Showing posts with label chemicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemicals. Show all posts

Friday, September 27, 2019

Day 65: These products can cause cancer


Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 65: These products can cause cancer

I'm slightly ticked off today as I learned that Juul has suspended their marketing campaign in the U.S. Apparently, they targeted teens and some people were offended. What else is new.

The health nuts will have a field day. Oh smoking/vaping is bad for you. You know what else is bad for you? The following products:

Hormonal treatments

Millions of women are put at risk of breast cancer by taking hormonal treatments. As soon as women enter menopause and experience hot flashes, doctors recommend hormones. Are these women informed of the dangers? 

Weapons

Millions have died due to weapon use, but is there a ban on weapons? No, Americans scream at the top of their lungs that it is their constitutional right. Never mind that people are being gunned down at work, in schools, on the street, in cinemas, at gatherings.  

Alcohol

Alcohol is the leading cause of vehicle accidents, causing drivers, passengers, other road users and pedestrians to die, get crippled or at least sustain serious injuries. 

Alcohol is also responsible for divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, pet abuse, and job loss.

The use of alcohol leads to liver cancer, heart attack, stroke and a number of other ailments.

Yet, is there a no alcohol campaign in place? No. On the contrary. Alcohol is being advertised on TV, in magazines and newspapers in the most enticing way. Seldom do you see old people with a beer in their hand. No, ad campaigns select beautiful sexy people, having fun, or relaxing.
  
Junk food

Whether it’s burgers, hotdogs, pizzas or another type of junk food, they all have one thing in common ... they raise people’s cholesterol, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Yet are people offended by advertising these foods? No, young and old gorge on them. Never mind that 39% of adults and 18% of children in the U.S. are overweight or considered obese. Oh no, let nobody tell them that they can’t have their greasy cheeseburger anymore.

Personal hygiene

Where it comes to cancer, you might not be aware of a few other products that put you at risk. Every day people wash and condition their hair, shower and put on deodorant. The chemicals in those products can lead to cancer.
The moisturizer you put on your face, the lotion you put on your body, the makeup you apply ... all of it can cause cancer.
 
Not to mention what goes on in hair salons. Millions of women straighten, perm and/or color their hair, but are they worried ... not at all. They are completely oblivious to the chemical used.

Purchase receipts
  
Supermarket staff is especially at risk for cancer. You know those paper receipts that are handed to you at the end of a purchase? They are loaded with chemicals that can lead to cancer. You may only touch them a few times a day, but the supermarket staff handles them all day long.

Scented candles

Another seemingly harmless product is scented candles. They too can lead to cancer. The chemicals fill the air, you breathe in that air, and there you go, those chemicals go into your lungs and bloodstream.

Fact ... anything and everything can give you cancer.

Fact ... billions of currency are lost by boycotting smoking. Yeah, the non-smokers will say, but a lot of money is saved in healthcare. Really, be honest with yourself and think for a moment how many people you know personally who died of smoking cigarettes/vaping? Not, a friend told me, or my auntie told me, do you know anyone personally? A handful of people may know someone. But did that person die of smoking cigarettes or vaping? Or did something else cause the person's death? The reason for his/her lung cancer could be car fumes, airplanes fumes, the use of aerosols, contact with asbestos, inhaling perfumes, etc.

And if, and that's a big if, smoking/vaping causes lung cancer, what causes brain cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer? Are you going to blame smoking for that too? 

Before the 1980s just about everyone smoked and lived long lives. Take my own (smoking) family for instance. My granddad lived to be 92 (died of natural causes), grandma 91 (died of blood clod due to a kick of a horse), dad 88 (died of a hospital bacteria), mom 84 (died of brain tumor after a fall). 

With each passing generation people are turning more and more into whimps. They can’t have this, they can’t have that, the are non-tolerant of this and that, they are allergic to this and that. Are they healthier and live longer? No, they get sick at a drop of hat and they die younger and younger. 

All this health babble makes me bloody mad. First the smokers were no longer allowed to smoke inside but were given a smoking room; then they were forced to smoke outside, then they had to be away 6 feet from a door.

Fact is, before all this no smoking nonsense started the Cancer Society was an itty-bitty company. Since the no-smoking campaign, they have grown into a multibillion-dollar organization. Coincidence? I think not.
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Friday, November 24, 2017

Day 59: Does deodorant increase the risk of breast cancer


My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 59: Does deodorant increase the risk of breast cancer

The question does deodorant (or underarm protection in general) increase the risk of breast cancer has been going around for years. The breast cancer foundation says no, that no evidence has been found, yet other sources do state that deodorant can lead to breast cancer due to the fact that the aluminum in deodorant raises the estrogen in the body. For most women, present company included, it’s an excess of estrogen that causes breast cancer.

From dontmesswithmama.com I plucked this piece of information:

Aluminum is the ingredient in antiperspirants that actually clogs your pores and prevents sweating. Aluminum exposure has been linked with the development of Alzheimer’s disease and interferes with your estrogen levels. When your body can’t process estrogen properly, there’s a higher risk for breast and prostate cancer.

You can read more on the subject at:


The Dangers of Aluminum

On the subject of aluminum I’m not going to say one word but rather let the experts of the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health speak:

Aluminum salts are used as the active antiperspirant agent in underarm cosmetics, but the effects of widespread, long term and increasing use remain unknown, especially in relation to the breast, which is a local area of application. 

Clinical studies showing a disproportionately high incidence of breast cancer in the upper outer quadrant of the breast together with reports of genomic instability in outer quadrants of the breast provide supporting evidence for a role for locally applied cosmetic chemicals in the development of breast cancer. 

Aluminum is known to have a genotoxic profile, capable of causing both DNA alterations and epigenetic effects, and this would be consistent with a potential role in breast cancer if such effects occurred in breast cells. 

Estrogen is a well established influence in breast cancer and its action, dependent on intracellular receptors which function as ligand-activated zinc finger transcription factors, suggests one possible point of interference from aluminum. 

Results reported here demonstrate that aluminum in the form of aluminum chloride or aluminum chlorhydrate can interfere with the function of estrogen receptors of MCF7 human breast cancer cells both in terms of ligand binding and in terms of estrogen-regulated reporter gene expression. 

This adds aluminum to the increasing list of metals capable of interfering with estrogen action and termed metallestrogens. Further studies are now needed to identify the molecular basis of this action, the longer term effects of aluminum exposure and whether aluminum can cause aberrations to other signaling pathways in breast cells. 

Given the wide exposure of the human population to antiperspirants, it will be important to establish dermal absorption in the local area of the breast and whether long term low level absorption could play a role in the increasing incidence of breast cancer.


Now, who would you rather believe? The breast cancer foundation who claims that there is no link between aluminum and breast cancer, or other sources that state that aluminum most definitely has an effect on estrogen and as such can cause breast cancer since breast cancer is linked to estrogen.

Personally, I rather don’t take the chance. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

If you cannot do without some form of underarm protection, you might want to look at Ombra, a deodorant manufacturer that uses only natural ingredients in their products and does not include aluminum chlorohydrate.

Other natural forms of protection include baking soda, lemon juice, rubbing alcohol, or making your own. You can read more on the subject at Mother Nature Network at