Saturday, March 29, 2014

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 19: Breast Cancer PREVENTION…


From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21225/abstract;jsessionid=AB68024307C6BEBA9839C5AED2B5EC49.f03t03

While this isn’t exactly a “breakthrough”, it IS research that highlights the fact that we do less to promote the PREVENTION of breast cancer than we do treating the disease. “With more than 234,000 new breast cancer diagnoses in the United States each year, efforts to improve treatment and early detection resonate strongly with clinicians and patients alike. Breast cancer prevention has received far less attention but holds tremendous promise. In a discussion of cancer genomics published in Science, Vogelstein et al note, ‘When we think of cardiovascular or infectious diseases, we first consider ways to prevent them rather than drugs to cure their most advanced forms.’

I’ve highlighted the connection between exercise and breast cancer recovery –and now I’ve labeled and grouped all of them together. You can read them all here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Exercise

But as I just said, none of these are about PREVENTING breast cancer. With my daughter, I’d just as soon see her begin to consider preventing breast cancer using the recommendations of this study – and do NOT include prophylactic radical mastectomies.

They can be simply reduced to integrating eight factors into a woman (and a man’s!) lifestyle. Let me iterate one thing however: doing these eight things DOES IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM GUARANTEE FREEDOM FROM BREAST CANCER.

There is nothing that guarantee that. If you don’t have a spiritual life, Mother Nature is notoriously fickle in following our directions. If you do have a spiritual life, you know that prayer is not magic and we are not God: “To pray is nothing more involved than to open the door, giving Jesus access to our needs and permitting Him to exercise His own power in dealing with them.” (O. Hallesby)

However, these seem to be sensible steps to take for breast cancer prevention:

 
  1. Keep Weight in Check
  2. Be Physically Active
  3. Avoid Too Much Alcohol
  4. Breast Feed If Possible
  5. Avoid Birth Control Pills, Particularly After Age 35 or If You Smoke
  6. Avoid Post-Menopausal Hormones
  7. Find Out Your Family History
  8. Tamoxifen and Raloxifene for Women at High Risk

 
Not sure about the last one – but that’s a “see your doctor” one. Also you should research that yourself. You can start here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/12/breast-cancer-research-right-now-5-take.html

Most of the above could be reasonably grouped into the “clean living” category that often pops up when the media interviews centenarians, so following them might just be a ticket to long life AS WELL AS the prevention of breast cancer.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

BREAST CANCER WISDOM 9: From Others and From Life Here…


https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR7ShPQBlgRm53GbBrlj9oda5CZsCxPflbqUVD0RMka-6F5xoAqiw

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…


It’s been three years.

Three years since the diagnosis. Since the double mastectomy. Since the chemo. Since the terror.

I looked for support – and this wasn’t there. Not for me.

Watching the video brought back memories like a rush…

At any rate, on their website, they say they are, “…Men Against Breast Cancer, the first and only national non-profit organization designed to educate and empower men to be effective caregivers when breast cancer strikes their family.

It started a long time ago, but I never found the site. Their conferences are a long way away from here and the fact is that the group is small.

Why?

What is it about men that keeps them from supporting each other when they run, fast and furious, into the wall of the women they love being diagnosed with breast cancer?

*sigh*

The video WAS good! Watch it. Connect with them. Reach out to other men. You can contact me if you want to.

My wife is at the THREE YEAR breast cancer survivor stage! Hallelujah! And that’s where I’m gonna stop this morning.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT 1...


From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…OK – after nearly three years of posting, it’s time to reevaluate.

Looking at my stats for each “type” of post I’ve made since starting:
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: total hits on 13 posts = 326; comments = 0
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: total hits on 18 posts = 395; comments = 2
Breast Cancer Wisdom: total hits on 8 posts = 62; comments = 0
Comments on other subjects: total hits on 4 posts = 19; comments = 0
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings: total hits on 24 posts = 1041; comments = 8
Guest Post: total hits on 1 post = 68 ; comments = 0
Introductions: total hits on 1 post = 22; comments = 2
Random Thoughts: total hits on 6 posts = 61; comments = 0
Reconstruction Era: total hits on 11 posts = 138; comments = 0
Somewhere Along the Way: total hits on 39 posts = 1750; comments = 0
Translating the Doctors: total hits on 41 posts = 2276; comments = 3

Now for some math.
Percentage of hits:
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: 13/326 = .039 x 100 = 3.9%
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: 4.5%
Breast Cancer Wisdom: 12.9%
Comments on other subjects: 21%
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings: 2.3%
Guest Post: 1.47%
Introductions: 4.5%
Random Thoughts: 9.8%
Reconstruction Era: 28.9%
Somewhere Along the Way: 2.2%
Translating the Doctors: 1.8%

And a ranking:
Reconstruction Era: 11/138 = .289 x 100 = 28.9%
Comments on other subjects: 21%
Breast Cancer Wisdom: 12.9%
Random Thoughts: 9.8%
Introductions: 4.5%
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: 4.5%
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: 3.9%
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings: 2.3%
Somewhere Along the Way: 2.2%
Guest Post: 1.47%
Translating the Doctors: 1.8%

Eliminating “Comments” because those were things like “Internet Down!”; Introductions because I’ll only introduce myself once; and Guest Post because that was a one-time thing, we have:
Reconstruction Era: 11/138 = .289 x 100 = 28.9%
Breast Cancer Wisdom: 12.9%
Random Thoughts: 9.8%
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: 4.5%
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: 3.9%
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings: 2.3%
Somewhere Along the Way: 2.2%
Translating the Doctors: 1.8%

According to Google tracking on my administrative site, my top 5 most popular posts since I started were:
“Lymph Node Excision, Mosquito Bites and a Return to Normal” with 538 hits
(Category: Somewhere Along The Way)
“Metastatic Breast Cancer: Brain Cancer” with 404 hits
(Category: Translating the Doctors)
“Easter Saturday Reflections of Nearly One Year Since I Started This” with 199 hits
(Category: Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings)
“Metastatic Breast Cancer: Bone Cancer” with 144 hits
(Category: Translating the Doctors)
“Husbanding A Bigger Middle” with 132 hits
(Category: Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings)


All right then. I’m going to combine categories:
Reconstruction Era: 11/138 = .289 x 100 = 28.9%
Breast Cancer Wisdom: 12.9%

Random Thoughts: 9.8% + Somewhere Along the Way: 2.2% + Feelings, Nothing More Than
Feelings: 2.3% for a total percentage of 14.3%
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: 4.5%  + Translating the Doctors: 1.8% for a total of percentage of 6.3%
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: 3.9%


Finally, the new categories:

Reconstruction Era: 28.9%
Random Thoughts: 14.3% *Rename: GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…*
Breast Cancer Wisdom: 12.9%
Breast Cancer Research Right Now!: 6.3%
A Fantastic Cancer Voyage: 3.9%


So, there we go this is the “new” GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER. Who knows, I may retool the look of the site, too! We’ll see.
Image: http://wrex.images.worldnow.com/images/23784252_SA.jpg

Saturday, March 8, 2014

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 18 – Immunotherapy


 

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/03/05/recent-advances-in-targeted-breast-cancer-treatments/

I’d never heard of this and had to take some time to do a bit more research than usual.

“Immunotherapy is a new class of cancer treatment that works to harness the innate powers of the immune system to fight cancer.”

Hmmm, OK, I had my class in immunology in college and did pretty well in it. But this STILL doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So let me go to my “first base” source and we’ll scaffold up from there to the abstract that sparked this post.

From Wikipedia: “Cancer immunotherapy is the use of the immune system to reject cancer. The main premise is stimulating the patient's immune system to attack the malignant tumor cells that are responsible for the disease. This can be either through immunization of the patient (a cancer vaccine), in which case the patient's own immune system is trained to recognize tumor cells as targets to be destroyed, or through the administration of therapeutic antibodies as drugs, in which case the patient's immune system is recruited to destroy tumor cells...

“Cell based immunotherapy is another major entity of cancer immunotherapy. This involves immune cells...which are either activated in [the body by using] certain cytokines...or they are isolated, enriched and transfused to the patient to fight against cancer.

“...the immune system responds to [everything] it encounters [by identifying the differences] between ‘self’ and ‘not-self’ [things. That is part of the challenge with cancer:] many kinds of tumor cells...are more or less tolerated by the patient's own immune system since the tumor cells are essentially the patient's own cells that are growing, dividing and spreading without proper regulatory control.

 “...many kinds of tumor cells display unusual antigens that are either inappropriate for the cell type and/or its environment, or are only normally present [at certain times]. A protein called GD2 is often found on the surfaces of a wide range of tumor cells [so it is used as a kind of a signal for] target for immunotherapies. Other kinds of tumor cells display cell surface receptors that are rare or absent on the surfaces of healthy cells, [one of which is present on the]cell surface [in] abnormally high levels on the surface of breast cancer tumor cells.”

In summary: breast cancer cells (as well as other kinds of cancer cells) are cells that grow out of control inside the Human body. Because they are from the body, they don’t set off the reaction of the immune system – which usually charges up as soon as it comes in contact with something foreign like influenza or cold viruses. It doesn’t fight the cancer cells on its own – because it thinks they “belong”. But they aren’t completely normal and using certain kinds of drugs, doctors can “highlight” the cancer cells so that the body says, “Aha! There you are!” and goes on to attack the cancer cells on its own.

OK – background. This month, an article I came across expresses new hope for the use of immunotherapy in treating breast cancer. “Active immunotherapy in breast cancer and its implementation into clinical trials have been largely a frustrating experience in the last decades.” The implication here is that this is changing.

For those of you who are appalled by the standard practice of introducing toxic chemicals to the body, this line of research and new interest in stimulation the body itself to fight cancer will come as good news.

The “bad” news is that this information is just the beginning and looks at answering basic questions:

“What do we know about tumor immunogenicity, and how might we therapeutically improve tumor immunogenicity?” In other words, what do we know about how tumors hide and can we make drugs to cut through that “cloak of invisibility”?

“How can we modulate response of the immune system?” Can we make it so the body ONLY attacks the cancer cells?

“Is there any gene signature predictive of response to immune modulators?” Is there any natural part of a tumor cell that would tell us how well a cancer cell could protect itself from the immune system?

“The success of future immunotherapy strategies will depend on the identification of additional immunogenic antigens that can serve as the best tumor-rejection targets.” They need to find MORE SPECIFIC cancer cell markers than they have now in order to really target them.

“Therapeutic success will depend on developing the best antigen delivery systems and on the elucidation of the entire network of immune signaling pathways that regulate immune responses in the tumor microenvironment.” There’s NOTHING OUT THERE NOW that is effective in spurring the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. The need to find the markers, design drugs that will highlight them by figuring out how to “tell the body” that it needs to fight THESE cells.

So while we wait, we go on with new therapies – confident that breast cancer will go the way of smallpox: extinction on Earth.

Image: http://www.ddw-online.com/img/32/800/600/0/0/current-and-emerging-trends-in-immunogenicity-research.png

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Round Six: Random Thoughts On Breast Cancer, Reconstructive Surgery, Lymphedema, Pain, Work, Suffering, and Joy


From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

My wife got sick this week.

REALLY sick! I won’t go into the nasty details, but I will note a comment she made: “I haven’t been this sick since before chemo started!”

That got me to thinking. I know I’ve commented on this before here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/12/chemo-killed-coldsand-other-weird.html

That was a year and a half ago, so I decided to see if anything has changed in the intervening months.

It turns out that chemo itself may boost the immune system: “…new research published online on April 4 in the Cell Press journal Immunity shows that effective chemotherapies actually work by mobilizing the body's own immune cells to fight cancer.”

When the chemo – targeted for particular kinds of cancer cells – smashes the cancer, the destroyed cells break up and the bits and pieces of a protein called ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) start to float through the bloodstream. When the body’s cells pick it up, they mobilize and start to create anti-bodies against that particular kind of ATP. That kind of ATP is only found in the cancer cells, so the body itself begins to fight back!

Neulasta, which stimulates the growth of white blood cells in bone marrow, “super-charges” the body and pretty soon, you have a mobile force attacking the cancer cells.

While the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta strongly urges post-cancer folks to get the vaccine against seasonal influenza because of weakened immune systems, they don’t really give any hints at the subject of my curiosity…

So – the question remains: does the LOSS of chemotherapy expose a patient to infection by more “usual” illnesses? I still can’t find any research to support my thoughts, and while it seems logical that this would be true, it remains to become the research topic of some clinic somewhere. I’ll keep you all posted.


Image: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/rAxNwvR-1f4/hqdefault.jpg