By Margie King
GreenMedInfo.com

Is coffee a health elixir or an addictive toxin?  The evidence goes both ways. But a study from Rutgers University now casts another vote for the health benefits of coffee.  It finds that in addition to drinking that morning cup, you may even want to bathe in some coffee as a way of preventing harmful sun damage or skin cancer.

The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports the theory that caffeine guards against certain skin cancers at the molecular level by inhibiting a protein enzyme in the skin known as ATR. Based on lab experiments on mice, scientists think caffeine applied directly to the skin might help prevent damaging UV light from causing skin cancer.

Because coffee contains antioxidants (and is probably the greatest source of antioxidants in the standard American diet), it was previously associated with reduced cancer risk. Prior research indicated that mice fed caffeinated water and exposed to UVB radiation (which damaged the DNA in their skin cells) were able to kill off a greater percentage of their badly damaged cells and reduce the risk of cells becoming cancerous.

The researchers noted that prior studies found an association between coffee drinking and a decreased risk of non-melanoma skin cancer, and called for more studies to determine whether topical caffeine inhibits sunlight-induced skin cancer.

In this study, instead of inhibiting ATR with caffeinated water, Rutgers researchers genetically modified and diminished ATR in one group of mice. The genetically modified mice developed tumors more slowly than the unmodified mice, had 69% fewer tumors than regular mice and developed four times fewer invasive tumors.

The study also found, however, that when both groups of mice were exposed to chronic ultraviolet rays for an extended period of time, tumor development occurred in both the genetically modified and regular mice. The researchers believe that inhibiting the ATR enzyme works best at the pre-cancerous stage before UV-induced skin cancers are fully developed.

According to the National Cancer Institute, sunlight-induced skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer in the United States with more than 1 million new cases each year. Although multiple human epidemiologic studies link drinking caffeine beverages with significant decreases in several different types of cancer, including prostate, skin and oral cancers, how and why coffee protects against cancer is unknown.

The researchers speculated that caffeine may help prevent skin cancer because it inhibits ATR but may also act as a sunscreen and directly absorb damaging UV light.

For more information about coffee, check out GreenMedInfo’s coffee research page documenting over 40 health conditions which may respond favorably to its use.

Read the Full Article Here: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/could-your-morning-coffee-ward-skin-cancer

We Lost the War on Cancer – Review of Alternative Cancer Therapies

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We have lost the war on cancer. At the beginning of the last century, one person in twenty would get cancer. In the 1940s it was one out of every sixteen people. In the 1970s it was one person out of ten. Today one person out of three gets cancer in the course of their life.

The cancer industry is probably the most prosperous business in the United States. In 2014, there will be an estimated 1,665,540 new cancer cases diagnosed and 585,720 cancer deaths in the US. $6 billion of tax-payer funds are cycled through various federal agencies for cancer research, such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI states that the medical costs of cancer care are $125 billion, with a projected 39 percent increase to $173 billion by 2020.

The simple fact is that the cancer industry employs too many people and produces too much income to allow a cure to be found. All of the current research on cancer drugs is based on the premise that the cancer market will grow, not shrink.

John Thomas explains to us why the current cancer industry prospers while treating cancer, but cannot afford to cure it in Part I. In Part II, he surveys the various alternative cancer therapies that have been proven effective, but that are not approved by the FDA.