Is a Potential Cancer Cure Being Ignored?

 

On April 12, 1955, the first successful polio vaccine was administered to almost 2 million schoolchildren around the country. Its discoverer, University of Pittsburgh medical researcher Jonas Salk, was interviewed on CBS Radio that evening.

"Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" radio host Edward R. Murrow asked him.

It was a reasonable question, considering that immunity to a deadly disease that afflicted 300,000 Americans annually ought to be worth something.

"Well, the people, I would say," Salk famously replied. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

In a world where the cancer drug Avastin — patented by the pharmaceutical company Genentech/Roche — costs patients about $80,000 per year without having been proven to extend lives, Salk's selflessness has made him the hero of many medical researchers today.

One of Salk's admirers is Evangelos Michelakis, a cancer researcher at the University of Alberta who, three years ago, discovered that a common, nontoxic chemical known as DCA, short for dichloroacetate, seems to inhibit the growth of cancerous tumors in mice. Michelakis' initial findings garnered much fanfare at the time and have recirculated on the Web again this week, in large part because of a blog post ("Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice") that ignited fresh debate.

The mechanism by which DCA works in mice, Michelakis discovered, is remarkably simple: It kills most types of cancer cells by disrupting the way they metabolize sugar, causing them to self-destruct without adversely affecting normal tissues.

Following the animal trials, Michelakis and his colleagues did tests of DCA on human cancer cells in a Petri dish, then conducted human clinical trials using $1.5 million in privately raised funds. His encouraging results — DCA treatment appeared to extend the lives of four of the five study participants — were published last year in Science Translational Medicine.

The preliminary work in rodents, cell cultures, and small trials on humans points to DCA as being a powerful cancer treatment. That doesn't mean it's the long-awaited cure — many other compounds have seemed similarly promising in the early stages of research without later living up to that promise — but nonetheless, Michelakis believes larger human trials on DCA are warranted.

Like Jonas Salk, Michelakis hasn't patented his discovery. It's not because he doesn't want to, but because he can't. When it comes to patents, DCA really is like the sun: It's a cheap, widely used chemical that no one can own.

In today's world, such drugs don't readily attract funding.

Pharmaceutical companies are not exactly ignoring DCA, and they definitely aren't suppressing DCA research — it's just that they're not helping it. Why? Drug development is ultimately a business, and investing in the drug simply isn't a good business move. "Big Pharma has no interest whatsoever in investing [in DCA research] because there will be no profit," Michelakis told Life's Little Mysteries. 

The long road to a cure

Pharmacologist Omudhome Ogbru, an R&D director at a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical business, The Medicines Company, notes, "Drug companies are like other companies in that they manufacture products that must be sold for a profit in order for the company to survive and grow."

Only one in 10,000 compounds studied by researchers ends up as an approved drug, Ogbru explained in an op-ed at MedicineNet. To get to the approval phase, drugs must undergo seven to 10 years of testing at a total cost averaging $500 million — all of which can be for naught if the drug doesn't receive Food and Drug Administration approval. Even if it does, "only three out of every 20 approved drugs bring in sufficient revenue to cover their developmental costs."

"Profit is the incentive for the risk that the company takes," Ogbru wrote. "Without the promise of a reasonable profit, there is very little incentive for any company to develop new drugs."

It would be nearly impossible to make a profit on a drug like dichloroacetate. "If DCA proves to be effective, then it will be a ridiculously cheap drug," Michelakis said.

Daniel Chang, an oncologist at the Stanford Cancer Center who recently began looking into DCA, concurred. "I'm sure the lack of patentability is playing a role in the lack of investigation," Chang told us in an email.

While government health organizations like the National Cancer Institute give research grants to help fund clinical trials, "those would never be enough to get DCA approved as a cancer treatment," said Akban Kahn, a Toronto doctor. "You need hundreds of millions of dollars, and a government grant is not that big."

DCA research has moved along much more slowly than if a drug company were footing the bill. That said, grassroots funding has allowed surprisingly steady progress. "Through the website, radio, phone calls, things like that, we raised about $1.5 million in nine months" at the University of Alberta DCA Research Center, Michelakis said. This was enough to fund a detailed study of DCA treatment in five brain cancer patients.

The results were promising. The study, however, was small and lacked a placebo control, making it impossible to say for sure whether the patients' conditions improved because of the DCA treatment or because of something else. Daniel Chang, the Stanford researcher, described the study's results as interesting but inconclusive. In their paper, Michelakis and his co-authors wrote, "With the small number of treated participants in our study, no firm conclusions regarding DCA as a therapy … can be made."

Despite the dearth of clinical tests, one family practitioner, Akbar Khan of Medicor Cancer Centre in Toronto, prescribes off-label DCA to his cancer patients. (He says this can be done in Canada because DCA is already approved there for treating certain metabolism disorders. Michelakis, however, said he does not think Khan should be prescribing the drug before it is officially approved for cancer use.)

"We are seeing about 60 to 70 percent of patients who have failed standard treatments respond favorably to DCA," Khan told Life's Little Mysteries. Khan's group just published its first peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. "It's a case report of a patient with a rare form of cancer who had tried other treatments that weren't working, so he came to us for DCA. It was effective, and actually it's quite a dramatic result. He had multiple tumors, including a particularly troubling one in his leg. DCA stabilized the tumor and significant reduced his pain.

"We currently have three patients with incurable cancers who are in complete remission, and are likely cured, from using DCA in combination with conventional palliative (non-curative) treatments. We are in the process of publishing these cases," he said. [Countdown: Top 10 Mysterious Diseases]

A new drug model

Small trials and case studies won't be enough, however, to prove DCA works. Further investigation into the drug's efficacy is necessary, and without the help of Big Pharma, it will have to happen in an unusual way.

"This could be a social experiment where the public funds these trials," Michelakis said. "After discovering the effect of DCA on cancer cells, I consider this the second-biggest achievement of our work: when we showed that you can bring a drug to human trials without a lot of money. If others were inspired" — his group is beginning to establish collaborations with some prominent cancer hospitals —"this could be a major achievement. Eventually the federal bodies like the National Cancer Institute would see there is enough evidence, and then they'll help with funding."

"It represents a new attitude and a new way of thinking," he added.

Perhaps not entirely new. For inspiration and encouragement, Michelakis often recalls the story of the polio vaccine: "It succeeded in eradicating a deadly disease without making a profit."

 Read more: http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/big-pharma-ignoring-potential-cancer-cure-dca-1697/

Kaewong Boy: Who cares about humanity & world peace anyway, it is all about the money....

The 5 Biggest Fitness Mistakes

by Bill Phillips and the Editors of Men's Health

People are always asking me questions about fitness. Two reasons: 1) I’m an editor at the world’s largest health and fitness magazine; 2) they think I’m the other Bill Phillips.

Truth is, I’m no fitness expert, but I’ve been at the magazine long enough to play one at cocktail parties:

• “Is it better to exercise in the morning or evening?” (Exercise when you feel like it, which will reduce the chances you won’t do it at all.)

• “Which builds muscle more effectively: machines or free weights?” (Which cleans your car more effectively: a machine wash or a hand wash?)

• “Why don’t I have abs yet?” (Because you have a day job, enjoy Doritos, and aren’t a genetic freak.)
But when the questions get really tough, I turn to Adam Campbell, the Men’s Health Fitness Director. He sits right next to me. Adam understands fitness better than anyone I know.

In fact, a few years ago, I walked into his office and told him that I was hiring a personal trainer. Even though I was exercising—pushups, situps, crunches—I was still packing on pounds. That morning, I’d looked in the mirror and saw a fat guy staring back. I freaked. I needed to make big changes, quick.

“You don’t need to find a personal trainer,” he told me. “You need to find an hour.”

An hour? Adam promised that if I could make time to exercise 20 minutes a day, three days a week—while cutting my two-sodas-a-day habit—I’d be lean again in no time. My workouts were ineffective, he explained, because I was battering the same small muscles over and over. He gave me a workout that hit all my large muscle groups. When these muscles grew bigger, he said, they’d burn more calories—and I’d begin to lose weight.

He was right. Over the next six months, I dropped 20 pounds.

If you’ve looked into the mirror recently and didn’t recognize the person staring back, I’ve got good news. Adam is happy to be your personal trainer, too. I asked him what advice he’d give men and women in my situation: Working out, but not seeing results. He wrote up this list of the five biggest fitness blunders—along with the fixes you need for the results you want.

 
Mistake #1: You Don't Lift Weights

You’ve no doubt been told that aerobic exercise is the key to losing your gut, but weight training is actually more valuable. Three reasons:

1. Lifting protects your muscle. When people diet without lifting weights, research shows that 75 percent of their weight loss is from fat and 25 percent is muscle. That 25 percent may reduce your scale weight, but it doesn’t do a lot for your reflection in the mirror. However, if you weight train as you diet, your weight loss is more likely to be 100 percent fat. Think of it in terms of liposuction: The whole point is to simply remove unattractive flab, right? That’s exactly what you should demand from your workout.

2. Lifting boosts your metabolism. Your muscles need energy to repair and upgrade your muscle fibers after each resistance-training workout. For instance, a University of Wisconsin study found that when people performed a total-body workout comprised of just three big-muscle exercises, their metabolisms were elevated for 39 hours afterward. What’s more, they also burned a greater percentage of their calories from fat during this time, compared with those who weren’t hitting the weights.

3. Lifting torches calories. It’s considered common knowledge that jogging burns more calories than weight training. Turns out, when scientists at the University of Southern Maine used an advanced method to estimate energy expenditure during exercise, they found that weight training burns as many as 71 percent more calories than originally thought. The researchers calculated that performing just one circuit of eight exercises—which takes about 8 minutes—can expend 159 to 231 calories. That’s about the same as running at a 6-minute mile pace for the same duration.

Need a weight workout? Check out the 20 best we've ever published. No matter your goal, we have the right workout for you.

Mistake #2: You Don’t Use the Right Dumbbells

Ladies, we’re especially talking to you on this one. Your goal is to challenge your muscles, not just go through the motions. For instance, if you can lift a weight 15 times, it’s not going to do your muscles much good to lift it for only 8 repetitions. A good way to gauge if a weight is appropriate: Note the point at which you start to struggle. Let’s say you’re doing 10 repetitions. If all 10 seem easy, then the weight you’re using is too light.
However, if you start to struggle on your tenth repetition, you’ve chosen the correct poundage.

Mistake #3: You Don’t Work Your Lower Body

To cut inches from your waist, make sure you’re working the muscles below your belt. In a Syracuse University study, people burned more calories the day after they did lower-body resistance training than the day after they worked their upper body. “Leg muscles—like your quads and glutes—generally have more muscle mass than those of your chest and arms,” says study author Kyle Hackney, Ph.D. (c), C.S.C.S. “Work more muscle during your exercise session, and your body has to expend more energy to repair and upgrade them later.” So the best approach, of course, is to hit every muscle each workout.


Mistake #4: You Don’t Watch What You Eat

You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. After all, you can eat 1,000-calorie fast food burger in just 5 minutes, but it’ll take you more than an hour to burn that many calories with physical activity. So make sure you’re not using exercise as an excuse to eat whatever you want. You may even find that regular workouts help you better follow a smart eating plan. Case in point: University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 169 overweight adults for 2 years and found that the participants who didn’t follow a 3-hour-a-week training plan ate more than their allotted 1,500 calories a day. The reverse was also true—sneaking snacks sabotaged their workouts. The study authors say it’s likely that both actions are a reminder to stay on track, reinforcing your weight-loss goal and drive.


Mistake #5: You Skip Workouts

We’re all busy, but that’s usually just a lame excuse. After all, plenty of people find time to exercise. And when was the last time you heard someone say they regretted their workout? Probably never, and here’s why: U.K. researchers found that workers were 15 percent more productive on the days they made time to exercise compared to days they skipped their workout. They were also 15 percent more tolerant of their coworkers. Now, consider for a moment what these numbers mean to you: On days you exercise, you can—theoretically at least—accomplish in an eight-hour day what normally would take you nine hours and 12 minutes. Or you’d still work nine hours, but get more done, leaving you feeling less stressed and happier with your job, another perk that the workers reported on the days they exercised.

Thanks, Adam! For more strategies that will keep you fit and healthy for life, check out The Best Fitness Tips Ever!

Read more:  http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/5-biggest-fitness-mistakes

Kaewong Boy:  "exercise 20 minutes a day, three days a week". That sounds real easy until around the 3rd week or so onwards. Because that is when the brain starts compiling a list of excuses & slooowly telling you that you are much to busy to find even 5 or 10 mins a day for this until you leave it all together.

But, if you stay strong to your hope of not wanting to see "that fat man looking back at you every time you look in the mirror" then challenge yourself & stay with the course, because after the 10th week or so you will find yourself automatically finding excuses to schedule yourself for your workout & the best thing is this time you will really enjoy doing it.

Found! The Seat of Embarrassment in Your Brain

Ever wonder why your pulse races and your heart beats faster and you start to sweat when you're embarrassed?

You can blame your pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, a thumb-sized region in the brain that seems to determine the size of your emotional response to, say, accidentally tripping in public or realizing that you've beamed an amorous email meant for your honey to your boss instead.

Virginia Sturm, a postdoctoral fellow at the Memory and Aging Center of the University of California, San Francisco, recently reported at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting that changes in this part of the brain can regulate how much — or little — you're shamed.

She studied the size of this particular region of the cingulate cortex in both healthy controls as well as people with neurological disorders, and correlated these measurements with an embarrassment-inducing task: listening to themselves sing the Temptations' "My Girl" karaoke-style. "The smaller the region," she says, "the less embarrassed people were."

Sturm says emotions like embarrassment are slightly different from feelings like sadness and anger, because embarrassment involves a social element. Feelings like guilt, pride, shame and embarrassment all tend to occur in the presence of others, and result largely from how we think others perceive us.

What's interesting about the region of the cingulate cortex that Sturm identified is the fact that it connects to both higher-level behavioral networks in the frontal cortex, which regulate how we interact with others, as well as to more basal functions and automatic behaviors that are less under our control, such as heart rate and breathing.

Other parts of the cingulate cortex have previously been linked to depression, and deep brain stimulation of the area has helped some patients feel less depressed.

That means that treatments that stimulate activity in this part of the brain could help increase mindfulness in people with neurological disorders that make them too uninhibited or oblivious to the effect their behavior has on others. Conversely, suppressing activity in the region can help people with outsize embarrassment responses; perhaps, rather than suffering from social awkwardness, they could be helped to interact more normally with others. "There are lots of ways this region could affect emotional behavior," says Sturm.

In any case, it's nice to know that being embarrassed is a perfectly natural response — and a biologically built-in part of being human.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/18/the-seat-of-embarrassment-in-your-brain/

Kaewong Boy: 'Pregenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex', why do they have to name it with words so difficult even to pronounce.

Sitting Can Kill You

He's killing himself.

Well, it's official: Sitting all day is bad for you.

It makes you fat.

It makes you weak.

It makes you more likely to keel over dead.

How do we know?

Because "inactivity researchers" have finally cracked the code.
Specifically, they have figured out why some people get fat when they eat too much and other people don't get fat, even when they eat the same amount:

The people who get fat get fat because they sit around all day. The people who don't get fat don't sit around as much.

Importantly, the difference between the fatties and the non-fatties in the study had nothing to do with exercise. None of the folks in the "inactivity" study were allowed to exercise. The folks who didn't get fat didn't exercise--they just didn't spend as much time sitting. Instead, they stood. They walked. They took stairs instead of elevators. They fidgeted. Etc.

And sitting doesn't just make you fat. It makes you sick, too.

Why is sitting so bad for you? Per James Vlahos in the New York Times, here's what happens when you sit:

• Electrical activity in the muscles drops — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” [inactivity researcher Marc] Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for “vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream,” as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall. 

• Hamilton’s most recent work has examined how rapidly inactivity can cause harm. In studies of rats who were forced to be inactive, for example, he discovered that the leg muscles responsible for standing almost immediately lost more than 75 percent of their ability to remove harmful lipo-proteins from the blood. To show that the ill effects of sitting could have a rapid onset in humans too, Hamilton recruited 14 young, fit and thin volunteers and recorded a 40 percent reduction in insulin’s ability to uptake glucose in the subjects — after 24 hours of being sedentary.

Over a lifetime, sitting really can kill you:

• Men who sit 6 hours a day are 20% more likely to die than men who sit 3 hours a day

• Women who sit 6 hours a day are 40% more likely to die

Another bummer: You can't counter the harmful effects of sitting by exercising once in a while. You actually have to stop sitting.  Or at least start moving around more.

So get off your ass!

 Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sitting-can-kill-you-2011-4

Kaewong Boy: Lazy bums, beware!