Cancer rates set to increase six times faster in women than men

Cancer rates will increase nearly six times faster in women than in men over the next 20 years, with obesity partly to blame, experts predict.

As several of the obesity-related cancer types only affect women, the growing number of people of both sexes who are severely overweight is likely to have a greater effect on incidence of the disease among women, according to the analysis by Cancer Research UK.

Cases of ovarian, cervical and oral cancers are predicted to rise the most. Rates will rise by around 0.5% for men and 3% for women, meaning an estimated 4.5 million women and 4.8 million men will be diagnosed with cancer by 2035.

That equates to projected UK cancer rates increasing by approximately 0.5% for men and 3% for women.

The figures were released on the same day as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) announced that it was recommending that the breast cancer drug palbociclib should not be routinely funded on the NHS in England.

Charities decried the decision by the drugs watchdog, stressing the importance of developing and supporting more treatments to help women to survive, but they also urged women to change their lifestyles to minimise their risk.

Cancer Research UK’s chief executive Sir Harpal Kumar said: “These new figures reveal the huge challenge we continue to face, both in the UK and worldwide. Research is at the heart of finding ways to reduce cancer’s burden and ensure more people survive, particularly for hard-to-treat cancers where the outlook for patients is still bleak. We need to keep working hard to reduce the devastating impact cancer can have on so many families.

“The latest figures show that more than 8 million people die from cancer each year across the world. More people die from cancer than Aids, malaria and tuberculosis put together. With more investment into research, we hope to make big improvements over the next 20 years in diagnosing the disease earlier and improving and developing treatments so that by 2034, three in four people will survive their disease.”

Smoking is another factor behind the projected growth of cancer cases among women, which will mean the gap between the number of women and men with the disease narrows. Widespread smoking among women happened later than men and lighting up continues to have a big effect on the number of cancer cases diagnosed each year, says Cancer Research UK.

Sarah Toule, head of health information at the World Cancer Research Fund, said lack of exercise and alcohol consumption were also driving the predicted increase in the UK cancer rate for women.

“It is concerning that rates are predicted to rise so sharply in women, especially as so many cancer cases could be prevented,” she said. “For example, about two in five breast cancer cases in the UK could be prevented if women maintained a healthy weight, were more physically active and didn’t drink alcohol – that’s around 20,000 fewer cases a year. Other cancers that could be reduced by women having a healthier lifestyle include womb and ovary.”

Professor Kevin Fenton, the director of health and wellbeing at Public Health England, said: “The top things we can all do to prevent and reduce the risk of cancer are quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, being physically active and attending cancer screening when invited.”

In draft guidance explaining its reasoning for its advice on palbociclib, which is made by Pfizer, the drug watchdog said that a full course of treatment costs £79,560. Although Nice found that the drug stalled the growth of the cancer for an extra 10 months on average “it was still not enough to make palbociclib cost effective at its current price”.

The watchdog estimates that around 5,500 people in England – out of 45,000 new diagnoses of breast cancer each year – would be eligible for treatment with palbociclib.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, said: “This is the clearest illustration to date that the drug appraisal system is totally unfit for purpose in assessing first-in-class breast cancer medicines.

“Palbociclib could benefit a large proportion of metastatic breast cancer patients and may even be the closest thing these women would have to a cure in their lifetime.”

She urged Pfizer to reconsider its decision not to offer the NHS a discount on the list price and said the pharmaceutical giant must work with Nice to ensure the drug can be made widely available to women as soon as possible.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), with its partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, led a major clinical trial of palbociclib.

Dr Nicholas Turner, team leader in Molecular Oncology at ICR and consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden, said: “Palbociclib is one of the most important advances in treating the most common type of breast cancer in 20 years.

“If the manufacturer, Nice, and NHS England can find a way of making this treatment available for patients, they will substantially improve the lives of patients with breast cancer.”

In December, Nice turned down another breast cancer drug, Kadcyla, made by Roche Pharmaceuticals, on financial grounds, triggering an outcry from patients’ groups who say it prolongs the lives of people who are seriously ill with the disease.

At present there are an estimated 7.4 million men and 6.7 million women being diagnosed with cancer worldwide each year. The disease is the leading cause of death globally, accounting for an estimated 8.2m deaths in 2012 and approximately 15% of all deaths.

Cancer rates set to increase six times faster in women than men

Can’t Sleep? Here are 13 Effective Ways to Fall Asleep Faster

Having trouble falling asleep can lead to getting not enough sleep or sleep deprivation, the most signs of which are excessive daytime sleepiness, yawning, and irritability. Chronic sleep deprivation can interfere with balance, coordination, memory, decision-making abilities. Worse still, it suppresses immune system function.

Remedies to the more physical and environmental sleep-deprivers are fairly obvious, even though not always easily employed. So, if you are in the majority of those having trouble to fall asleep and not having a quality sleep, here are some do-it-yourself suggestions:

Avoid eating within 1 ½ – 2 hours of bedtime

Eating or snacking before bedtime is one of many nighttime habits. Eating especially right before your bedtime can be very disruptive to sleep. Salt-filled snacks such as potato chips, for instance, could make you feel thirsty. Drinking too much fluid before bedtime may cause extra trips to the bathroom.

Taking refined carbohydrates and sodas loaded with sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup) before bedtime can also cause disrupted sleep. Eating high-carb diet before bedtime can cause blood sugar to nose dive.

Snack on fats and proteins

Snacking on fats and proteins 2 hours of bedtime are much safer than snacking on carbs especially processed carbs. The reason is these foods would not cause sugar spikes. Fats especially healthy fats such as coconut milk, cheese, full cream milk and most proteins that contain an amino acid tryptophan may help you to feel calm, which in turn make you falling sleep more easily.

Avoid alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine

Caffeine, nicotine, and sugar are stimulants if consumed close to bedtime can prevent you from falling asleep. Caffeine is found in a number of foods and drinks, including chocolate, tea, energy drinks, and some pain relievers. While alcohol sometimes makes users feel sleepy and may speed up the onset of sleep, as the body metabolizes the alcohol, it actually acts as a stimulant, preventing quality sleep and increasing awakenings during the night.

Good nite sleep depends much on parasympathetic nervous system (PSN) dominance. So nicotine, sugar (from table sugar or processed carbs), caffeine, and alcohol (certain amounts) would increase sympathetic nervous system activity resulting in its dominance over PSN and may awaken you as well as disrupt your sleep.

Note: Some people believe that any type of alcohol is bad for health due to ethanol content even only a glass of it at a time. Ethanol is converted to ethanal, a lethal aldehyde. This aldehyde is found to be very cytotoxic, meaning it can destruct and eventually kill cells.

Consider alternative treatment/therapy

 Some medications can cause disrupted sleep. These are the most common ones said to cause it, including alpha-blockers, beta-blockers, corticosteroids, SSRI antidepressants, ACE inhibitors, ARBs, cholinesterase inhibitors, H1 antagonists, glucosamine/chondroitin, and statins.

Write down every drug and supplement you take. If you’re taking any of them and having sleep problems, you may try an alternative treatment or therapy. Gotu Kola and Sensitive Plant, for instance, may be used as alternatives for alpha-blockers and beta-blockers. They may also be used as antidepressants.

Turn off you mind

Convert your concern over something that bothering such as worrying about next day’s event into some kind of action plan and you will rest easier. Take a piece of paper and jot down your top concerns. Then write down the steps you will take to resolve the problems or situations. Don’t forget to include how and when you want to materialize your planned strategies.

Exercise, at least four hours of bedtime

Exercise especially cardio workout helps improve the length and quality of you sleep. 30 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, for instance, keeps your body temperature up to 4 hours, thus, inhibiting sleep. When your body cools down, at the same time the stress hormone cortisol follows suit, your brain starts releasing melatonin, so then you will get drowsy.

Comfortable sleeping environment

Use your bed for sleep and sex only. Using your bed for other activities such as studying or watching television would let your brain to associate your sleep spot with being awake and alert.

Blue wavelengths are beneficial during daylight hours as they boost attention, reaction times, and moods, however, when emitted by electronics with screens, as well as energy-efficient lighting during bedtime may cause disrupted sleep. Many people don’t know that LED screen of their mobile phones emits blue wavelengths.

Use dim red lights for night lights as it has the least power to shift circadian rhythm and suppress melatonin.

Have sex

Having sexual activities before bed is seldom discussed as one of the ways to induce sleep and to have a good sleep. Some married couples have routine intercourses performed every night or several nights per week before bedtime as a means to help them to fall asleep more easily. Sexual activities release endorphins, which exert a soothing effect on the brain and nervous system.

Some married couples or individuals practice non-orgasmic sex or at least delayed orgasm, obtained via having intercourse or caressing/fondling genitals or sensual parts. The moderate release of dopamine would not only provide pleasure but also long-term satisfaction to both parties as well as inducing good night sleep.

Start a sleep ritual

When you were a child, your mother read you a bedtime story and tucked you into bed every night. This comforting ritual acts as a signal to your brain to fall asleep. Have sex, drink a glass of warm milk, take a bath, listen to calming music, or recite bedtime prayer are bedtime rituals, which help signal the mind and body that it’s time to sleep.

Make your bedroom smell good

Essential oils such as Ylang-ylang, Lavender, Bergamot, Marjoram, Neroli, Sandalwood, and Sandalwood are said can combat insomnia, two symptoms of which are difficulty falling asleep at night and waking up during the night.

The most convenience way to use them is by applying on your neck or pillow.

Epsom Salt and lemon

If you want to improve your sleep every night, you may want to consider taking lemon water with Epsom salt added to it. Magnesium is believed can help calm your brain and autonomic nervous system by activating parasympathetic nervous system over sympathetic nervous system.

Squeeze ¼ lemon in a glass of water, add ¼ teaspoon of Epsom salt and a pinch of Himalayan salt. Drink it ½ hour of your bedtime. It is useful in inducing sleep for those experiencing insomnia, hypertension, anxiety, and depression.

Alternatively, take Valerian root, Gotu Kola, Chrysanthemum or Lemon Grass tea ½ hour before bedtime. It can help relax your mind and body

Take coconut oil

Surprisingly, consuming coconut oil daily is said can help induce sleep and have a good night sleep. Coconut oil is believed to have the ability to regulate body functions and eventually help one sleep more easily.

Turmeric milk

In the evening, having a warm cup of golden yellow turmeric milk is soothing and can help you sleep soundly through the night. How to prepare: in a small pot, bring almond milk to a boil, turn off the heat and whisk in turmeric, cardamom, and raw honey. Adding 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla would make the turmeric milk taste better and further synergize its calming effect.

Can’t Sleep? Here are 13 Effective Ways to Fall Asleep Faster

Why pictures trigger buried memories much faster than words

As you’ll have noticed, in our issue devoted to this year’s most memorable news images, there is an immediacy to a photograph that we can’t help but respond to. A picture can trigger a buried memory and recall a precise moment in time much more rapidly than words. But why exactly?

Neuroscientists have known for many years that humans have an extraordinary ability to encode pictures. In one study, first carried out around 50 years ago and repeated since, people are shown 10,000 photographs and, a few days later, another 1,000 – half from the original batch and half new. Within seconds, respondents point accurately to the ones they’ve seen before. Which is why, at this time of year when you look through a photo review, a picture glanced at six months ago will still chime and feel familiar, even though you couldn’t call it to mind a minute ago.

This is possible because our brains are so efficient at storing the ‘essence’ of a picture, capturing not just the subject but specific visual qualities. You can’t bring this to mind actively, it’s what we call a ‘passive effect’. If you were asked to recall a news image from March, you may struggle, but if you saw a stack of photos from that time, you’d instantly know the ones you’d seen before.

Before we get too full of ourselves, it’s worth knowing that at least one other animal shares a similar ability – the pigeon. In studies they show high levels of recall when presented with different images – helpful for finding food. For us it may be linked to social relations or just navigation.

However trivial the picture, it’s the recognition and the rush of familiarity that is fun – an added benefit that’s lost on pigeons but satisfying for us.

Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London

Why pictures trigger buried memories much faster than words

6 Sneaky Ways To Burn Calories And Lose Weight Faster

6 Sneaky Ways To Burn Calories And Lose Weight Faster

Rethink Your Water: Deep Ocean Water Rehydrates Better, Faster

The ocean. Probably not where your mind goes when thinking of an infinitely renewable drinking water source. The ocean contains salt water, which isn’t suitable for drinking, right?

As it turns out, there’s a unique kind of ocean water that is ideal for drinking: deep ocean water. Desalinated deep ocean mineral water is naturally pure, and a robust source of naturally occurring minerals and electrolytes, which are essential for our bodies’ everyday functions, especially when it comes to hydration.

You may already know there is a direct correlation between hydration status and exercise performance. As you become more dehydrated, your performance declines, including decreased endurance, and muscle tightening and cramping. Now imagine adding heat stress into your exercise routine. Heat stress, coupled with exercise-induced dehydration, aggravates performance decline.

A recent human hydration study conducted at the University of Arizona, in which my colleagues and I evaluated the impact of post-exercise hydration on student athletes, revealed that desalinated deep ocean mineral water not only rehydrated participants twice as fast compared to a carbohydrate-based sports drink or mountain spring water, but also significantly improved recovery of lower body muscle performance. Even though the carbohydrate-based drink contains a larger amount of minerals and electrolytes, we attribute deep ocean water’s greater impact on rehydration and muscle recovery to its unique blend of these materials, not their quantity.

To measure the impact of each liquid’s rehydrating properties, we asked well-hydrated student athletes to exercise on a stationary bike surrounded by heat lamps until they lost 3% of their starting body weight due to dehydration (that’s a 3-5 lb. water weight loss for a 150 lb. person). This typically took about an hour for men, and slightly longer for women, to achieve. The participants then received desalinated deep ocean water, mountain spring water or a carbohydrate-based sports drink for rehydration. We tested their salivary osmolality, a biomarker measuring the rate of rehydration through saliva, as well as the performance of their lower body muscles.

Although many studies have tested the ability of sports drinks to help exercise performance and recovery, our study was the first to compare deep ocean water’s  potential for rehydration after exercise against other fluids. We felt it was critical put participants into a controlled environment, and empirically measure hydration status and exercise performance.

The deep ocean water used in our study comes from the Global Conveyor Belt, a deep ocean current comprised of melted glacial water that travels the depths of the world’s ocean, collecting a natural balance, and specific blend, of minerals and electrolytes not found in any other hydrating beverage. This particular blend is unique because of where the water is sourced, 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Kona, HI.

More studies are on the horizon to explore deep ocean water and its properties on rehydration, mental capacity and beyond.

This study was supported by an Independent Science Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Dr. John P. Konhilas. The deep ocean water used in the study was Kona Deep, the first of the new category of deep ocean water now available for consumption in the continental US.

Sources: http://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-016-0129-8

Author: Dr. John P. Konhilas, PhD., Associate Professor of Physiology at the University of Arizona.

This study was published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

Rethink Your Water: Deep Ocean Water Rehydrates Better, Faster

How To Clear Out Your Inbox Faster: Categorize Your Emails

Right here are a handful of ways to categorize and tackle your overflowing inbox.

Sort of E mail: Long, good quality, and thoughtfully written
Problem: Not ample quick time to process and meaningfully reply
How to Reply: Reply immediately expressing your thanks and intention to slowly place all the info to use. Comply with up with an update as you can or in individual. By sending the thank you immediately, you in no way search negative for taking too long to get back to the sender.

Sort of Electronic mail: Tens of random, not overly essential notes or asks
Issue: Time consuming and not urgent
How to Response: Really don’t let these emails stew. These are the emails where a simpler reply than you think is needed, and will be ample. Replies to these sorts of emails may possibly be greater if you hyperlinked anything or if you could discover the correct person’s title that you are pondering of, but shipping the reply even if it’s not best, is greater than no reply. Try out to do a speedy-fire session and answer a ton of these emails following lunch or on Saturday mornings.

Type of E-mail: Miscellaneous emails from strangers, or emails you’d rather not have to reply
Dilemma: You really don’t have time to help or meaningfully reply or, you have the time, but investing that time elsewhere is far more meaningful for you
How to Answer: Rather than ignore their email, get 1 minute to respectfully decline and say you cannot do what they are asking. If what they are asking would be nicely obtained by somebody else, mention that.

Common Guidelines of E-mail:
Acknowledge. If some thing is sent to you and you require time to execute, aren’t confident about your schedule nevertheless, or merely really don’t have the time to do some thing, just allow the particular person know this. It is greater carry out by you for the sender, otherwise they are in the dark questioning why you haven’t replied.
Do One thing. For non-priority, not core to your work emails, just get some thing back to the sender. They’ll enjoy it, and you will not feel overwhelmed with so numerous emails sitting that you know you can do anything about. Just do some thing simple sufficient to get the electronic mail out of your inbox.
Say No. You decide on what will get your time, and your inbox should not be a area the place men and women get to get your time from you. Opt in to what tends to make sense and say sorry to these that aren’t the ideal use of your time, or communicate that you do not have capability.
five-minute rule, by Adam Grant. If it will take you five minutes or less, help the particular person.

How To Clear Out Your Inbox Faster: Categorize Your Emails

Seek out treatment faster to keep out of hospital, individuals told

An ambulance outside A&ampE. Photograph: Bethany Clarke/Getty Pictures

The NHS is urging patients to help alleviate the expanding strain on hospitals by getting quicker treatment for minor ailments and not “soldiering on” with an sickness that may possibly then worsen.

It is launching a new £3m marketing campaign to persuade sufferers to look for advice or treatment method as soon as symptoms seem, so they do not finish up in A&ampE or having to keep in hospital.

Professor Keith Willett, NHS England’s director for acute care, said: “We see in our hospitals so numerous people who have not had or sought the aid they want early sufficient. We have to do much better at assisting people keep effectively, not just choosing up the pieces when they fall critically ill.”

Advertisements for the NHS’s “the earlier, the greater” campaign will appear on billboards, in nationwide newspapers and on radio stations and web sites.

It is aimed in distinct at frail, older men and women and individuals with extended-phrase circumstances such as heart trouble and diabetes, who take up a disproportionate volume of hospital beds and doctors’ time.

NHS bosses want sufferers to go to their local chemist for tips, check out the NHS Options website or ring the 111 guidance services, then see their GP if necessary, and only turn up at A&ampE if medically necessary.

The University of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&ampE physicians, welcomed the move as “a phase in the proper direction”, but additional that additional action was required.

A higher use of self-care would also relieve strain on GP surgeries, the British Health care Association explained.

“If a patient feels they want to access NHS solutions they ought to do so, but it is usually the case exactly where an individual can safely deal with their personal small conditions or ailments, for instance by going to a pharmacist for non-prescription medicine, rather than possessing the inconvenience of creating an pointless GP appointment and then sitting in a waiting space with other sick individuals”, explained Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA’s GP committee.

Seek out treatment faster to keep out of hospital, individuals told