Today is a really warm day in São Paulo and I've been thinking a lot about how the weather could make us stronger or weaker. Since I can't go to bed under this heat why not write a little bit?
Alexis de Tocqueville, the prophet of democracy and inspired writer and observer, is quoted in his biography with the following thought: "If one day I come to write a book about medicine I guarantee it will not be like all the existing books that are published every day. I will sustain and prove that in order to feel well it is necessary, first, to eat corn and pork meat, to eat very little, a lot or nothing, depending on the circumstances; to make your bed on the floor and sleep all dressed up; to travel in one week from hot to cold temperatures and from cold to hot temperatures, to put your hands to work or wake up in a ditch: above all, don't think..." (extracted from a letter of Alexis de Tocqueville to Chabrol, in Chesapeake Bay, January 16 of 1832, according to Hugh Brogan's biography of Alexis de Tocqueville). This happened while AT travelled across the US in the early 19th century. He was obsessed with the idea of dying, he had excruciating abdominal pains and thought that it was from a disease that would kill him at any moment. After travelling for a long time and surviving several near death experiences, like 3 boat crashes, one of witch in very cold conditions in the Mississippi River, (the steam boat he was in exploded right after the crash), I can bet he went from thinking he was very fragile to thinking he was invincible.
I shared one of my hypothesis that exercising might prevent cancer by helping the body produce heat shock proteins, the proteins responsible for reconstituting damaged DNA. Strenuous exercising is proven to increase HSP levels, just as severe variations in temperature, and high performance athletes have a much lower cancer incidence, according to my oncologist (I could not find data on this topic but I can't think of many athletes that had cancer).
My hypothesis is the following: if one lives in a severely controlled temperature environment and does not exercise one would have all the reasons to have reduced HSP levels and therefore be more likely to suffer from genetic mutations, some of which could lead to cancer.
I am writing this with no scientific data whatsoever, I could find no sources of air-conditioning consumption by country, like I've had in my other hypothesis, and therefore cannot correlate air-conditioning usage and cancer incidence, but I thought this could be an interesting topic for an adventurous researcher.
If anyone knows of any data sources of air-conditioning consumption by country I would really appreciate a hint, the only thing I could find on the topic was around air-conditioning consumption in the US.
Anyways the more I think about all these crazy hypothesis the more I find that we are simply trading-off a wild life and a modern life, with a much better prospect to live longer under a modern life style.
Below are two examples that we cannot avoid that lead to DNA damage and therefore make our body naturally require heat shock proteins:
- Cell Phones: the ionizing radiation from cell phones damage DNA and cell phones are everywhere;
- Sun exposure: the sun radiation damages DNA but we need sun light to produce vitamin D.
Anyway this is just a long way to say that I don't mean to scare anyone about their air-conditioning usage, I am indeed a heavy user (I've always worked in air-conditioned environments), but just a crazy insight I had that if any biologist or cancer researcher is looking for research topics this could be one.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Alcohol & Cancer - Are there reasons to be alarmed?
Several news outlets in Brazil shared a piece of news that might sound like hope - "The Link Between Alcohol Consumption and Cancer". Below are a few news stories on the topic:
Daily News (UK) - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2192611/How-alcohol-causes-cancer--particularly-lethal-Asian-descent.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822124714.htm
O Globo: http://oglobo.globo.com/saude/descoberto-um-novo-elo-entre-alcool-o-cancer-5867676
O Povo: http://www.opovo.com.br/app/maisnoticias/saude/2012/08/23/noticiasaude,2905373/consumo-de-alcool-esta-ligado-ao-desenvolvimento-de-cancer.shtml
The author of the study - Dr. Silvia Balbo from the University of Minnesota - points out that Asians should avoid alcohol consumption because they lack a dehydrogenase gene that helps metabolize alcohol. This is how the Daily News (UK) reported her discoveries:
Balbo pointed out that people have a highly effective natural repair mechanism for correcting the damage from DNA adducts. Most people thus are unlikely to develop cancer from social drinking, although alcohol is associated with a risk of other health problems and accidents. In addition, most people have an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which quickly converts acetaldehyde to acetate, a relatively harmless substance.
However, about 30 percent of people of Asian descent ― almost 1.6 billion people ― have a variant of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene and are unable to metabolize alcohol to acetate. That genetic variant results in an elevated risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol drinking. Native Americans and native Alaskans have a deficiency in the production of that same enzyme.
"We now have the first evidence from living human volunteers that acetaldehyde formed after alcohol consumption damages DNA dramatically,"
"Acetaldehyde attaches to DNA in humans ― to the genetic material that makes up genes ― in a way that results in the formation of a 'DNA adduct.' It's acetaldehyde that latches onto DNA and interferes with DNA activity in a way linked to an increased risk of cancer."
First of all I want to applaud Dr. Balbo's effort and time invested researching the mechanisms of cancer. Thank you for picking such an honorable profession, cancer research.
Now I want to think and evaluate with data if this makes sense, and this is just my opinion:
1. DNA damage and cancer - I am not a biologist so I cannot comment on the link between DNA damage and cancer, but cancer is by definition a mutation in DNA that leads cells to reproduce uncontrollably. DNA damage does not necessarily mean cancer. In fact strenuous exercising severely damages DNA, activating Heat Shock Proteins that help rebuild DNA and protect the body. If DNA damage was per se a cause of cancer all professional athletes would be toast, and the evidence is quite the opposite - high performance athletes have a significantly lower chance of developing cancer.
2. People with Asian descent have an increased risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol drinking - First of all what is the definition of Asian descent? - I researched brain and nervous system cancer incidence per country relative to alcohol consumption per capita. While flawed in method as I am not using a control population test, the general correlation between recorded alcohol consumption per capita and nervous system cancer incidence dropped from 60% to 35% when I picked "Asians", quite a surprise given her conclusion. BTW I only selected the population qualified as "Asian". While Russians, Indians, Pakistanis and Israelis are all Asians, to name a few, the stereotypical definition of "Asians" in the US mean people with "Asian" eyes. I selected China, Vietnam. Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Mongolia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.
I might seem a bit radical but what is happening to science? How can a scientist say "people of Asian descent"? I am reading Burrhus Skinner's book on Behaviorism and in his first pages he compares science to other areas of knowledge. Science is by definition cumulative, reproducible and well defined. This sound-bite comment sounds more like a news selling tagline than science. Dr. Balbo, please accept my apologies if journalists are butchering your comments to sell the news, but the news reported your quoted words. If journalists used your words out of context I totally understand.
Cancer is serious business, millions of people live with hope of being saved by new discoveries. My mother sent me multiple links to this'"discovery". Scientists and journalists seem to increasingly lack responsibility in their reporting, and the uneducated public can be literally uninformed by pieces of news like this. I don't want to corrupt the first amendment of the US Constitution, people should universally have the right to free speech, and Google is helping the whole world with this process.
To all news outlets, scientists and readers that want to survive in the age of broadcasting freedom, here is my advice:
1. The Truth, The Whole Truth, Nothing But The Truth - focus on the facts and think critically about what you write, read and research, leave the hard selling lines to the tabloids. Always think critically about what you are writing or reading;
2. The Ends do Not Justify the Means - sorry Machiavel, but in the Age of Transparency and Power Universalizing the ends do not justify the means anymore. A scientist might get one grant, a person might get one promotion or be elected for one term, but what matters is consistency. One can only achieve ones long-term goals and life purposes by respecting rule number 1 and having a clear goal, whether you want to find the cure for cancer or sell a news paper.
3. Learn With Others - I am shocked to see how many people reinvent the wheel in cancer and other areas, be it in raising funds (several NGOs raising money globally to combat the same malady, all with their own administrative staff, research grants and efforts) and researching what might have already been researched. On the other hand the one size fits all approach is just as bad in a world that is constantly reshaped by new information. Collaboration is a universal need in every level of society and in the fight against cancer we need more collaboration than ever to eliminate redundancies, from cross-discipline collaboration within universities to cross-university, country and company collaboration.
4. Efficiency and Meritocracy - this simple mantra helped turn struggling companies into global leaders and struggling countries into emerging powers. This mantra must be applied to Cancer Research. Resources are limited and as Governments, NGOs and Universities channel millions to cancer research this money needs to be well managed. There is a reason why health care is so expensive and poorly managed resources are a piece of the problem. Business principles need to be applied to cancer research, always remembering that when companies live for an honorable purpose the money will follow, and not the other way around.
Long, complex blog but I needed to get this our of my chest. May God, People, Business and Science converge to give the best scientists the will power and resources to tirelessly research cancer until a cure is found.
Daily News (UK) - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2192611/How-alcohol-causes-cancer--particularly-lethal-Asian-descent.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822124714.htm
O Globo: http://oglobo.globo.com/saude/descoberto-um-novo-elo-entre-alcool-o-cancer-5867676
O Povo: http://www.opovo.com.br/app/maisnoticias/saude/2012/08/23/noticiasaude,2905373/consumo-de-alcool-esta-ligado-ao-desenvolvimento-de-cancer.shtml
The author of the study - Dr. Silvia Balbo from the University of Minnesota - points out that Asians should avoid alcohol consumption because they lack a dehydrogenase gene that helps metabolize alcohol. This is how the Daily News (UK) reported her discoveries:
Balbo pointed out that people have a highly effective natural repair mechanism for correcting the damage from DNA adducts. Most people thus are unlikely to develop cancer from social drinking, although alcohol is associated with a risk of other health problems and accidents. In addition, most people have an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which quickly converts acetaldehyde to acetate, a relatively harmless substance.
However, about 30 percent of people of Asian descent ― almost 1.6 billion people ― have a variant of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene and are unable to metabolize alcohol to acetate. That genetic variant results in an elevated risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol drinking. Native Americans and native Alaskans have a deficiency in the production of that same enzyme.
"We now have the first evidence from living human volunteers that acetaldehyde formed after alcohol consumption damages DNA dramatically,"
"Acetaldehyde attaches to DNA in humans ― to the genetic material that makes up genes ― in a way that results in the formation of a 'DNA adduct.' It's acetaldehyde that latches onto DNA and interferes with DNA activity in a way linked to an increased risk of cancer."
First of all I want to applaud Dr. Balbo's effort and time invested researching the mechanisms of cancer. Thank you for picking such an honorable profession, cancer research.
Now I want to think and evaluate with data if this makes sense, and this is just my opinion:
1. DNA damage and cancer - I am not a biologist so I cannot comment on the link between DNA damage and cancer, but cancer is by definition a mutation in DNA that leads cells to reproduce uncontrollably. DNA damage does not necessarily mean cancer. In fact strenuous exercising severely damages DNA, activating Heat Shock Proteins that help rebuild DNA and protect the body. If DNA damage was per se a cause of cancer all professional athletes would be toast, and the evidence is quite the opposite - high performance athletes have a significantly lower chance of developing cancer.
2. People with Asian descent have an increased risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol drinking - First of all what is the definition of Asian descent? - I researched brain and nervous system cancer incidence per country relative to alcohol consumption per capita. While flawed in method as I am not using a control population test, the general correlation between recorded alcohol consumption per capita and nervous system cancer incidence dropped from 60% to 35% when I picked "Asians", quite a surprise given her conclusion. BTW I only selected the population qualified as "Asian". While Russians, Indians, Pakistanis and Israelis are all Asians, to name a few, the stereotypical definition of "Asians" in the US mean people with "Asian" eyes. I selected China, Vietnam. Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Mongolia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.
I might seem a bit radical but what is happening to science? How can a scientist say "people of Asian descent"? I am reading Burrhus Skinner's book on Behaviorism and in his first pages he compares science to other areas of knowledge. Science is by definition cumulative, reproducible and well defined. This sound-bite comment sounds more like a news selling tagline than science. Dr. Balbo, please accept my apologies if journalists are butchering your comments to sell the news, but the news reported your quoted words. If journalists used your words out of context I totally understand.
Cancer is serious business, millions of people live with hope of being saved by new discoveries. My mother sent me multiple links to this'"discovery". Scientists and journalists seem to increasingly lack responsibility in their reporting, and the uneducated public can be literally uninformed by pieces of news like this. I don't want to corrupt the first amendment of the US Constitution, people should universally have the right to free speech, and Google is helping the whole world with this process.
To all news outlets, scientists and readers that want to survive in the age of broadcasting freedom, here is my advice:
1. The Truth, The Whole Truth, Nothing But The Truth - focus on the facts and think critically about what you write, read and research, leave the hard selling lines to the tabloids. Always think critically about what you are writing or reading;
2. The Ends do Not Justify the Means - sorry Machiavel, but in the Age of Transparency and Power Universalizing the ends do not justify the means anymore. A scientist might get one grant, a person might get one promotion or be elected for one term, but what matters is consistency. One can only achieve ones long-term goals and life purposes by respecting rule number 1 and having a clear goal, whether you want to find the cure for cancer or sell a news paper.
3. Learn With Others - I am shocked to see how many people reinvent the wheel in cancer and other areas, be it in raising funds (several NGOs raising money globally to combat the same malady, all with their own administrative staff, research grants and efforts) and researching what might have already been researched. On the other hand the one size fits all approach is just as bad in a world that is constantly reshaped by new information. Collaboration is a universal need in every level of society and in the fight against cancer we need more collaboration than ever to eliminate redundancies, from cross-discipline collaboration within universities to cross-university, country and company collaboration.
4. Efficiency and Meritocracy - this simple mantra helped turn struggling companies into global leaders and struggling countries into emerging powers. This mantra must be applied to Cancer Research. Resources are limited and as Governments, NGOs and Universities channel millions to cancer research this money needs to be well managed. There is a reason why health care is so expensive and poorly managed resources are a piece of the problem. Business principles need to be applied to cancer research, always remembering that when companies live for an honorable purpose the money will follow, and not the other way around.
Long, complex blog but I needed to get this our of my chest. May God, People, Business and Science converge to give the best scientists the will power and resources to tirelessly research cancer until a cure is found.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The Affordable Health Care Act - Good News for Everyone
Liz (The Liz Army) posted the link below and made me reflect a lot about the challenges facing the world's health care system and the lack of strategic thinking from politicians. The disconnect between what politicians do and the defense and implementation of rules that benefit the people they represent is quite shocking. While the headline paints a much worse picture of what the politician meant, I do believe that this issue needs to be debated. Rep. David Dreier said "I don't think someone who is diagnosed with a brain tumor should have health care provided".
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/10/513735/republican-rep-i-dont-think-someone-who-is-diagnosed-with-a-brain-tumor-should-have-health-care-provided/
In a well-functioning democracy the Government is supposed to be composed of people elected by the people and should work for the people. The American Constitution is one of the most incredible timeless documents ever assembled and it created the foundation for the most incredible society ever devised: a free society that self-regulates itself based on free markets and the rule of law, a machine that constantly adapts to the needs of its time and that every once in a while requires a set of new regulations to control certain aspirations of its society. A few examples:
- The Pure Food and Drug Act - created in 1906 to address food and drug safety, giving birth to the FDA
- The Federal Reserve Act - created to address financial instability in 1907, giving birth to the Federal Reserve Bannk
- The Affordable Care Act - created in 2012 to address the increase in health care costs in the US
I am using the US in my example because I am more familiar with it and because this Congressman's statement affects me personally. I will soon talk about Brazil, a relatively new social experiment that seems to be thriving for the first time in its history by emulating what the US once did well.
In this specific case this politician argues that insurance companies should be able to discriminate against people with brain tumors while as a safety net people with pre-existing conditions enroll in a high-risk insurance pool paid by the Government. This is just another classic example of socializing losses and privatizing gains. The complete lack of strategic thinking from a U.S. Congressman is concerning and somewhat puzzling, putting the issue of "capture" at the forefront of this debate. Is this elected Government Official thinking about his country or about his campaign contributors?
His tagline might appeal to the tax-cutting Republican voter who does not like to see that there is a cost to live in a civilized society, but as my uncle used to say the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is on how they pay for Government costs. The first one pushes the burden to future generations by issuing debt while the second one places the burden on current citizens through taxes.
Health care is not something where you can regulate in a "half-pregnant" way, I believe regulation should be explicitly driven by what we want to socialize and what we want to privatize, and who is keeping the profits and losses in each case. There is no argument that an unhealthy society places a huge burden on the heatlhy, but there is also no question that most people understand the need to spread the risks and costs of health care, hence the development of a large health insurance industry.
The biggest risk I see in this proposal is the lack of transparency on who is going to pay for the expensive treatments provided by the Government and what will be the benefits of having an insurance plan if catastrophic events are covered by the Government.
If the Government does not get a pool of money from healthy individuals I do not see this as a viable proposal, unless the costs are simply going to be paid by higher tax costs, which reduces visibility to how much money is entering the healhcare piggy bank and how much goes out, although the out-going flow is easy to track.
My suggestion would be to absolutely not accept discrimination in the insurance industry. This is the exact same issue that led to the collapse of the Blue Cross Blue Shield system. When insurance companies were allowed to discrimate, new health insurance firms popped-up and captured all the profitable, healthy patients that subsidized the costly, older, sick patients. This lead to the collapse of the BCBS system and to the big increase in health insurance costs due to a pervasive competition for the healthy individuals and an unacceptable discrimination against the sick ones, defeatting the purpose of the Health Insurance industry.
On the opposite side we have Brazil. I pay high taxes and public health care is deducted straight from my payroll, but in exchange I get my expensive chemo medication through the public health case system. I also have private insurance and a law was just passed saying that insurance companies need to provide coverage for this drug, and therefore I should have it covered privately.
Until this law was passed I would have needed to go to court to receive the chemo drug that I have always paid for through my health insurance, but since I am covered by the public system I did not have to go through this hassle. Health insurance is always there when you are healthy, but once you are sick you need to fight hard to claim your benefits, in some instances even having to go to court, like a friend of mine that won her case against a widely known problematic health insurance company in Brazil to have her glioma treatment covered.
However talk to any doctor in Brazil and they will argue that I should not get this expensive treatment through the public system as it places a massive burden on the system costs. Given the fact that I do have private insurance I do agree that I pay too much to have the Government fund my treatment, but in any case I pay for both systems, a somewhat inneficient model but one that provides a good safety net.
To summarize this long rumbling, I have the following suggestions:
- Not allow for health care discriminatory practices - if discrimination is not acceptable based on race, gender or sexual preferences, why should they be accepted for health care purposes?
- Create a publicly based high risk insurance pool but also create an income stream to pay for it that is highly transparent and congruent with the investment needs;
- Never end the debate for a better, more efficient health care system. There will never be a right or wrong answer to this, we need to keep trying until we are all satisfied with what we get relative to how much we contribute, as individuals and as a society;
- Always be aware that for every cost we need an income stream, in the short-term and in the long-term. This is particularly critical for countries with increasingly older people such as the European countries.
In this whole debate I have not mentioned NGOs. I have been blessed to count with the indirect support of several Brain Tumor NGOs that helped me clarify treatment options, research avenues and survival stories. Without the efforts of tireless volunteers from the UK based Astrofund, the American Brain Tumor Association and the German Brain Tumor Association I am sure several people afflicted with brain tumor would have had a much worse prognostic. However we should always strive for more and as I get closer to all these issues I see many opportunities for the future, such as:
- Organized collaboration between patients, research, medical, business and regulatory communities. We all have the same interest and should work together to accomplish our goals, a better and long life for brain tumor patients;
- Increased collaboration and competition between NGO's and drug companies - by threatening to lower drug costs by funding cancer-drugs research, NGO's might help re-direct drug companies investments from erectile-disfuntion drug marketing to cancer drug research;
- Global collaboration between NGO's to increase research collaboration, reduce adminstrative costs (websites maintenance, content development etc.), reduce fund-raising costs (the money is going towards the same purpose) and give more hope to all of us living with glioma.
To come back to this post's title the Affordable Health Care Act is good news because it finally changes something that most people were not happy about, let's just hope it doen't take people from one bad place to another bad place, and the only way to make that happen is by actively understanding what it means to you.
This is it for today, I missed my bike ride but I had to get this off my chest (and brain).
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/10/513735/republican-rep-i-dont-think-someone-who-is-diagnosed-with-a-brain-tumor-should-have-health-care-provided/
In a well-functioning democracy the Government is supposed to be composed of people elected by the people and should work for the people. The American Constitution is one of the most incredible timeless documents ever assembled and it created the foundation for the most incredible society ever devised: a free society that self-regulates itself based on free markets and the rule of law, a machine that constantly adapts to the needs of its time and that every once in a while requires a set of new regulations to control certain aspirations of its society. A few examples:
- The Pure Food and Drug Act - created in 1906 to address food and drug safety, giving birth to the FDA
- The Federal Reserve Act - created to address financial instability in 1907, giving birth to the Federal Reserve Bannk
- The Affordable Care Act - created in 2012 to address the increase in health care costs in the US
I am using the US in my example because I am more familiar with it and because this Congressman's statement affects me personally. I will soon talk about Brazil, a relatively new social experiment that seems to be thriving for the first time in its history by emulating what the US once did well.
In this specific case this politician argues that insurance companies should be able to discriminate against people with brain tumors while as a safety net people with pre-existing conditions enroll in a high-risk insurance pool paid by the Government. This is just another classic example of socializing losses and privatizing gains. The complete lack of strategic thinking from a U.S. Congressman is concerning and somewhat puzzling, putting the issue of "capture" at the forefront of this debate. Is this elected Government Official thinking about his country or about his campaign contributors?
His tagline might appeal to the tax-cutting Republican voter who does not like to see that there is a cost to live in a civilized society, but as my uncle used to say the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is on how they pay for Government costs. The first one pushes the burden to future generations by issuing debt while the second one places the burden on current citizens through taxes.
Health care is not something where you can regulate in a "half-pregnant" way, I believe regulation should be explicitly driven by what we want to socialize and what we want to privatize, and who is keeping the profits and losses in each case. There is no argument that an unhealthy society places a huge burden on the heatlhy, but there is also no question that most people understand the need to spread the risks and costs of health care, hence the development of a large health insurance industry.
The biggest risk I see in this proposal is the lack of transparency on who is going to pay for the expensive treatments provided by the Government and what will be the benefits of having an insurance plan if catastrophic events are covered by the Government.
If the Government does not get a pool of money from healthy individuals I do not see this as a viable proposal, unless the costs are simply going to be paid by higher tax costs, which reduces visibility to how much money is entering the healhcare piggy bank and how much goes out, although the out-going flow is easy to track.
My suggestion would be to absolutely not accept discrimination in the insurance industry. This is the exact same issue that led to the collapse of the Blue Cross Blue Shield system. When insurance companies were allowed to discrimate, new health insurance firms popped-up and captured all the profitable, healthy patients that subsidized the costly, older, sick patients. This lead to the collapse of the BCBS system and to the big increase in health insurance costs due to a pervasive competition for the healthy individuals and an unacceptable discrimination against the sick ones, defeatting the purpose of the Health Insurance industry.
On the opposite side we have Brazil. I pay high taxes and public health care is deducted straight from my payroll, but in exchange I get my expensive chemo medication through the public health case system. I also have private insurance and a law was just passed saying that insurance companies need to provide coverage for this drug, and therefore I should have it covered privately.
Until this law was passed I would have needed to go to court to receive the chemo drug that I have always paid for through my health insurance, but since I am covered by the public system I did not have to go through this hassle. Health insurance is always there when you are healthy, but once you are sick you need to fight hard to claim your benefits, in some instances even having to go to court, like a friend of mine that won her case against a widely known problematic health insurance company in Brazil to have her glioma treatment covered.
However talk to any doctor in Brazil and they will argue that I should not get this expensive treatment through the public system as it places a massive burden on the system costs. Given the fact that I do have private insurance I do agree that I pay too much to have the Government fund my treatment, but in any case I pay for both systems, a somewhat inneficient model but one that provides a good safety net.
To summarize this long rumbling, I have the following suggestions:
- Not allow for health care discriminatory practices - if discrimination is not acceptable based on race, gender or sexual preferences, why should they be accepted for health care purposes?
- Create a publicly based high risk insurance pool but also create an income stream to pay for it that is highly transparent and congruent with the investment needs;
- Never end the debate for a better, more efficient health care system. There will never be a right or wrong answer to this, we need to keep trying until we are all satisfied with what we get relative to how much we contribute, as individuals and as a society;
- Always be aware that for every cost we need an income stream, in the short-term and in the long-term. This is particularly critical for countries with increasingly older people such as the European countries.
In this whole debate I have not mentioned NGOs. I have been blessed to count with the indirect support of several Brain Tumor NGOs that helped me clarify treatment options, research avenues and survival stories. Without the efforts of tireless volunteers from the UK based Astrofund, the American Brain Tumor Association and the German Brain Tumor Association I am sure several people afflicted with brain tumor would have had a much worse prognostic. However we should always strive for more and as I get closer to all these issues I see many opportunities for the future, such as:
- Organized collaboration between patients, research, medical, business and regulatory communities. We all have the same interest and should work together to accomplish our goals, a better and long life for brain tumor patients;
- Increased collaboration and competition between NGO's and drug companies - by threatening to lower drug costs by funding cancer-drugs research, NGO's might help re-direct drug companies investments from erectile-disfuntion drug marketing to cancer drug research;
- Global collaboration between NGO's to increase research collaboration, reduce adminstrative costs (websites maintenance, content development etc.), reduce fund-raising costs (the money is going towards the same purpose) and give more hope to all of us living with glioma.
To come back to this post's title the Affordable Health Care Act is good news because it finally changes something that most people were not happy about, let's just hope it doen't take people from one bad place to another bad place, and the only way to make that happen is by actively understanding what it means to you.
This is it for today, I missed my bike ride but I had to get this off my chest (and brain).
Monday, July 16, 2012
New Correlations Between Glioma and...
I shared in my first post the leading correlations to brain and nervous system cancers to be the following:
- Average Height: 70%
- Life Expectancy: 62%
- Recorded Alcohol Consumption: 60%
I have now investigated new hypothesis and came up with new, also high correlations that could lead to glioma (or not):
- Protein Consumption (kg/yr): 63%
- Carbs % of Diet: -68%
That's right, the higher the contribution of carbs to one's diet the lower chance to develop brain tumor. Of course I might be stretching my conclusion here. As I learned in statistics correlations do not mean causality. In fact the high % of carbs in a diet might just mean lower protein consumption, the potential cause (these do not look like independent variables).
This leads me into a new hypothesis: could protein consumption lead to cancer? When I combined all the variables into one multi-variate correlation, carbs and protein consumption had negative correlations to brain tumor while the other variables remained with positive correlations.
One of the leading theories about why we thrived as humans is the size of our brains. Large brains were only developed because we were able to support it with higher protein consumption as we evolved, enabling us to sustain the high energy levels required by the brain to function properly. Another theory, available in the book "Born to Run", is that by being able to run for very long distances we were able to hunt large, protein filled animals, feeding our growing brain.
What if one thing led to the next? As we ate more proteins new genetic mutations helped us develop our brains, but potentially our high level of activity enabled us to control the increase in brain size without it turning into a deadly tumor. One of my hypothesis is that heat-shock proteins (HSPs) might help us as a tumor suppressor gene helps us fight cancer cells. In fact new experimental brain tumor vaccines are based on HSPs, which levels are increased after physical exhertion. In fact after half-marathons HSPs levels increase and remain high, and given its function, which is to restore damaged DNA after our body is exposed to high temperatures, I started believing in my crazy theory.
According to my neuro-surgeon I probably developed my brain tumor about 10 years ago, coinciding with a period of extreme physical inactivity from my part (I would play pick-up soccer or basketball once in a while).
I am not a professional scientist (not even an amateur one), but if a real scientist is looking for hypothesis I hope this one is worth investigating and leads into something, even if just into more research grants for scientists to investigate and help us living with glioma.
What exactly am I speculating again?
That a combination of being tall, high alcohol and protein consumption, and little physical activity (meaning not running at least say 20k/week) might be a potential cause for what I have, which would put all my tall friends in a risk group. I will keep running crazy correlations until I find more stuff. I tried to correlate polution with it all and could not get to a high correlation, so I will keep digging. If you know something that might help this amateur investigation please share it with me. Thanks!
- Average Height: 70%
- Life Expectancy: 62%
- Recorded Alcohol Consumption: 60%
I have now investigated new hypothesis and came up with new, also high correlations that could lead to glioma (or not):
- Protein Consumption (kg/yr): 63%
- Carbs % of Diet: -68%
That's right, the higher the contribution of carbs to one's diet the lower chance to develop brain tumor. Of course I might be stretching my conclusion here. As I learned in statistics correlations do not mean causality. In fact the high % of carbs in a diet might just mean lower protein consumption, the potential cause (these do not look like independent variables).
This leads me into a new hypothesis: could protein consumption lead to cancer? When I combined all the variables into one multi-variate correlation, carbs and protein consumption had negative correlations to brain tumor while the other variables remained with positive correlations.
One of the leading theories about why we thrived as humans is the size of our brains. Large brains were only developed because we were able to support it with higher protein consumption as we evolved, enabling us to sustain the high energy levels required by the brain to function properly. Another theory, available in the book "Born to Run", is that by being able to run for very long distances we were able to hunt large, protein filled animals, feeding our growing brain.
What if one thing led to the next? As we ate more proteins new genetic mutations helped us develop our brains, but potentially our high level of activity enabled us to control the increase in brain size without it turning into a deadly tumor. One of my hypothesis is that heat-shock proteins (HSPs) might help us as a tumor suppressor gene helps us fight cancer cells. In fact new experimental brain tumor vaccines are based on HSPs, which levels are increased after physical exhertion. In fact after half-marathons HSPs levels increase and remain high, and given its function, which is to restore damaged DNA after our body is exposed to high temperatures, I started believing in my crazy theory.
According to my neuro-surgeon I probably developed my brain tumor about 10 years ago, coinciding with a period of extreme physical inactivity from my part (I would play pick-up soccer or basketball once in a while).
I am not a professional scientist (not even an amateur one), but if a real scientist is looking for hypothesis I hope this one is worth investigating and leads into something, even if just into more research grants for scientists to investigate and help us living with glioma.
What exactly am I speculating again?
That a combination of being tall, high alcohol and protein consumption, and little physical activity (meaning not running at least say 20k/week) might be a potential cause for what I have, which would put all my tall friends in a risk group. I will keep running crazy correlations until I find more stuff. I tried to correlate polution with it all and could not get to a high correlation, so I will keep digging. If you know something that might help this amateur investigation please share it with me. Thanks!
Sunday, July 1, 2012
What Causes Glioma? First Hypothesis
Why would a Mechanical Engineer with an MBA that currently works in Marketing think that he might substitute thousands of researchers and doctors trying to answer the same question? I don't know, I just like to solve problems, and this is my biggest one!
To be clear this is not a profound scientific research, it is just a compilation of hypothesis from someone that spends an awful amount of time thinking about gliomas. I hope that a real scientist feels compelled to dig deeper into these ideas and maybe provide a real answer to this century-old question.
As you probably know there are no obvious reasons why Brain Tumors occur. I've read a lot about this with no conclusive answer, so I started doing my own research.
Most doctors will say that head and neck cancers or tumors are highly correlated with alcohol and cigarette consumption. In addition genetic factors play a big role, and I just found out that I hit the jack-pot on this one. I am a breed of Portuguese, German and Dutch immigrants and these rank in the 14th, 16th amd 29th positions in my brain tumor per 1000 people incidence rank out of 167 countries.
I targeted alcohol consumption after finding out that Germany had a 3 times higher Brain Tumor incidence than the world average, and we all know what Germans are famous for, aside from being very industrious.
In addition I found out that brain tumors for some reason are correlated to height. In fact my wife's grandfather died from a gliobastoma, and he was 1.92m, my exact same height. Oscar Schmidt, a legendary basketball player in Brazil, also suffered from an oligoastrocytoma, the exact same brain tumor I carry.
I ran some correlations between alcohol per capita consumption, average height and life expectancy vs. brain/nervous system tumors and found stunning correlations. The sources of my data were:
Brain and Nervous System Cancer Incidence by Country: Globocan 2008 WHO Research
- http://globocan.iarc.fr/
Per capita alcohol consumption: World Health Organization, found in Wikipedia through the link below:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption
Average Height - Males 20+ years old:
http://www.interbasket.net/news/4385/2009/09/average-height-by-country-males-20-years/
Now let's go to the correlations between the factors analyzed and brain tumor/nervous system cancer incidence:
1. Average Height: 70%
2. Recorded per capita alcohol consumption: 62%
3. Life Expectancy: 60%
These are all simple single-variable correlations that simply reinforce factors that are available in several scientific papers but the numbers stunned me. In addition there are some flaws in the numbers I analyzed such as I only looked at Male Average Hieght and Brain Tumors occur in males with a higher incidence. In addition GLOBOCAN statistics have several approximations in cases where data was not available, such as using neighboring countries as proxies for countries that did not have data available.
Nonetheless I have to mention another big surprise: 4 out of the top 5 countries in Brain Tumor incidence are Nordic countries:
1. Denmark
2. Norway
3. Finland
4. Serbia
5. Sweden
I looked at life expectancy to adjust for people that simply by living longer have a higher chance of having anything, but height and alcohol consumption surpassed life expectancy in my correlations, to my surprise.
But one unanswered question remains: why do brain tumors also occur in kids? Seizures are usually the smoking gun that announce a brain tumor. One common reason that leads kids to have seizures is hyponatremia, or water intoxication. This led me down a hypothesis that combines alcohol consumption in adults and a potential cause that can be common to kids: dehydration.
The Hypothalamus is the brain region responsible for regulating water absorption through antidiuretic hormone (ADH). It also produces oxitocin, which is now being researched as potentially being responsible for ethical behavior. When alcohol is ingested it affects ADH, increasing urination and leading to dehydration. I can't comment on oxitocin. If somehow we are dehydrated the hypothalamus might go nuts and the excessive electrical stimulus might lead glial cells to be more active. This might be a completely silly hypothesis but I am not implying that I have the answer, this is just a question.
Another crazy hypothesis I created based on a sample of one is Folic Acid consumption. Folic Acid is present primarily in leaffed vegetables, which have been nearly neglected from my diet throughout my life. I found out that when kids with leukemia had folic acid injected into their blood stream the rate of reproduction of their blood cells got even worse. When I had my first daughter I adopted a product called Instant Breakfast, a chocolate milk my wife's doctor recommended her to get the necessary folic acid needed during pregnancy. I figured that if it was good for her it would be good for me as I never used multi-vitamins. I drank one a day for 7 years nearly every day.
I have capped my current knowledge but I will continue to study and provide new ideas, I hope these are real ideas and not just rumblings from an ignorant undoctor.
To be clear this is not a profound scientific research, it is just a compilation of hypothesis from someone that spends an awful amount of time thinking about gliomas. I hope that a real scientist feels compelled to dig deeper into these ideas and maybe provide a real answer to this century-old question.
As you probably know there are no obvious reasons why Brain Tumors occur. I've read a lot about this with no conclusive answer, so I started doing my own research.
Most doctors will say that head and neck cancers or tumors are highly correlated with alcohol and cigarette consumption. In addition genetic factors play a big role, and I just found out that I hit the jack-pot on this one. I am a breed of Portuguese, German and Dutch immigrants and these rank in the 14th, 16th amd 29th positions in my brain tumor per 1000 people incidence rank out of 167 countries.
I targeted alcohol consumption after finding out that Germany had a 3 times higher Brain Tumor incidence than the world average, and we all know what Germans are famous for, aside from being very industrious.
In addition I found out that brain tumors for some reason are correlated to height. In fact my wife's grandfather died from a gliobastoma, and he was 1.92m, my exact same height. Oscar Schmidt, a legendary basketball player in Brazil, also suffered from an oligoastrocytoma, the exact same brain tumor I carry.
I ran some correlations between alcohol per capita consumption, average height and life expectancy vs. brain/nervous system tumors and found stunning correlations. The sources of my data were:
Brain and Nervous System Cancer Incidence by Country: Globocan 2008 WHO Research
- http://globocan.iarc.fr/
Per capita alcohol consumption: World Health Organization, found in Wikipedia through the link below:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption
Average Height - Males 20+ years old:
http://www.interbasket.net/news/4385/2009/09/average-height-by-country-males-20-years/
Now let's go to the correlations between the factors analyzed and brain tumor/nervous system cancer incidence:
1. Average Height: 70%
2. Recorded per capita alcohol consumption: 62%
3. Life Expectancy: 60%
These are all simple single-variable correlations that simply reinforce factors that are available in several scientific papers but the numbers stunned me. In addition there are some flaws in the numbers I analyzed such as I only looked at Male Average Hieght and Brain Tumors occur in males with a higher incidence. In addition GLOBOCAN statistics have several approximations in cases where data was not available, such as using neighboring countries as proxies for countries that did not have data available.
Nonetheless I have to mention another big surprise: 4 out of the top 5 countries in Brain Tumor incidence are Nordic countries:
1. Denmark
2. Norway
3. Finland
4. Serbia
5. Sweden
I looked at life expectancy to adjust for people that simply by living longer have a higher chance of having anything, but height and alcohol consumption surpassed life expectancy in my correlations, to my surprise.
But one unanswered question remains: why do brain tumors also occur in kids? Seizures are usually the smoking gun that announce a brain tumor. One common reason that leads kids to have seizures is hyponatremia, or water intoxication. This led me down a hypothesis that combines alcohol consumption in adults and a potential cause that can be common to kids: dehydration.
The Hypothalamus is the brain region responsible for regulating water absorption through antidiuretic hormone (ADH). It also produces oxitocin, which is now being researched as potentially being responsible for ethical behavior. When alcohol is ingested it affects ADH, increasing urination and leading to dehydration. I can't comment on oxitocin. If somehow we are dehydrated the hypothalamus might go nuts and the excessive electrical stimulus might lead glial cells to be more active. This might be a completely silly hypothesis but I am not implying that I have the answer, this is just a question.
Another crazy hypothesis I created based on a sample of one is Folic Acid consumption. Folic Acid is present primarily in leaffed vegetables, which have been nearly neglected from my diet throughout my life. I found out that when kids with leukemia had folic acid injected into their blood stream the rate of reproduction of their blood cells got even worse. When I had my first daughter I adopted a product called Instant Breakfast, a chocolate milk my wife's doctor recommended her to get the necessary folic acid needed during pregnancy. I figured that if it was good for her it would be good for me as I never used multi-vitamins. I drank one a day for 7 years nearly every day.
I have capped my current knowledge but I will continue to study and provide new ideas, I hope these are real ideas and not just rumblings from an ignorant undoctor.
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