About-to-Start-Hormones Group

Rachel_BC

Lydia- the emotional stuff is serious.  It can make you make bad decisions, like thinking cancer is not so bad!  Tell the doc.  Maybe you need Effexor.  Maybe you need to take the break from Tamox that some gals here did, 5 weeks off and try again.  

I know, you are sick of docs.  This time you need them.  I know from emotional issues, they are terrifying.  This should not be happening to you, and neither should recurrence.  Tell the doc, make it better.  Let us know?   

Mary22

Lydia, talk to your onc, they can prescribe Effexor, it really worked for me. I was a basket case after I started tamox. It may have been a combination of everything I was going through, but once I started on Effexor XR 75 mg, things were much better.

peeps1111

Unique:

You cracked me up with the "poodle head".  That's what I have too!  It's wiry, curly and unruly and totally white.  I've already had it cut twice but like you, I'm happy to have hair and lots of people tell me how much they like it.

I am taking 10 mgs. of tamoxifen because it has made me an emotional mess. I take 5 mgs. in the morning and 5 at night.  I've gone on and off it several times because it is affecting my quality of life in more ways than that too!  If I have a limited time here, I'm going to live, not just exist.  But that's just me.  My kids are grown and gone so I don't really have anyone dependent on me and they both understand my desire for quality of life. 

Leg cramps are a common side effect especially at night. 

Peeps

Peeps

unique

Hi, Peeps!

I remember you from chemo!!! I think that's where it was.

I haven't had any leg cramps but so far I don't sleep well at night because my right arm aches. It sometimes aches during the day as well.

???

Kind of tired and a bit foggy in the head, but otherwise well!

Springtime

Oh Lydia! Check out with the Doctor? I wonder if walking and exercise would help or no? You need to find some equalibrium for sure. I am sure the stress is no good!!!

Rachel, thanks for the video link. Way to go Cookie Mom! It does make me realize that however sad/mad I am about getting cancer, that I got it as an adult, and it's breast cancer, not brain cancer. That poor little guy. Puts things in perspective! I just can't stand cancer, it makes me want to spit!!! ugh.. kids! ugh.

Annie, I have been reading some lately that SUGAR is the real enemy in our fight with cancer. Some are seriously speculating that this is way more important than fat. I'm cutting down on sugar and use Stevia packets (I find at Wal-Mart near the vitamins) and Agave Nectar (also at our Super Wal-Mart). The Dr. who wrote the Anti-cancer book recommends these. 

1.5 months+ on TAM and so far hot flashes and occasional discharge that seems to come and go... very manageable...

Spring.

Rachel_BC

YAY Springtime- thank you for the Tamox update.  Yeah I feel the same way about kid's cancers.  I am also against sugar.  Have been for a while now, before breast cancer.  Some sugar fun facts:

200 years ago humans did not eat sugar.  

It is one molecule off from cocaine

The sugar industry is a quiet giant, eclipsing oil and gold.  

It's in all kinds of foods where it doesn't belong.  In the US the sugar lobby is so strong that we don't even have sugar in most of the foods, we have corn syrup, which is cheaper for the sugar producers to make, and have a glycemic level through the roof.  Canada has laws against using corn syrup in foods instead of sugar, Candian Coca Cola and Hershey's Chocolates have sugar, but in the US its corn syrup.

As people are becoming educated about sugar, we have started to see commercials on TV that are trying to say that corn syrup isn't bad for you.   

Sugar/Corn Syrup is baaaaad.   

Springtime

Yes, RAchel, I agree. Have you read the "Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life" book? I like that book and it convinced me to try and axe the sugar.

This weekend I made banana breads with Agave nectar (rather than sugar) and applesauce (rather than oil). No sugar, no fat. I added Dates, Walnuts and some Granola, and they are really good!

This all has nothing to do with Tamoxifen or AIs! LOL....

SUGAR IS BAD. 

Spring.

unique

Hi Lovely Springtime and other nice gals on here, Rachel, hi!

I have switched to Stevia for sweetening. I still eat sugar in some foods, or corn syrup rather, but I am trying to get it down. I like a cuppa coffee in the morning and then a decaf later in the day, with HALF AND HALF and one Stevia packet.

Rachel_BC

Spring, I learned about it while trying the Montignac Diet.  Its the original boring tedious version of what's usually called the "French Diet".   It seeks to answer the question, why are the French folks all skinny and have less heart disease while eating all that butter and cheese and drinking all that wine?  

A lot of it is about how Americans have been merchandised and marketed into accepting horrid foodstuffs, and predicting the rampant obesity we now have, as well as our skyrocketing heart disease- thanks to the agrobusiness industries.

Tonight I was so happy I could get back on my elliptical trainer (with my kid strapped on my back) and do my hour workout, as I did before breast cancer.  I save episodes of "The Biggest Loser" and I only allow myself to watch it WHILE I am on the trainer working out.  So this was the first episode of the season, and one of the contestants faints on a treadmill.  In that moment I realized that obesity was a lot like breast cancer as a disease.  These contestants were sitting down with a doctor whose done these tests and scans on them, showing them their enlarged livers - full of fat because there's no more room in the skin to hold the fat- and their lungs shrunk to half their size - because the fat and the liver are taking up all t he space in their body, shoving their lungs up and it's just dawning on them if they don't take on a serious program for the next year of their lives, and continue "treatment" for the rest of their lives, they are going to die- soon.

Their "treatment" is the diet and exercise, separation from their families and homes, pain, hours of working out, facing their fears.

Natch, they had control of some type getting this disease, they could see it coming, and they don't have to have their hair fall out and all the medical torture and the end result is better health and they look better and better each day... but still, I could see some comparison.  They were facing the fact that if they didn't do the hard stuff they were going to die.

Weight is a risk factor for breast cancer.  Fat has estrogen.  I haven't read the Anti Cancer book yet, thanks for the tip.  I just know I have to do what I can to preserve my health.

I am not much of a religious person per se, but when I realized that sugar is never mentioned in the bible, only "manna" and maybe some honey, it blew my mind.  I just assumed humans had always eaten sugar, used it in cakes and sweets.  We are not supposed to be eating sugar.  We are not built to process sugar.  

I am also not a perfectionist by any means.  I cook with a telephone (I live in NYC, I order food from restaurants), I LOVE the ice cream shop and i am addicted to chocolate (but only the dark kind which has less sugar)... but I do choose my foods looking for things like sugar and corn syrup on the label.  The other day I bought Motts Apple Sauce.  Apple Sauce for crying out loud.  Apples are sweet, right?  I took a couple bites and I thought I was going to choke.  My lips felt sticky and almost numb.  Corn Syrup.  In apple sauce?  Calories off the scale.  My head was buzzing from the glycemic "high".  It was revolting.

So you are right, it's got nothing to with this thread on Hormone Therapy, true.  But it does relate to cancer, our health and our self image...  and possibly even to a better ride on Tamoxifen or other hormones, consider also how many of us fear the unexplained weight gain that sometimes happens on Tamoxifen.  Sugar is bad, and has no redeeming value.  Easily replaced.  Try some honey, honey  I also use (real) maple syrup.

Springtime

Rachel,

One thing I learned from the "Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life" book is that Honey and Maple Syrup area also not good for us. He recommendes things that don't cause an insulin spike (which apparently is the first part of the bad sugar chain of events). These things are Agave Nectar and Stevia. I am now growing Stevia! Agave Nectar is like honey, very sweet, and I use it for baking now instead of sugar. 

Just FYI. I am no expert at this, but wanted to mention.

Spring.

unique

Hi gals,

I am the most horrible skeptic. And I'm curious. Sugar is concentrated cane juice. Honey is concentrated flower juice. Corn syrup is concentrated corn juice. Stevia is ... well, what is it again? A natural sweet derivative of yet another plant.

Is there a discussion on exactly what makes all these things different?

Why IS corn syrup worse for our metabolisms than, say, maple syrup? I think that is probably is, but WHY?

Interested in the insulin spike - more on that. Is it the complexity of a molecule, and how long it takes to break down?

unique

Rachel,

I think I'm confusing my son, but the way I proceed is that everything but desserts should really be sugar free. Then we can eat creamy ice cream, the Breyers with the short list of ingredients. But all in proportion, and not eating all our foods with sneaked in things like "concentrated cane juice" etc.

Altho I am finding I'm less achy if I avoid sugar these days.

NancyD

Unique, there is a very interesting, very readable book called The Omnivore's Dilemma.  There's a whole section about the corn industry in America. It isn't that natural corn syrup is worse than sugar. It's that the genetically engineered corn that is used to make corn syrup these days is a horror in our bodies. It's engineered to be disease and bug resistent, and grow in tighter formation so they can get a bigger yield per acre, not to be more nutritious to us. It has an extra carbon molecule that they can track all the way through the food chain.

The book goes on to explore other food chains, and has made me a proponent of sustainable farming methods. If I had a farm, that's what I would try to emulate. As it is, all I can do is support sustainable farmers by buying their products whenever I can.

Rachel_BC

Heya-

I have a saying that I only have so much "RAM" in my head, so when I had my baby it shoved all the previous stuff I knew for work and stuff off my inner hard drive, and now with the breast cancer, it wiped all the baby stuff off... so I'll be damned if I can remember the whole deal with the sugar... but...  

Yes, spring, I did read that honey and maple syrup were not great either

Unique, I got most of this from Dine Out and Lose Weight by Michel Montignac

He explains it all in boooring detail.  It starts from this... if you ate a stick of butter, just the butter by itself, you would not retain the fat from it, your body would use the nutrients and discard the fat.  If you eat a piece of bread (bread that doesn't have sugar in it, bread not made from processed white flour) by itself, again the body would use the nutrients and not store the fat.  But- if you eat them together, the insulin that your body uses to digest the carbohydrates in the bread would also trap the fat from the butter.  This also explains why one person can eat a bag of potato chips and not gain weight, while the person next to them (me) eats one potato chip and gains weight.  The former has a perfectly tuned metabolism that secretes just enough insulin to process the carbohydrate of the potato chip or bread (carbohydrate) *without* also trapping the fat.  Me, I look at a potato chip and my body has already started secreting the insulin.  It traps every bit of the fat and goes to the neighbor's house to trap some more.  OK, I am kidding on that last part but you get the idea.

Its the insulin in our bodies that is trapping the fat we would otherwise be secreting, so the idea is to reduce the insulin running around.  How?  The insulin trigger is the glycemic value of the foodstuffs. Glycemic values may seem foreign to most of us, but that's what diabetics are watching to stay alive and in control of their insulin levels.  It's why they watch sugar intake.

The glycemic value of corn syrup is higher than sugar, and both are higher than the body is meant to process.  Generally (or specifically maybe) the more processed a food is, the higher the glycemic value.  So as I am writing this, I am re-seeing how all makes sense and comes together.  This is why natural and brown breads are better for you than white-flour processed breads.  The more you process it, the less nutritional value it has, and the hugher glycemic value.  This explains why you feel better on the days you avoid sugar.  This explains why obesity is rampant in America- fast foods, highly processed foods, convenience foods... very profitable and tasty... and diabetes and obesity and heart disease skyrocket.

I read this so long ago I just took it as more and more commonly accepted knowledge.  We see now "healthy" options on fast food menus.  Hey, it costs more to keep fresh lettuce on hand than frozen meat.

I don't know what Stevia is, and I am happy to hear its a plant.  Montignac also warns us about nutrisweet- what's that stuff called, all those sweeteners that are also processed stuff.

But you made the best point of all when you said you know you are less achy if you avoid sugar.

So why would you eat it?  Well obviously because it tastes good and its much easier to eat it in foods than try to avoid it, but when you think of it as an addictive substance much like cocaine, you can see how it is that as well.  Cocaine users know they feel better when they don't use coke, but they do anyway.  Life is not as much fun without it they feel.  Just like we might feel that coffee is not as nice without sugar etc.  Once you are used to sugar in your foods its really hard to give it up.

Once you take sugar out of your diet, its really disgusting when it's put back in.  When I have tomato sauce, I want to taste the tomatoes and oregano and stuff, not SUGAR.  Look at the labels of anything you have in your kitchen.  The other night I was making instant pudding, first ingredient SUGAR.  Second ingredient CORN STARCH (another glycemic no-no).  Then finally some cocoa. (It was chocolate of course!).

I agree with you on the Breyers.  And as you can see with my instant pudding I am not a zealot, I do eat some sugar- but I don't add it to anything, I don't even have sugar in the house.  I look, as you do, for the short list of ingredients of recognizable foodstuffs.  I avoid anything that's got corn syrup in it (But I am on a frikin diet that they bring my "healthy, nutritious, fresh balanced etc" food to me in a container each night, and I looked at the ingredients and many many times see corn syrup in there!) and still am surprised when I see something like Mott's apple sauce with frikin corn syrup in there.

When I see corn syrup it says to me that whoever made it was too lazy and cheap to care what I am eating.

And... I lost another 4 pounds.  ::::dancin:::

I don't know if I answered your question but what I think I  got from reading stuff before it fell off my brain is that its about the gylcemic values, and about nutritional values  - like if something has no nutritional value, putting it in my body is a mistake I will pay for in other ways.  And about processing.  I know this also from cooking... the less you do to food, the better.  

And I like actually tasting the taste of my foods, not just the monotonous sugar is everywhere taste.

Now I am going to get on my elliptical trainer and watch TV so I can finish the package of pepperidge farm milano cookies I mostly ate already, and no, I hadn't checked the back o fthe package yet...

Oh and before i let go of Montignac and the French diet, I should say that he does NOT say you should not eat carbohydrates.  That was more Atkins.  If you don't eat carbohydrates, just fat and protein yes its true your body will shed fat but by ketosis- using your kidneys (or is it the liver) to process the food.  This is not a nice thing to do to your body.  Montignac just says to stick to the least processed foods, stay away from high glycemic foods and essentially put 4-6 hours between a carbohydrate meall and a protein meal.  And also he doesn;t want anyone going hungry because that's when your metabolism thinks you are starving and holds on to every precious calorie... when you want to spending them like its a bull market.

Rachel_BC

and what Nancy just said while I was writing my post just adds to the point.

The agrobusinesses are really really scary.  Did anyone see Soylent Green?  

What are we eating and how far is it from the food we are designed to eat?

Also reminds me of the new show, Better Off Ted.  Genetically engineered food, replacing sugar with corn syrup, and then replacing the corn with even more nefarious things so that we are eating even less than the corn syrup!!!!!! 

Mandy1313

This is a little off topic but I noticed several people saying apple sauce has sweeteners. For years I have been buying unsweetend apple sauce. It is delicious.  I do not know why anyone would buy the sweetend variety. While I buy organic, I believe that even motts has an unsweetend version.

M

Rachel_BC

Oh Mandy I am sure you are right, that Motts makes an unsweetened version. I was just surprised as all get out the one I bought that just said "Applesauce" actually had corn syrup!

poolgirl

Thanks guys for all of your input! I feel beter now BUT I have been cutting the Tamox in half and taking 5 MG per day. That is the best I can do until I am healed from the surgery 9 days ago.I will not make my only child have a nightmare of a life to take it.He is just too young to see his Mom crying like that.If I can get used to it I will increase it after 6 weeks. I will be taking evening primrose  and black cohosh to see if I can get enough in my system to help. Otherwise I will try to excercise as soon as I am able. We are installing a reverse osmosis water filter with activated carbon to eliminate chemicals. I am 100% switched to organic and off of sugar as well. I use Stevia drops and Agave nectar as well. If worse comes to worse I will go without the Tamoxifen.

I am glad you are doing so well Spring! Keep us posted!

unique

Hi Rachel -

I saved your thoughts to read them again later. It makes sense about glycemic value, I guess, will think about that. Mott's Natural Applesauce (bit of brown on the label) has nothing but apples and water in it. That's what I always buy - it was my hubby's fav, he had hypoglycemia and ate no sugar, not even in bread. That was a pain in the ass! But he would get dizzy and pass out if things too sweet, even too many raisins.

I like my food natural but sometimes have trouble finding time for that. I like real maple syrup! Altho that is expensive. Have it maybe once a month. I like real butter, too. As it happens, many margarines were worst for us than butter.

Rachel_BC

Agreed Annie, on all points. (Oh and I checked, my milanos don't have corn syrup- yay!)

Lydia, I had a bit of a panic yesterday because our situations are similar and I asked for some studies and saw all this frightening stuff about reported side effects from Tamoxifen.  What you describe is my worst fear.  But as I kept searching I ended up here:

The Breast Cancer Prevention Trial (BCPT)  - National Cancer Institute

I was looking for the Susan Love report mentioned in the Buchholtz article posted here long ago. 

The thing about both of these reports is that they had a control group on placebos reporting their "side effects" as well.  The critical point for me is that the side effects reported by both groups, the women taking the Tamoxifen as well as the women who were taking the placebo were the same.

On the BCPT study, not only were there 13000 women participating, instead of the 140 cited in Buchholz, but also there were followup studies specifically about the side effects.  They used a big pool of women who had no previous issues with depression.

The results and also all the followup studies are on this page

Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial to Determine the Worth of Tamoxifen for Preventing Breast Cancer 

And these are some of the specific follow up studies: 

Day R; National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Projet P-1 study (NSABP-1).: Quality of life and tamoxifen in a breast cancer prevention trial: a summary of findings from the NSABP P-1 study. National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project. Ann N Y Acad Sci 949: 143-50, 2001.

Day R, Ganz PA, Costantino JP, et al.: Health-related quality of life and tamoxifen in breast cancer prevention: a report from the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project P-1 Study. J Clin Oncol 17 (9): 2659-69, 1999

Ganz PA, Day R, Ware JE Jr, et al.: Base-line quality-of-life assessment in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project Breast Cancer Prevention Trial. J Natl Cancer Inst 87 (18): 1372-82, 1995

Day R, Ganz PA, Costantino JP: Tamoxifen and depression: more evidence from the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project's Breast Cancer Prevention (P-1) Randomized Study. J Natl Cancer Inst 93 (21): 1615-23, 2001 

What I get from this is that

- symptoms/side effects about 98% of the time are the same thing we'd have on placebo.  Whether that means it's all based on our fears or we're just getting older, I don't know.

- depression is pretty unusal, almost rare, as a symptom either of Tamoxifen or placebo

- when there is depression, its usually in people who are high risk for depression, because of all the other crapola going on

- there is a cousin drug to Tamoxifen,(not the AIs, but I can't remember the name and there might be two of them), that may be a better fit for some people 

From what you have written, I am thinking for one thing, why are you taking Tamoxifen when you are also going through so much other crapola?  You are like me (and the women in the study), taking Tamoxifen as a preventative, not as a treatment for an existing cancer.  My onc said one thing at a time, and I wanted this summer off because I would rather have the hot flashes in the winter, so I am starting in September.

I hope you don't mind me asking - and it's none of my business but if it helps... you are listed as both DCIS and Stage I.  I was there too, because they thought it was DCIS but after surgery they discovered it was invasive.  Stage I means invasive (just means the cancer broke through the duct wall, as opposed to sitting in the milk duct alone).  

We all have a limit to how much of the details we can handle, so it's understandable if you have tuned out on a lot of this.  

One more thing, I found an answer to this specific question on Susan Love's site:

I am being treated for DCIS. My doctor has told me that I should take tamoxifen for five years. I am worried about the side effects associated with it. Do you recommend that I take it? 

Springtime

Hi Unique,

Something about an insulin reaction and the glycemic index of stevia and agave vs other sweeteners. Did you ever check out "Anti-Cancer, A New Way of Life" book? He explains it in there. I wish I understood it all better, I really do...

Spring.

Springtime

Oh, and if we exercise, it also burns off "glucose" (I sense from Glycemic index, aka sugar sort of thing) so exercise is good and low glycemic index good. Apparently, this all feeds cancer?

There are many who are now speculating that the sugar connection to cancer may be way more important that the "fat" connection. 

Did I already say that!? Sorry if I am repeating! 

Have a gr8 wkend lovelies! 

Spring.

Kleenex

I could believe that sugar is a contributor to cancer - I'm not overweight, but I do regularly have things like those flavored coffee creamers and candy bars, etc...

I noticed the applesauce thing when I tried to take my children from baby food to "normal" food. Most canned fruit has a TON of sugar, not just the applesauce. The scariest stuff to me is the collection of freaky applesauces in bright colors with tons of sugar marketed to kids. There's a Mott's product called Healthy Harvest or something similar that is great - JUST fruits, blended with apples. Definitely sweet enough.

The other diet nightmare that's kind of subtle is sodium. It's in EVERYTHING - lots of canned vegetables and soups and chilis and spaghetti sauce and those foil packets of tuna. It's bad for your blood pressure.

Fast Food Nation and Fatland were two other books that are very enlightening about the American diet, and what's happened to it as a result of all the big food companies.

I will get a copy of "Anti-Cancer" - sounds like a good read! Thank you for mentioning it!

5 1/2 months into Tamoxifen - the hot flashes tapered off a TON this week, but perhaps that was the fabulous weather. Once the heat kicks in, I'm toast. Literally.

Rachel_BC

I know zero about sugar regarding cancer.  If y'all read Cancer Vixen she has this one comic of a cancer game set up like a monopoly board, trying to guess what we did that caused our cancer.  When I see kids with cancer, I know it's nothing we've done, it's nothing they've done.  There's a 10 year old with breast cancer on another thread here, (she's been on GMA and all over now), and there's nothing she did I am sure to cause her breast cancer.  One of my favorite books, Five Lessons I Didn't Learn From Breast Cancer goes into historical cancer, going back to accounts from the 1400s I think, where the misnomer "Cancer" was coined.  It was named for the crab-shaped tumors that they would see, as if they were crabs under the skin.

Yesterday I found myself wondering if the marshmallows I roasted- actually I let them get set on fire since i couldn't  wait for them to brown, and they so often caught fire or fell into the coals anyway- were the carcinogens that got into my body and caused the cancer...

Red meat, soy, not soy, processed soy, not processed soy, underwire bras, plastic bottles, standing too close to the microwave, estrogen from fat, sugar, cyclamates, nutrisweet, birth control pills, HRT, hormone creams... reminds me of the scene in Sex in the City when Sam goes to the breast cancer doc thinking they will blame her cancer on her not having kids and settling down, and sits next to a nun... that same book, Five Lessons etc, mentions historically breast cancer was known as "Nun's Disease"... sex, no sex, kids, no kids, aughaughaughaughaughaugh... my own hellish version of the Andromeda Strain.  It's kinda like after 9/11 I saw Osama Bin Laden everywhere, now I find my mind drifting to maybe it's this, maybe it's that that causes breast cancer... and my neighbor the surgeon was just diagnosed, and then I open the paper and see Phil Mickelson's wife was just diagnosed...

I posted a list of celebrities with breast cancer somewhere , probably March RADS, and saw Gloria Steinem on the list with Nancy Reagan... and Richard Roundtree... come on come on come on!!!!!!  Marianne Faithfull and Betty Ford... My BS office waiting room was all Jews and Nuns... an Asian woman walked in and I thought she had the wrong room... my surgeon friend is a black woman, so is my friend the gym trainer, both of them are very fit.. they are not supposed to have breast cancer...

Sorry for the rant... the point of all this is that I don't know what causes breast cancer so I am just going to do what i can to stay healthy as possible.  I also am avoiding soy specifically regarding breast cancer because they just don't know yet if it does promote breast cancer, and all I know is when I happened to be eating a whole bunch of soy, the "good kind" in soy milk, I got my first cyst and the radiologist said the soy was why. (6 months later I had breast cancer 1.6 cm).  I don't eat sugar because its got no nutritional value and the stuff I wrote above.  I also dont eat salt, and am especially avoiding it now because my GP thinks it will make me retain water weight when I start Tamoxifen.  That is, I don't ADD salt or sugar, and I check labels.  I don't eat the obvious... salty snacks... candy...

I don't know if it will help me avoid breast cancer, but I know it's good for me and makes me feel good.  And I am losing weight  best I can do.

LOL Kleenex, at toast. 

BooBee

I cheeted and copied this from my web site. 

For sale

Hormone Suppressors:  FDA approved to make you cry like a girl, sweat like a pig, throw flames out of every pore located in your upper torso and send you running for the closest koi pond to douse the fire at the most inopportune times.

Don't take this if your pregnant, nursing, married, experience psychotic tendencies, multiple personalities, frequent outbursts of tears over McDonalds commercials or Hallmark cards and for God sake don't  take the antidepressants you've taken for 20+ years that have successfully prevented you from tossing your screaming children out the car window at 60 MPH.

May cause vaginal atrophy......  (What the hell is that?  No, never mind, don't tell me I don't want to know.)

Discontinue immediately if you're experiencing any of the following: shortness of breath, drowning in your own bed, unexplained desire to rip the head off of the shoulders of anyone that dares to cross your path.

Any takers?

****************************

Most women have the opportunity to slowly acclimate into menopause but when your hormones act as fuel for cancer it's time for them to go. 

For the most part I've been happy with God's choice of my sex but now I'm rethinking my reincarnation preference.  Guys, you have lucked out yet again.  You've missed out on the pleasures of child birth, cramps, bloating, difficult to achieve orgasms, and now hot flashes.  Some women equate this strange phenomenon to being cooked in an oven but I say the heat comes from within; much like being cooked in a microwave on the popcorn setting.  Can you believe we had to fight for the opportunity to vote less than a century ago yet we get more than our share of the nasty stuff that life has to offer?  Shocking.  Just shocking. 

Makratz

LOL, Renee,  so true! Thanks for sharing!

Rachel_BC

This article was in the paper this week:

 THE END OF OVEREATING: SCARY FINDINGS REVEAL WHY PROCESSED FOOD TASTES SO GOOD

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

Posted: 3:16 am
May 24, 2009

A middle-aged woman who weighs about 180 pounds sits at Chili's Bar & Grill in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, shoveling in a massive platter of Southwestern Eggrolls.

Every time she downs one of the crispy brown treats, she first dunks it in the creamy avocado sauce served with the appetizer.

Unbeknownst to her, she's being watched by one of the nation's premier medical researchers: Dr. David Kessler, former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Kessler, who earned the reputation as a crusader at the FDA for his dogged attempts to regulate the tobacco business, has now turned his laser eye on food industry practices in his latest book.

Months of 3 a.m. dumpster diving at Chili's and other fast-food restaurants gave Kessler a complete list of the ingredients contained in innocuous sounding snacks.

The tortilla wrap used for Chili's Southwestern Eggrolls, for example, has been deep-fried -- driving the water content down to about 5% from 40%, and replacing it with tasty fat.

The chicken filling was chopped up at a food processing plant, mashed into a meat-loaf like shape, and bulked up with starchy binders like autolyzed yeast extract, sodium phosphate, and soy protein concentrate.

It was probably pre-fried, Kessler says, then frozen -- after getting a chemical bath to give it the smoky, BBQ-like flavor that appeals to customers.

The tiny rolls also contain eight types of salt and five types of sweeteners. They've been specifically engineered, Kessler writes, to deliver three things the majority of Americans have come to crave: high fat, high salt, and lots of sugar.

Add to that the industry practice of pre-processing products to cut down the need for customers to chew -- yes, that's right, chew -- and you end up with a plate of fat-enhanced food that customers can throw down with minimal effort.

"When you are eating these things, you've had 500, 600, 800, 900 calories before you know it," a food industry source tells Kessler.

As the book dissects the post-WWII practices used to make the cheap, plentiful and satiating fast food that's come to characterize classic American cuisine, Kessler draws link after link to the nation's exploding obesity problem.

But crusading Kessler doesn't stop there. Driven in part by his own weight problem, the Harvard-trained scientist explores why some Americans -- apparently wired with extra sensitivity to certain stimuli -- can't break free from the cue-and-reward cycle created by the ubiquitous presence of highly palatable foods. Through no fault of our own, some of us are destined go through life like Pavlov's dogs -- stimulated to eat whenever a particular food rings our bell, Kessler says.

But losing the battle of the bulge is not inevitable, Kessler argues. With cognitive and behavioral training -- laid out in easy steps in the final chapters -- it is possible to change the brain's voracious response to processed junk.

And if Kessler's encouraging words don't prod Americans into new habits, the shock therapy of learning what we're really consuming likely will.

The End of Overeating

Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

By David Kessler

Rodale Press 

knowledgeforpower

Well, I popped my first Aromasin this morning.  Any thoughts on how soon side effects can occur.  My biggest side effect is I met my dedutible for my prescrption insurance due to all the prescriptions during chemo and I have to pay $901 for a three month supply.  Anyone have suggestions for a good place to buy if cheaper??????

Rachel_BC

At first it sounded more like you had just taken your first tab of acid....

Damn the cost. Damn. 

Makratz

Know, how about walmart or the like.  Many pharmacys now have small copays for hundreds of rx's.  If not, how about appealing to your insurance company or the drug manufacturer itself.  Good luck.  BTW, it did sound like you were popping acid!!  Funny!