Soy tied to better lung cancer survival among women

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Women with lung cancer who ate the most soy before their diagnosis might live a little longer than those who ate the least, according to a new study.

Of 444 Chinese women with lung cancer, researchers found those who consumed the most soy milk, tofu and similar products were 7 to 8 percent less likely to die over a 13-year period, compared to women who ate an average amount of soy.

"To our knowledge this is the first study to suggest this association. Although this finding is promising, it would be premature to make any recommendation based on the findings of a single study," said Dr. Gong Yang, the study's lead author from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

Another study from Yang's group published last year found women who ate the most soy were less likely to develop lung cancer in the first place.

"Based on that study, we hypothesized people with a history of eating a lot of soy food - if they're diagnosed with lung cancer, their lung cancer would be less aggressive," he said.

Laboratory and animal research has also suggested phytoestrogens - plant-based estrogens similar to those produced by women's ovaries, which are present in soy - can prevent tumor cells from spreading.

According to the researchers, only 15 percent of U.S. women who develop lung cancer are still alive five years after their diagnosis. So any improvement in survival could be meaningful.

For the new study, the researchers used information from the Shanghai Women's Health Study, which began in 1997 and surveys 75,000 women every two to three years.

Between 1997 and 2010, 444 women in the study developed lung cancer, and 318 of them died. They were - on average - 66 years old at diagnosis, and 92 percent of them had never smoked.

Before the women were diagnosed, they had eaten an average of 16 grams of soy from food each day, according to diet questionnaires.

The researchers found women who consumed more than that - 21 to 31 g of soy per day - were about seven to 8 percent less likely to die during the study, compared to women who ate 16 g daily.

On the other hand, women who only ate about 6 g of soy per day were over 40 percent more likely to die during that time.

"This longitudinal follow-up study provides the first evidence that soy food consumption before cancer diagnosis may favorably affect clinical outcomes of lung cancer in women," the researchers wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on Monday.

But Matthew Schabath, a lung cancer researcher who was not involved with the new study, stressed that it can't prove eating soy prevents people with lung cancer from dying.

For example, Schabath, from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, told Reuters Health women who eat a lot of soy may be in better health to begin with, and would be expected to live longer than women in poorer health.

Researchers also said more studies on soy and lung cancer are needed to confirm the findings.

"We need to take it with a grain of salt until this data is validated in clinic trials," Schabath said.

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A BETTER CONDOM? Gates Hopes Mixing Biz + Pleasure = Safer Sex

Published March 25, 2013

FoxNews.com

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Philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates is offering start-up funds of $100,000 to anyone who can come up with the “next-generation condom,” according to Grand Challenges in Global Health.

The Round 11 of Grand Challenges Explorations initiative through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is aimed at improving the lives of the world’s poorest people – and a new, innovative condom could do just that.

The condom must be effective at lowering the chance of transmitting sexually transmitted diseases, and offer incentive for men and women to use it.

If chosen, the Foundation would continue to fund the condom up to $1 million. 

“To overcome persistent health and development problems, we need new, game-changing ideas,” Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery & Translational Science at the Foundation, said in a press release.  “Inspiration can come from anywhere, and we are hopeful that this new round of Grand Challenges Explorations will uncover innovative approaches to improve lives around the world.”

According to the press release, the new condom will “preserve or enhance the pleasure so as to increase uptake and also promote its regular use.”

The proposals must have a “testable hypothesis . . . an associated plan for how the idea would be validated . . . and would yield . . .an unambiguous data plan in Phase I, to be considered for Phase II.”

Of course, the condom should also be easy to use and include ground-breaking design.

Click for more from Grand Challenges in Global Health or to submit your idea online.

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IRAQ, 10 YEARS LATER: Opinion: World Is Better Without Saddam Hussein

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    Firing the first shots in the Iraq War

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    How SEALs helped changed the momentum in Iraq

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    Sen. McCain on Iraq: We won the conflict, lost the war

The world is better off without Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq, and the alternative to what we did wasn’t to do nothing. While the extensive investigation by the Iraq Survey Group did not find the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that U.S. (and British and French and other) intelligence services expected we would find, it did confirm that Saddam hadn’t given up on his pursuit of weapons. He fully intended to restart the programs, through which he had produced chemical and biological weapons and pursued nuclear weapons in the past, as soon as sanctions were lifted.

As a strictly military matter, if the war in Iraq had actually ended when we got to Baghdad, it would have been counted an historic victory, akin to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s daring amphibious landing at Inchon in the rear of the invading North Korean army in 1950 during the Korean War.

Also like Inchon, however, the arrival of coalition forces in Baghdad turned out to be not the end but more nearly the beginning of the real war. In the case of Korea, it was China’s entry into the war. In the case of Iraq it was the insurgency, although many saw it as simply “post-conflict” chaos, a result of our having “broken” Iraq.

The principal reason why the war in Iraq proved so difficult and lasted so long is that it took so long to develop a counterinsurgency strategy.

The principal reason why the war in Iraq proved so difficult and lasted so long is that it took so long to develop a counterinsurgency strategy. The essence of such a strategy is that protecting the population must be the primary focus of the effort, not just killing or capturing the enemy. Because confronting insurgents is so dangerous, particularly for unarmed civilians, U.S. forces need to attend to the security of the population if they want to gain their cooperation and obtain essential intelligence.

Eventually, in 2007, the U.S. did implement a counter-insurgency strategy which became known as “the surge.” While a counter-insurgency strategy required more troops – roughly 30,000 to reach a peak of 170,000, the surge wasn’t primarily about adding more troops. The new strategy was primarily about using those forces in a different way.

If it is surprising that it took the U.S. four years to begin to pursue a counter-insurgency strategy, it is even more surprising that the new strategy produced such dramatic results so quickly. And it did so despite the growth in the insurgency and despite the sectarian violence that had begun to spin out of control after the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006.

Such a rapid reversal is almost unprecedented in the history of guerilla warfare and probably several different factors help to explain it. But the speed with which things turned around in Iraq, even after reaching such a low point, gives an idea of how different things might have been if the U.S. had been pursuing a counter-insurgency strategy from the outset. Those four years of delay cost lives and treasure and lost opportunities.

No matter how much we wish to avoid it, we may have to confront insurgents again someday. If so, we should not have to relearn the lessons acquired at such cost from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paul Wolfowitz, now an American Enterprise Institute scholar, was U.S. deputy secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005.

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Embedded in Iraq as the war began -- the most challenging assignment of my career

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Justin Bieber 'gettin better': Who had the scariest onstage collapse?

Justin Bieber is "gettin better" after collapsing backstage during a London show on Thursday, according to a note the 19-year-old pop star posted to his Instagram account (along with a shirtless pic).

And while his Friday show at The O2 is set to go on as scheduled (the Biebs is just a little "under the weather," a spokeswoman told the AP), he is far from the only celeb to pass out in the middle of a performance. Just last week, One Direction singer Harry Styles collapsed in pain when a fan threw a shoe at his nether regions during a show in Scotland. 

SODAHEAD SLIDESHOW: See the scariest onstage collapses.

Last month, goth rocker Marilyn Manson keeled over onstage in Canada while suffering from the flu. And the tradition goes back decades. In 1973, The Who's Keith Moon passed out onstage during "Won't Get Fooled Again" and again during "Magic Bus." Guitarist Pete Townshend famously asked the audience, "Can anyone play the drums? I mean somebody good."

In 2008, Rihanna nearly collapsed onstage during a Sydney performance of "Umbrella" with her now on-again boyfriend Chris Brown. And in 2010, Lady Gaga seemed on the verge of passing out during a performance of "Bad Romance" in New Zealand.

PHOTOS: See the latest celebrity pictures to hit the Internet.

From Bieber to Bret Michaels, let us know: Who had the scariest onstage collapse?

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Is Greek yogurt really better for you than regular yogurt?

It seems many people are “going Greek” these days – at least when it comes to yogurt.

We got this question from a viewer:

Dear Dr. Manny,
Is Greek yogurt really healthier than regular yogurt?
Thanks, Allison

Greek yogurt usually has more protein than regular yogurt, but that doesn’t always mean it’s more healthy – some kinds contain a lot of sugar and fat. So it’s important to always check labels and compare if you have insulin sensitivity or need to control your sugar intake.  

But, according to New York-based registered dietician and author of Tanya Zuckerbrot, Greek yogurt does tend to have less sugar than other yogurts because during the straining process, whey and lactose are removed.

“The other benefit is that Greek yogurt does have twice the amount of protein per 6 ounces than typical yogurt,” Zuckerbrot told FoxNews.com.  “Six ounces of Greek yogurt contains 18 grams of protein – which is equivalent to 2 to 3 ounces of protein found in a chicken breast.”

Zuckerbrot also noted that conventional yogurt may not just have more sugar, but also more sodium.

“Greek yogurt tends to have less than 50 milligrams of sodium – which can help reduce your risk for hypertension,” she added.         

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