I last posted several correlations to nervous system cancers but I just read about a substance that may serve as hope and as an explanation as to why alcohol consumption was one of the highest factors I correlated to gliomas.
It is a known fact that alcohol consumption increases the chances of breast cancer in women and that the combination of cigarette smoking and alcohol significantly increases the probability of head and neck cancer development.
While surfing on my mother's iPad I noticed that she found a good article while looking for a cure for me. Sad but true, mothers suffer with their kids no matter how old their kids are and keep researching to save them, thanks mom!
The article states that a substance called lithocholic acid has an amazing propriety: it kills neuroblastoma cells while sparing normal neuronal cells. The substance also killed cultured rat glioma cells and human breast cancer cells. A link to the scientific article is found below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21992775
The substance is a bile acid that acts as a detergent that makes fats soluble for absorption and is produced by bacteria in the colon through the reduction of chenodeoxicholic acid, one of four bile acids produced in the liver. It is insoluble in water but soluble in alcohol and is synthesized from cholesterol.
I am now going to excuse myself to share two personal stories that are leading to smoke, and where there is smoke there is fire.
When I lived in Pittsburgh a good friend of mine died of colon cancer and while his family searched for a cure his wife talked a lot about a treatment that used a very expensive juice maker that could save him. Unfortunately his case was fast and furious and his body gave up to the heavy chemo and radiation therapies, but two years later, through a high-school friend and later through a work contact that gave me a few DVDs, I became acquainted with the Gerson Therapy. I watched the movies and learned that the juice machine my friend's wife wanted was develop by a Nazi-time German doctor called Dr. Gerson, whose relatives now run a clinic in Mexico where they practice his treatment protocols.
To summarize and possibly bastardize the Gerson therapy the treatment consists of eating a lot of raw food that is in essence pressed raw - which according to Dr. Gerson provided the body with all the nutrients the body needed - let the liver remove toxins from the body, and send the toxins to the colon, where all the bad substances that entered the body are clean through an organic coffee infusion.
Yes, the Gerson Therapy sounds extremely odd and I need to mention that most patients that claimed to be cured under his treatment also underwent traditional treatment. I want to highlight to all the conspiracy theorists that think the drug companies are holding off cures that the most dangerous and deadly form of anti-conspiratory action is to avoid standard treatment protocols. As a personal friend to many researchers who devote their lives to find cures and as a patient nearly cured through traditional treatment with Temodar I highly recommend that you listen to your doctor and the drug companies, there are still a lot of great people that devote their lives to cure patients.
Getting back to lithocholic acid, it struck me that bacteria present in the colon produce a substance that may act as a deterrent to cancer cell proliferation and that an unorthodox Nazi-time German doctor who probably exposed numerous patients and possibly victims to his experiments somehow got to the colon as he searched for cancer cures. Back in an era when observation, trial and error were the only means to find cures to diseases it is incredible that both led to bacteria in the colon, just another example of what an amazing eco-system the human body is.
My proposal is that, possibly by solublilizing chenodeoxicholic acid, alcohol might be just reducing the production of litocholic acid and therefore reducing the body's natural ability to fight cancer.
I hope that researchers get to the same conclusion and quickly enable companies to manufacture a cure for cancer, we might just be watching a "cancer penicillin" come to market. Good luck!
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Diet and Brain Tumors - is There a Clue?
I have shared in previous posts how different variables correlate to nervous system cancer incidence. Below is a recap of the correlations found:
It is interesting to see how latitude had the highest correlation to cancers, followed closely by Carbs % of diet (negative correlation meaning the higher the % of carbs in total diet the lower the incidence).
I am reading something seemingly unrelated to cancer (A Study of History - Arnold Toynbee) and was surprised to find new hints into how latitude might affect cancer incidence, aside from lack of sunlight exposure, which I have previously hypothesized as a potential reason for cancer development.
As fossil humans migrated from the tropics they became exposed to the elements of nature and to the seasons. While along the tropics humans had plenty of food to choose from in trees and on the ground such as fruits and insects, in temperate climates such options were no longer available. As such the need for "winter food", shelter and winter clothing was born and this forced humans to innovate. Hence the farming/hunting sedentary lifestyle was born.
There are records of cancer pre-dating Christ in civilizations such as the Mayan and the Egyptian, according to Syddartha Mukherjee in his master piece "The Emperor of All Maladies - A Biography of Cancer". All these were sedentary civilizations that hunted and farmed for survival.
It is evident that fewer species of animals and vegetation survive as latitudes increase. My hypothesis is that with the reduction in the varieties of species to eat the exposure to a variety of minerals is reduced. This insight came from an observation my wife made that I really latched onto. She highlighted how orchids grew into different colors depending on the minerals occurring in the soil. Applying the same principle I realized why in several sports magazines there were always healthy diet sections promoting meals based on the number of colors on the plate.
I hereby propose that eating as many colors as possible in the form of fruits, vegetables and cereals might be a healthy options for those looking to reduce the probability of developing cancer or those hoping to combat it, but with so many potential reasons to pick from I figured there was some logic to this explanation.
Please don't infer from this that you should not be treated through the new standard medical protocols, Steve Jobs was a die-hard vegetarian and thought that this alone would save his life from cancer and unfortunately it didn't. All I am proposing is an explanation for the higher cancer incidence with increasing latitudes, hope this helps those searching for research avenues or hopes for longer life. Even if just as placebo I hope this helps!
|
|
Nervous System Rate Incidence
|
|
Alcohol Consumption
|
56.1%
|
|
Life Expectancy
|
59.6%
|
|
Carbs % of Diet
|
-73.4%
|
|
Protein Consumption (kg/yr)
|
62.2%
|
|
Height
|
69.7%
|
|
Latitude
|
73.1%
|
|
Energy per Capita
|
55.6%
|
|
Carbon Footprint
|
54.1%
|
|
Income Index
|
72.0%
|
|
% Urban Population
|
44.8%
|
It is interesting to see how latitude had the highest correlation to cancers, followed closely by Carbs % of diet (negative correlation meaning the higher the % of carbs in total diet the lower the incidence).
I am reading something seemingly unrelated to cancer (A Study of History - Arnold Toynbee) and was surprised to find new hints into how latitude might affect cancer incidence, aside from lack of sunlight exposure, which I have previously hypothesized as a potential reason for cancer development.
As fossil humans migrated from the tropics they became exposed to the elements of nature and to the seasons. While along the tropics humans had plenty of food to choose from in trees and on the ground such as fruits and insects, in temperate climates such options were no longer available. As such the need for "winter food", shelter and winter clothing was born and this forced humans to innovate. Hence the farming/hunting sedentary lifestyle was born.
There are records of cancer pre-dating Christ in civilizations such as the Mayan and the Egyptian, according to Syddartha Mukherjee in his master piece "The Emperor of All Maladies - A Biography of Cancer". All these were sedentary civilizations that hunted and farmed for survival.
It is evident that fewer species of animals and vegetation survive as latitudes increase. My hypothesis is that with the reduction in the varieties of species to eat the exposure to a variety of minerals is reduced. This insight came from an observation my wife made that I really latched onto. She highlighted how orchids grew into different colors depending on the minerals occurring in the soil. Applying the same principle I realized why in several sports magazines there were always healthy diet sections promoting meals based on the number of colors on the plate.
I hereby propose that eating as many colors as possible in the form of fruits, vegetables and cereals might be a healthy options for those looking to reduce the probability of developing cancer or those hoping to combat it, but with so many potential reasons to pick from I figured there was some logic to this explanation.
Please don't infer from this that you should not be treated through the new standard medical protocols, Steve Jobs was a die-hard vegetarian and thought that this alone would save his life from cancer and unfortunately it didn't. All I am proposing is an explanation for the higher cancer incidence with increasing latitudes, hope this helps those searching for research avenues or hopes for longer life. Even if just as placebo I hope this helps!
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Could HSP and Temodal Interact to Increase Life Expectancy?
Today is a sad day for the Brain Tumor Community. Another Brain Tumor warrior passed away (Mary Catherine Calisto). By total coincidence she also lived in Pittsburgh for a period of her life and battled a disease for many years while living an inspiring life. She lead the implementation of a new front in Brain Tumor Research, to which link I am posting here (http://www.braintumor.org/giving/mcc-sbi/). The research is focused on Systems Biology and is expected to yield new treatment paths to further extend life expectancy of brain tumor patients.
Every time something like this happens I get energized to further investigate the mechanisms of brain tumor and its treatment, I get upset when this disease takes great people away from us, so I am now studying the mechanisms of temozolamide, the chemo drug that all of us take while treating brain tumors. I came across the paper below that explains the mechanism of temozolamide on brain tumors.
http://www.rsc.org/images/TEMOZOLOMIDE_ChemistryWorldJul09_tcm18-155909.pdf
As I read the paper I came across the following conclusion: "although temozolomide was developed before the target-driven approach to drug design became fashionable, it does have a very distinct molecular target - the O6 oxygen atom of guanine residues within DNA, particularly those within poly-guanine sequences. It can therefore be expected to interact with proteins that repair damaged DNA".
As I shared in previous posts this is consistent with the role of heat shock proteins, which lead me to once again study the role of Hsp. Below is a good summary about it:
http://www.sdbonline.org/fly/genebrief/hsp70.htm
As I read my high school biology book (high school today is what would probably be considered PhD material when I went to College) I found that cancers and tumors are generally caused by gene deletions (DNA degeneration), which can happen for multiple reasons such as contamination, heat shock, radiation etc. Here is what I found on Hsps: "The Hsp's and their constitutively synthesized relatives (termed heat-shock cognates, or Hsc proteins) form a diverse group of protein chaperones that can disaggregate proteins from large aggregates or assemblies, prevent aggregation of denatured proteins, aid the renaturation or folding of proteins to reach their proper conformation, direct proteins to degradative pathways, and bind proteins to restrain their function, making them available for ligand binding or allowing them to translocate across membranes. Although some of the classes of Hsp's clearly have distinct activities, they also exhibit overlapping functions, and may share proteins that act as cofactors, known as cochaperones (Gong, 2006)."
I am sure that I am acting like a boy that just learned the basics of physics and is trying to teach an engineer how to build a bridge but as I witness the reduction in the size of my tumor I have developed the faith (at this stage it just cannot be considered science) that the combination of exercising and temozolamide has helped me.
To recap why I am such a believer in exercising I discovered that Hsp levels increase after strenuous exercising (measurable only after a half-marathon distance run). This could also simply be God's will to extend my life, but I am not sure why God would save me and not others, so I am trying to help by coming up with these crazy theories that might have already been extensively exhausted. Might humanity be able to save my life like it saves so many people today that might have died in the past from trivial to treat diseases today. I really believe that we are getting closer to the day that brain tumors will be seen as a trivial to treat condition and I hope that this "message in the bottle" is not needed to get us to a cure to brain tumor.
My crazy suggestion is to run a clinical trial on people treated with temozolamide that exercise for one hour or more at least twice a week and those that do not exercise at all. In my case exercising seems to be working but I am a relatively "young" patient. I have just interrupted my temozolamide treatment and will find out next week if I should continue it based on an MRI with spectroscopy and prefusion, fingers crossed! But if I need more temozolamide no big deal, I was lucky enough to have absolutely no side effect from it.
Mary Catherine Calisto, I have not met you but in a way I feel very close to you. Thanks for living such an honorable life and setting a great example, there is nothing more we can ask from anyome, you have a new fan, rest in peace.
Every time something like this happens I get energized to further investigate the mechanisms of brain tumor and its treatment, I get upset when this disease takes great people away from us, so I am now studying the mechanisms of temozolamide, the chemo drug that all of us take while treating brain tumors. I came across the paper below that explains the mechanism of temozolamide on brain tumors.
http://www.rsc.org/images/TEMOZOLOMIDE_ChemistryWorldJul09_tcm18-155909.pdf
As I read the paper I came across the following conclusion: "although temozolomide was developed before the target-driven approach to drug design became fashionable, it does have a very distinct molecular target - the O6 oxygen atom of guanine residues within DNA, particularly those within poly-guanine sequences. It can therefore be expected to interact with proteins that repair damaged DNA".
As I shared in previous posts this is consistent with the role of heat shock proteins, which lead me to once again study the role of Hsp. Below is a good summary about it:
http://www.sdbonline.org/fly/genebrief/hsp70.htm
As I read my high school biology book (high school today is what would probably be considered PhD material when I went to College) I found that cancers and tumors are generally caused by gene deletions (DNA degeneration), which can happen for multiple reasons such as contamination, heat shock, radiation etc. Here is what I found on Hsps: "The Hsp's and their constitutively synthesized relatives (termed heat-shock cognates, or Hsc proteins) form a diverse group of protein chaperones that can disaggregate proteins from large aggregates or assemblies, prevent aggregation of denatured proteins, aid the renaturation or folding of proteins to reach their proper conformation, direct proteins to degradative pathways, and bind proteins to restrain their function, making them available for ligand binding or allowing them to translocate across membranes. Although some of the classes of Hsp's clearly have distinct activities, they also exhibit overlapping functions, and may share proteins that act as cofactors, known as cochaperones (Gong, 2006)."
I am sure that I am acting like a boy that just learned the basics of physics and is trying to teach an engineer how to build a bridge but as I witness the reduction in the size of my tumor I have developed the faith (at this stage it just cannot be considered science) that the combination of exercising and temozolamide has helped me.
To recap why I am such a believer in exercising I discovered that Hsp levels increase after strenuous exercising (measurable only after a half-marathon distance run). This could also simply be God's will to extend my life, but I am not sure why God would save me and not others, so I am trying to help by coming up with these crazy theories that might have already been extensively exhausted. Might humanity be able to save my life like it saves so many people today that might have died in the past from trivial to treat diseases today. I really believe that we are getting closer to the day that brain tumors will be seen as a trivial to treat condition and I hope that this "message in the bottle" is not needed to get us to a cure to brain tumor.
My crazy suggestion is to run a clinical trial on people treated with temozolamide that exercise for one hour or more at least twice a week and those that do not exercise at all. In my case exercising seems to be working but I am a relatively "young" patient. I have just interrupted my temozolamide treatment and will find out next week if I should continue it based on an MRI with spectroscopy and prefusion, fingers crossed! But if I need more temozolamide no big deal, I was lucky enough to have absolutely no side effect from it.
Mary Catherine Calisto, I have not met you but in a way I feel very close to you. Thanks for living such an honorable life and setting a great example, there is nothing more we can ask from anyome, you have a new fan, rest in peace.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
What am I doing with my brain?
If British historian Eric Hobsbawm was still alive I believe his next book in the series "The Age of..." would be "The Age of Transparency". I am no Eric Hobsbawm expert, but when in my early 20s I read his "The Age of Revolution", I thought it was a good summary of the 18th/19th century.
I believe that we are entering an incredible new era where information flows faster and more freely when Adam Smith's invisible hand will work significantly faster. We all have to thank Google for this, I never realized how revolutionary Google was until I started reading and writing blogs.
I used to tell my wife that if something was not in the news it was probably not true until I lived in the US. I used to drive to work listening to NPR (left leaning) and drive back home listening to Fox News (right leaning). I was always amazed at how the exact same piece of news could be spun differently, reinforcing something my dad would always preach based on St. Thomas Aquinas: "beware of the man of one book!".
I am more convinced than ever that today there are no excuses for anyone to do something they do not like, nor to do something they should not do because they are unaware of the consequences of their actions.
This week three casual conversations got me thinking and once again I arrived at the same conclusion: don't defer your dreams for retirement, vacation or the weekend, every single day counts. We need the work days, the weekends and the vacation days, they all have a role in life but we need to enjoy them all. Like "The Byrds" song "Turn Turn Turn" (words adapted from the Bible) used to say:
To Everything
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
The first conversation was with a few work friends where one person interjected and shared that money was not an object for him, he simply loved what he did. So I quickly gave him a "give me your money and be even happier!".
The second one was with my daughter. I was having breakfast with her and she shared that she did not want to work when she got older. I asked her what she liked and she said "math, reading and science". I told her that with that she could do pretty much anything and that if she found something she liked she would look forward to working, just like daddy. She then replied "of course you like your work, everybody knows you!". Thinking more about it this is true for nearly everywhere I worked as I am fairly social. Knowing that she loves basketball I then told her that I could have chosen to be a basketball player. Her face was priceless, "you could have been a basketball player and you chose to work?". I shared with her that I simply did not like basketball enough to put in the hours of practice required to be successful at it, but that she would understand it when she got there. She concluded that "OK, I definitely want to be a fashionista, I spent hours drawing my last dress".
The third conversation was with my wife. She shared reading that a Chinese Executive argued that Chinese goods were cheaper because Chinese Executives did not make millions of dollars.
So where am I going with this? I will get there, but before I continue I want you to watch the video below,this inspired me to write this and it poses a great question as to what are we doing with our brain.
Money cannot be an end, it is simply an exchange mechanism. Once we see it that way everything becomes clearer. In my humble opinion we need money, this is the best mechanism devised to replace bartering as a way to exchange the fruits of our labor. With all its imperfections no better mechanism has been devised to date to help us exchange our talents, so cheers to Capitalism! The socialist experiment was interesting but it proved that in order to work it cannot be forced upon people. When someone decides what others should do we are deprived of our most special gift: free will.
I have been doing what I have always done lately, somewhat my favorite past-time: solving problems. It all started with math problems that were then transferred to engineering and finally to business. But this was not all I liked, I also liked sports. I spent most of my time playing soccer until I was 13, when I started playing basketball. I had a very disciplined routine, leaving school at 12, finishing my homework and going to the club I played for, most of the time much sooner than practice time, giving me time to play volleyball with the volleyball team. A little later I started skateboarding until I was about 17. But once again I never liked these enough to do it full-time, or in all honesty simply did not have the talent to live out of it. Accepting our limitations is part of leading a good life, but until today I fit in a sport into my routine.
Today I am discovering a whole new world in philosophy. I have been reading a lot lately and "phylosophing" a bit myself. A friend of mine who is going through mid-life crisis shared an interesting concept. When we approach our 40s we reach neurological maturity and we begin questioning many things we have never questioned before. I have always been an inquisitive person and really never posed existential questions to myself, but that quickly changed with my brain tumor diagnose. I have always lived a life for the present. Someone posted on Facebook that interesting people move several times, restart life several times, among other things, and an article in Forbes magazine from Jessica Hagy gives the following advice on how to be interesting (as if being interesting was something to be pursued...):
1. Explore
2. Share What You Find Out
3. Do Something. Anything
4. Embrace Your Innate Abilities
5. Embrace a Cause
6. Don't be Arrogant
7. Give it a Shot
8. Hop off the Bandwagon
9. Be Brave
10. Ignore "Normal" People
To me the only way to be interesting is to be interesting to yourself. The only person you owe an explanation to is to the person you see in the mirror everyday. I found a few people who have followed their heart and their brain and this is what they are doing:
So do you need to do all this to be happy? Absolutely not! You need to find out what you like and do it as best as you can, so that when you report it to the person in the mirror you can look him in the eye and say "I tried my best".
I am trying to use my brain as best as I can while I have it. The brain is God's gift to us, in my philosophical thoughts I arrived at something that somewhat helped me define God after realising that the definition of God is somewhat taken for granted. God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. After seeing what humanity has accomplished it is hard to believe that we are not, by definition, God's image and reflection. And that our Holiness resides in our brain, the organ in our body that gives us presence, awareness and potential.
What are you doing with your brain?
Brain, use it wisely!
I believe that we are entering an incredible new era where information flows faster and more freely when Adam Smith's invisible hand will work significantly faster. We all have to thank Google for this, I never realized how revolutionary Google was until I started reading and writing blogs.
I used to tell my wife that if something was not in the news it was probably not true until I lived in the US. I used to drive to work listening to NPR (left leaning) and drive back home listening to Fox News (right leaning). I was always amazed at how the exact same piece of news could be spun differently, reinforcing something my dad would always preach based on St. Thomas Aquinas: "beware of the man of one book!".
I am more convinced than ever that today there are no excuses for anyone to do something they do not like, nor to do something they should not do because they are unaware of the consequences of their actions.
This week three casual conversations got me thinking and once again I arrived at the same conclusion: don't defer your dreams for retirement, vacation or the weekend, every single day counts. We need the work days, the weekends and the vacation days, they all have a role in life but we need to enjoy them all. Like "The Byrds" song "Turn Turn Turn" (words adapted from the Bible) used to say:
To Everything
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
The first conversation was with a few work friends where one person interjected and shared that money was not an object for him, he simply loved what he did. So I quickly gave him a "give me your money and be even happier!".
The second one was with my daughter. I was having breakfast with her and she shared that she did not want to work when she got older. I asked her what she liked and she said "math, reading and science". I told her that with that she could do pretty much anything and that if she found something she liked she would look forward to working, just like daddy. She then replied "of course you like your work, everybody knows you!". Thinking more about it this is true for nearly everywhere I worked as I am fairly social. Knowing that she loves basketball I then told her that I could have chosen to be a basketball player. Her face was priceless, "you could have been a basketball player and you chose to work?". I shared with her that I simply did not like basketball enough to put in the hours of practice required to be successful at it, but that she would understand it when she got there. She concluded that "OK, I definitely want to be a fashionista, I spent hours drawing my last dress".
The third conversation was with my wife. She shared reading that a Chinese Executive argued that Chinese goods were cheaper because Chinese Executives did not make millions of dollars.
So where am I going with this? I will get there, but before I continue I want you to watch the video below,this inspired me to write this and it poses a great question as to what are we doing with our brain.
Money cannot be an end, it is simply an exchange mechanism. Once we see it that way everything becomes clearer. In my humble opinion we need money, this is the best mechanism devised to replace bartering as a way to exchange the fruits of our labor. With all its imperfections no better mechanism has been devised to date to help us exchange our talents, so cheers to Capitalism! The socialist experiment was interesting but it proved that in order to work it cannot be forced upon people. When someone decides what others should do we are deprived of our most special gift: free will.
I have been doing what I have always done lately, somewhat my favorite past-time: solving problems. It all started with math problems that were then transferred to engineering and finally to business. But this was not all I liked, I also liked sports. I spent most of my time playing soccer until I was 13, when I started playing basketball. I had a very disciplined routine, leaving school at 12, finishing my homework and going to the club I played for, most of the time much sooner than practice time, giving me time to play volleyball with the volleyball team. A little later I started skateboarding until I was about 17. But once again I never liked these enough to do it full-time, or in all honesty simply did not have the talent to live out of it. Accepting our limitations is part of leading a good life, but until today I fit in a sport into my routine.
Today I am discovering a whole new world in philosophy. I have been reading a lot lately and "phylosophing" a bit myself. A friend of mine who is going through mid-life crisis shared an interesting concept. When we approach our 40s we reach neurological maturity and we begin questioning many things we have never questioned before. I have always been an inquisitive person and really never posed existential questions to myself, but that quickly changed with my brain tumor diagnose. I have always lived a life for the present. Someone posted on Facebook that interesting people move several times, restart life several times, among other things, and an article in Forbes magazine from Jessica Hagy gives the following advice on how to be interesting (as if being interesting was something to be pursued...):
1. Explore
2. Share What You Find Out
3. Do Something. Anything
4. Embrace Your Innate Abilities
5. Embrace a Cause
6. Don't be Arrogant
7. Give it a Shot
8. Hop off the Bandwagon
9. Be Brave
10. Ignore "Normal" People
To me the only way to be interesting is to be interesting to yourself. The only person you owe an explanation to is to the person you see in the mirror everyday. I found a few people who have followed their heart and their brain and this is what they are doing:
So do you need to do all this to be happy? Absolutely not! You need to find out what you like and do it as best as you can, so that when you report it to the person in the mirror you can look him in the eye and say "I tried my best".
I am trying to use my brain as best as I can while I have it. The brain is God's gift to us, in my philosophical thoughts I arrived at something that somewhat helped me define God after realising that the definition of God is somewhat taken for granted. God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. After seeing what humanity has accomplished it is hard to believe that we are not, by definition, God's image and reflection. And that our Holiness resides in our brain, the organ in our body that gives us presence, awareness and potential.
What are you doing with your brain?
Brain, use it wisely!
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Science, Pseudo-Science and Faith - is the Sun Next?
And here I am again messing with a favorite set of tools: books, Microsoft Excel and data.
I found a great data set of indicators, the 2008 UN Data Development Indicators. This enabled me to run tighter regressions as all my data, from population, cancer and other variables by country were all related to 2008, reducing time-frame related inconsistencies.
To recap what I am doing I plotted Brain & Nervours System Cancer incidence by country according to Globocan, a UN study performed in 2008, and a group of other variables. Reading the Globocan metholodoly it was clear that many of the cancer statistics by country were already estimates, so I am running estimates on estimates, never a good start, but nonetheless a start.
Interestingly I found a new variable that bet my previous highest predictor of Brain & Nervous System Cancer Incidence by Country predictor (average height, and yes, I am tall, 6'4'' ft).
I added the following variables to my regressions:
- Latitude: a girl from work mentioned meeting a person who had been treated with Vitamin D for sclerosis with positive results, so I figured why not add latitude by country to my data-set;
- Energy per Capita: I tried to used this as an approximation of polution exposure;
- Carbon Foot Print: same as above;
- Income Index: I am sure cancer incidence increases with the ability to diagnose, so higher income countries surely are negatively impacted on my analysis for having arguably good things such as longer life expectancy, and negative things such as a higher carbon foot print.
Obviously many of these variables are far from being independent, but the correlations between them and Brain & Nervours System Cancer incidence by country are pretty high. See below the correlations and R-Squares of all the varilables explored relative to BT incidence by country. The R-Square statistic is simply an estimation of how the variation in one variable (in our case Brain & Nervous Cancer) can be statistically described by a set of other variables (in our case the variables below):
As a curious explorer I would never consider this a scientific analysis, just a glorified speculation, let's call this Science for illustration purposes as it is full of numbers, something every scientist needs to prove a hypothesis. To ensure that there are no misunderstanding to how I intepret science I will use the following definition: something that is observable, measurable and reproduceable under similar circumstances. For example, in theory for a drug to be approved by the FDA the drug manufacturer needs to prove statistically that people treated with the drug have a much higher likelyhood of being cured than people using placebo.
I was surprised with this week's Veja Magazine (a Brazilian magazine with large circulation) which had in its front page a call-out for Vitamin D, a hormone produced by the body when exposed to the Sun. Aparently Vitamin D defficiencies are now being explored as a major cause of auto-immune diseases such as Sclerosis, Cancer and Rickets, the latter one a proven case long time ago.
Given the fact that this is not an FDA approved treatment one might argue that this is not scientific. However when I looked at the data above I was intrigued, so I moved to the next step in my logic: this is not scientific as there is no substantial data to prove that in order to cure an auto-imune disease just stay out in the Sun and the disease will be gone. Given the numbers above I could argue in favor of pseudo-science (let's say the data above can be called pseudo-science), but since I know enough about the scientific method I have to move to the next logical step: faith - I either believe the Sun can cure or not.
I still like my Heat Shock Protein theory and the Sun might elevate HSP levels, any taker? Wether Vitamin D, HSP or anything else might cure cancer we still need to deall with everything else in life wisely, never letting a condition define who we are.
It is amazing to see how the world works in cycles. Thousands of years ago Egiptians planted the seeds to our monoteistic religions treating the Sun as their God. While they worshiped many Gods, Ra (the Sun) was the father & grand-father of the other Gods. All of a sudden the Sun is again contemplated not only as the solution to our energy problems but now also to health.
At this stage believing in such thing is a matter of Faith rather than of Science, and quite frankly there is nothing wrong with this in my view. The reality is that we know significantly less than what we don't know, we need to accept that doctors and religious leaders don't have answers to everything and therefore we need to accept that it is better to live a happy life sick than to lead a sad life with health.
Existencial questions exist throughout the world and are answered differently by every culture. I am becoming fascinated by the similarities of how ancient people from all over the world dealt with these questions, taking different paths to get to the same place. As people of faith like to say "God writes straight with crooked lines", and this is true to every culture. The only things we know for sure are that we will not live forever, at least in our current form, and that we need to make the most out of the time we have in our current form. But what exactly does "making the most out of the time we have" mean? I now turn to examples from a great book I am reading that aggregates all the great philosophers of the world in a suscint and incredible book called "The Book of Philosophy".
I somewhat liked the Confucian definition: "The virtuous man is not the one at the top of the social hierarchy, but the one that understands his role in this hierarchy and accepts it." However there is something missing in it that did not sit well in my mind - it is somewhat submissive, or like I tell my daughters, "you get what you get and you don't get upset". So I move to Bhuda who preached the following: "Don't believe in anything, no matter where you read it or who tells you, unless it is in line with your own reasoning". So I finally close with Mozy, my favorite thinker so far, and I have many to go. "Jian Ai", or in English, treat everyone like you want to be treated.
Today we have over 5 billion people wondering about the same things that significantly less people worried about centuries ago, yet many lead a meaningless life worrying about meanigless things. If you haven't found what makes you tick keep searching, and I hope that a many tick with science and that your search for answers to extend lives through medicine and medical/pharmaceutical research leads us to new treatment paths, like Flemming, Sabin and Pasteur have done.
Given the pseudo-scientific nature of my findings it is too early for me to move to the Equator, give away my money, shrink, shift my diet to 100% pasta, cut down on meat, eliminate alcohol from my diet (this one I have actually done) and abolish anything that consumes fossil fuels. No, I don't believe that shifting to a vegan or paleo diet and moving to a cave will help me at all (these are all faith-based principles to a better life), but if this moves you do, do it! The world is big enough to assimilate different thoughts and faiths, we just need to learn to co-exist and accept the personal consequences of the choices we make, which are ultimately always ours. God (or nature) has given us freewill and we need to use it wisely to be happy and fullfilled. With the end of the world approaching, according to the Mayans, I wish everyone a Happy End of the World and a Prosperous Reencarnation! Every day is a new birth and we should treat our time accordingly, we don't need to wait until we die to go to Paradise, we need to build Paradise on Earth to deserve the next one.
I found a great data set of indicators, the 2008 UN Data Development Indicators. This enabled me to run tighter regressions as all my data, from population, cancer and other variables by country were all related to 2008, reducing time-frame related inconsistencies.
To recap what I am doing I plotted Brain & Nervours System Cancer incidence by country according to Globocan, a UN study performed in 2008, and a group of other variables. Reading the Globocan metholodoly it was clear that many of the cancer statistics by country were already estimates, so I am running estimates on estimates, never a good start, but nonetheless a start.
Interestingly I found a new variable that bet my previous highest predictor of Brain & Nervous System Cancer Incidence by Country predictor (average height, and yes, I am tall, 6'4'' ft).
I added the following variables to my regressions:
- Latitude: a girl from work mentioned meeting a person who had been treated with Vitamin D for sclerosis with positive results, so I figured why not add latitude by country to my data-set;
- Energy per Capita: I tried to used this as an approximation of polution exposure;
- Carbon Foot Print: same as above;
- Income Index: I am sure cancer incidence increases with the ability to diagnose, so higher income countries surely are negatively impacted on my analysis for having arguably good things such as longer life expectancy, and negative things such as a higher carbon foot print.
Obviously many of these variables are far from being independent, but the correlations between them and Brain & Nervours System Cancer incidence by country are pretty high. See below the correlations and R-Squares of all the varilables explored relative to BT incidence by country. The R-Square statistic is simply an estimation of how the variation in one variable (in our case Brain & Nervous Cancer) can be statistically described by a set of other variables (in our case the variables below):
Correlation
|
R-Square
|
|
Latitude
|
73.1%
|
53.4%
|
Income Index
|
72.0%
|
51.9%
|
Average Height
|
69.7%
|
48.6%
|
Carbs % of Diet
|
-69.2%
|
53.8%
|
Protein
Consumption (kg/yr)
|
62.2%
|
38.7%
|
Life Expectancy
|
59.6%
|
35.6%
|
Alcohol
Consumption
|
56.1%
|
31.4%
|
Energy per Capita
|
55.6%
|
30.9%
|
Carbon Footprint
|
54.1%
|
29.2%
|
% Urban Population
|
44.8%
|
20.1%
|
As a curious explorer I would never consider this a scientific analysis, just a glorified speculation, let's call this Science for illustration purposes as it is full of numbers, something every scientist needs to prove a hypothesis. To ensure that there are no misunderstanding to how I intepret science I will use the following definition: something that is observable, measurable and reproduceable under similar circumstances. For example, in theory for a drug to be approved by the FDA the drug manufacturer needs to prove statistically that people treated with the drug have a much higher likelyhood of being cured than people using placebo.
I was surprised with this week's Veja Magazine (a Brazilian magazine with large circulation) which had in its front page a call-out for Vitamin D, a hormone produced by the body when exposed to the Sun. Aparently Vitamin D defficiencies are now being explored as a major cause of auto-immune diseases such as Sclerosis, Cancer and Rickets, the latter one a proven case long time ago.
Given the fact that this is not an FDA approved treatment one might argue that this is not scientific. However when I looked at the data above I was intrigued, so I moved to the next step in my logic: this is not scientific as there is no substantial data to prove that in order to cure an auto-imune disease just stay out in the Sun and the disease will be gone. Given the numbers above I could argue in favor of pseudo-science (let's say the data above can be called pseudo-science), but since I know enough about the scientific method I have to move to the next logical step: faith - I either believe the Sun can cure or not.
I still like my Heat Shock Protein theory and the Sun might elevate HSP levels, any taker? Wether Vitamin D, HSP or anything else might cure cancer we still need to deall with everything else in life wisely, never letting a condition define who we are.
It is amazing to see how the world works in cycles. Thousands of years ago Egiptians planted the seeds to our monoteistic religions treating the Sun as their God. While they worshiped many Gods, Ra (the Sun) was the father & grand-father of the other Gods. All of a sudden the Sun is again contemplated not only as the solution to our energy problems but now also to health.
At this stage believing in such thing is a matter of Faith rather than of Science, and quite frankly there is nothing wrong with this in my view. The reality is that we know significantly less than what we don't know, we need to accept that doctors and religious leaders don't have answers to everything and therefore we need to accept that it is better to live a happy life sick than to lead a sad life with health.
Existencial questions exist throughout the world and are answered differently by every culture. I am becoming fascinated by the similarities of how ancient people from all over the world dealt with these questions, taking different paths to get to the same place. As people of faith like to say "God writes straight with crooked lines", and this is true to every culture. The only things we know for sure are that we will not live forever, at least in our current form, and that we need to make the most out of the time we have in our current form. But what exactly does "making the most out of the time we have" mean? I now turn to examples from a great book I am reading that aggregates all the great philosophers of the world in a suscint and incredible book called "The Book of Philosophy".
I somewhat liked the Confucian definition: "The virtuous man is not the one at the top of the social hierarchy, but the one that understands his role in this hierarchy and accepts it." However there is something missing in it that did not sit well in my mind - it is somewhat submissive, or like I tell my daughters, "you get what you get and you don't get upset". So I move to Bhuda who preached the following: "Don't believe in anything, no matter where you read it or who tells you, unless it is in line with your own reasoning". So I finally close with Mozy, my favorite thinker so far, and I have many to go. "Jian Ai", or in English, treat everyone like you want to be treated.
Today we have over 5 billion people wondering about the same things that significantly less people worried about centuries ago, yet many lead a meaningless life worrying about meanigless things. If you haven't found what makes you tick keep searching, and I hope that a many tick with science and that your search for answers to extend lives through medicine and medical/pharmaceutical research leads us to new treatment paths, like Flemming, Sabin and Pasteur have done.
Given the pseudo-scientific nature of my findings it is too early for me to move to the Equator, give away my money, shrink, shift my diet to 100% pasta, cut down on meat, eliminate alcohol from my diet (this one I have actually done) and abolish anything that consumes fossil fuels. No, I don't believe that shifting to a vegan or paleo diet and moving to a cave will help me at all (these are all faith-based principles to a better life), but if this moves you do, do it! The world is big enough to assimilate different thoughts and faiths, we just need to learn to co-exist and accept the personal consequences of the choices we make, which are ultimately always ours. God (or nature) has given us freewill and we need to use it wisely to be happy and fullfilled. With the end of the world approaching, according to the Mayans, I wish everyone a Happy End of the World and a Prosperous Reencarnation! Every day is a new birth and we should treat our time accordingly, we don't need to wait until we die to go to Paradise, we need to build Paradise on Earth to deserve the next one.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Air Conditioning and Cancer - Just a New Theory
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.
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.
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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