Potential Causes of Cancers and Steps for Prevention

Cancer is a diverse group of more than hundred diseases occurring in different parts of body and due to different reasons. Accordingly, their aetiology varies but one thing is common in all cancers and that is they start from a few abnormal cells that have lost the control on their growth.

Our body is made of trillions of cells which have been formed from a single cell called zygote. Usually the cells grow, divide, form the tissue to perform specific function and die in very controlled manner, and that is how a child grows up into an adult. In adults the cells divide only for maintenance and to replace the dead cells and for healing the injuries.

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The growth and division of the cells are regulated by the DNA, deoxynucleic acid, which makes our genes, situated in cell nucleus. If some undesired changes occur in the DNA, called mutation, which is not repairable by the cells, it may lead to uncontrolled division of cells forming a lump of unorganised tissue called cancer. In case of blood cancer, however, the cells do not form lump of tissues. Cancers of different tissues behave differently and respond to different medications.

After reading my last blog one of the reader suggested to cover the causes of cancers so that people can get aware and avoid the cancer by making certain life style changes.

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According to American Cancer Society, a number of factors may be responsible for cancer including familial inheritance of defective genes, use of tobacco which contain many compounds that can cause DNA damage, the diet, physical inactivity, hormonal unbalance, increased body weight, and alcohol abuse, all can make the body organs prone to develop certain cancers. Further, environmental factors such as excessive sun, ultra-violet, radiation and chemical and pollutants exposure can also lead to cancer development.

One cannot do much in case of inheritance of a defective gene, but if such genes run in the family, the person can go for screening of such genes early and try to avoid the occurrence of cancer by staying away from the stimulus that may activate those genes. Alternatively, the affected organs can be regularly screened for any benign growth, and if needed may be removed surgically. Recently, Hollywood actor Anjelina Jolie’s double mastectomy was widely covered by Global media, which has been helpful in increasing the awareness about familial cancers.

In the present day scenario, westernised life style has been blamed for developing many cancers. The energy rich diet, along with little or no physical activity, obesity and tobacco and alcohol abuse has been scientifically shown to cause cancers. These factors induce a condition in the body which affects the body cells and make them vulnerable for DNA damage. In many people these changes may result in cancer development. The affected person would not know immediately because the cancer grows slowly. By the time symptoms appear and it may be diagnosed cancer may be uncontrollable and untreatable resulting in fatality.

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One can avoid the life style-related cancers by consuming balanced diet, avoiding energy rich and overcooked or fried meal, stopping tobacco and alcohol abuse and by exercising regularly to stay fit and regulate the body weight.

The pollutants, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers and other toxic chemical may also act as carcinogen. These days most of the food items are being grown using these chemicals, our cities are excessively polluted and our homes are full of toxic chemicals. These chemicals are scientifically proven to cause severe and irreversible DNA damage which can result into cancer development.

The organic farming using no fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides can be helpful in avoiding the dangers of these chemicals on our health. Governments are implicating policies to decrease the pollution in residential and work area including offices and parks in which citizens should actively and consciously make effort to minimise the pollution. These step may, slowly and certainly, become helpful in prevention of many deadly cancers in due course.

Cancer Dwindling the Population Dividend of India

With the billion plus population, India is one of the youngest country in the world with 65% population in the working age. However, this promising population dividend is also suffering from malignant life style related health issues which is silently hollowing the India’s pillar of strength, it young people. The diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular problems and lately cancer has started appearing in the young men and women of this country as early as in late thirties or early forties.

Surprisingly, the cancer has become a significant menace and concern of personal, social and economic life of our people and severely impacting the socio-economic scenario of India. According to a study, in 2004 total cancer patients were over eight lacs, which in 2014, just after a decade, has more than doubled to 18 lacs. Every year a million (10 lacs) people are being diagnosed with cancer and nearly 6-7 lacs die of it annually, while the number of oncologists and specialists to treat these patients has not increased as much in these years.

According to an estimate an average cancer therapy for an individual with lung cancer comes around Rs. 6.5 lacs which is much more than average income (Rs. 5 Lacs) of middle class family. One can imagine how a poor family would remain untreated and left to die an untimely death. Thousands of the patients who receive the costly therapy are pushed deep into poverty.

What can be done?

The individual effort to stay healthy is necessary to beat the menace of cancer and live cancer free. The balanced and simple diet, active life style, daily exercise, routine check-up to catch the disease early are a few step an individual can adopt in order to lead a healthy life.

To increase the awareness of the cancer disease the government and private corporates under their social responsibility should run awareness campaign about the cancer using the social media, television and print media to have wide reach. The campaign may include awareness for early diagnosis, annual check-ups of the prone people such as 40 year plus individuals or those having the disease in close family, promoting healthy life style, especially in urban areas.

The state governments should provide for a clear policy for the patient’s treatment and cap the cost of cancer treatment so that private hospitals or care providers do not charge the patients unreasonable and catastrophic amounts for the treatments including the surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or palliative care. The cost of treatment needs to be made realistic and affordable for the average citizen. Privately funded health insurance or publicly funded health initiatives help the people in western country to meet the excessive treatments cost, while in India insurance remains limited to middle class or upper middle class families, that most of the times not realistic to meet the cost of cancer treatments. The government initiative and funding is meagre and the majority of the people remain unaware of such schemes. Efforts and policy are urgently needed to plug these gaps so that cancer care become economically accessible.  

Enhancing the infrastructure and ensuring the availability of specialist doctors is major bottleneck in the current cancer treatments. A country of 1.25 billion population has only 27 dedicated cancer hospitals and only 1000 trained cancer specialists. These numbers suggest that situation is really serious. Sample this, India has one oncologist for nearly 2000 cancer patients while the USA has one doctor for every 100 patients. Therefore, a policy should be adopted to open more speciality care centres in the area where cancer incidence is more such as in the north-eastern states, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and some areas of Punjab. 

Google's Nanobots to diagnose fetal disease early

The search engine and internet giant Google is trying to host a search engine in our bodies by using a magnet based nanopills, which will help diagnose the various disease including cancer and heart diseases. These nanopills will send the signals to the sensors located outside the body which then translate the signals into diagnostic indicators. 

Source: bigthink.com

The pills will be able to identify discrete changes in the cellular biochemistry which will be identified as an early warning to diagnose the diseases such as cancer. This could be a path breaking tool to catch the fetal disease like cancer early.... read more.....  Here

Goodness of Fruits & Vegetables For Health

Ever since the discovery of 'FIRE' our food habit has evolved in such a way that we cook our meals, sometimes char it or overcook it. Overcooking modifies certain food constituents, especially those present in the meat and protienacious foods, and make them toxic. 

The proteins in our food contain amines and aromatic compounds which when heated excessively get converted into various toxic compounds including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heterocyclic amines, and nitrosamines. A well known polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is benzopyrene which is a potential carcinogen. These chemicals are toxic to cells and know to cause damage DNA, the genetic material in our body cells.

The damage to DNA results in various mutations and DNA breaks which may cause cells death or excessive and unregulated cell growth forming tumors. Both of these condition are deleterious to human body.

Further, these chemicals also produce excessive reactive free radicals with induce inflammation in our bodies during damage to the cells and creating a inflammatory condition in body. Inflammation is bad and a starting point to many diseases including aging-related diseases, cardiovascular diseases, various types of cancer and many more. 

Therefore, overcooking and deep frying of food items should be avoided for better benefits of the food that we consume.

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In addition including more fruits and vegetables in our diet is always a better option to minimize the risks of developing these complications and diseases. It has been found that some of the fruits and vegetables which include deep colored berries such as blueberries and blackberries, other fruits like cherries, guava, dates, resins, red grapes, apricots, cantaloupe; and vegetables such as green pepper, Olive, Mushrooms, Tomato, Radish, Chicory, cucumber, Spinach, Broccoli and sweet potato contain an potential anti-inflammatory compound salicylic acid. 

Salicylic acid is a know inhibitor of an enzyme in our body called cycloxygenase-2 or Cox-2. Cox-2 produces a pro-inflammatory compound called  prostaglandins which are known to induced and promote inflammation and excessive proliferation of our body cells. Thus, presence of salicylic acid in our diet will suppress the activation of Cox-2 and thereby prevent any onslaught of inflammation on our body.

The take home message is to avoid overcooked meal so that any exposure to toxic chemicals that may damage DNA and thus our health may be prevent; and include appropriate amount of fruits and vegetables in diet so that natural anti-inflammatory compounds present in them could protect the body from any onslaught of oxidants and inflammatory mediators and promote health.

Diet and Disease

What we eat affects how we live - disease free or with diseases. Several of the scientific research and clinical & epidemiological studies warn us about the ill effects of artificial, over-cooked, fried and so called fast food. Yet rarely such information impact our food choices or eating habit.

The choices we make with what to fill our platter does not depend on a logical and well thought out decision making process. Most of the times immediate urge to sooth taste buds leads to bad choices. On other occasions real limitations of availability of healthy options affects our choices. In any case we end up filling our tummies with so called junk food, which we know will harm us.

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We all know that eating green vegetables, colorful, seasonal and fresh fruits, and home prepared healthy meals are good choices. But most of us opt for calorie loaded, frozen, preservative added and overcooked meals on some pretext. We spend more or less equal amount of time and money in procuring either types of food items but if only a little thinking about long-term effects of these choices is practiced, we can save ourselves from many health problems. 

Scientific studies indicate that junk food items affect and alter physiology of our body cells drastically and propel them towards a state where only disease can develop. The high calorie besides being stored in body as increased weight, also fires the mitochondria excessively which leaks many highly reactive molecules called free radicals that destroy the basic fabric of our cells, the proteins, DNA and other molecules. These damages are initially small and do not cause major problems. With time, however, they accumulate and till then it becomes too late and managing the after effect becomes difficult, costly and some times irreversible. 

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The plants from where we derive most of our food supply including cereals, vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices possess many molecules, which evolved simultaneously with our own evolution. The prehistoric day-to-day interaction and co-evolution has resulted in a perfect bio-compatibility  of these molecules with our body cells and their functions. It provide certain definite advantages compared to drastically modified artificial meals which contain many synthetic chemicals.

The plant derived bio-molecules have been shown to be effective in preventing and/or treating a number of pathological conditions. For example, studies show that Lycopene, a molecule from tomato, could prevent heart diseases, strokes and even prostrate cancer in humans.  The examples of Turmeric derived curcumin, ginger, garlic,  and some other spices have filled the scientific literature. In all societies and cultures such examples are in plenty, and we just need to take note of them and make conscious decisions regarding what we bring to our plates.

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We must realize that wrong choices and modern food habit is creating consistent problems for our own health leading to increased incidence of metabolic diseases including obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and Alzheimer disease among others. An intelligent choice made once creates opportunity for repeat of similar choices, and same is true if one makes bad choices.

Therefore, our goal must be to eat healthy, live healthy and have a long and disease free life. This indeed is a life long investment to have a graceful aging without major disease and of course bitter pills. The choice is ours and so does the outcome :)

Forbidden Fruits of Aging Research !

The research on aging has been one of the ‘Hot Cake’ that researchers all over the world try to bake in their laboratories, and people in general try to sniff the aroma coming out of it, if not have the real bite.

Many leads on the aging research have come about in last few decades but their translation into clinics has eluded thus far. A couple of leads that I am going to discuss today are promising but have their own pros and cons.

The first approach is associated with telomere shortening. Telomere, discovered in 1970s, is the terminal part of the DNA in chromosomes, which protects the chromosomes from degradation. However, every time when a cell divides its DNA replicates.  Due to an inbuilt mechanism with every replication of DNA the length of telomere decreases, eventually exposing the terminal genes to be inactivated or degraded leading to aging and other related health problems.

A number of age-related diseases are associated with short telomeres like Alzheimer’s disease.

The length of telomeres shrink due to many reasons including very low levels of telomerase in most body cells, DNA replication mechanism itself and a variety of stresses that one has to face including emotional and environmental stress. Scientists have not found as yet the full proof solution to solve this problem.

Interestingly enough, I had discussed in my earlier write-up that somehow telomeres in a man's sperm tend to get longer with age, which means that his children will have longer telomeres to begin with and would live longer.

Scientists believe that if somehow the length of telomere is prevented from decreasing, the life of the cells and the individual with those cells could be extended. This is theoretically possible to achieve by activating an enzyme called telomerase that is known to extend the length of telomere.

However, practically increased telomere length and over active telomerase makes cells immortalized and cancerous. Consequently, question regarding which cells to be targeted when it comes to protecting the telomere length is a complicated one.

Another approach is the use of antioxidants to defy aging. Proponents of this approach believe that antioxidants may help slow aging and prevent a number of aging-related diseases.

From ancient times antioxidants have been advocated to have natural anti-aging properties. It is believed that anti-oxidants not only slow down the aging but also prevent many of the aging-related diseases.

Antioxidants are known to inhibit a transcription factor called nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB), which synthesizes many inflammatory substances in body. Activated NF-kB has been implicated in diseases such as cancer, diabetic, cardiovascular, Alzheimer’s disease and other aging-related problems. It is thus understandable that inhibiting NF-kB would slow the aging process. A new research seems to further strengthen this claim.

Published in the journal Nature, a study in mice suggests that NF-kB becomes more active in the hypothalamus of mice as they get older. A mouse lives for nearly 1000 days on an average. When researchers blocked the activity of NF-kB, mice lived longer, roughly 1100 days. On the other hand, when they activated this factor in mice, they lived only 900 days or less.

Although natural antioxidants taken as fruits and vegetables have been found to lower the risk of some chronic aging-related diseases or aging itself, only a few clinical trials using antioxidants have shown anti-aging effects.

The synthetic antioxidants when taken have shown adverse effects. Since NF-kB also plays important role in the body’s immune response that fights against the bacterial and viral pathogens, its complete inhibition using specific inhibitor could be detrimental.

Although there is no direct study linking these two players in the aging process, it would be interesting to know whether antioxidants somehow prevent telomere shortening. A study that I came across suggests that telomeres are vulnerable to oxidative injury, and antioxidants may prevent it from further damage.

Having said that, it is obvious that antioxidants consumed as fruits and vegetables go a long way to protect from diseases and may also slow down aging process.

Thus, for the common man like us it is prudent to stick to our apples, berries, broccolis and carrots, and avoid antioxidant drugs that claim to retain your youth and slow your aging. They may rather pace it!!