Herbal Medicines for Cervical Cancer

Description

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting women. Women between the ages of 30 and 55 have the highest incidence of cervical cancer. Women who have had sexually transmitted disease, and those who have had many pregnancies beginning at a young age, are at greater risk. If you smoke, quit. Cigarette smoking is a suspected risk factor for cervical cancer. Getting an annual pelvic examination and Pap test is the only way to screen for cervical cancer. A Pap test can detect malignant cells before symptoms are present.

Fortunately, cervical cancer is slow to develop. If diagnosed at an early stage, when the cancer is still confined to the outermost layers of cervical tissue, cervical cancer has a cure rate of almost 100 percent. Even in more advanced cases, when the cancer spreads deeper into the cervical wall, the chances of recovery are good. On the other hand, if the cancer is allowed to spread to other organs, the prognosis is not as good.

Signs and Symptoms

Cervical cancer in its early stages usually does not produce symptoms. Later, the most common symptoms are:

Bleeding from the vagna after inter course, between periods, or after meno pause

Bloody  discharge

Conventional Medical Treatment

If you notice any type of unexplained bleeding or discharge, see your gynecologist immediately, who performs a pelvic examination and Pap smear. If the Pap smear reveals abnormalities, your doctor examines your cervix closely (using a device called a colposcope) and takes a tissue sample to check for malignant cells. If cancer is confirmed, your doctor may take X-rays to determine if the cancer has spread to any of the surrounding organs.

Treatment for cervical cancer depends on what stage it is in. If it is caught early, laser surgery, freezing, or cauterization may be used to remove the malignant cells from the outer layer of tissue. If the cancer has advanced into the cervical wall, radiation may be performed. (See "Conventional Medical Treatment" in the "Bladder Cancer" entry for more information on radiation therapy.) Your doctor also may recommend a hysterectomy, an operation in which the cervix and uterus are removed.

Complementary and Alternative Treatments

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Acupuncture Acupuncture may be used as an adjunct treatment during the early stages of cervical cancer to boost the body's immune system and improve the flow of chi to diseased cells.

Acupressure Acupressure may be useful in alleviating the pain of cervical cancer and the stomach upset caused by conventional treatments.

Chinese Herbal Therapy Garlic has been shown to inhibit the growth of cancer cell while promoting the production of healthy cells, which may account for this herb's popularity in the prevention and treatment of all types of cancer, including cervical. Ginseng also is known for its immunity-boosting, anti-cancer properties.

By Robin Brain

The Cancer-Test Kid

After a family friend died of pancreatic cancer, high school sophomore Jack Andraka invented a diagnostic strip that could detect the disease in its early stages:

In the spring of 2011, 15-year-old Jack Andraka had a lot on his mind. A close friend of the family, a man who was like an uncle to Andraka, had recently died of pancreatic cancer. Reading up on the disease, the then high school freshman discovered that around 85 percent of pancreatic cancers are diagnosed too late, when patients have less than a 2 percent chance of survival. The reason, Andraka learned, was that the best tools for early detection are both expensive and woefully inaccurate.

“I was like, ‘There has to be a better way than this really crappy test,’” says Andraka, currently a sophomore at North County High School in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

A typical teenager might have left it there, but Andraka dove deep into the scientific literature. He learned about a popular biomarker called mesothelin, a protein in the blood that’s overexpressed in patients with several types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer, even in the earliest stages. Andraka was also thinking about carbon nanotubes—tiny cylinders, around 1/50,000 the diameter of a human hair, with amazing mechanical and electrical properties, which he describes as “the superheroes of materials science.”

Then, while learning about antibodies in biology class, Andraka was struck with an idea. “I thought maybe if I lace mesothelin-specific antibodies into a network of carbon nanotobes I would have a network that reacts only to mesothelin [in a blood sample] and would change its electrical properties based on the amount present.” As the mesothelin proteins attach to the antibodies, the gaps between nanotubes widen, weakening the network’s conductivity—a signal detectable with a simple ohmmeter.

Andraka wrote up a detailed research proposal and e-mailed it to scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and the National Institutes of Health. He received a raft of rejections—and one maybe, from Anirban Maitra, a pathologist at JHU. “It was remarkable because he sent a very specific, 30-page protocol including reagents and pitfalls and everything,” says Maitra, who, after meeting (and grilling) Andraka, invited the teenager to work in his lab.

Almost every day for the next 7 months Andraka’s mom picked him up after school and drove him to JHU, where he often worked long into the evening. It was a steep learning curve, and there were tearful moments—not least when a month’s worth of cell-culture samples exploded in a centrifuge. But by January 2012 Andraka’s dedication was beginning to pay off. In a series of pilot studies, he demonstrated that his dip-coated filter paper test strips—hooked up via electrodes to a $50 ohmmeter from Home Depot—were capable of measuring mesothelin levels in the blood of transgenic mice with human pancreatic tumors, and in a limited number of human serum samples.

COURTESY OF JACK ANDRAKA“It’s important to note that this is still very much at a preliminary stage,” says Maitra. “We have to do a larger series of patient samples, and we have to prove that in human serum, where you have low levels of mesothelin in early-stage patients, you can still detect it.” Andraka is not the first to coat carbon nanotubes with antibodies. In fact, researchers have already developed similar tests for breast and prostate cancer. But Andraka’s is the first attempt to use the method to diagnose early-stage pancreatic cancer—and, if all goes according to plan, he could be the first to demonstrate that the approach is sensitive enough for such purposes.

Nevertheless, Maitra says, “it’s extremely impressive for a 15-year-old kid to come up with such a cogent idea and then to work through it in the lab with such dedication. He’s a very bright kid, but he had to work hard, and he never gave up.” Maitra also notes that this was all Andraka’s own work. “I gave him a corner of my lab, with a postdoc to supervise him—because he’s a kid, so that’s required by law—but he truly did everything on his own. This is not someone else’s project that he piggybacked on.”

Andraka’s work won him the grand prize at the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, which comes with $75,000 in scholarships. “It was a dream come true,” says Andraka, who was cast into the national spotlight with a subsequent appearance on ABC World News Tonight. He has since delivered six TED talks, sat on a panel of luminaries at the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, and attended the recent State of the Union Address as a guest of President Obama. Andraka seems to be taking his newfound fame in stride. “It can be overwhelming at times, but I’m enjoying it,” he says. “I have to balance it with being a normal high school student.”

For now, Andraka will continue to do just that. But Maitra says he’s sure his young protégé will achieve great things. “He’s a remarkable kid,” Maitra says. “Whatever he goes into, he will excel, but hopefully we can keep him in biomedical science.

Courtesy:the-scientist.com

A New Bra That Can Detect Breast Cancer?

It claims to measure abnormal cell cycles right in your bra.  Would you try this device?

Mammograms could eventually be part of the past with a new technology about to hit the market. In fact, detecting breast cancer could be as easy as snapping on a bra -- and wouldn't that be nice?

The device named First Warning System™, is described on its website as "a novel breast health screening device and method based on disruptive technology and tissue health science."

The device collects 12 hours of cell data in your breasts just by being placed under your bra.

"Circadian rhythm-based temperature variances of cell cycles are measured to identify abnormalities at the earliest stages of cell augmentation. Powerful predictive analytic software analyses the tissue data producing an object result to the physician to enable a sound and robust clinical decision from the physician and patient," the website, FirstWarningsSystem.com, states.

The cancer-deteacting bra method has reportedly been tested on 650 women having an accuracy rate of 92.1 percent. One case involving a woman named Nedra Lindsay who agreed to be part of an early testing trial. Twenty years and a mastectomy later, Nedra is cancer free.

“I never thought it would be any use to me because I was so young,” she told NY CBS news about participating in the trial when she was just 25 years old.

Breast cancer remains the number one cancer killing women. In 2009, 211,731 women in the U.S. were diagnosed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While the device has been in development for the past two decades, CBS reports it expects to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in a year-- with a price tag around $200.

What do you think about this detection device? Do you think this could be a breakthrough in the battle against breast cancer? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

source: realself.com 

Kidney Cancer Cures - Natural Methods to Cure Cancer

When you are dealing with cancer it is not uncommon to wonder about natural kidney cancer cures. More and more people are starting to look for natural treatments to their cancer. This is because the chemicals in chemotherapy, a widely used treatment, destroy the cancer cells as well as healthy cells. If you have seen a loved one suffer through a battle with cancer using chemotherapy then you know just how devastating this treatment can be. If you have not then you should know that chemotherapy can cause hair loss, weight loss, nausea, fatigue, and many more side effects that are very unpleasant for the patient and their family. This is where the natural remedies come in to play.
Different Natural Cancer Cures
There are many different cures for cancer that are completely natural. You should know however that these treatments might be great for preventing and curing many other types of cancers as well. These are not necessarily specific to the kidney cancer alone.
One of the main stream natural ways of treating cancer is by the use of vitamins, herbs, and changes in your diet. There are many different vitamins and herbs that can be used in conjunction with others or that may be used by themselves to help treat cancer. Some of these are garlic, calcium, folic acid, vitamin C, and vitamin D. These however are only a few of the many different herbs or vitamins that you may use. As far as a diet goes it has been said that eating a diet that is high in fiber is a great way to cure cancer. One of the main foods that many have been using is brown rice. This is extremely high in fiber. In severe cases of cancer it might be recommend by a natural remedies' expert that you limit yourself strictly to brown rice for a period of time.
Living with Cancer
Though you may be struggling with the daily battle of cancer you should know that this battle does not have to be fought alone. You should also know that you do not have to go through the chemical treatments for cancer should you not want to. Though a decision like this should take a lot of time to make and you should certainly involve your medical professional in any decision like this. They may suggest that you try both treatments at the same time. This decision however is solely yours to make. So know there are many different options should you opt out of medical intervention or should medical intervention not cure you from this horrible illness called cancer. You have many options out there from herbal remedies to vitamins to other medical treatments like detoxification or oxygenation that are natural treatments that your doctor may offer. Detoxification can also be preformed by you using different products on the market should you be looking to not involve the medical profession with any of your treatments.

By Ty Daniel