Cancer News from Johns Hopkins

[ChrisH]

I received this in an e-mail. It is very interesting.

Cancer News from Johns Hopkins* No plastics in microwave!* No water bottles in freezer!* No plastic wrap in microwave! Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in their newsletters worth noting... This information is being circulated at Walter Reed ArmyMedical Center. Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Don't freeze your plastic water bottles with water as this also releases dioxins in the plastic. Dr. Edward Fujimoto from Castle hospital was on a TV program explaining this health hazard. (He is the manager of the Wellness Program at the hospital.) He was talking about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers.This applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat and plastics releases dioxins into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Dioxins are carcinogens and highly toxic to the cells of our bodies. Instead, he recommends using glass, Corning Ware,or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, without the dioxins. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He said we might remember when some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.To add to this, Saran wrap placed over foods as they are nuked, with the high heat, actually drips poisonous toxins into the food, use paper towels.Pass this on to your family & friends & those that are important in your life.

 

[waltky]

Proton beam cancer therapy causes fewer side effects in children than conventional radiotherapy...

Proton beam cancer therapy 'effective with fewer side effects'
30 January 2016 - A cancer treatment at the centre of an NHS controversy in 2014 causes fewer side effects in children than conventional radiotherapy, according to new research.

The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, suggests proton beam therapy is as effective as other treatments. Researchers looked at 59 patients aged between three and 21 from 2003 to 2009. In 2014 the parents of Ashya King took him out of hospital in Hampshire to get the treatment abroad. Their actions led to a police operation to find them. Ashya, who was five at the time of his treatment, is now cancer free, his family said last year.

Ashya King left the UK to have proton beam therapy in the Czech Republic​

'Acceptable toxicity'

All the patients who took part in the study, led by Dr Torunn Yock from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, had the most common kind of malignant brain tumour in children, known as medulloblastoma. After five years, their survival rate was similar to that of patients treated with conventional X-ray radiotherapy, but there were fewer side effects to the heart and lungs, the study found.

Radiotherapist watching a patient​

Dr Yock told BBC Radio 5 live: "The major finding is that proton therapy is as effective as photon therapy [conventional X-ray radiotherapy] in curing these patients and what is also very exciting is that it is maintaining these high rates of cure but doing so with less late toxicity, which has dramatic quality of life improvements." The paper said: "Proton radiotherapy resulted in acceptable toxicity and had similar survival outcomes to those noted with conventional radiotherapy, suggesting that the use of the treatment may be an alternative to photon-based treatments."

Independent expert Prof Gillies McKenna, who is the head of the department of oncology at the University of Oxford, said the research suggested that the "side effects are indeed dramatically reduced" with proton beam therapy. "There were no side effects seen in the heart and lungs and gastrointestinal tract, which are almost always seen with X-rays, and no secondary cancers were seen at a time when we would have expected to see them in X-ray treated patients," he added.

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