Why Styrofoam is Bad for the Environment
Friday, 22 September 2017
Tiada Beg plastik di Johor
No more
plastic bags in Johor supermarkets
JOHOR BARU: All hypermarkets and supermarkets in Johor have to replace their
plastic bags and polystyrene containers with biodegradable ones beginning July
1.
State Health, Environment, Education and Information Committee chairman
Datuk Ayub Rahmat said hypermarkets were supposed to have done this early this
month but it was postponed due to Ramadan and Hari Raya Aidilfitri.
“This is among the first steps by the state government to make Johor
plastic and polystyrene-free starting from Jan 1, 2018,” he said after
launching Iskandar Malaysia Ecolife Challenge (IMELC) 2017 at the Johor
Education Department yesterday.
He said Johor Biotechnology and Biodiversity Corp (J-Biotech) was appointed
as an anchor in implementing the use of biodegradable products.
“J-Biotech is in the midst of finding a proper mechanism and is discussing
with supermarkets and hypermarkets.
“Johor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin will make an
announcement on how we will implement it at the next state Budget tabling,” he
added.
Ayub said he did not see any problem with the stores complying with the
state ruling.
He reminded the community to bring along their own bags when shopping for
groceries.
On the event, Ayub said IMELC’s main objective was to protect the
environment under the Low Carbon Society Blueprint for Iskandar Malaysia 2025.
He added that the plan was to make Iskandar Malaysia a developed economic
corridor with low carbon emission of 58% until 2025.
Since the IMELC was introduced four years ago, 77 primary schools within
the Iskandar area had dramatically lowered their water and electricity bills,
he said.
“This year, the programme has been expanded to 346 schools involving 34,000
students and I believe Iskandar will be a low carbon society,” he added.
Johor to ban plastik
Kurangkan Risiko Kanser Payudara
Kurangkan
Risiko Kanser Payudara
Lower Breast
Cancer Risk Naturally Without a Mammography Screening
Last year, the Swiss Medical Board, an independent health technology
assessment initiative, was asked to prepare a review of mammography screening.
The team of experts on the board included a medical ethicist, a clinical
epidemiologist, a pharmacologist, an oncologic surgeon, a nurse scientist, a
lawyer, and a health economist.
After a year of reviewing the available evidence and its implications,
they noted they became “increasingly concerned” about what they were finding.
The “evidence” simply did not back up the global consensus of other experts in
the field suggesting that mammograms were safe and capable of saving lives.
On the contrary, mammography appeared
to be preventing only one death for every 1,000 women screened, while causing
harm to much more. Their thorough review left them no choice but to recommend
that no new systematic mammography screening programs be introduced and that a
time limit should be placed on existing programs.
In their report, made public in February 2014,1 the
Swiss Medical Board also advised that the quality of mammography screening
should be evaluated and women should be informed, in a “clear and balanced”
way, about the benefits and harms of screening.
The report caused an uproar among the Swiss medical community, but it
echoes growing sentiments around the globe that mammography for breast cancer
screening in asymptomatic populations no longer makes sense.
3 Primary Reasons the Swiss Medical
Board Recommended No More Systematic Mammograms
In a perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine,2 two
members of the Swiss Medical Board’s expert panel explained how they reached
their conclusions. Three primary factors came into play:
1. Outdated Clinical Trials
The ongoing debate over mammography screening is based on a “series of
re-analyses of the same, predominantly outdated trials.” The first mammography
trial began more than 50 years ago, and the last trial was in 1991.
The mammography benefits that were supposedly found during these trials
were before the era of modern breast cancer treatment, in which the prognosis of women with breast cancer has improved
significantly from even two decades ago. The expert panel questioned:
“Could the modest benefit of mammography screening regarding
breast-cancer mortality that was shown in trials initiated between 1963 and
1991 still be detected in a trial conducted today?”
2. The Benefits Did Not Clearly
Outweigh the Harms
The experts noted they were “struck by how nonobvious it was that the
benefits of mammography screening outweighed the harms.”
They cited a recent study published in British Medical Journal (BMJ)3 —
one of the largest and longest studies of mammography to date — involving
90,000 women followed for 25 years. It found that mammograms have absolutely NO
impact on breast cancer mortality.
Over the course of the study, the death rate from breast cancer was
virtually identical between those who received an annual mammogram and those
who did not, while 22 percent of screen-detected invasive breast cancers were
over-diagnosed, leading to unnecessary treatment. The experts noted:
“This means that 106 of
the 44,925 healthy women in the screening group were diagnosed with and treated
for breast cancer unnecessarily, which resulted in needless surgical interventions,
radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or some combination of these therapies.”
A Cochrane Collaboration review also found no evidence that mammography
screening has an effect on overall mortality,4 which, taken
together, seriously calls into question whether mammography screening benefits
women. According to the authors of the Cochrane review:
“If we assume that screening reduces breast cancer mortality by 15% and
that overdiagnosis and overtreatment is at 30%, it means that for every 2000
women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will avoid dying of breast
cancer and 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not
been screening, will be treated unnecessarily.
Furthermore, more than 200
women will experience important psychological distress including anxiety and
uncertainty for years because of false positive findings.”
3. Women’s Perceptions of Mammography
Benefits Do Not Match Reality
The experts also said they were “disconcerted” by the profound
discrepancy between women’s perceptions of mammography benefits and the actual
benefits.
In one survey, most women said they believed mammography reduced the
risk of breast cancer deaths by at least half and prevented at least 80 deaths
per 1,000 women screened. In reality, mammography may, at best, offer a
relative risk reduction of 20 percent and prevent in absolute terms only
one breast-cancer death per 10,000 women. The experts
asked a long overdue question:
“How can women make an informed
decision if they overestimate the benefit of mammography so grossly?”
The sad reality, of course, is that they can’t. Many women are still
unaware that the science backing the health benefits of mammograms is sorely
lacking. Instead of being told the truth, women are guilt-tripped into thinking
that skipping their yearly mammogram is the height of irresponsibility.
Standing your ground against such tactics can be hard. After all, you
expect health professionals to know what they’re talking about, and to give you
the best advice possible.
When it comes to cancer prevention, however, many doctors are just as confused and manipulated as the
average person on the street because of the relentless industry and media
propaganda that downplays or ignores research that dramatically contradicts
their profit-based agenda.
Indeed, mounting research shows that more women are being harmed by regular mammograms than are saved by
them. In light of such facts, avoiding an annual mammogram is hardly an
irresponsible act.
Ditto for saying “no thanks” to 3D tomosynthesis, which exposes you to an even greater amount of cancer-causing
radiation for virtually no additional benefit. Please understand that
there are other
screening options, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and you have a
right to utilize those options.
Also remember that to truly avoid breast cancer, you need to focus your
attention on actual prevention and not just early detection. Finally, it’s
important to note that the Swiss Medical Board is a non-governmental
organization, and its recommendations are not legally binding. Therefore, it’s
unclear whether the report will have any effect on the policies enforces
country wide.
Certain Factors, i.e. Dense Breasts
and Genetics, Make Mammograms Even Riskier
Under normal circumstances, the Swiss Medical Board reported that for
every breast cancer death prevented in US women over a 10-year course of annual
screening beginning at 50 years of age:5
- 490 to 670 women are likely to have a
false-positive mammogram with repeat examination
- 70 to 100, an unnecessary biopsy
- Three to 14, an over-diagnosed breast cancer that would never have become clinically apparent
This lack of clear benefit and evidence of apparent harm was
enough for them to recommend abolishing mammography screening programs. You
might be surprised to learn, however, that for some women the effectiveness
of mammograms is even less… or poses an even greater risk of harm.
Up to 50 percent of women have dense breast tissue, which makes
mammograms very difficult to decipher. Dense breast tissue and cancer both
appear white on an X-ray, making it nearly impossible for a radiologist to
detect cancer in these women. It’s like trying to find a snowflake in a
blizzard.
Breast density laws have now been passed in California, Connecticut,
New York, Virginia, and Texas, making it mandatory for radiologists to inform
their patients who have dense breast tissue that mammograms are basically
useless for them. A law is now being considered at a federal level as well.
Some radiologists already provide density information to their patients
and encourage them to utilize other options like thermography, ultrasound,
and/or MRI. I believe it reasonable for a woman to trust that her radiologist
is not withholding vital breast density information.
Unfortunately, many have kept this potentially lifesaving data from
women for decades, and our government agencies have failed to protect them from
this unethical, albeit profitable practice.
Another at-risk group is women with BRCA 1/2 mutation, which is
associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. Results published in BMJ in 2012 showed that women carrying this mutation are particularly vulnerable to radiation-induced cancer.6
Women carrying this mutation who were exposed to diagnostic radiation
before the age of 30 were twice as
likely to develop breast cancer, compared to those who did not have the mutated
gene.
They also found that the radiation-induced cancer was dose-responsive,
meaning the greater the dose, the higher the risk of cancer developing. The
authors concluded that:
“The results of this study
support the use of non-ionizing radiation imaging techniques (such as magnetic
resonance imaging) as the main tool for surveillance in young women with
BRCA1/2 mutations.”
Despite these findings, the National Cancer Institute reports that some
expert groups recommend women with BRCA 1/2 mutation have a mammogram every
year starting as young as age 257 – the exact scenario that
the BMJ study
found may double their breast cancer risk!
16 Ways To Lower Your Risk of Breast
Cancer Naturally
It’s important to remember that early diagnosis is not the same as
prevention. And cancer screening that does more harm than good can hardly
qualify as “your best bet” against becoming a cancer statistic! I believe the
vast majority of all cancers could be prevented by strictly applying basic,
common sense healthy lifestyle strategies, such as the ones below.
1. Avoid sugar, especially fructose,
and processed foods.
All forms of sugar are
detrimental to your health in general and tend to promote cancer. Refined fructose,
however, is clearly one of the most harmful and should be avoided as much as
possible. This automatically means avoiding processed foods, as most are loaded
with fructose.
2. Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels
Vitamin D influences
virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature’s most potent cancer
fighters. Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger
apoptosis (programmed cell death). If you have cancer, your vitamin D level
should probably be between 70 and 100 ng/ml.
Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I’m aware
of, with no adverse effects. Ideally, your levels should reach this point by
exposure to the sun or a safe tanning bed, with oral vitamin D used as a last
resort.
3. Limit Your Protein
Newer research has emphasized the importance of the mTOR pathways. When
these are active, cancer growth is accelerated. One way to quiet this pathway
is by limiting your protein to one gram of protein per kilogram of lean body
mass, or roughly a bit less than half a gram of protein per every pound of lean
body weight.
For most people, this ranges between 40 and 70 grams of protein a day,
which is typically about 2/3 to half of what they are currently eating.
4. Avoid Unfermented Soy Products
Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, also known as
isoflavones. In some studies, soy appears to work in concert with human
estrogen to increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the chances for
mutations and drives the phenotype associated with cancer.
5. Improve your insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity.
The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and restricting
carbs to mostly fiber vegetables. Also make sure you are exercising, especially
with Peak Fitness.
6. Exercise Regularly
One of the primary reasons exercise works to lower your cancer risk is because it drives your insulin
levels down, and controlling your insulin levels is one of the most powerful
ways to reduce your cancer risks. It’s also been suggested that apoptosis
(programmed cell death) is triggered by exercise, causing cancer cells to die
in the way nature intended.
Studies have also found that the number of tumors decreases along with
body fat, which may be an additional factor. This is because exercise helps
lower your estrogen levels, which explains why exercise appears to be
particularly potent against breast cancer.
7. Maintain a Healthy Body Weight
This will come naturally when you begin eating right and
exercising. It’s important to lose excess body fat because fat produces
estrogen, creating a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle.
8. Drink a pint to a quart of organic
green vegetable juice daily.
Please review my juicing instructions for more detailed information.
9. Get plenty of high-quality,
animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil.
Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer.
10. Curcumin
This is the main active ingredient in turmeric and high concentrations can be very useful adjunct in the
treatment of cancer. It actually has the most evidence-based literature
supporting its use against cancer of any nutrient, including vitamin D.8 For
example, it has demonstrated major therapeutic potential in preventing breast
cancer metastasis.9
It’s important to know that curcumin is generally not absorbed that
well, so I’ve provided several absorption tips here. Newer preparations have also started to emerge, offering
better absorption. For best results, you’ll want to use a sustained release
preparation.
11. Avoid Drinking Alcohol
Avoid or at least limit your alcoholic drinks to one per day.
12. Avoid electromagnetic fields as much as possible.
Even electric blankets may increase your cancer risk.
13. Avoid synthetic hormone
replacement therapy, especially if you have risk factors for breast cancer.
Many forms of breast cancer are estrogen-fueled, and according to a
study published in the Journal
of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women
dropped in tandem with decreased use of hormone replacement therapy. (There are similar risks for younger women who use oral
contraceptives.
Birth control pills, which are also comprised of synthetic hormones, have been linked to
cervical and breast cancers.) If you are experiencing excessive menopausal
symptoms, you may want to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy
instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your
body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer
alternative.
14. Avoid BPA, phthalates, and other
xenoestrogens.
These are estrogen-like compounds that have been linked to increased
breast cancer risk.
15. Make sure you’re not iodine
deficient.
There’s compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency with certain
forms of cancer. Dr. David Brownstein, author of the book Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t
Live Without It, is a proponent of iodine for breast cancer. It
actually has potent anticancer properties and has been shown to cause cell
death in breast and thyroid cancer cells.10
For more information, I recommend reading Dr. Brownstein’s book. I have
been researching iodine for some time ever since I interviewed Dr. Brownstein as I do believe that the bulk of what he states is spot on.
However, I am not at all convinced that his dosage recommendations are correct.
I believe they are far too high.
16. Avoid Charring Your Meats
Charcoal or flame broiled meat is linked with increased breast cancer
risk. Acrylamide—a carcinogen created when starchy foods are baked, roasted, or
fried—has been found to increase cancer risk as well.This is not an exhaustive
list. There are many other strategies that can be useful as well, like
practicing self-love and self-acceptance.
In the video below, you can view my interview with Dr. Christiane
Northrup, a practicing physician and ob-gyn specialist who has dedicated a good
portion of her life to helping women take control of their health. She believes
women who tend to be most at risk for breast cancer are those who have
difficulty nurturing themselves and receiving pleasure, which is why learning
nurturing self-love and self-acceptance may be especially important for women.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)