CANCER INITIATION: PULLING THE TRIGGER
Weve seen the role of estrogen as a fuel that causes cells to divide and grow. But something must still "pull the trigger" to initiate changes in the cell that turn it cancerous. When scientists say they are looking for the "cause" of breast cancer they are really looking for whatever substance or toxin damages the cell's DNA. DNA is thought of as an extraordinary blueprint that carries all of the instructions for the complete building, care, and maintenance of every part of the human body. But DNA goes beyond mere blueprints; it is also chief architect and general contractor, manufacturing the elements that build every element of every cell in the body.
The entire complement of DNA contains the equivalent of 500,000 typewritten pages. Imagine having those half million pages on a computer disk and having the disk constantly zapped by chaotic electrical surges, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year in and year out for 80 years without ever suffering a single misspelling or loss of data while being used by tens of thousands of computer operators. Error-free operation is just not possible and that's the trouble with DNA. It's under a blistering daylong attack. These blueprints get zapped up to 1,000 times every day by the toxins that are in our environment and in the foods that we eat. To protect itself, DNA has an enormous repair crew to repair the damage. This repair crew has to spot that one error out of a billion and fix it. Should, however, the repair crew get taken out of action by potent carcinogens or should the damage be so devastating that it can't be repaired the damaged DNA reprograms a normal cell and turns it into a cancer cell.
Doctors have classically been led to believe that there is just a single "zap" that pulls the trigger and creates an error that leads to cancer. With breast cancer, nothing could be further from the truth. The new emerging concept is that there are lots of mutations and genetic defects. For the most benign of cancers, there are at least half a dozen errors. For the most severe and aggressive, there are up to 50 errors. Each one may come from a different cancer-causing substance. When scientists look at DNA, they see a distinct pattern of damage that is characteristic of environmental damage. The gene most frequently damaged is called P53. But the distinct patterns of damage vary widely from one population of women to another. So it's likely that women in Austria suffer a very different kind of damage than women in Los Angeles or Australia. Thus it is very difficult to come up with one approach to preventing cancer initiation. But there is one new emerging concept an overall measure of the daily siege that DNA undergoes. It goes by the name "oxidative load."
"Oxidative load" sounds fairly innocuous, but here's what it means. Elements in the body called free radicals are responsible for the cellular damage that occurs with aging, in heart disease, cancer, and most degenerative diseases . . . regardless of what the original toxin may have been. These free radicals cut and hack away at DNA at a furious pace. The more free radicals clustered around doing their damage to your DNA, the higher the "oxidative load." Inside your body they are created from fat metabolism. External sources range from solar and ionizing radiation to cigarette smoke, air pollutants, heavy metals, ozone, organic solvents, pesticides, and food additives. More to the point, researchers can actually see a higher oxidative stress in the breasts of women with breast cancer than in those who are cancer-free.
So, in summary, while we can't single out specific foods or toxins that initiate breast cancer, we can measure oxidative load. The lower that load, the lower your risk of cancer, and certain foods dramatically reduce oxidative load. The following chapter looks first at how to cut the estrogen effect and then at how to lower oxidative load.
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Womens health
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ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH: MISUSE
Originally, when Alexander discovered that he was stiffening his neck and pulling his head back, and creating tension throughout his body, he thought that he was the only person to do this, but his investigations confirmed that this pattern of 'misuse' is common to the vast majority of people.
The effect of this misuse is that it interferes with the head/neck/back relationship, which means that a high degree of muscular tension is needed to maintain upright posture and for movement. This muscular tension is distributed unevenly through the body, with an excessive amount in some areas and too little tension in others, and there is a lack of interaction between the muscle groups. Obviously this brings about the very opposite of what we find with good use: being upright becomes an effort, there is a limited range of movement, the joints are stiff and breathing is impaired.
As with good use, misuse refers to our 'thinking'. It involves performing activities in a habitual and automatic way that is harmful to overall use and functioning. This could mean that we allow our emotional state to affect our musculature adversely, for example if we are worried about something we let tension build up in the neck muscles. Or it could be how we perform everyday activities. Observing people in action, we often see a great deal of effort being used, in parts of the body that are not directly involved in the activity. Check for yourself how tightly you hold your toothbrush while cleaning your teeth - or how tightly you are holding this book right now! You will probably find that, like most people, you are using an excessive amount of effort in holding what is a very light object, and in a task that actually requires a minimum of force.
People misuse themselves in different ways. Broadly speaking, a person may hold himself up with too much tension - the 'sergeant major' approach - or he may 'collapse', with over-relaxed muscles. In practice, of course, it is not as clear cut as this; both forms of misuse involve a combination of excess tension and over-laxity. For example, even in someone with collapsed posture, only some muscles are 'over-relaxed', and therefore others have to work all the harder in compensation, and are over-tense.
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Womens health
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