Decades after battling childhood cancer, survivors often face a new challenge: cardiometabolic disease. A spectrum of conditions that includes coronary heart disease and diabetes, cardiometabolic disease typically impacts people who are obese, elderly, or insulin resistant. For reasons yet unknown, young, seemingly healthy adults who survived childhood cancer are also at risk.
Radiation therapy may be to blame. A new study finds that childhood cancer patients who were treated with abdominal or total body irradiation grow up to display abnormalities in their adipose (fat) tissue, similar to those found in obese individuals with cardiometabolic disease.
"When physicians are planning radiation therapy, they are very conscious of toxicity to major organs. But fat is often not considered," says Rockefeller's Paul Cohen. "Our results imply that the early exposure of fat cells to radiation may cause long-term dysfunction in the adipose tissue that puts childhood cancer survivors at higher risk of cardiometabolic disease."
Researchers discover link between dietary fat (palm oil) and the spread of cancer
Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (Spain), November 10, 2021
The study, published in the journal Nature and part-funded by the UK charity Worldwide Cancer Research, uncovers how palmitic acid alters the cancer genome, increasing the likelihood the cancer will spread. The researchers have started developing therapies that interrupt this process and say a clinical trial could start in the next couple of years.
Newly published findings reveal that one such fatty acid commonly found in palm oil, called palmitic acid, promotes metastasis in oral carcinomas and melanoma skin cancer in mice. Other fatty acids called oleic acid and linoleic acid—omega-9 and omega-6 fats found in foods such as olive oil and flaxseeds—did not show the same effect. Neither of the fatty acids tested increased the risk of developing cancer in the first place.
The research found that when palmitic acid was supplemented into the diet of mice, it not only contributed to metastasis, but also exerts long-term effects on the genome. Cancer cells that had only been exposed to palmitic acid in the diet for a short period of time remained highly metastatic even when the palmitic acid had been removed from the diet. The researchers discovered that this "memory" is caused by epigenetic changes—changes to how our genes function. The epigenetic changes alter the function of metastatic cancer cells and allow them to form a neural network around the tumor to communicate with cells in their immediate environment and to spread more easily. By understanding the nature of this communication, the researchers uncovered a way to block it and are now in the process of planning a clinical trial to stop metastasis in different types of cancer.
Study finds consuming nuts strengthens brainwave function
Loma Linda University, November 15, 2021
A new study has found that eating nuts on a regular basis strengthens brainwave frequencies associated with cognition, healing, learning, memory and other key brain functions.
In the study titled "Nuts and brain: Effects of eating nuts on changing electroencephalograph brainwaves," researchers found that some nuts stimulated some brain frequencies more than others. Pistachios, for instance, produced the greatest gamma wave response, which is critical for enhancing cognitive processing, information retention, learning, perception and rapid eye movement during sleep. Peanuts, which are actually legumes, but were still part of the study, produced the highest delta response, which is associated with healthy immunity, natural healing, and deep sleep.
The study's principal investigator, Lee Berk, DrPH, MPH, associate dean for research at the LLU School of Allied Health Professions, said that while researchers found variances between the six nut varieties tested (almonds, cashews, peanuts, pecans, pistachios and walnuts), all of them were high in beneficial antioxidants, with walnuts containing the highest antioxidant concentrations of all.
Why Nitrates And Nitrites In Processed Meats Are Harmful – But Those In Vegetables Aren’t
University of Hertfordshire (UK), November 11, 2021
While there are many reasons processed meats aren’t great for our health, one reason is because they contain chemicals called nitrates and nitrites. But processed meats aren’t the only foods that contain these chemicals. In fact, many vegetables also contain high amounts – mainly nitrates. And yet research suggests that eating vegetables lowers – not raises – cancer risk. So how can nitrates and nitrites be harmful when added to meat but healthy in vegetables? The answer lies in how nitrates and nitrites in food get converted into other molecules.
Nitrates and nitrites occur attached to sodium or potassium, and belong to a family of chemically related molecules that also includes the gas nitric oxide. Vegetables such as beetroot, spinach and cabbages are particularly good sources of nitrates.
When we eat something containing nitrates or nitrites, they may convert into a related molecular form. For example, nitrate in vegetables and in the pharmaceutical form nitroglycerine (which is used to treat angina), can convert in the body into nitric oxide. Nitric oxide dilates blood vessels, which can reduce blood pressure.
It’s actually sodium nitrite – not nitrate – that’s linked to cancer. But if consuming nitrites alone directly caused cancer, then even eating vegetables would be harmful to us. Given this isn’t the case, it shows us that cancer risk likely comes from when the sodium nitrites react with other molecules in the body. So it isn’t necessarily the nitrates and nitrites themselves that cause health issues – including cancer. Rather, it’s what form they are converted into that can increase risk – and what these converted molecules interact with in our bodies.
The main concern is when sodium nitrite reacts with degraded bits of amino acids – protein fragments our body produces during the digestion of proteins – forming molecules called N-nitroso compounds (NOCs). These NOCs have been shown to cause cancer.
