Monday, April 19, 2010

Chronic Stress Linked to Cancer

Chronic stress triggers a chain of molecular events that protects breakaway ovarian cancer cells from destruction, a team of researchers reports in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. In preclinical research, the team found that heightened levels of the fight-or-flight stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine permit more malignant cells to safely leave the primary tumor, a necessary step in metastasis and cancer progression. They also found that ovarian cancer patients face earlier mortality when a crucial protein activated by the hormones is present at high levels in their tumors and that depressed patients have higher levels of the protein.

Using depression as an indicator of stress, the researchers found major depression was associated with increased levels of norepinephrine in the tumors.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Treat Depression if Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

Many women consider depression a normal reaction to the shock of a breast cancer diagnosis, but treating the depression may be one of the best ways to battle the cancer. Researchers at Ohio State University found that breast cancer patients with depressive symptoms who treated the mood disorder with talk therapy, relaxation techniques, and exercise had lower levels of inflammation than those who had no psychological intervention. Curbing inflammation is key because breast cancer patients with higher levels of inflammation also have greater recurrence rates. A follow-up with all study participants 11 years later revealed that those who had undergone tretment for depression lived longer.

An Interesting Quote Pertaining to Toxic Load

"Every cell in the body registers more than one million disturbances or alterations daily, all of which need to be corrected just to keep abreast and maintain the integrity of the system against these stresses. Multiplying that by 75 trillion (the number of cells in the body), that means that every second of every day the bodymind is performing close to 870 trillion corrections."

Apsley-II, J.W., Biogenic Medicine: Health Care for the Twentieth Century,
in The Advanced Guide to Longevity Medicine,
M.J. Ghen, Editor. 2001, Partners in Wellness: Landrum , SC.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Brain's Response to Food

Willpower plays a role in dieting. But keeping the weight off after you've lost it? This is where our physiology can get in the way. Research suggests that hormone shifts that follow weight loss play a role in changing the way the brain responds to food.

"After you've lost weight, you have an increase in the emotional response to food," says Columbia University Medical Center researcher Michael Rosenbaum, who studies the body's response to weight loss. He says you also see "a decrease in the activity of brain systems that might be more involved in restraint."

And there's another factor making weight loss maintenance tough: a slower metabolism. When you lose weight, the body adapts to conserve energy, so it just doesn't need as many calories.

One of the hormones that play a role in controlling appetite in the body is leptin. After significant weight loss, leptin levels drop. This seems to signal to the brain a need to seek more food.

Rosenbaum and his colleague Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist at Columbia University Medical Center, designed an experiment to better understand the relationship between the brain, leptin and weight-loss maintenance.

They recruited overweight volunteers who agreed to a calorie-restricted diet aimed at shedding 10 percent of body weight. Using fMRI scans, the researchers looked at how the volunteers' brain responses to seeing food changed after weight loss. They found some interesting patterns of neural activity in their volunteers after they'd lost weight.

For instance, there was more blood flow to areas of the brain known to be involved in the emotional control of food intake, such as the brainstem and parahippocampal gyrus.

But here's the fascinating part: When they restored leptin to these volunteers by giving them injections of the hormone, the brain response changed. When they saw food, there was more activity in brain areas associated with conscious decisions.

"It's a feedback mechanism," says Rexford Ahima of the University of Pennsylvania. Leptin signals the brain; when there's a deficiency of the hormone, the areas of the brain associated with reward-seeking become more active.

This evolutionary programming is out of sync with what's healthiest for our bodies. The signal evolved over thousands of years when food was scarce. It was the brain's way of telling the body to seek food and protect fat stores. Many people, particularly those who are prone to gain weight easily, retained more genes that program us to seek food.

This research is showing that our physiology tends to set the brain in one of two modes: the "regain" mode, which nudges us, emotionally, to seek food, or the "retain" mode, which helps us maintain a steady weight. Researchers are following up with more studies to see if people's eating behaviors mirror their brain response to food.