- What's causing America's huge surge in blood cancer?
It might be our diet.
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- It's called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's a killer collection
of different white-blood-cell cancers. And it's a mystery why it's been
increasing so quickly in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
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- Now there's a clue. It comes from a study of 601 Connecticut
women with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Tongzhang Zheng, ScD, head of the division
of environmental health sciences at the Yale School of Public Health in
New Haven, Conn., collected detailed dietary information from these women
and from 717 similar women without cancer.
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- "What we found is if a person has a higher intake
of animal protein, they will have a higher risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,"
Zheng tells Web. "And people who have a higher intake of saturated
fat have an increased risk. On the other hand, if you have higher-than-average
intake of dietary fiber -- particularly if you frequently eat vegetables
and fruits with a high fiber content -- you have a reduced risk of non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma."
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- The findings appear in the March 1 issue of the American
Journal of Epidemiology.
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- Earlier studies hinted at the same thing. Now, Zheng
says, it seems clear that a major factor in the mysterious rise of non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma is a diet high in meat, saturated fats, dairy products, and eggs
and low in fiber, fruits, and vegetables.
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- Unbalanced Diet, Unhealthy Body
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- In the U.S., three kinds of cancer have skyrocketed in
recent decades. One is lung cancer, mainly caused by smoking. Another is
skin cancer, caused by too much sun. The third is non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
But nobody knows why it's on the rise, says Nancy Mueller [pronounced MULL-er],
ScD, associate director of population sciences at Harvard's Dana-Farber
Cancer Center.
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- "Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a basket of related diseases,"
Mueller tells WebMD. "It probably has a set of causal factors that
may be related to one another, but not in a simple way. We can't really
explain it -- this is a really hard nut to crack. But what is happening
to the American is associated with a number of malignancies such as breast,
kidney, and colon cancer. Higher body weight is a common theme."
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- A high-fat diet may indeed be linked to higher body weight.
But Zheng says that people eating low-carb diets may also be at risk of
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma if they eat too much meat and too few vegetables.
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- One thing that's known about non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is
that people whose immune systems aren't working well -- such as AIDS patients
-- are at increased risk. Zheng suggests that immune function depends on
proper nutrition.
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- "Your body is designed to repair things," Zheng
says. "But if your body is not getting proper nutrition, how can the
immune system continue to function? Everything relates to the nutrients
in your dietary intake."
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- Cancer-Fighting Foods
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- Zheng's study showed that people who ate more of certain
foods tended to have a lower risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Those foods
include:
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- Tomatoes
- Broccoli
- Squash
- Cauliflower
- Onions
- Mixed lettuce salad
- Leeks
- Apples
- Pears
- Citrus fruits
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- Improving your diet won't just lower your cancer risk,
Mueller notes.
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- "There is such a confluence between risk factors
for cancer and risk factors for heart disease," she says. "Get
plenty of exercise, eat a good diet, don't smoke. It is what your mother
told you. It's true that this is the basis of a healthy lifestyle. And
it's true that this lowers your risk for these big killers, too."
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- SOURCES: Zheng, T. American Journal of Epidemiology,
March 1, 2004; vol 159: pp 454-466. Tongzhang Zheng, ScD, chief, division
of environmental health sciences, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven,
Conn. Nancy Mueller, ScD, associate director of population sciences, Dana-Farber
Cancer Center, Harvard University, Boston.
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- © 2004 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.
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- http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/83/97796.htm?printing=true
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