The title of a new study says it all: “Dietary Fish Oil Alters T Lymphocyte Cell Populations and Exacerbates Disease in a Mouse Model of Inflammatory Colitis” (see abstract: http://tinyurl.com/3yllblr). I was concerned when I first read of this study because I take two grams of fish oil per day, and I certainly do not want to take anything that might hurt me…

So I asked a friend (thanks!) to get the full study for me. I wanted to read more details about doses, the type of fish oil administered to this unfortunate group of mice and any other pertinent information. Let’s see…In a nutshell, four weeks after being infected with Helicobacter hepaticus (which gave them mild colitis and increased their risk of developing colon cancer…), mice consuming relatively high doses of dietary fish oil, as we will see in a second, were worse off than those in the control group.

Well, I have to admit that my first draft of this post was jam-packed with technical details about colon cancer, colitis, IBD (=irritable bowel disease), the mice, their diets and whatnot. But, after getting to the Discussion part of the study, I had second thoughts about going overboard with too many details. After all, what we really need to know can be found in the final paragraph, as follows:

Investigations regarding FO supplementation in human IBD have used FO doses ranging between 500 mg/d and 7 g/d. Our diets mimicked 1 g/d (0.75%), 3 g/d (2.25%), 5 g/d (3.75%), and 8 g/d (6.00%) DFO when calculated as a component of a 2,000 kcal human diet. We observed inflammatory and dysplastic changes at the 3, 5, and 8 g equivalent. The most dramatic increase was observed at the 8 g/d dose. Currently, efforts are under way to establish dietary reference intakes for EPA and DHA due to substantial evidence supporting beneficial effects of FO consumption in the prevention of common diseases such as coronary artery disease and cognitive decline. Consumer intakes of DHA and EPA continue to increase with growing FO supplement consumption and addition of n-3 PUFAs to foods (i.e., functional food). Studies from our group and others’ advocate establishing a tolerable upper limit for FO consumption to protect certain immunocompromised sectors of the population who may be at risk for pathogen-associated enteric inflammation and gastrointestinal cancers.

Now, the mice that developed inflammatory problems belonged to the groups that had a high daily intake of fish oil–the human equivalent of 3 to 8 grams/day. The more they took, the worse off they were. Another point: as we read the abstract/study, let’s not forget that these mice were not healthy little things. No, they had been infected with a nasty virus that can lead to the development of colon cancer…

Two more considerations (apart from the obvious one that, as far as I know!, I am not a…mouse! 😉 ): 1. I have never taken more than 2 grams of fish oil per day; 2. I live in Italy, where foods are not (yet!) fortified with dietary PUFAs or even vitamins. Therefore, it appears that my daily intake of fish oil is perfectly safe, especially since I do not suffer from colitis or IBD…

As always, though, it is best to be cautious. And so I will continue to take two grams of fish oil per day…but no more than that.

Well, knock me down with a cat’s whisker!!! Do you remember the Toyota race car design competition? Well, guess what???? The International Myeloma Foundation’s design, “Myeloma Survivor,” is a FINALIST!!!

And all this happened thanks to our votes!!! Yaaay!!!

But this means that we have more work to do. A lot more work. We need to keep voting every day for the next eight days. So please go ahead and vote on as many computers as you have access to; ask your friends, neighbors and family members to vote; book an appeal on your Facebook page; twit the news on Twitter and tell all your social network friends to get clicking,…whatever it takes! I mean, we now have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to help raise myeloma awareness! Here is the link: http://www.sponsafier.com/#/gallery/view/367247

Besides, there are ten other designs in the competition. Are we going to allow “Myeloma Survivor” to be beaten by “Home Depot Hippie” or “Nick&Friends” or…”Jazzy”??? Noooooo!!!

Click away, everyone! WE CAN DO IT!!! 🙂

I just finished reading this article (thanks, Hanna!): http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/07/a-sick-ceos-full-disclosure/ I particularly liked this quote: “I could sit at home and think about how much I want to get better, or I could keep myself busy and try to get better. I really believe that an incredible part of the healing process is your mental attitude.” 

Indeed. So do I…

I may finally have discovered why my feverfew extract didn’t work at all for me last year. According to a new study published in “Blood” (http://tinyurl.com/2f4l3oc), while parthenolide, the active ingredient in feverfew, has devastating effects on acute myeloid leukemia stem cells, it also induces cellular protective responses that likely function to reduce its overall cytotoxicity. AAAAAGGGHHH! That essentially means that a leukemic cell will raise barriers to protect itself from parthenolide. Obviously, not a good thing…!

But never fear: the indefatigable parthenolide “investigators” (=the authors of this study) have already identified those parthenolide compounds that do not induce any cytoprotective* effects in vitro. So, a bit of bad news is followed by a bit of good news, too…

(*Cytoprotection, by the way, has to do with how a cell protects itself against harmful agents such as chemotherapy or, as in this case, parthenolide.)

I have to admit that, after reading about parthenolide’s murderous effects on leukemic stem cells, I had verrry high hopes for PTL…And I was really upset when I saw that my myeloma markers had worsened quite a lot…

Well, this abstract at least provides a plausible explanation for what happened to me. So, for now at least, I am cancelling PTL from my list of supplements…with regret, I might add…

Well, I am still a bit under the weather. In addition to having a rather revolting cough, for the past couple of afternoons I have been getting bit of a fever (almost 38° Celsius). No worries, though: this is a “change of season” complaint that is making the rounds of many Florentine households, according to my family doctor. Ah, that probably means that Mr. Expectorate is off the hook, since I was most likely infected somewhere here…in a store, perhaps…

Anyway, it will pass in a few days, and my cats are taking good care of me (in this photo, as you can see, Priscilla is giving me a CAT scan, thanks Hanna for the suggestion hehe, while Puzzola waits patiently in the background…)…

In the meantime, my feline nurses and I are getting plenty of rest and watching some of the fabulous BBC costume dramas that I ordered from the UK last Xmas. Right now we are watching “Little Dorrit,” though I must say that my attention span is much higher than theirs (they take what I can only call “cat naps” during most of the episodes 😉 ). Ahhh, how I love those Dickens characters…

Ahhh, but now let’s get to the point of this post. This morning I came across an article of immense interest to me…particularly right now: http://tinyurl.com/24wxh6y This is not the first time I have read about fevers driving some cancer patients into spontaneous remissions, but there is more to the article than just that…so I thought I would jot down a quick post and urge you all to read it.

There is still no scientific explanation for fever-caused spontaneous regressions, but there are a couple of theories floating around, as follows (more details can be found in the article…): 1. the high fever jumpstarts the immune system, which, in its heightened state, is thus able to detect and eradicate the cancer cells; 2. the fever itself attacks and destroys the cancer.

Now, this fever-cancer eradication business hasn’t worked for me. In the spring-summer of 2006, I came down with a terrible case of pleurisy that almost killed me. I did recover…obviously!…but the high fevers unfortunately did NOT exterminate my myeloma cells. (If they had, my blog would now have a completely different title! 😉 )

Details: at the beginning of July (2006) I was still not completely over my pleurisy, but, since I hadn’t had any tests since March, I decided to go to the hospital lab for my routine tests. The results were not good at all. But then, just two months later (in September, that is), I had my tests repeated. Those were the BEST results I had had in years…and thus far I have not done better…

So this article provides some food for thought…

But right now, Pinga really wants to watch Episode Two of “Little Dorrit,” so I must go… 🙂

After feeling inexplicably tired for days, I woke up with a terrible sore throat yesterday morning. Uh oh, I thought. I immediately sprayed my throat with propolis, took some Sambucol (black elderberry extract) and ignored it. But whatever it is did not ignore me…

During the day the sore throat disappeared, but I developed a slight fever. All I wanted to do was sleep. So I stayed in bed, surrounded by my loving nurses (=Stefano, who is also not feeling that great, and my cats). Then this morning I woke up with a cough and the unmistakable beginning signs of a chest infection. Uffachebarbachenoia! So I guess that Mr. Expectorate, = a man who had a bad case of bronchitis and was on my Boston-Zurich flight, managed to “get” me after all! Drat…

I am on antibiotics now. Well, I think I caught this thing in time and should be okay within a few days. No worries. I just need to sleep it off…I mean, after all, I feel okay enough to be at my computer! 🙂

I wanted to make the point that this is a good example of what can happen to those who have a compromised immune system. A little sniffle can turn into a chest infection within hours. We must learn to recognize the symptoms and take immediate action…

Hmmm, is it a mere coincidence that The Virus struck me down almost as soon as I started asking you about viral infections….? 😉 Speaking of which, please keep sending me any “viral infection before diagnosis” accounts (see my September 28 post). As soon as I feel better, I will continue my research…

A new species has been born…right in my own home! I am verrrrrrrry excited, as you can imagine.

I have temporarily named the new species as follows: “Turtlecat”…although I thought that “Cardboard Cat” or “Box Turtlecat” might also fit the bill.

As you can see from the photos, the turtlecat has already begun proliferating…I found not one but TWO of these amazing-looking creatures on my living room floor this morning.

Hmmm…what else can I tell you about my discovery? Well, I noticed that these new creatures don’t move around very much…no, they seem to be happy to stay in one place. But they are quite alert, and their eyes, as you can see, have an almost alien-like reflection.

Ah, a word of warning: when they get tired of being photographed, they glare fiercely at you and lash their tails back and forth in a most menacing manner…

Otherwise, they seem to be very peaceful critters…Oh, I should mention that they did abandon their shells hastily when it was time for lunch… 🙂

P.S. The response to my previous post has been almost overwhelming. I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who wrote to me both publicly and privately and let you know that what I have so far encourages me to keep digging…Putting all of this information together might take a while, though, since I also have a “day job” (oh, and a “life,” too!)! Seriously, though, please don’t stop sending me any information you think might be useful/relevant to my research. I appreciate your help…thanks!

I returned to Florence less than a week ago but have been tremendously busy…recovering from jet lag…zzzz (=uff, it really hit me hard this time around…zzzzz)…going back to work…zzzzz…cooking…spending a long weekend morning with Stefano in the “Oasi di Focognano,” a WWF bird sanctuary here in Florence (see photos; don’t you just love the grey heron dancing the boogie oogie oogie? 😀 )…playing cards with my girlfriends…but also reading, doing research and making, or trying to make!, a few connections…

Those connections are the reason I am appealing to you today. I need your help!

Basically, I would be very grateful if you could tell me if, before being diagnosed with MGUS, SMM or MM, you came down with a viral infection of some sort. If so, do you remember what it was, and could you provide a few details, anything you think might be relevant? Just to give you a quick example, in my final year of grad school at the University of Toronto, I came down with Epstein Barr…oooh, a nasty critter, that one. Anyway, that occurred only a few years before my MGUS diagnosis…

If you don’t want to leave a comment here on the blog, please use the Contact form (over on the right) or send me a message via my private e-mail address or Facebook…

Your input is vital for the rather exciting bit of research I am doing right now, so I will be immensely grateful for any help. Needless to say, I will respect everyone’s privacy, just as I always have. Hmmm, I can’t think of anything else…except this: thank you so very much!

Okay, I need to get back to work now. Ciao a tutti! 🙂

I wasn’t sure I would publish this…After re-reading it, it does seem a bit silly…more like something I might write for Facebook…

But I am too jetlagged to do any serious research or even write a funny piece…so here goes!

I arrived in Florence on Wednesday afternoon. The Boston-Zurich-Florence trip was, thankfully, uneventful…No customs problems in Zurich (on the contrary, my customs official couldn’t have been nicer)…No lost or damaged luggage…Everything went smoothly, except for a bit of turbulence over Nova Scotia, undoubtedly triggered by what was left of Hurricane Igor…

However, since complaints are sometimes a bit more fun to read than praise, I do have a short list of those, as follows…

1: there was almost no space at all between seat rows on this particular aircraft, so the flight was quite uncomfortable, especially for my long legs (I should note that I was in Economy class, though I guess that is obvious!). I wonder how anyone taller than I am can, er, stand it…? Long flights should really provide comfortable seats with plenty of legroom. It wouldn’t take much, really. I mean, this was ridiculous…I was so squished against the man sitting in front of me that my TV screen ended up being just a few inches from my nose, making it almost impossible to watch the movie (=that might actually have been a good thing…see point number three 😉 ).

2: dinner. The choice was between chicken and pasta. I chose pasta, since I am VERY MUCH opposed, for a variety of VERY good reasons!, to battery-farm-raised/tortured chickens. I don’t know how the chicken dish tasted, obviously, but I can assure you that my tortellini looked so revolting that I almost took a photo of ‘em. A tiny, useless amount of tomato sauce stared at me unappealingly from the bottom of the dish, which meant that the sauceless tortellini had completely dried out in the process of being reheated….Oh, and a few of the tortellini in the center of the dish were covered by a couple of withered strands of spinach. My dinner ended up being a roll with some cheese…

3: the movie selection. I confess that I watched “Sex and the City, Part II” on the flight to the U.S. (two weeks ago). Avoid that movie at all costs if, like me, you hated…no, let me correct that…if, like me, you loathed Part I, which, at the time I saw it (coincidentally, during a flight to the U.S., two years ago…), zoomed to the top of my “worst movie on the planet” list. I got through Part II only because the movie selection wasn’t very exciting…I should instead have read my book. Compared to Part I, Part II was even dumber…even more unbearably pointless, annoying and offensive on many levels. And it was just plain boring…For these reasons, it has replaced Part I as THE WORST movie ever made. Just my opinion, of course…

Still under 3. The movie that I watched a few nights ago, on my return flight, was titled “Letters to Juliet.” Another gem has been added to my “worst movie on the planet” list. Okay, it was not as bad as the above-mentioned disaster, thanks to a couple of interesting scenes, which I will get to in a moment… Let’s see. The basic idea was a good one…And yes, seeing fabulous Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero together was somewhat enjoyable. Oh, and of course (!) the snippets of scenery were incredibly fabulous: the lovely cities of Verona and Siena, and the rolling, cypress-covered hills of my Tuscany. But the best part of the movie was the brief, alas!, focus on a group of VERY talented Italian actresses, including Luisa Ranieri and Marina Massironi. For me, those were the most compelling scenes in the entire movie…

If only the plot had built on that promising beginning, that is, the intriguing letter-writing role played by the group of Italian women…if only it had expanded on the background and lives of those dedicated women…perhaps throwing in, for colour, a bit of wonderful traditional Italian cooking, barely mentioned in a couple of scenes that overly concentrated on the oh-so-very-annoying exclamations of delight uttered by the oh-so-very-annoying fiancé/chef…

If only the story had focused on those two aspects, I am convinced that “Letters to Juliet” would have turned into a spendid movie. But no, the plot took a wrong turn and ended up in a simply dreadful cul-de-sac…It was utterly unconvincing, completely stupid, totally predictable and unbelievably boring. Oh, and don’t get me started on the two main characters…that obnoxious young couple that ends up falling in love…Assurdo! Okay, I will stop here and go on to a more important topic… 

4: sick, germy people. Of course, it isn’t the airline’s fault if sick passengers board an airplane. Still, it would be nice for airlines to have a “mask” policy for visibly ill passengers. If I were ill, I wouldn’t mind wearing a mask, so why should anyone else? Case in point: a man sitting two rows behind me coughed (a deep, throaty cough) throughout the flight…almost seven hours without stopping. He should have been wearing a mask. I just hope he didn’t contaminate me and anyone else with a compromised immune system…eeek! But so far, so good…

Okay, enough complaining! Now for some positive stuff.

Getting home from the airport. As soon as I opened the front door, I was greeted by our five excited cats (they had all been taking their usual nap, of course, but I guess that somehow they knew that I had returned…). They aren’t letting me out of their eyesight now. If I go out on the terrace to hang out some laundry, they watch me from the door and scold me for having been out too long when I come back inside. So cute!  🙂   And Pinga, my one-year-old baby, has been sleeping on my shoulder for the past couple of nights…She is getting a bit too heavy for that, but I don’t mind.

But, as happy as the cats were to see me, it was the happiest man in Italy who hugged me at the airport…

Yes, it’s good to be home! 🙂

My visit to the U.S. is about to end. Holy cats, how time flies! I will be back in Florence on Wednesday (afternoon). Stefano, who has confessed to feeling lonely and missing me a lot 🙂 , is picking me up at the airport, so we can spend the afternoon together.

The cats have missed me, too. Stefano told me that they have been a bit lethargic and don’t want to play at night, the way they usually do. Cute story: the other day I left a message on our answering machine, and when Stefano pressed the button to listen to it, an excited Pinga came running and began looking for me everywhere. Awww! Sweetie pie! And yesterday morning, while Stefano and I were chatting on the phone, he put the phone next to Pinga’s ear for a few moments, and I cooed to her…at the sound of my voice, Stefano reported that she began purring madly. Double awww!

But this cute stuff isn’t really the point of my post today. The point is that yesterday I read an interesting Science Daily article (http://tinyurl.com/237dlgw) about watercress…or rather, about an ingredient in watercress (and in broccoli and other Brassicaceae family members, by the way) called PEITC, which stands for phenethyl isothiocyanate…quite a mouthful, ain’t it?

This isn’t the first time we have discussed PEITC, an important anticancer substance, and I am sure it won’t be the last. It was, e.g., the focus of a post I wrote in July 2007…and, if you scroll down on the right-hand side of my blog, you will find a “Page” on broccoli, which, of course, discusses PEITC. Oh, here is a titbit: PEITC and curcumin apparently work well together (so don’t forget to add a bit of turmeric to your plate of steamed broccoli with garlic…).

But let’s get back to watercress. A recent study carried out by a University of Southampton team shows that PEITC can turn off a protein called HIF, or Hypoxia Inducible Factor, which is important in the development of breast cancer. As soon as I read the acronym HIF, I knew that I had already written about it in connection with myeloma. I don’t have the time right now to look up this information on my blog, but I did quickly check PubMed where I found a series of studies, including a July 2010 one (http://tinyurl.com/265c79l) confirming that HIF and VEGF are best buddies. That, by the way, is good news for cancer cells but very bad news for cancer patients! Hmmm, in case you were wondering, yes, curcumin inhibits HIF…

The actual experiment carried out by the University of Southampton team is interesting mainly because it goes beyond test tubes. The team measured how PEITC affected actual cancer patients. Fabulous! You can read about it in the SD article…but, in a nutshell, after eating a bowl (80 grams) of watercress, a small group of breast cancer survivors had significant levels of PEITC in their bloodstream AND, even more importantly, considerably lower levels of HIF. Super duper.

If you read the abstract (http://tinyurl.com/2dx872u), you will notice that this effect was measured 6 to 8 hours after the watercress was ingested…I say, this is excellent news. And it really seems to prove (even though larger studies are needed) that what we eat could have an impact, perhaps even a significant impact, on our cancer…I find this very exciting.

Anyway…another point scored by the Brassicaceae or Cruciferae family…!!!