Roughly six months after the American Cancer Society released their own rosy report, the downward trend in American cancer rates -- based on data culled from the CDC, National Cancer Institute and other research entities -- continues, albeit slowly.

The mortality rate among cancer patients fell 1.6 percent annually from 1999-2006 as did the number of new cancer diagnoses by less than 1 percent (during that same period). Still, more than a half-million Americans will die from cancer and almost three times as many patients will be diagnosed with it every year, according to the report.

But, it's no surprise taking better responsibility for your health can pay huge dividends when it comes to cancer prevention. Taking current colon cancer rates into consideration, without lifestyle changes, treatments or extra screenings, deaths linked to such cancers are projected to drop 17 percent from 2000-2020 just by themselves. Factoring in the aforementioned preventative measures, however, mortality statistics for colon cancer could be slashed by an amazing 50 percent over time.

Lifestyle changes identified in the study that would accelerate the positive trend in reducing cancer risks among all Americans:

* Eating a healthier diet.

* Better moving through exercise.

* Smoking cessation.

* Keeping off the extra pounds.

Cancer, December 7, 2009

MedlinePlus December 8, 2009

USA Today December 8, 2009

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a recall of 65 dietary supplements sold by Bodybuilding.com through their Web site, based on concerns these products contain ingredients the agency either currently classifies, or should be classified, as steroids. Turinabol, androstenedione, superdrol, madol and tren are the ingredients under federal scrutiny.

Some of the side effects associated with steroids are alarming. Among them:

* Acute liver injury

* Male infertility

* Increased risks of death, heart disease and stroke

* Male breast enlargement

Among the 65 supplements recalled by the FDA (review the links below for a full product list): Anabolic Xtreme Hyperdrol X2, Diabolic Labs Revenge, Myogenix Spawn, Performance Anabolics Methastadrol, Rage RV5 and Transform Supplements Forged Extreme Mass.

All the more reason for you to do your homework when it comes to choosing a safe supplement for your health. Learn more about the lack of testing and quality standards associated with other supplements by reviewing CNCA's Nutritional Supplement Quality -- The Facts.

FDA.gov November 3, 2009

eNews Park Forest November 3, 2009

Citing an "understandably anxious and confused" public, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson recently announced an urgent push for major reforms for the long outmoded 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that governs how the agency regulates toxic chemicals. "Over the years, not only has the TSCA fallen behind the industry it's supposed to regulate, it's been proven an inadequate tool for providing the protection against chemical risks that the public rightfully expects," Jackson says.

It's about time. During TSCA's sorry, 33-year history, the FDA has issued either strong regulations or banned only five chemicals out of some 80,000. Among the reforms being considered:

1. Giving greater authority to the EPA to take action when chemicals don't meet safety standards.

2. Mandating more timely assessments of new and existing priority chemicals.

3. Reviewing chemicals against risk-specific safety standards based on sound science that safeguard the environment and human health.

4. Requiring manufacturers to provide the agency with enough information to make informed assessments about the safety or non-safety of chemicals.

5. Changing the mindset of assessments, so that chemicals aren't automatically assumed to be "innocent until proven guilty," says an Environmental Working Group spokesperson.

A big surprise: The American Chemistry Council endorses the move by the EPA to revamp TSCA, considered by many environmental health experts to be obsolete.

Toxic "surprises" are just another thing to consider when you're weighing the pros and cons of a product to improve your health. Read more about protecting yourself and your family from our toxic world here.

EPA.gov September 29, 2009

San Francisco Chronicle September 30, 2009

USA Today September 29, 2009

If you've been reading our blog from the very beginning, one of the major themes we often discuss in this space is the need for you to do your homework when considering a quality supplement. It's not rocket science by any stretch... just using some good old fashioned common sense and doing a bit of due diligence on your end.

So, you may be interested -- if not a bit confused -- to learn that even as the FDA is cracking down on the questionable quality of some supplements, the agency lists a trio of vitamin strategies in their latest video Fortify Your Knowledge About Vitamins, to help you select the best and safest supplements for your health (particularly if you're a vegetarian or vegan, pregnant or breastfeeding). No doubt, faithful readers of this space should know them by heart.

1. Don't "chase" headlines (trendy studies may not yield safe, optimal results over the long term).

2. More is not better (too much of a good thing isn't always safe or ideal).

3. Watch for false claims (too good to be true usually is).

Learn more about how CNCA protects your health in many ways by reviewing our Nutritional Supplement Quality -- The Facts.

NutraIngredients-USA.com October 2, 2009

FDA.gov February 21, 2009

An interesting piece published by Natural Products Insider (free text link below) details the very shaky history of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) as described by Peter Barton Hutt, who served as chief counsel for the FDA in the 70s and was one of many who helped to shape the act in behalf of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN).

The DSHEA was drafted in response to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act in 1990, that gave the FDA the authority to approve all disease prevention claims for food, including dietary supplements. Using the vast powers of the act some three years later, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, M.D., said the agency would block any attempt to approve disease prevention claims connected with supplements, even instances in which those claims were made for conventional foods, essentially banning supplements. Additionally, the act would be employed by the FDA to prevent food manufacturers from using dietary ingredients -- apart from essential minerals and vitamins -- deemed to be "illegal food additives."

Political pressure by consumers, however, forced Congress to relax these restrictions with the passage of the DSHEA, a law that legal experts believe provides the FDA enough legal authority to ban mislabeled and harmful supplements from the American marketplace. Unfortunately, that's where the regulatory road became very rocky.

In protest of its passage, Kessler prohibited FDA employees from enforcing the DSHEA because he was so convinced an unregulated marketplace rife with abuses would force Congress to repeal the act. The damage done to safety regulations and the health of Americans was so devastating that the DSHEA wasn't properly enforced until 2002, five years after Kessler left the agency. Even worse, it took some six more years for Congress to increase funding just so the FDA could enforce laws already on the books.

Still, these laws haven't stopped the production and sale of supplements with potency problems or those contaminated with harmful substances like lead. All the more reason for you to better understand what you're really paying for, by reviewing CNCA's Nutritional Supplement Quality -- The Facts.

Natural Products Insider September 21, 2009

Perhaps, the Labor Day weekend was another slow news period for the Wall Street Journal, as evidenced by the latest in a seemingly ongoing series of articles appearing in the mainstream media (MSM) slamming the presence of dangerous ingredients in some herbal supplements.

A good portion of the article is devoted to eye-opening, first-person accounts of consumers, young and old, who experienced very serious and very legitimate medical problems, as a result of taking some supplements, followed by citations of reports documenting the health-harming presence of foreign substances -- think steroids and prescription drugs -- in them.

Buried about halfway down, however, was the real moral of the story, voiced by Andrew Shao, vice president for The Council for Responsible Nutrition, whose organization welcomed recent efforts by the FDA to jump-start its enforcement efforts. In a statement, Shao urged consumers to be savvy as well about the supplements they use.

To that end, the rest of the story took a more even-handed approach, detailing the many ways consumers can do their homework to ensure the supplements they use are safe, from surfing the Web to studiously reading product labels to consulting with their physicians before taking them.

Learn more about what you can do to protect your health and that of your loved ones by watching this short, informative video by Dr. Timothy Birdsall, vice chairman of CNCA's Quality Control Unit.

Wall Street Journal September 7, 2009

The list of health-harming pollutants once considered to be benign at best -- think mercury -- appears to be growing by the day, with the latest being atrazine, one of the more common herbicides used on golf courses, crops and lawns in America.

The major concern: Recent animal studies are showing how atrazine -- among the more common contaminants found in American drinking water sources and reservoirs -- can be harmful in low concentrations, even at levels meeting current federal standards. Among the problems linked to atrazine:

* Menstrual issues.

* Low birth weights.

* Birth defects.

Even worse, animal fetuses briefly exposed to atrazine had an elevated risk of cancer.

The only good news about atrazine: A recent report published in Biology of Reproduction found that hormonal problems experienced by adult rats fed higher amounts of atrazine vanished after exposure to the common herbicide ended, and their recovery was quick (previous studies have shown how atrazine is expelled from the blood and brain of rats within a day).

New York Times August 23, 2009

Environmental Health News August 20, 2009

Atrazine is produced in America by Syngenta.

The FDA seems to be getting more comfortable with issuing black box warnings. The latest group of drugs on the watch list -- tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers -- are linked to rising cancer risks among children and adolescents.

The agency began investigating TNF blockers after reports of several dozen children developing cancer surfaced more than a year ago. Malignancies were diagnosed some 21/2 years after kids started taking these drugs and roughly half led to lymphomas.

What really grabbed the attention of the FDA: A New England Journal of Medicine report about a Chron's disease sufferer and lung cancer patient whose cancer went into remission after she stopped using a TNF blocker.

TNF blockers receiving black box warnings from the FDA:

Cimzia

Enbrel

Remicade

Humira

Simponi

HealthScout August 4, 2009

Wall Street Journal August 4, 2009

Remicade and Simponi are trademarks of Centocor Ortho Biotech.

Enbrel is a trademark of Amgen and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Humira is a trademark of Abbott Laboratories.

Cimzia is a trademark of UCB.

Nanotechnology may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but the ability to control matter at the molecular level may soon give medicine new weapons to fight cancer, according to a pair of studies.

In one study, John Hopkins University researchers developed nanoparticles made of liposomes (that may contain drugs and other chemicals and can be controlled to stay in a patient's bloodstream for a given time) to deliver radioisotopes to selected areas in the body where tumors reside. But, these liposomes were designed with antibodies, immune system proteins that recognize and bind with many tiny targets, among them viruses, bacteria and human cells.

Because some antibodies specifically bind to cancer cells, these special liposomes are made to better navigate through the bloodstream and find tumors without harming healthy cells, as scientists found in their studies on the extending the lives of mice treated with aggressive metastatic breast cancer cells.

In another report, scientists from Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Rice proved how multi-walled nanotubes -- long, thin sub-microscopic tubes made of carbon -- killed kidney tumors in mice with the help of a laser, compared to laser or nanotube therapy alone. In fact, kidney tumors disappeared in 80 percent of mice treated with the highest number of nanotubes exposed to laser-generated, near-infrared radiation, and many test subjects lived tumor-free to the end of the study nine months later.

Newswise.com/American Institute of Physics July 24, 2009

healthfinder.gov July 29, 2009

Science Daily August 3, 2009

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 30, pp. 12459-12464, July 28, 2009

The health benefits of flavonoids -- a class of plant-based chemicals known for their antioxidant properties -- may also protect your brain from Alzheimer's, according to a new study.

Epicatechin -- the flavonoid found in many plants and, in high quantities, in tea, cocoa and grapes -- may protect brain cells from damaging beta-amyloid peptides deposited abnormally via a mechanism unrelated to its antioxidant properties, scientists said.

All the good news notwithstanding, researchers believe the real challenge is to identify any single flavonoid or combinations of chemicals that can do the job and determine how they work before committing to any clinical trials.

Science Daily July 19, 2009

The Press Association July 9, 2009

With the recent addition of $2 billion to the Cash-For-Clunkers program, the government expects to take some 750,000 gas-guzzling cars off America's streets. Although the benefits to your pocketbook may be considerable, there are tradeoffs, and exposing the environment to health-harming mercury may be one of them.

It's an unfortunate convergence between the pullout of General Motors from the End of Life Vehicle Solutions (ELVS), an auto industry-sponsored partnership created to stop mercury emissions by collecting toxic auto parts when scrapped vehicles are crushed, and the far better-than-expected results from the Cash-For-Clunkers program.

Some 36 million mercury switches used in antilock brakes and trunk convenience lights found their way into cars built and sold during the last two decades of the 20th century, including more than half of them in GM vehicles. Until now, the program had collected 2.5 million switches, with GM being the largest contributor and sponsor.

All that changed when the "new" GM, now largely owned by the U.S. government, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July and declared that they weren't part of the ELVS program because they built cars without mercury switches. Without GM funding, the ELVS program could be scrapped or greatly scaled back, making it harder for recyclers to get rid of the mercury switches accumulating with Cash-For-Clunkers trade-ins.

USA Today August 10, 2009

The FDA finally issued formal black box warnings for BOTOX and three other products containing botulinum toxins (BOTOX Cosmetic, Myobloc and Dysport). These new warnings underscore the potentially harmful spread of these drugs from the injection site to distant parts of the human body, potentially affecting a patient's ability to breathe or swallow.

The agency acted on a 15-month-old petition sent by Public Citizen, spurred by 180 reports of serious health problems and 16 deaths connected to such products. During its investigation, the FDA identified 225 additional reports linked to the spread of the drug beyond the injection site. Many of these side effects were related to off-label uses, primarily the treatment of muscle spasticity in children suffering from cerebral palsy.

On the heels of the black box warnings, the FDA also approved Dysport, a variation of the very same toxin to treat cervical dystonia (a neck problem that may cause severe pain and abnormal head positioning), for sale in America.

FDA.gov August 3, 2009

AboutLawsuits.com August 4, 2009

New York Times April 30, 2009

BOTOX is a trademark of Allergan Inc.

Dysport is a trademark of Medicis Pharmaceutical.

Myobloc is a trademark of Solstice Neurosciences.

BOTOX Cosmetic is a trademark of Allergan Inc.

With the cellular phone seemingly becoming an "extension" of the human body -- contributing to increased reports of cell phone elbow -- trying to drive while talking on one of those handy, dandy devices may be more hazardous to your health than you ever imagined.

This sobering New York Times piece describes how driving while chatting on cell phones -- attractive as it may appear to multitask -- can be a deadly combination, even for the safest people. What's more, many states have resisted any attempts to pass laws legislating cell phone chatting while driving due to a lack of long-term data and any reports that do are often based on first-person accounts, a rarity among folks who don't want to admit they were distracted by their cell phones for insurance reasons, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

If you need any convincing, the numbers cited in this alarming NYT feature really tell the story.

* Distractions created by cell phones while driving were responsible for an estimated 2,600 traffic deaths, based on a 2003 Harvard study, more than double the number from just seven years ago, according to federal researchers.

* Cell phone account for some 330,000 traffic accidents a year, according to the same Harvard study.

* The probability you'll cause an accident while talking on a cell phone than drivers who don't is four times greater. Also, your likelihood of a crash is equal to someone to that of a person driving with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, or legally drunk.

* During daylight hours, almost 2 million people may be using their cell phones at any time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

New York Times July 18, 2009

The Age.com.au July 20, 2009

For all the talk of preventing Montezuma's Revenge -- the temporary bout of diarrhea that commonly affects travelers on vacations -- you can avoid such gastrointestinal problems, very literally, by not burying your head and body in the sand.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the EPA based their findings on interviews with more than 27,000 patients who visited seven freshwater or marine beaches located within 7 miles of sewage treatment plant discharges (water quality on beaches was judged within acceptable limits). First, folks were questioned about their contact with sand, then contacted 10-12 days later about any health problems they had experienced since their visit.

Although some 13 percent of patients who reported digging in sand and 23 percent of those being buried in it experienced gastrointestinal issues, walking on the beach or swimming weren't associated with any health problems.

The best solutions for avoiding any sandy health problems, according to the EPA, are always the simplest ones: Take a hand sanitizer on your trips to the beach and don't hesitate to wash your hands after playing in the sand.

American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 170. No. 2, p. 164-172, July 15, 2009

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill July 9, 2009

healthfinder.gov July 14, 2009

The FDA's tougher stance toward food companies making health claims hasn't stopped manufacturers from touting the unusual benefits of "functional" foods, products perceived as possessing health benefits beyond their basic nutrients, according to an interesting feature in the Wall Street Journal.

You may have heard of some of this latest crop of foods, that include a green tea/ginger ale drink and a soft drink with vitamins and minerals added. And, marshmallows imported from Japan that contain collagen, cited in the WSJ piece, are available in the UK, but not the U.S. Nevertheless, the market for functional foods -- a $30.7 billion industry based on 2008 numbers -- is projected to grow by 40 percent over the next five years.

The unspoken problem: Enhanced foods are processed in ways that destroy nutrients, says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. For example, some yogurts may be advertised as featuring extra probiotics, but the processing necessary to include them breaks down the probiotics that already exist in that food.

Unlike many nutritional experts, Nestle recommends staying away from such "Frankenfoods," urging consumers instead to take a multivitamin.

Wall Street Journal June 15, 2009