risk

Risk of Breast Cancer

The term “risk” is used to refer to a number or percentage that describes how likely a certain event is to occur.
When we talk about factors that can increase or decrease the risk of developing breast cancer, either for the first time or as a recurrence, we often talk about two different types of risk: absolute risk and relative risk.

Absolute risk

Absolute risk is used to describe an individual’s likelihood of developing breast cancer.
It is based on the number of people who will develop breast cancer within a certain time period. Absolute risk also can be stated as a percentage.

When we say that 1 in 8 women in the United States, or 13%, will develop breast cancer over the course of a lifetime, we are talking about absolute risk.

On average, an individual woman has a 1-in-8 chance of developing breast cancer over an 80-year lifespan.

The absolute risk of developing breast cancer during a particular decade of life is lower than 1 in 8. The younger you are, the lower the risk

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risk of breast cancer

Breast Cancer Risk

By now you may be familiar with the statistic that says 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer. Many people misinterpret this to mean that, on any given day, they and the women they know have a 1-in-8 risk of developing the disease. That’s simply not true.
People tend to have very different ways of viewing risk. For you, a 1-in-8 lifetime risk may seem like a high likelihood of getting breast cancer. Or you may turn this around and reason that there is a 7-in-8, or 87.5%, chance you will never get breast cancer, even if you live to age 80. How you view risk often depends on your individual situation —
for example, whether you or many women you know have had breast cancer, or you have reason to believe you are at higher-than-normal risk for the disease — and your usual way of looking at the world.

Even though studies have found that women have a 13% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, your individual risk may be higher or lower than that. Individual risk is affected by many different factors, such as family history, reproductive history, lifestyle, environment, and others.

This section is designed to help you better understand breast cancer risk and some of the factors that can increase risk.

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symptoms

Breast Cancer symptoms

breast cancer may not cause any symptoms. A lump may be too small for you to feel or to cause any unusual changes you can notice on your own. Often, an abnormal area turns up on a screening mammogram (x-ray of the breast), which leads to further testing.

According to the American Cancer Society, any of the following unusual changes in the breast can be a symptom of breast cancer:

• swelling of all or part of the breast
• skin irritation or dimpling
• breast pain
• nipple pain or the nipple turning inward
• redness, scaliness, or thickening of the nipple or breast skin
• a nipple discharge other than breast milk
• a lump in the underarm area

These changes also can be signs of less serious conditions that are not cancerous, such as an infection or a cyst. It’s important to get any breast changes checked out promptly by a doctor.

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Breast cancer is always caused by a genetic abnormality (a “mistake” in the genetic material). However, only 5-10% of cancers are due to an abnormality inherited from your mother or father. About 90% of breast cancers are due to genetic abnormalities that happen as a result of the aging process and the “wear and tear” of life in general.

While there are steps every person can take to help the body stay as healthy as possible (such as eating a balanced diet, not smoking, limiting alcohol, and exercising regularly), breast cancer is never anyone's fault. Feeling guilty, or telling yourself that breast cancer happened because of something you or anyone else did, is not productive.

Over time, cancer cells can invade nearby healthy breast tissue and make their way into the underarm lymph nodes, small organs that filter out foreign substances in the body. If cancer cells get into the lymph nodes, they then have a pathway into other parts of the body. The breast cancer’s stage refers to how far the cancer cells have spread beyond the original tumor

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breast cancer

What Is Breast Cancer?

Breast cancer is an uncontrolled growth of breast cells. To better understand breast cancer, it helps to understand how any cancer can develop.Cancer occurs as a result of mutations, or abnormal changes, in the genes responsible for regulating the growth of cells and keeping them healthy.
The genes are in each cell’s nucleus, which acts as the “control room” of each cell. Normally, the cells in our bodies replace themselves through an orderly process of cell growth:

healthy new cells take over as old ones die out. But over time, mutations can “turn on” certain genes and “turn off” others in a cell. That changed cell gains the ability to keep dividing without control or order, producing more cells just like it and forming a tumor.
Usually breast cancer either begins in the cells of the lobules, which are the milk-producing glands, or the ducts, the passages that drain milk from the lobules to the nipple.
Less commonly, breast cancer can begin in the stromal tissues, which include the fatty and fibrous connective tissues of the breast.

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Accreditation of cancer

Accreditation and Affiliation
Our cancer program is accredited by the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Radiology, a distinction that means we meet high standards for access to care, technology, multidisciplinary care, information and education. Cape Cod Healthcare is affiliated with distinguished cancer treatment centers including Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare, and the adult oncology collaboration among Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition, we are affiliated with Women & Infants Hospital, Boston Medical Center and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These affiliations enable us to offer the most current cancer protocols available and to participate in clinical trials for new treatments.

A regional leader in cancer care
Cape Cod Healthcare Cancer Services provides a complete range of advanced cancer treatment options, highly trained specialists, and top-notch facilities. Our multidisciplinary approach brings together medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgery, radiology, pathology and nursing to analyze and consult on cancer cases. Our investment in imaging technology gives us the ability to provide accurate and early diagnosis and staging.

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COPING WITH ANGER

It is the rare survivor that understands and handles anger in an effective way. Many survivors are completely numb and do not allow themselves to feel their anger. Others direct their anger outward, destroying property, yelling and screaming, name-calling or even becoming abusive themselves. Still others direct it inward in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-harm or neglect.

Babies have all kinds of habits, needs, and emotions that parents prohibit: sloppiness, anger, greediness, jealousy, self-centered demands, etc. As a child, we all learned that parts of ourselves were bad. This self-hatred becomes automated in the form of depression, which both punishes us and drowns out other feelings too. understading anger. Theories and Facts from Psychological Self-Help at Mental Health Net

The adult survivor needs to learn that his or her anger can be experienced, handled and used for a positive purpose without a catastrophe. As one survivor put it, she was afraid if she ever got angry, the whole world would burn down. For many survivors, anger was a catastrophic experience in their households. They have trouble imagining that anger can be anything but a profoundly destructive force or that there are skills one can learn to manage it effectively.

definitions of anger, learning how to identify when you are angry, and ways you can use anger as a positive force for change. However, before anger can be used as a positive force for change, it is often necessary to learn how to cope with this overwhelming emotion. This article explores some tools you can use to help you cope with anger. It is important to realize that learning to manage anger (like most recovery steps) is a process, not an event.

Because anger control is basically a set of skills, Gintner said it is important to remember that clients will "strike out" at times. "It is important to prepare your clients for this by having them think of a lapse as a 'slip' versus a sign that the plan doesn't work at all," he said. Handling your anger before it handles you by Sharon Foster, reprinted at CTOnline from Counseling Today, vol. 38, May 1996

The ideas below will give you a set of tools you can pick and choose from in building your own anager management strategy. Use what works for you. If one of the tools does not work for you, try another. Do not be afraid to put your own spin on these ideas to provide a truly customized plan for you.

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Major Types of Diabetes


Type 1 diabetes
Results from the body's failure to produce insulin, the hormone that "unlocks" the cells of the body, allowing glucose to enter and fuel them. It is estimated that 5-10% of Americans who are diagnosed with diabetes have type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes
Results from insulin resistance (a condition in which the body fails to properly use insulin), combined with relative insulin deficiency. Most Americans who are diagnosed with diabetes have type 2 diabetes.

Gestational diabetes
Immediately after pregnancy, 5% to 10% of women with gestational diabetes are found to have diabetes, usually, type
Posted by nena at 9:21 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The standard definition of diabetes mellitus is excessive glucose in a blood sample and in other words, you have too much sugar in your blood. For years, doctors set this level fairly high. The World Health Organisation (WHO) lowered the standard level for normal glucose in 1997, and now almost everyone in the UK uses this new standard for diagnosis. Why did the WHO decide to lower the standard level? Because too many people were experiencing complications of diabetes even though their glucose level wasn't high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. The new definition of diabetes includes symptoms of diabetes, along with any one of the following three criteria
Posted by nena at 10:09 AM 0 comments
Saturday, October 4, 2008
how help ourbody vitamin A
The discovery of vitamin A and the history of its application in the field of human nutrition is a story of bravery and brilliance, one that represents a marriage of the best of scientific inquiry with worldwide cultural traditions; and the suborning of that knowledge to the dictates of the food industry provides a sad lesson in the use of power and influence to obfuscate the truth.

A key player in this fascinating story is Weston A. Price, who discovered that the diets of healthy traditional peoples contained at least ten times as much vitamin A as the American diet of his day. His work revealed that vitamin A is one of several fat-soluble activators present only in animal fats and necessary for the assimilation of minerals in the diet. He noted that the foods held sacred by the peoples he studied, such as spring butter, fish eggs and shark liver, were exceptionally rich in vitamin A.

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Risk

Risk of blood pressure
However the risks which lead to high blood presure and cardiovascular disease should be known. Some risk factors can be changed. These include smoking, lack of exercise and obesity. An unhealthy diet also increases the risk of high blood pressure. The intake of too much of sodium and salt leads to hypertension. One should also control the intake of alcohol as excessive alcohol in the system increases the risk of hypertension.

Some factors leading to hypertension can be cured or treated. High amounts of cholesterol in the blood, high amounts of fat in the blood, diabetes and diseases of the kidney the affect its function.
One suffering from any such casualties should immediately seek professional medical help which may help reduce hypertension. It also affects our eyes and causes damage to our retina.
One should aim to indulge in regular physical activity at least five days in a week for at least half an hour. Swimming, dancing, cycling, or even taking a brisk walk. Regular physical activity positively helps in lowering blood pressure.

The intake of salt also has a negative effect on blood presure. It is advisable not to have more than six grams of salt a day.

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Blood Pressure

what is Blood Pressure

In Pre-hypertension, each heartbeat generates a force which is transferred to the blood. This force is carried through into the arteries as blood is expelled from the heart.
The presure thus caused pushes against the walls of the arteries and the walls push back. This causes the blood to be propelled forward into various parts of the body.
On an average, the normal human heart beats almost 90,000 times every day.if the pressure of the blood is too high, a blood vessel could be damaged and even ruptured causing complications like bleeding.
If the blood presure is not enough, the required amount of blood does not reach all the parts of the body, hence the cells do not receive the necessary amount of oxygen and nutrients and the waste products may not be removed adequately.

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Eating for a Healthy Heart

Nutrition and Diet to Help Prevent Heart Disease

Recent studies have suggested that eating a heart-healthy diet can cut the risk of developing heart disease or stroke by 80%. Considering that heart disease is still the number one killer of both men and women in the United States, this is news worth considering!

Weight control and exercise are the first steps to a healthy heart, but there are additional ways to boost the body’s immunity to heart disease. Take a closer look at how specific food choices impact our ability to help manage or prevent heart disease and high blood pressure— two of the biggest health challenges we face today.

Healthy heart diet:

While age and genetics play a role, doctors have identified six controllable risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity. The first steps in preventing heart disease are to quit smoking and incorporate exercise into your life. The rest of your heart healthy plan can focus on your diet what you eat, and what you don’t eat.

Coronary heart disease is caused by blockages in the arteries that supply blood to the heart. When the blood supply is obstructed, the heart muscle becomes deprived of oxygen and essential nutrients needed to function properly, which can result in angina (chest pains) or a heart attack. The primary substances responsible for narrowing of the arteries are cholesterol and fatty deposits making dietary cholesterol and saturated fat the two major dietary culprits that affect your heart health,

In order to protect your heart, certain foods should be drastically reduced or eliminated from your diet, while increasing foods that support cardiovascular health.

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Allergic To Everything will teach you how to protect yourself from toxic chemicals and poisonous practices before you ingest any of the products on the latest recall lists.

DISCOVER HOW "safe" practices and processes may already be harming or killing you...and how to determine which items you put on or in your body are truly safe for consumption.

You may be the most diligent consumer, yet still be taking home bags and bags of toxic chemicals from the grocery store each and every visit. Sure you read labels, but do you really know what they mean? How many of those twelve syllable words can you actually pronounce, let alone understand,

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The Healing Power of a Slinky Posted

"Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body." ~ Cicero

In ancient Greece, doctors served the God of medicine, Askeplios, while healers served the God of health, Hygeia. Medicine means “the tool by which to restore health by correcting imperfections.” Health means “the natural order of things.” These are two contrasting views. So many prescription drugs simply suppress disease rather than correct disease. Sometimes suppression is beneficial and absolutely necessary. But as Dr. Andrew Weil says, by aligning with the natural order, one triggers the body’s tremendous healing capacity and need not be so dependent on the outside cure.*

The “natural order” might sound intimidating like a 30 day fast; or a special diet to suit your blood type; or a complex ayurvedic analysis. That’s all fine and good but “natural order” is so incredibly simple. The institute of hearmath in Colorado has proven what the yogis have practiced for 5,000 years. When a human being reaches a combined state of relaxation, positive emotion, and focus, heart rhythms change immediately. “A shift in heart rhythms may not seem important but in fact it creates a favorable cascade of neural, hormonal and biochemical events that benefit the entire body.”

How do you get to this combined state? No matter your stress, no matter your busy schedule, no matter your crazy life…you take the time to lie down right smack in the middle of your day and relax. As Sark said, "Healing doesn't care about the years or about the counting. I think it is timeless and without age. It waits for our souls to shift into acceptance."

Here are some tips on aligning with the “natural order" and triggering the body's healing capacity:

1. Make Time
   
   It’s all too often we don’t have time to exercise or relax or do something positive for the mind and body.
   
   “If you don’t have time for exercise, you’ll have to make time for illness.” - Robin Sharma
   

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Notes

Some Notes on Fasting

In relation to the article, "Perfect Health," I received some six or eight hundred letters from people who either had fasted, or desired to fast and sought for further information. The letters shared a general uniformity which made clear to me that I had not been sufficiently explicit upon several important points.

The question most commonly asked was how long should one fast, and how one should judge of the time to stop. I personally have never taken a "complete fast," and so I hesitate in recommending this to any one. I have fasted twelve days on two occasions. In both cases I broke my fast because I found myself feeling weak and wanted to be about a good deal. In neither case was I hungry, although hunger quickly returned. I was told by Bernarr Macfadden, and by some of his physicians, that they got their best result from fasts of this length. I would not advise a longer fast for any of the commoner ailments such as stomach and intestinal trouble, headaches, constipation, colds and sore throat. Longer fasts, it seems to me, are for those who have really desperate ailments, such deeply-rooted chronic diseases as Bright's disease, cirrhosis of the liver, rheumatism and cancer.

Of course if a person has started on a fast and it is giving him no trouble, there is no reason why it should not be continued; but I do not in the least believe in a man's setting before himself the goal of a forty or fifty days' fast and making a "stunt" out of it. I do not think of the fast as a thing to be played with in that way. I do not believe in fasting for the fun of it, or out of curiosity. I do not advise people to fast who have nothing the matter with them, and I do not advise the fast as a periodical or habitual thing. A man who has to fast every now and then is like a person who should spend his time in sweeping rain water out of his house, instead of taking the trouble to repair his roof. If you have to fast every now and then, it is because the habits of your life are wrong, more especially because you are eating unwholesome foods. There were several people who wrote me asking about a fast, to whom my reply was that they should simply adopt a rational diet; that I believed their troubles would all disappear without the need of a fast.

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Diffrent disease info

Keep cholestrole down:

LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) level down under 100 is a target level. It’s also helpful to raise the “good” or HDL level with an increase in aerobic exercise, weight loss and dietary changes. An optimal diet is low in animal (saturated) and hydrogenated fats, low in sugar and refined grains (e.g. white flour, white rice, white pasta & bread) and high in fiber. You should be getting about 20 grams of fiber daily for every 1000 calories you eat.
Lower your Lipoprotein(a):

Lipoprotein(a) is one of the “bad” forms of cholesterol, with a particular tendency to run in families and cause stroke. Lp(a) levels can be lowered with supplemental vitamin B3, a.k.a. niacin. Before you start taking niacin supplements check your Lp(a) level with a fasting blood test – your result should be less than 30.
Control your level homocystine:

A high homocysteine level is a strong, independent risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Homocysteine is an amino acid – one of the building blocks of protein. A simple blood test will measure your homocysteine level. Your level should be less than 9.0. Homocysteine levels can be lowered by taking supplements of folic acid, along with vitamins B6 and B12. I recommend that everyone take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily as a bare minimum. B6 and B12 supplements should be 25-50 mg, and 100-1000 mcg, respectively. If your homocysteine level is elevated you may need much higher amounts of folic acid.
Eat :

Independent research has suggested that a lower intake of calories, as well as saturated fat and cholesterol can cut the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in half in certain people. Fewer calories mean fewer free radicals the dangerous byproducts of metabolism caused by the processing of food with oxygen. These free radicals have been shown to cause the type of brain injury (known as “oxidative damage”) seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
Eat better:

rich in colorful fruits and vegetables, olive oil, avocados, nuts & seeds, small fish, beans & whole grains and lean protein sources including eggs, soy and nonfat dairy products are recommended.

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Alzheimer's disease information

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects about 4 million Americans and is the 8th leading cause of death, accounting for about 50,000 deaths per year in the U.S. The chance of having Alzheimer’s disease doubles every 4 to 5 years after the age of sixty. Although the risk at age 60 is low (1%), by the age of 75 this reaches almost 10%, and by age 85 between a third and half of Americans have some form of dementia (of which about 75% are the Alzheimer’s type of dementia). Estimates place the risk at about two-thirds of Americans age 90 and above.

This is particularly disturbing news for all of us, since the average American lifespan has been steadily increasing – most women will live to be over 80, and men now average over 75, which means that more than one in ten of us will develop Alzheimer’s disease in our lifetimes.

Despite the many millions of dollars being spent on Alzheimer’s research, the treatment options remain extremely disappointing. Even with earlier, more sensitive diagnostic tests, no effective therapy to has been shown to halt or reverse the disease. The four FDA-approved drugs on the market for Alzheimer’s disease (Aricept®, Exelon®, Reminyl® and the seldom-prescribed Cognex®), only marginally improve function in less than half of patients.

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