The Vitamins That Cause Cancer [A Must Read]

When the SELECT trial started in 2001, there were high hopes it would prove that taking vitamin E or selenium could help prevent prostate cancer. The newest results from the trial show just the opposite—that taking selenium or vitamin E can actually increase the odds of developing prostate cancer.
Bottom line: men shouldn’t take selenium or vitamin E as a way to prevent prostate cancer, or anything else for that matter.
“I counsel all of my patients to absolutely avoid any dietary supplements that contain selenium or vitamin E—including multivitamins,” says prostate cancer expert Dr. Marc Garnick, a clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, an oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and editor in chief of Harvard’s Annual Report on Prostate Diseases.

The case against selenium and vitamin E

Studies done in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that vitamin E and selenium each somehow provided protection against prostate cancer. The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) was started in 2001 to see if that was true. The 36,000 healthy, middle-aged volunteers were divided into four groups. Each man took two pills a day: 400 international units (IU) of vitamin E plus 200 micrograms of selenium; vitamin E plus a placebo; selenium plus a placebo; or two placebos. Neither the men nor their doctors knew who was taking what.
Although SELECT was supposed to last until 2011, it was stopped three years early because neither vitamin E nor selenium were showing any benefit—and there were hazy warning signs they might be doing some harm.
A new report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute clarifies the picture. A team of researchers from across the U.S. looked specifically at almost 5,000 of the SELECT volunteers who sent in toenail clippings when they joined the trial. Toenail clippings are a great way to measure how much selenium is in a man’s (or woman’s) body. The new study showed that:

• Taking vitamin E alone boosted the risk of developing high-grade prostate cancer, but only in men who started the study with low selenium levels.
• Taking selenium, either alone or in combination with vitamin E, increased the risk of high-grade prostate cancer in men who started the study with high selenium levels, but not in those with low selenium levels.
• Among men who didn’t take either vitamin E or selenium, those who started the study with high selenium levels were no more likely to have developed prostate cancer than men who started it with low selenium levels. (This means the culprit is added selenium from supplements, not selenium from food.)

“The new data are very troubling, and emphasize that supplements can cause real and tangible harm,” says Dr. Garnick. “Any claims of benefits from dietary supplements must be ignored unless large, controlled, and well-conducted investigations confirm such benefits—which I believe will be a very rare occurrence.

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Treating severe snoring can help control blood pressure

I come from a family of champion snorers. Mother, father, brothers—we all broadcast nightly like buzz saws. But by 2006, my snorking and snarking took an unhealthy turn. Instead of merely driving everyone nearby to distraction, I began to stop breathing for short periods. Dozens of times per night, my upper airway fell slack like a worn-out garden hose, which pinched off the flow of air and jarred me awake. Blood oxygen plummeted and adrenaline surged into my bloodstream, making blood pressure swing up and down.

After a sleep study in which I slumbered overnight at a special clinic while wired up to various gadgets, my doctor offered an explanation for my increasing fatigue and mental fog: obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Not surprisingly, I read with great interest a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) which reported that treating OSA can help people with very hard to control blood pressure. Many people with this so-called treatment resistant hypertension take several medications but their pressures remain stubbornly high. Many people with treatment-resistant hypertension also have OSA.

Healthier BP with CPAP

Could treating their OSA help? To find out, researchers in Spain provided the standard treatment for OSA to nearly 200 men and women for 12 weeks. The treatment was continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which uses a facemask and bedside air pump to inflate the upper airways enough to prevent the collapse of soft tissue in the upper throat that obstructs airflow.

After 12 weeks of CPAP, average 24-hour blood pressures in the study participants were a few ticks lower. They also had more healthy nighttime blood pressure patterns.

The improvements, though modest, are still important. Nighttime interruptions in breathing, or “apneas,” starve the brain of oxygen and stress out the cardiovascular system. Inadequately treated OSA comes with a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes. Another hazard is next-day drowsiness that predisposes people to accidents.

What it means for those with OSA

To get the bottom line on the study for OSA sufferers, I talked to Dr. Atul Malhotra, an expert on sleep apnea and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical. He’s also the chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

“The wrong message is to say CPAP is weak,” Dr. Malhotra says. “Blood pressure medications offer a bigger bang for the buck to reduce daytime blood pressure, but it’s important to say that when you treat sleep apnea there are a lot of other benefits that are not necessarily related to daytime blood pressure.”

I’ll say! I was absolutely miserable pre-CPAP. But now I sleep like a lamb (well, probably more like an helium-inflated Macy’s Day Parade lamb). Every night I strap on the headgear of what I affectionately call my “astronaut machine.” A small high-tech bedside air pump monitors my breathing and adjusts the flow of filtered, humidified air to my nose. A microchip in the machine tracks my breathing patterns and adjusts the flow throughout the night to compensate for shifts in body position.

Overcoming CPAP roadblocks

But not all of my brother and sister CPAPers are as lucky. Some can’t get used to the mask and tend to tear it off in their sleep or simply don’t wear it at all. But most people can adapt to CPAP.

“Strapping a mask to your head is not ideal, but in some people adherence is extremely good,” Dr. Malhotra says. “They wear it all night every night and couldn’t get to sleep without it. Then they get transformative benefits from it.”

How do you get to that point? A critical factor is mask comfort. “The key is just to find one you like,” Dr. Malhotra says. “It’s like going to Baskin Robbins. There are 31 flavors, and you just have to try different flavors before you find one you like.”

Fortunately, the Baskin Robbins of CPAP is well stocked these days with a variety of mask options. It includes nasal masks, full face masks, and twin tubes that deliver air to each nostril.

Mask fitting can be a trial-and-error process, and you may have to try different ones until you find the right match. “If you try pistachio at Basin Robbins the first time and don’t like it you may never come back,” Dr. Malhotra says, “but some people try pistachio the first time and like it.”

Me, I like vanilla—the smaller, lighter nose-only nasal mask. My brain learned quickly to keep my mouth closed and breath through the nose. Later I found better-designed headgear and an accordion-like mask that maintained its seal better despite my occasional tossing and turning.

Dr. Malhotra urges those going on CPAP not to quit if the first taste isn’t pleasing. “Even if the first experience with CPAP doesn’t go well,” Dr. Malhotra says, “it’s very important to keep trying.” Untreated or inadequately treated sleep apnea can have devastating effects on health and quality of life, but there is usually a solution. 

Source: Harvard Health Publications

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Can a baby that is a product of rape be aborted? Pastor Oyakhilome answers the question

 Whenever Pastor Chris says something new, its usually an opportunity for a new level of knowledge and insight..... whats your take on this one.. 

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