In previous studies there has not shown to be an increase in survival when adding chemotherapy after surgery for gastric cancer compared with surgery alone. Most U.S. patients that are diagnosed with cancer of the stomach or lower esophagus have locally advanced disease that is hard to cure.

The MAGIC trial represents a landmark study in gastric cancer, as it is the first trial to demonstrate a survival benefit for pre- and postoperative chemotherapy. Researchers studied 503 patients with cancer of the stomach, esphagogastric junction or lower esophagus. One arm of the trial received three preoperative and three postoperative cycles of chemotherapy, the other arm of the study had only surgery.

The trial concluded that the chemotherapy group had smaller resectable tumors with negative margins, fewer patients had advanced nodal disease and the five year survival rate increased by 13 percent. It was noted that this is a significant advance for the treatment of this disease.

Writer Richard Morris of www.breadandmoney.com coins the word nutritainment in a recent article about foods that are hyped to magically make us healthy -- foods that can cancel out cancer and wipe out heart disease. Nutritainment is nutritional news delivered in entertainment-like fashion, designed to urge consumers to buy into the latest, greatest super foods. Yet making small changes in diet -- what most consumers will do -- to incorporate these so-called powerful products is unlikely to do much good, Morris says. And he offers some thoughts on why the media continues to force this news down our throats and why we continue falling for their tactics.

Morris says human nature and marketplace economics motivate those engaged in nutritional sciences to strive for media attention and exposure. As a result, bits and pieces of nutritional studies make their way to medical journals and then land in media's lap through press releases. Some will even ghostwrite nutrition articles to promote products. These articles end up in the hands of the media and spread like wildfire to the public, in as-is format. Consumers may be left with the notion that these bits and pieces are important, relevant, non-biased research -- when this is not the case.

Morris says knowledgeable health experts who have the time to accurately report on important nutrition news are scarce. And when they do have time to share words of wisdom that really do matter, the packaging of the news is often technical and not so sensational. A headline that reads, Pomegranate juice packs power to prevent cancer will bury a scientific -- yet more accurate -- headline. Catchy headlines grab readers, and readers buy products. But headlines can be misleading -- and pomegranate juice alone is not likely to have many health benefits.

There are also issues with advertising and editorial content, according to Morris, who compares overall good nutrition to car maintenance. "Just like changing the air freshener in your car won't prevent a breakdown if the car desperately needs a tune-up, adding one item of magical food to your diet won't protect you from a breakdown either," he says and shares that a complete dietary makeover is what's necessary for good health -- that and stress reduction, physical activity, emotional balance, and life fulfillment. A quick dose of pomegranate juice may not do the trick. But a steady, consistent dose of these items will.

For a young adult of 18, Chad Juros list of accomplishments is impressive. Magic, even.

An episode of Criss Angel's MindFreak featured Chad. He is an official magician for the Philadelphia 76ers and the Philadelphia Eagles Fly organization. He performs at Richard Petty's and Paul Newman's camps for sick kids. He is the youngest magician ever to perform at the White House. He is a finalist in the World Magic Seminar Stage Competition. He was the finalist in the Volvo for Life Award and was awarded the Volunteer of the Year Award for the Leukemia Society.

Chad Juros is also the founder of Spread the Magic Foundation, an organization that uses magic to help kids with cancer find laughter, joy and hope. He knows about childhood cancer and the struggles faced when fighting cancer. At the age of three, he was diagnosed with leukemia. At the age of seven, his cancer came back. He needed a transplant, no match could be found. They put Chad on an experimental protocol where he spent 17 months as a hospital inpatient. He suffered cardiac arrest, and for a while, went into a coma. Chad's father taught him magic tricks to distract him from the fear and pain of the grueling ordeal he faced as a child in cancer treatments.

Chad Juros has continued to perfect his magic. He is a remarkable young adult. Inspiring as a cancer survivor, skilled as a magician. You can visit Chad Juros at his website, and learn more about Magic Chad and the Spread the Magic Foundation.

Magic or medicine? That's the question nurse practitioner Kathy Turner at the Stanford University School of Medicine wants to find the answer to and is currently conducting a study of touch therapy. The therapy is described as a noninvasive form of energy-balancing work that aims to promote deep relaxation and is attributed with easing nausea, fatigue, feelings of fear and worry, pain, and lymphedema. According to practitioners of touch therapy, a person's body is surrounded by a field of energy, and unblocking the body's energy flow can aid in healing and maintaining health. For many in the Western medical community, it is pure hooey. But the centuries old philosophy and practice involving a body's energy fields is deeply rooted in Eastern medicine.

In the New York Times, the headline reads, Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer, and of course, as with so many study results regarding the measurement of the immeasurable, all it reveals is more ambiguity. According to the researchers, this study was going to be the study that ended the contentious debate between those who believe you can measure, in scientific terms, the power of prayer to heal, and those skeptics who believe you simply cannot measure spirituality by the laws of the physical world. The results of this study suggest prayer has no power to heal. But, I can quote an equal number of respected studies that show prayer does have the power to heal. In addition, I can illuminate a central flaw in the study, just from reading the press on it. The flaw begins in defining healing and the true power of prayer.

The participants in the study who were asked to pray, were told they could pray in any way that suited them, but they were to include in the prayer, for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Basically, prayer is not an exercise where Santa shows up and leaves all the presents you asked for under the tree. This predisposes the belief there is some central magical figure granting requests. Or, equally as misdirected, that we are all little Harry Potters, with the power to alter the course of an event by chanting a certain phrase. There are all kinds of healing. There is physical healing. There is emotional healing. There is healing of the mind. There is spiritual healing. Which means, at the start of this study, the researchers were on a course doomed to failure, if the results were based on specific wish granting of a single wish.

I think Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, sums it up best when he states, "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion." Research into the power of prayer will be a waste of time and money until there is a paradigm shift in physical world thinking to the spiritual world. Both are real, and both are intertwined, but both are separate, with a power all their own.