Pancreatic Quotes

What struck me on the beach–and it struck me indeed, so that I staggered as at a blow–was that if the Eternal Principle had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there, then it might rest in everything, in every thorn in every bush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

One of us could always get pancreatic cancer,” you said pleasantly.

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene deceased To Ray deceased To Francy permanent psychosis To Kathy permanent brain damage To Jim deceased To Val massive permanent brain damage To Nancy permanent psychosis To Joanne permanent brain damage To Maren deceased To Nick deceased To Terry deceased To Dennis deceased To Phil permanent pancreatic damage To Sue permanent vascular damage To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.

It was incredible, the way that people kept on going, whether they were dying of pancreatic cancer or drug addiction or the apocalypse itself.

What struck me on the beach and it struck me indeed, so that I staggered as at a blow—was that if the Eternal Principle had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there, then it might rest in anything, and in fact probably did rest in everything, in every thorn on every bush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

The Pancreator is infinitely far from us," the angel said. "And thus infinitely far from me, through I fly so much higher than you. I guess at his desires--no one can do otherwise.

I have acute pancreatitis." "I thought it was just average looking.

Who cared? She was going to meet Tom Benton and convince him to take her on. Pancreatic cancer, I’m coming for you.

Raskin died of pancreatic cancer in 2005, not long after Jobs was diagnosed with the disease.

Lee was my father’s lawyer, a mensch. But he’s been very sick. Cancer. Pancreatic.” “That’s one of the worst. A killer.” “Yes, the ones that kill you are definitely the worst. [...]

I think I have found a set of biomarkers. Not from tissue biopsy—blood biomarkers. Noninvasive, easy to obtain. Cheap. In mice they can detect pancreatic cancer as early as stage one.

She remembered walking back from there last month, half-drunk with a gaggle of half-friends from her dorm, and when one of them asked her (only half-giving a shit) where she’d planned to go for Christmas break, Darby had answered bluntly: that it would require an act of God Himself to make her come back home to Utah. And apparently He’d been listening, because He’d blessed Darby’s mother with late-stage pancreatic cancer.

Mutations litter the chromosomes. In individual specimens of breast and colon cancer, between fifty to eighty genes are mutated; in pancreatic cancers, about fifty to sixty. Even brain cancers, which often develop at earlier ages and hence may be expected to accumulate fewer mutations, possess about forty to fifty mutated genes. Only a few cancers are notable exceptions to this rule, possessing relatively few mutations across the genome. One of these is an old culprit, acute lymphoblastic leukemia: only five or ten genetic alterations cross its otherwise pristine genomic landscape.* Indeed, the relative paucity of genetic aberrancy in this leukemia may be one reason that this tumor is so easily felled by cytotoxic chemotherapy. Scientists speculate that genetically simple tumors (i.e., those carrying few mutations) might inherently be more susceptible to drugs, and thus intrinsically more curable. If so, the strange discrepancy between the success of high-dose chemotherapy in curing leukemia and its failure to cure most other cancers has a deep biological explanation. The search for a “universal cure” for cancer was predicated on a tumor that, genetically speaking, is far from universal. In

The Human Genome Project, the full sequence of the normal human genome, was completed in 2003. In its wake comes a far less publicized but vastly more complex project: fully sequencing the genomes of several human cancer cells. Once completed, this effort, called the Cancer Genome Atlas, will dwarf the Human Genome Project in its scope. The sequencing effort involves dozens of teams of researchers across the world. The initial list of cancers to be sequenced includes brain, lung, pancreatic, and ovarian cancer. The Human Genome Project will provide the normal genome, against which cancer’s abnormal genome can be juxtaposed and contrasted. The result, as Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project describes it, will be a “colossal atlas” of cancer—a compendium of every gene mutated in the most common forms of cancer: “When applied to the 50 most common types of cancer, this effort could ultimately prove to be the equivalent of more than 10,000 Human Genome Projects in terms of the sheer volume of DNA to be sequenced.

In the absence of better information we can only hypothesize that many diseases such as multiple sclerosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and pancreatic cancer, as well as afflictions such as generalized lower back pain, are cases of evolutionary mismatch.

Which is something to be thankful for,” says Danielle Reed, Rawson’s former colleague at Monell. Otherwise you’d be tasting things like bile and pancreatic enzymes. (Intestinal taste receptors are thought to trigger hormonal responses to molecules, such as salt and sugar, and defensive reactions—vomiting, diarrhea—to dangerous bitter items.)

Obsession is a pair of blinders, and Beaumont wore his tightly. He far overstated the role of gastric acid, ignoring the digestive contributions of pepsin and of pancreatic enzymes introduced in the small intestine. As is regularly evidenced by tens of thousands of gastric reflux sufferers—their acid production pharmaceutically curtailed—humans can get by with very little gastric acid. The acid’s main duty, in fact, is to kill bacteria—a fact that never occurred to Beaumont. What, for all his decades of experimenting, did he teach us? That digestion is chemical, not mechanical—but European experimenters, using animals, had shown this to be true two centuries earlier. That protein is easier to digest than vegetable matter. That gastric juices don’t require the “vital forces” of the body. Not, in short, all that much.

And I was – still am – in a state of permanent terror that the pancreatitis may return. I still have nightmares about hospital and it is two years since my last admission. Those nights in A&E haunt me, and will probably do so forever, with their brutality and pain. No wonder I took a bit more, then a bit more, until it all spiralled out of control. No wonder I tried to run from those damaging memories into the arms of mother opiate. Charlie

doubled your odds of getting pancreatic cancer.89 What about people who eat chicken? The largest study to ever address that question is the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which followed 477,000 people for about a decade. The researchers found a 72 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer for every fifty grams of chicken consumed daily.90 And that’s not much meat, under two ounces—just about a quarter of a chicken breast.

[Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, the former women's rights advocate, made sure the nation knew she was there, even if alone. When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in February 2009, Ginsburg was recovering from pancreatic cancer and chemotherapy treatments, but she dragged herself to the evening event and sat with her brethren. She said she wanted to make sure that people watching the nationally televised address saw that the Supreme Court had at least one woman.

It’s unnecessary and undesirable to limit our readings to medically related texts (she notes that when reading Ivan Ilyich doctors get bogged down arguing about whether the title character of Tolstoy’s novella had gastric cancer or pancreatic cancer, missing the point entirely); that literature helps dismantle the “hidden curriculum,” the teaching that our patients are somehow fundamentally different from us and we from them; that immersing ourselves in imaginary worlds populated by imaginary people and investing emotionally in their problems is excellent training for empathy.

For all malignant cancers, both fish eaters and vegetarians and vegans combined had significantly lower mortality than regular meat eaters [HR: 0.76 (95% CI: 0.63, 0.91) and HR: 0.82 (95% CI: 0.72, 0.94), respectively]. Vegetarians and vegans combined also had significantly lower mortality than did regular meat eaters for pancreatic cancer [HR: 0.47 (95% CI: 0.26, 0.86); P-heterogeneity = 0.065] and cancers of the lymphatic/hematopoietic tissue [HR: 0.43 (95% CI: 0.27, 0.70)], and low meat eaters had significantly lower respiratory disease mortality than regular meat eaters [HR: 0.69 (95% CI: 0.49, 0.97); P-heterogeneity = 0.14].

In 2006, the Vogelstein team revealed the first landmark sequencing effort by analyzing thirteen thousand genes in eleven breast and colon cancers. (Although the human genome contains about twenty thousand genes in total, Vogelstein’s team initially had tools to assess only thirteen thousand.) In 2008, both Vogelstein’s group and the Cancer Genome Atlas consortium extended this effort by sequencing hundreds of genes of several dozen specimens of brain tumors. As of 2009, the genomes of ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, and several forms of leukemia have been sequenced, revealing the full catalog of mutations in each tumor type. Perhaps

While some methods of calculation find that cancer and its patients take up too many resources, from another angle, cancer patients are cash cows. Each cancer patient generates millions of dollars in revenues. If one wonders why we would extend the life of a pancreatic patient for a dozen days with a $16,000 drug, let’s remember that this money does not evaporate after twelve days; it continues to circulate in stock prices, salaries, and smaller crumbs of an infinitely profitable cancer pie. Just as the demon of communism justified the proliferation of a lucrative nuclear industry, so cancer fills the core of so many economies that if a cure were to be found, the economy might just crash.

The salicylic acid content in plants may help explain why traditional, plant-based diets were so protective. For instance, before their diets were Westernized, animal products made up only about 5 percent of the average Japanese diet.72 During this period in the 1950s, age-adjusted death rates from colon, prostate, breast, and ovarian cancers were five to ten times lower in Japan than in the United States, while incidences of pancreatic cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma were three to four times lower. This phenomenon was not unique to the Japanese. As we’ve seen throughout this book, Western rates of cancers and heart disease have been found to be dramatically lower among populations whose diets are centered around plant foods.73

One of the four genes used by Yamanaka to reverse cellular fate is called c-myc. Myc, the rejuvenating factor, is no ordinary gene: it is one of the most forceful regulators of cell growth and metabolism known in biology. Activated abnormally, it can certainly coax an adult cell back into an embryo-like state, thereby enabling Yamanaka's cell-fate reversal experiment (this function requires the collaboration of the three other genes found by Yamanaka). But myc is also one of the most potent cancer-causing genes known in biology; it is also activated in leukemias and lymphomas, and in pancreatic, gastric, and uterine cancer. As in some ancient moral fable, the quest for eternal youthfulness appears to come at a terrifying collateral cost. The very genes that enable a cell to peel away mortality and age can also tip its fate toward malignant immortality, perpetual growth, and agelessness-the hallmarks of cancer.

to an AirPort Express in his hospital room, announcing his surgery. He assured them that the type of pancreatic cancer he had “represents about 1% of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year, and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was).” He said he would not require chemotherapy or radiation treatment, and he planned to return to work in September. “While I’m out, I’ve asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, so we shouldn’t miss a beat. I’m sure I’ll be calling some of you way too much in August, and I look forward to seeing you in September.” One side effect of the operation would become a problem for Jobs because of his obsessive diets and the weird routines of purging and fasting that he had practiced since he was a teenager. Because the pancreas provides the enzymes that allow the stomach to digest food and absorb nutrients, removing part of the organ makes it hard to get enough protein. Patients are advised to make sure that they eat frequent meals and maintain a nutritious diet, with a wide variety of meat and fish proteins as well as full-fat milk products. Jobs had never done this, and he never would.

Broadly speaking, components of processed foods and animal products, such as saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, were found to be pro-inflammatory, while constituents of whole plant foods, such as fiber and phytonutrients, were strongly anti-inflammatory.938 No surprise, then, that the Standard American Diet rates as pro-inflammatory and has the elevated disease rates to show for it. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease939 and lower kidney,940 lung,941 and liver function.942 Those eating diets rated as more inflammatory also experienced faster cellular aging.943,944 In the elderly, pro-inflammatory diets are associated with impaired memory945 and increased frailty.946 Inflammatory diets are also associated with worse mental health, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and impaired well-being.947 Additionally, eating more pro-inflammatory foods has been tied to higher prostate cancer risk in men948,949,950 and higher risks of breast cancer,951,952 endometrial cancer,953 ovarian cancer,954 and miscarriages in women. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are also associated with more risk of esophageal,955 stomach,956 liver,957 pancreatic,958 colorectal,959 kidney,960 and bladder961 cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.962 Overall, eating a more inflammatory diet was associated with 75 percent increased odds of having cancer and 67 percent increased risk of dying from cancer.963 Not surprisingly, those eating more anti-inflammatory diets appear to live longer lives.964,965,966,967 But how does the Dietary Inflammatory Index impact body weight? Obesity and Inflammation:

there were also intellectual reasons to investigate and try to understand his cancer. Steve’s particular kind of tumor is a rare one. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), only about one thousand cases a year are discovered in the United States. As a result, research on pancreatic islet cell neuroendocrine carcinomas is not buttressed by the kind of massive database available to doctors studying breast or lung cancer, to cite two more common forms, or even other forms of cancer of the pancreas. (His own oncologist/surgeon admitted to me privately that not enough was known at that time to determine statistically what the best treatment should be—surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, something else, or a combination of treatments.) So Steve’s indecision about what to do was not completely off-base.

Like many other people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat pain. But multiple studies find otherwise. In one, researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or end-stage congestive heart failure. For the patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, or colon cancer, the researchers found no difference in survival time between those who went into hospice and those who didn’t. And curiously, for some conditions, hospice care seemed to extend survival. Those with pancreatic cancer gained an average of three weeks, those with lung cancer gained six weeks, and those with congestive heart failure gained three months.

Cruciferous vegetables are twice as powerful as other plant foods. In population studies, a 20 percent increase in plant food intake generally corresponds to a 20 percent decrease in cancer rates, but a 20 percent increase in cruciferous vegetable intake corresponds to a 40 percent decrease in cancer rates.8 • Twenty-eight servings of vegetables per week decreases prostate cancer risk by 33 percent, but just three servings of cruciferous vegetables per week decreases prostate cancer risk by 41 percent.9 • One or more servings of cabbage per week reduces the occurrence of pancreatic cancer by 38 percent.

Every year pancreatic cancer kills more than 35,000 people in America—it’s the fourth leading cause of cancer death.

In early primates, we can pinpoint a particular ERV integration event into the locus of the pancreatic amylase gene that conferred upon our ancestors the ability to express their amylase genes in the salivary gland. This heritable change provided for tissue-specific expression of the gene and gave us our sweet tooth. Here, the introduction of new gene regulatory DNA sequences close to the transcriptional start site of the amylase gene allowed salivary secretion of amylase. The resulting phenotype must have offered advantages to primates as they developed a diet containing more complex carbohydrates.

vegetarians and vegans had significantly lower mortality than regular meat eaters for pancreatic cancer and digestive diseases, and fish eaters had significantly lower colorectal cancer mortality than regular meat eaters (Supplemental Table 2). Further adjustment for BMI left these associations largely unchanged.

For specific causes of death, compared with regular meat eaters, low meat eaters had ~30–45% lower mortality from pancreatic cancer, respiratory disease, and all other causes of death, fish eaters had ~20% lower mortality from malignant cancer and ~20% higher circulatory disease mortality, and vegetarians and vegans had ~50% lower mortality from pancreatic cancer and cancers of the lymphatic/ hematopoietic tissue. These findings were essentially unchanged on further adjustment for BMI, and generally were robust across categories of sex, smoking, and BMI for the 6 most common causes of death.

One or more servings of cabbage per week reduces the occurrence of pancreatic cancer by 38 percent.

Surely the Pancreator knows all mysteries. He spoke the long word that is our Universe and few things happen that are not part of that word.

COMPOUNDS THAT STIMULATE TH-1143 144 (These dampen a TH-2 dominance and will worsen the autoimmune condition of a TH-1 dominant person): Astragalus145 Echinacea146 Beta-glucan mushroom147 Maitake mushroom148 Glycyrrhiza (from licorice)149 Melissa Officinalis (lemon balm)150 COMPOUNDS THAT STIMULATE TH-2151 (These dampen a TH-1 dominance and will worsen the autoimmune condition of a TH-2 dominant person): Caffeine152 Green tea extract153 Grape seed extract154 Pine bark extract155 White willow bark156 Lycopene157 Resveratrol158 Pycnogenol159 COMPOUNDS THAT MODULATE BOTH TH-1 and TH-2160 Probiotics161 162 163 164 Vitamin A165 166 Vitamin E167 168 Colostrum169 170 171 172 173 COMPOUNDS THAT DAMPEN IL-1 ACTIVATING TH-1 or TH-2:174 Boswellia175 176 177 178 Pancreatic enzymes Turmeric/Curcumin179 180 181

People who are that big must have a disease, just like the patients with pancreatic cancer or multiple sclerosis.

One man, after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, found himself followed everywhere with “insensitive and tasteless” ads for funeral services. The theoretical idea that customers might welcome or enjoy such solicitations increasingly seemed like a bad joke.

Green tea contains large concentrations of a group of powerful antioxidants called catechins; notably one called epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Catechins may play a role in inhibiting carbohydrate-digestive enzymes, resulting in lower glucose levels34 and protecting the pancreatic beta cells.35 Fermentation (black tea) changes the catechins to a variety of theaflavins,36 making the antioxidant potential of green tea and black tea comparable. Polyphenols in green tea are also believed to boost metabolism,37 which may aid in fat burning.38 Many health benefits have been ascribed to green-tea consumption, including increased fat oxidation during exercise,39 increased resting energy expenditure,40 lower risk of various types of cancer.41

Something was wrong, very wrong. This was not a dull, throbbing pain, like a headache; it wasn’t even a piercing, stabbing pain, like the pancreatitis I’d had when I was thirty. This was a different kind of Pain. Like my body was going to burst. Like my insides were trying to force their way out. This was the no-fucking-around kind of Pain.

Don’t fuck with an old lady, you shitty kid,” I yelled. “I have a lifetime of asshole tricks up my sleeve. They’re all right behind my Kleenex and my emergency Advil.” Mind you, I was doing all this in no bra, sweatpants, and leather slippers with shearling lining. “Sara,” I asked, “when we all get together for dinner in a restaurant, do you think other people see a group of old people having dinner instead of—us?” “Yeah,” she said after she thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think they see old people.” And that’s a trip, because when I look at Sara, I still see Sara. I see Sara as she was at twenty-seven. She hasn’t changed to me. Most of my friends haven’t changed, in my opinion. Jim lost his hair, but so what? Lots of guys shave their heads. Sandra has a couple of gray hairs in her long, jet-black hair. And yet, some of our friend group has died. From heart attacks. Pancreatitis. Liver failure. Drug overdoses. Suicides. Cancer. Aneurysms. We were stunned by each of those deaths. Honestly, drug overdoses and suicides are almost easier to take than pancreatitis and heart attacks, because those diseases rarely happen to kids our age. And then one day, your body stops working. It can be sudden, like throwing out your back while shaving your legs, and it just never goes back to normal. You live the rest of your days with a “bad back.” Then there’s the opposite; there’s the creep. In your thirties, a nerve pings in your hand, like someone has plucked a rubber band inside it. It’s startling and odd. In another five years, your hands start to tingle a little bit when you’re typing, and you buy a pair of hand braces to wear at night. In the next five years, you can’t open a jar, and in the five years after that, they suddenly fall asleep and you have to elicit a hearty round of applause to no one to wake them back up and make them functional again. And no one prepared me for that. I noticed that my nana’s fingers were oddly formed, racked with arthritis, but she never explained that they hadn’t always been like that. She never told me that once, a long time ago, she had hands just like mine, until she felt that first ping. And that’s the weird thing. As a young person, you assume all old people were just always that way—unfortunate. They came like that. And, as an old person, you think that young people surely understand that yesterday, you were just like them.

No matter how out of the ordinary demonic possession was, it was still somehow a smoker's lung cancer, a drunk's pancreatitis, a philanderer's STI - a thing she had brought upon herself by not behaving properly.

One more interesting thing,’ she says. ‘Fred Merton had advanced pancreatic cancer. He was dying anyway. He probably only had three or four months.

Just as some glands are activated in response to stress, various hormonal systems are inhibited during stress. The secretion of various reproductive hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone is inhibited. Hormones related to growth (such as growth hormone) are also inhibited, as is the secretion of insulin, a pancreatic hormone that normally tells your body to store energy for later use.

Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions. There are certain events in my life that I believe may have had a profound effect on me. For example: the little boy who drowned at the blowhole when I was a child. I have never forgotten the sound of his mother screaming. That boy had brown eyes and dark hair. When I saw that dear little brown-eyed, dark-haired baby, did I think of that poor boy and therefore predict the baby would drown at the same age? Did I look at the young bride, Eve, and remember the charming woman who came to my mother for readings, who was so excited about her forthcoming wedding, the first wedding I ever attended? Did I think of the time I saw her at the shops, her inner light snuffed out, and remember how she died in a fire believed to have been lit by her husband? Why did I choose self-harm for Allegra, the beautiful flight attendant? Was it simply that I saw repressed pain in her eyes from the back injury I now know she suffered on that flight? Was it because I knew the rate of suicide in young females has been steadily increasing over recent years? Was I thinking of death as I boarded the plane and contemplating the fact that everyone on that plane would one day die, and wondering what their causes of death would ultimately be? Well. That’s the only one of my questions I can answer with certainty. Of course I was thinking of death. I had my husband’s ashes in my carry-on bag. I was missing my two best friends. I was thinking of every person I had ever lost throughout my life.

Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions.

The sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

If the person is obese, with more than fifty pounds of excess fat, his body will demand huge loads of insulin from the pancreas, even as much as ten times more than a person of normal weight needs. So what do you think happens after five to ten years of forcing the pancreas to work so hard? You guessed it—pancreatic poop-out.

Second Opinions My doctor told me I have pancreatic cancer and have 2 months to live. I asked him about getting a second opinion. The Doc said, 'No problem.' He thought for a second and said, 'I think the Boston Red Sox are going to win the series again this year.

One exemplar of that pending disruption is teenager Jack Andraka, who at the age of fourteen single-handedly developed an early-stage detection test for pancreatic cancer that costs just three cents. His approach (awaiting peer review) is 26,000 times cheaper, 400 times more sensitive, and 126 times faster than today’s diagnostics. Big Pharma has no idea how to deal with Jack, who is one of many wunderkinds emerging globally, all of them with the potential to disrupt great companies and long-established industries. The Jacks of the world bring exponential

No Shows I woke up this morning but there were some no shows. My wife, Darcy, died of pancreatic cancer at 31; one day she came from a routine checkup and the next month she was gone. My oldest daughter, Jenna, was 9 at the time, and 9 years later she OD’d on something; I asked the coroner not to tell me ‘what’ but ‘why’? My youngest daughter, Sylvia, hasn’t talk to me since, so I guess that counts as a no show. My parents are long gone, my brothers and sisters, dispersed over the world, rarely email. My cousins, uncles, aunts, are all distant or deceased. So when I woke up this morning, I counted the no shows like sheep and fell back into a welcome sleep where everyone still showed up.

Red meat and processed meats contain more saturated fat and trans fat than other animal products, and are the poorest food choices. However, the fat issue does not tell the whole story. Scientific studies have documented that red meat has a much more pronounced association with colon cancer and pancreatic cancer compared with other animal products.51 The consumption of red meat and processed meats on a regular basis more than doubles the risk of some cancers. Even ingesting a small amount of red meat, such as two to three ounces a day, has been shown to significantly increase the risk of cancer.52 Toxic nitrogenous compounds (called N-nitroso compounds) occur in larger concentrations in red meat and processed meats. Red meat also has high haem (also spelled heme) content. Haem is an iron-carrying protein, and it has been shown to have destructive effects on the cells lining our digestive tract.53 Processed meat, luncheon meat, barbecued meat, and red meat must not be a regular part of your diet if you are looking to maintain excellent health into your later years of life. Eating too many animal products and not enough vegetables increases one’s risk of cancer. To achieve optimal health, humans require a high exposure to a full symphony of phytochemicals found in unprocessed plant matter. Eating more animal products results in a smaller percentage of calories consumed from high phytochemical vegetation such as seeds, berries, vegetables and beans. Also, since animal products contain no fiber, they remain in the digestive tract longer, slowing digestive transit time and allowing heightened exposure to toxic compounds.

Jobs was convinced that his vegan diet would eliminate body odor, so he passed on the deodorant and skimped on baths. No matter how much his associates told him that he stunk, he never seemed convinced. According to associate Mike Markkula, "We would have to literally put him out the door and tell him to go take a shower."8 So it's no shock that when a routine kidney screening found a highly treatable, slow-growing type of pancreatic cancer at a very early stage, Jobs ignored his doctor's advice and the advice of many wise and concerned associates. Removing the tumor was the obvious and only accepted medical option, but to the horror of his wife Laurene and their friends, he decided to delay treatment and try a hodgepodge of unproven herbal remedies, juice fasts, acupuncture, etc. While Jobs chose to believe what he wanted to believe, the cancer continued to grow. Nine months later he would relent to have surgery; but by then it had spread to the liver. It took his life at 56 years of age.9

Know each agent being used and relevant nutrient interactions and contraindications, especially when combinations of drugs are used. Selection of appropriate nutrients and botanicals is complex and based on many factors. General recommendations are safe for all types of chemotherapy. • Multiple vitamin: — Vitamin A: 5000 IU — Mixed natural carotenoids: 10,000-25,000 IU — B complex: 25-50 mg — Folic acid: 400-800 μg — Vitamin B12: 200-1000 μg — Vitamin E succinate: 400 IU — Vitamin C: 500-1000 mg — Vitamin D 400-800 IU — Trace minerals: full complement • Melatonin: 20 mg at bedtime • Vitamin C: 3000-10,000 mg q.d. in divided doses according to bowel tolerance • Fish oils: to provide 2 g total combined eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid daily • Mushroom extracts/immune support: use a variety of immune modulators, switching them regularly to avoid downregulation of receptors. Standard doses for Coreolis versicolor mushroom is 3 g of the extract daily. Suggested dosage for maitake D fraction is 0.5-1.0 mg of extract per kilogram body weight. Other botanical immune modulators may be used as desired. • Enzymes: use pancreatic enzymes with meals and mixed enteric-coated enzymes between meals. • Green tea: capsules and beverages to total the equivalent of 5-10 cups daily. Caffeinated form is preferred if patient tolerates caffeine. • Whey protein shake: administer with fruit daily as a source of easily assimilated protein and amino acids, particularly glutamine.

Falta had argued, even in the pre-insulin era, that whatever pancreatic hormone was absent or defective in diabetes governed not only the use of carbohydrates for fuel, but also the assimilation of fat in adipose tissue. “A functionally intact pancreas is necessary for fattening,” Falta wrote. He also noted that the only way to fatten anyone efficiently was to include “abundant carbohydrates in the diet.

Cyanogenic Glycosides. Hydrogen cyanide, which is highly toxic, is released from cyanogenic glycosides when plants that contain them are chewed and digested (through an enzyme that is also present in the plant). Cassava (also called manioc, yucca, and tapioca and a major ingredient in fufu flour), sorghum, lima beans, almonds, bamboo, corn, yams (but not sweet potatoes), chickpeas, cashews, stone fruits (like peaches and apricots), and fruits from the apple family are all food sources of cyanogenic glycosides. In most cases, the amount of these compounds can be greatly reduced using traditional preparation methods, which involves soaking (often grinding and then soaking) or fermenting followed by thorough cooking. Excess cyanide residue from improper preparation is known to cause acute cyanide intoxication and goiters (because cyanide binds to iodine and depletes iodine from the body—hence its status as an antinutrient) and has been linked to ataxia (a neurological disorder affecting the ability to walk). It has also been linked to tropical calcific pancreatitis, leading to chronic pancreatitis. You can minimize your exposure to cyanogenic glycosides by not eating the pits or seeds of stone fruits and fruits from the apple family, by eating only canned bamboo if you’re eating bamboo, and by avoiding fresh cassava (unless you know how to prepare it traditionally, which involves soaking it for at least twenty-four hours before thoroughly cooking it).

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. —Babatunde Olatunji

However, any food that is difficult to digest can contribute to bacterial overgrowth. This is especially true if there are other hindrances to digestion, such as low stomach acid, inadequate pancreatic enzymes, or inadequate bile salts.

Family meeting this morning.” “Oh, God, I do not need to know this.” “Yes, you do. Tío is sick.” “Which tío?” There’s a heavy silence, and after far too long, it clicks. “Oh.” My father. “Pancreatic cancer,” she continues once it’s clear I won’t. “Painful.” “The family wants to get him out of prison for treatment.” “Probably not happening, but not any of my business regardless.

Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs) are derived from coconut oil and range in length from 6 to 12 carbons. Their lengths allow for an easily absorbed energy source for people with malabsorption syndromes. Unlike other long-chain fatty acids, they do not require pancreatic enzymes or bile acid for absorption. MCTs are rapidly utilized by gastrointestinal mucosa cells for energy and may aid gastrointestinal regenerative processes and provide a useful source of energy for people that suffer from malabsorption.1 2

Hodgkin may have been disappointed by what he thought was only a descriptive study of his disease. But he had underestimated the value of careful observation—by compulsively studying anatomy alone, he had stumbled upon the most critical revelation about this form of lymphoma: Hodgkin’s disease had a peculiar propensity of infiltrating lymph nodes locally one by one. Other cancers could be more unpredictable—more “capricious,” as one oncologist put it. Lung cancer, for instance, might start as a spicular nodule in the lung, then unmoor itself and ambulate unexpectedly into the brain. Pancreatic cancer was notoriously known to send sprays of malignant cells into faraway sites such as the bones and the liver. But Hodgkin’s—an anatomist’s discovery—was anatomically deferential: it moved, as if with a measured, ordered pace, from one contiguous node to another—from gland to gland and from region to region.

disease76 375,000 2. Lung diseases (lung cancer,77 COPD, and asthma78) 296,000 3. You’ll be surprised! (see chapter 15) 225,000 4. Brain diseases (stroke79 and Alzheimer’s80) 214,000 5. Digestive cancers (colorectal, pancreatic, and esophageal)81 106,000 6. Infections (respiratory and blood)82 95,000 7. Diabetes83 76,000 8. High blood pressure84 65,000 9. Liver disease (cirrhosis and cancer)85 60,000 10. Blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma)86 56,000 11. Kidney disease87 47,000 12. Breast cancer88 41,000 13. Suicide89 41,000 14. Prostate cancer90 28,000 15. Parkinson’s disease91 25,000

But myc is also one of the most potent cancer-causing genes known in biology; it is also activated in leukemias and lymphomas, and in pancreatic, gastric, and uterine cancer.

Humans went from experiential and physical beings to conceptual ones, and one could surmise that in the future we will become even more brainy still. The changes in sedentary lifestyle alone are staggering. Dietary changes might have led to a diabetes since there may be different levels of pancreatic reserve. The explosion of carbohydrate intake that moderns indulge in may surpass the limit of the pancreas to endure, resulting in either childhood diabetes or later onset type 2 diabetes. We must be careful not to outsmart ourselves and in vanquishing the predators that plagues us for millions of years to create new ones. Having moved from chaos to order, we need to appreciate order’s value, to protect and enhance it. Any slide into chaos may well be swift and irreversible.

Paediatric Pancreatitis: What is it and How is it Treated? Pancreatitis refers to the inflammation of the pancreas. The pancreas is a long, flat gland located behind the stomach in the upper abdomen. It produces enzymes that help in digestion and hormones that help regulate body sugar. According to Dr Ashish Dharmik, MBBS, MS and MCH (General Surgery), Senior Consultant in Paediatrics and General Surgery, pancreatitis is uncommon in children and may improve with treatment. If left unnoticed, however, it can cause life-threatening complications. Hence, if you notice any change in your child’s health, consult the best child specialist in Chandigarh at the earliest.

we might reframe the answer in evolutionary terms. Recall that unicellular organisms evolved into multicellular organisms—not once, but many independent times. The driving forces that goaded that evolution, we think, were the capacity to escape predation, the ability to compete more effectively for scarce resources, and to conserve energy by specialization and diversification. Unitary blocks—cells—found mechanisms to achieve this specialization and diversification by combining common programs (metabolism, protein synthesis, waste disposal) with specialized programs (contractility in the case of muscle cells, or insulin-secreting capacity in pancreatic beta cells). Cells coalesced, repurposed, diversified—and conquered.

In 1922, a fourteen-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes was resuscitated from a coma—born anew, as it were—by the infusion of insulin extracted from the pancreatic cells of a dog. In 2010, when Emily Whitehead received her infusion of CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells, or twelve years later, when the first patients with sickle cell anemia are surviving, disease-free, with gene-modified blood stem cells, we are transitioning from the century of the gene to a contiguous, overlapping century of the cell.

Terri understood...he had to dig deep, beyond the walls and layers of pain and frustration, and reach into that place that held both vulnerability and power; the place where dreams were real and being cancer free was a reality.

curcumin to pancreatic cancer sufferers regardless of what other treatments they choose. Given the tragic prognosis, though, prevention is critical. Until we know more, your best bet is to avoid tobacco, excess alcohol intake, and obesity and to eat a diet low in animal products, refined grains, and added sugars97 and rich in beans, lentils, split peas, and dried fruit.98

dilated pancreatic duct (68%), parenchymal atrophy (54%),

Remission requires application of physiologic as well as addiction principles. Physiologically, reducing the frequency and quantity of total carbohydrate consumption below the threshold of maximum insulin production allows the hepato-pancreatic glucagon-insulin feedback pathway to recover its control of carbohydrate metabolism thus preventing T2DM and putting it into remission where the blood glucose level is not causing harm. If we were rats in a cage and our access to carbohydrates was tightly controlled, such reduction in carbohydrate consumption could work.

The egg made the clone. In the experiments, the scientists extracted a cell from the udder of an adult sheep, and they removed the nucleus from the cell, the nucleus being the storehouse of the cell’s genes. They wanted those adult genes, and they could have taken them from any organ. Every cell in an animal’s body has the same set of genes in it. What distinguishes an udder cell from a pancreatic cell from a skin cell is which of those tens of thousands of genes are active and which are silenced.

Can Strawberries Reverse the Development of Esophageal Cancer? Esophageal cancer joins pancreatic cancer as one of the gravest diagnoses imaginable. The five-year survival rate is less than 20 percent,124 with most people dying within the first year after diagnosis.125 This underscores the need to prevent, stop, or reverse the disease process as early as possible. Researchers decided to put berries to the test. In a randomized clinical trial of powdered strawberries in patients with precancerous lesions in their esophagus, subjects ate one to two ounces of freeze-dried strawberries every day for six months—that’s the daily equivalent of about a pound of fresh strawberries.126 All of the study participants started out with either mild or moderate precancerous disease, but, amazingly, the progression of the disease was reversed in about 80 percent of the patients in the high-dose strawberry group. Most of these precancerous lesions either regressed from moderate to mild or disappeared entirely. Half of those on the high-dose strawberry treatment walked away disease-free.127

In 2003, epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control, led by Eugenia Calle, published an analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine reporting that cancer mortality in the United States was clearly associated with obesity and overweight. The heaviest men and women, they reported, were 50 and 60 percent more likely, respectively, to die from cancer than the lean. This increased risk of death held true for a host of common cancers—esophageal, colorectal, liver, gallbladder, pancreatic, and kidney cancers, as well as, in women, cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary. In 2004, the CDC followed up with an analysis linking cancer to diabetes, particularly pancreatic, colorectal, liver, bladder, and breast cancers. Cancer researchers trying to make sense of this association would later say that something about cancer seems to thrive on the metabolic environment of the obese and the diabetic. One conspicuous clue as to what that something might be was that the same association was seen with people who weren’t obese and diabetic (or at least not yet) but suffered only from metabolic syndrome and thus were insulin-resistant. The higher their levels of circulating insulin, and that of a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor, the greater the likelihood that they would get cancer.

Like many other people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat pain. But multiple studies find otherwise. In one, researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or end-stage congestive heart failure. For the patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, or colon cancer, the researchers found no difference in survival time between those who went into hospice and those who didn’t. And curiously, for some conditions, hospice care seemed to extend survival. Those with pancreatic cancer gained an average of three weeks, those with lung cancer gained six weeks, and those with congestive heart failure gained three months. The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.

Twenty-eight servings of vegetables per week decreases prostate cancer risk by 33 percent, but just three servings of cruciferous vegetables per week decreases prostate cancer risk by 41 percent.9 • One or more servings of cabbage per week reduces the occurrence of pancreatic cancer by 38 percent.10

Endrocrine cells have neither dendrites nor axons, but many are like neurons in other ways. Some are electrically exitable: when pancreatic beta cells see an increase in extracellular glucose concentration they fire in bursts of spikes that are like the phasic bursts of vasopressin neurons; these bursts lead to calcium entry and trigger insulin secretion. In both neurons and endocrine cells, peptides are packages in vesicles just as neurotransmitters are. Typically, peptide secretion is the result of the same process as that by which neurotransmitters are released: exocytosis is triggered in both cases by an increase in intracellular calcium. In neurons, this happens when spikes depolarize the neuron, opening voltage-sensitive calcium channels, and the same occurs in spiking endocrine cells. However, endocrine cells have another trick. Th cell bodies of all eukaryotic cells contain rough endoplasmic reticulum, which sequesters free calcium, and activation of receptors for some neurotransmitters or hormones can release calcium from these stores. In many endocrine cells, this 'calcium mobilization' can trigger exocytosis of vesicles without any involvement of spikes. There is no rough endoplasmic reticulum in axon terminals, so spikes are necessarily involved in the release of synaptic vesicles.

Liver Cancer. AFP, normally present only in pregnancy, could indicate liver or pancreatic cancer. AFP can be measured by a blood test.

Here are the odds of five-year survival for several common cancers: Cancer Type Odds If Localized If Spread to Lymph Nodes Odds If Metastatic Chance of Getting It Chance of Dying From It Malignant Melanoma 90% 10% 2.5% 0.5% Squamous Cell Skin Cancer ~100% 10% 7.5% 0.01% Bladder Cancer 88% 55% 15% 2.5% 0.6% Breast Cancer ~100% 72% 22% 12% 3% Prostate Cancer ~100% ~100% 28% 15% 2.6% Colorectal Cancer 92% 65% 11% 4.6% 1.9% Esophageal Cancer 40% 21% 4% 0.9% 0.7% Lung Cancer 31% 15% 2% 6.8% 5.8% Pancreatic Cancer 14% 7% 1% 1.5% 1.35% Liver Cancer 28% 7% 2% Leukemia Varies Varies Varies 1.4% 0.8%