Smoking is not an easy habit to break, and of the many methods tried, only a handful seem to work. Of the methods that do seem to work -- nicotine-replacement products; bupropion drugs; counseling; classes; calling a helpline or talking to a health professional -- younger smokers between the ages of 16 and 24 years who smoke and try to quit only use one of the recommended methods of help by talking to a professional. Because of this, younger smokers are less likely to be successful in quitting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During the 2003 National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey, the CDC found that younger smokers most often tried to quit smoking by cutting back on the number of cigarettes they smoked each day; not buying cigarettes; exercising; using the buddy system and trying to quit with a friend; telling others they were quitting and changing to a lighter brand of cigarette, switching to chewing tobacco, snuff, or other tobacco products. None of these methods are recommended by the US Public Health Service.

According to the National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey, 77 percent of younger smokers have tried to quit at least once without success. Over a third have tried to quit smoking numerous times without success. Researchers suggest that many younger smokers may need help with other high-risk behaviors such as binge drinking; depression or ADD/ADHD.

If you are a younger smoker who is trying to quit, the CDC encourages you to call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or talk to your physician about methods that might lead to more success. The 2-page summary of the National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey is available as a pdf document.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center teaches the art of aromatherapy to soothe and heal. Cherie Perez, a supervising research nurse, teaches a monthly aromatherapy class to answer questions about aromatherapy treatments to cancer survivors and cancer caregivers undergoing treatment.

Perez first became involved with aromatherapy to help those diagnosed with fibromyalgia deal with the physical pain and discomfort caused by the disease. She now shares her professional knowledge of the basics of aromatherapy in each hour long class. Her classes are offered free of charge at the wellness center at M.D. Anderson. The wellness center focuses on helping patients and caregivers deal with the non-medical issues of living with cancer. This is the first complementary facility to be built on the campus of a comprehensive cancer center.

In the future Perez looks to designing research strategies to examine how aromatherapy can be used to treat or heal burns from radiation treatments. She would also like to explore aromatherapy in the use of pre-treatment anxiety and also manage loss of memory issues in cancer survivors.

Why do some researchers believe that aromatherapy is beneficial?

Our sense of smell is 10,000 times stronger than any of our other senses. The receptors in your nose communicate with two structures that are imbedded deep in your brain and serve as the storehouses for emotions and memories. It is believed that the stimulation of these structures influences our physical, emotional and mental health.

To read more about the uses of aromatherapy click here.

Survivor Crop, hosted by Ever After Scrapbooks, is an annual 24 hour scrapbooking marathon to raise money for breast cancer.

Now in its fifth year, participants come together to scrapbook, attend classes, play games, hold a raffle, enjoy catered breakfast and dinner, receive a Survivor T-shirt and scrapbooking freebies.

Breast cancer survivors attending will be telling their stories and the organizers promise a few scrapbooking surprises during the event.

In the last four years this event has raised over $116,000 dollars for the San Diego Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National MS Foundation, and each year the event gets bigger. The first one was held in a tent in the parking lot of the Ever After Scrapbooks store. This year's event will be held indoors in a much larger area on October 21st and 22nd. Each year, an Ultimate Survivor is chosen. For more information, visit the Ever After Scrapbooks website and the Survivor Crop blog.

For cancer survivor and Tai Chi, Yoga and Lebed Method teacher Dawn Stasko, her classes lead to more than a physical improvement in balance, a relaxing means of reducing stress, a boost to the immune system and increased energy for participants. It is a place for newly-diagnosed cancer patients, cancer patients undergoing treatments and cancer survivors to bond and find group support. Stasko accepts the initial non-belief of newcomers that Tai Chi and Yoga could possibly make a difference in the quality of their life, and is touched when they discover the classes do help.

"For me it is pure joy to have someone come into my class and say how can this help," she said with tears in her eyes and in a broken voice. "They listen to me and they are kind of hesitant and skeptical, and at the end of the class I get a 'thank you' and that makes the biggest difference in the world."

Valerie Cutshall features the benefits cancer survivors feel they have received by participating in Stasko's classes in Yoga, tai chi classes help cancer patients survive.

Tai Chi is referred to as a graceful form of exercise and described as meditation in motion. Yoga, when used as a form of alternative therapy to enhance flexibility, relaxation or stress relief, is a combination of breathing exercises, physical postures, and meditation. The Lebed Method focuses on healing through a therapeutic exercise and dance movement program designed for women who have had breast cancer, for all cancer patients who have undergone cancer treatments and for lymphedema. For more information, visit the Lebed Method.

The Mayo Clinic has created the Complementary & Alternative Medicine Center that publishes articles about Yoga, Tai Chi and other alternative therapies that can be incorporated to complement conventional cancer treatments.

You can find Tai Chi and Yoga classes in cities throughout the United States. To locate a class in your community, contact the local hospital, community center, community college, the YMCA or YWCA, health club or wellness center.

I like to read. I just don't find much time to do it -- with two kids, two jobs, an unpredictable exercise schedule, endless medical appointments, and all the other craziness that accompanies life. I would like to find more time for books -- books a bit more complex than the one I found time to read at bedtime tonight about a frog and a toad who spend their days flying kites and enjoying picnics together. I would like to read books that capture relationships and life experiences and a bit of mystery too.

The last book I read -- The Shop on Blossom Street -- is the kind of book I like. It is easy to read and captivating and inspiring and comforting. It is the kind of book I want to keep reading -- long after I have to put it down to tend to distractions. Perhaps it's the thread of cancer woven into the storyline of this book that kept me wanting more.

The Shop on Blossom Street -- by Debbie Macomber -- follows four women who are all seeking change in their lives. The lead character opens a yarn shop, years after a cancer diagnosis and with the intention of moving forward despite an uncertain future. She hosts knitting classes and forms relationships with three other women in search of brighter days.

Character Lydia Hoffman -- the cancer survivor -- overcomes obstacles and challenges and even another cancer scare. She finds friendship and love and all sorts of unexpected discoveries. She even graces the pages of a second book -- A Good Yarn -- that follows her continued life journeys.

I have the book A Good Yarn. It's on my bookshelf. And I can't wait to read it. I just can't find the time.

The National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), established to explore complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; to integrate scientifically proven CAM practices into conventional medicine; to train CAM researchers; and disseminate authoritative information to the public and professionals -- offers these definitions for alternative, complementary and integrative therapy.

Alternative therapy is used in place of conventional western medicine such as special diets to treat cancer instead of undergoing surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy recommended by a conventional doctor.

Complementary medicine is used together with conventional medicine such as using aromatherapy to help lessen a patient's discomfort following surgery.

Integrative medicine combines both mainstream western medical treatment and CAM therapies for which there is known high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

Based on the 2002 edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics report, in the US, up to 62 percent of adults use some form of CAM. Although the survey indicated that people who use CAM come from all backgrounds -- according to the survey -- some people more likely than others to use CAM are women, those with higher educational levels, people who have been hospitalized in the past year, and former smokers when compared with current smokers or those who have never smoked.

Research has proven some CAM therapies to be valid, while finding others useless, and research continues. NCCAM offers information on research, clinical trials, highlights and alerts, health topic fact sheets, and the CAM Online Continuing Education Series, presented in eight chapters, for health care providers and the public to learn more about CAM.

In the 11th report of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), children growing up in an affluent urban environment and children from rural areas are at higher risk for developing many cancers.

Researchers studied cancer clusters where leukemia and other childhood cancers were reported, and have come to the conclusion that affluent children are being raised in an environment that is too clean. Called the dirty hypothesis, children living in too sterile an environment where they are not exposed to infection have weak immune systems.

For rural children, infection brought in to the rural community by people from larger populated urban areas, might be causing genetic damage that leads to cancer.

With the exception of the processing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, and Dounreay in Scotland, the researchers also state they found no general pattern of increased cancer incidence around nuclear plants.

The researchers feel confident in the reported results of this study. They invite further study into the hypothesis of their findings. The database was constructed from the National Registry of Childhood Tumours by staff of the Childhood Cancer Research Group in Oxford, and included 12,415 cases of childhood leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 19,908 cases of children with solid tumors registered under the age of 15 in England, Wales and Scotland from 1969 to 1993. To download the 160 page report, go here.

Lori Fischer began making handmade dolls for her children. Soon her friends were asking for a one-of-a-kind doll of their own. Once, when a friend was suffering hair loss, she made a doll without hair -- and she included wigs and hats for the doll as accessories and gave it to her friend. She started holding doll making workshops. According to Fischer, women and their daughters, or groups of friends, have spent the day sewing, eating, and socializing in a way that has all but been forgotten.

In the fifteen years since she began making dolls, her dolls have evolved into works of art that are shown in local art galleries.

Last year, she was awarded a grant through the City of Oakland's Cultural Arts Funding Program to visit children in two hospitals for the purpose of teaching them to make hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind dolls.

The children that she works with are cancer patients at the Bone Marrow Transplant Center who are required to spend long periods of time in the hospital. Spending time making a doll takes the child's mind off the struggles and challenges they face. Each child is allowed to be expressive and create a doll that reflects individual creativity and personality.

Some of the dolls the children have made, and dolls that Fischer makes, can be seen at Dolls4ArtSake.

weSPARK - an acronym for support, prevention, acceptance, recovery, knowledge -- was the cancer support center Wendie Jo Sperber wished she could have visited when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A place more like home than a hospital. Sperber, a single mother, felt that the emotional challenges of cancer were more difficult than the physical ones. Four years after her breast cancer diagnosis, she opened the doors to a community-based recovery center that offered free holistic services designed to heal the mind, body and soul.

Sperber, an actress who starred in the television series Bosom Buddies, lost her life to breast cancer in 2004. In July, a second weSPARK center will open offering support groups for patient, family and friends, grief workshops, art classes, yoga, drum circles, teen drama groups and meditation. The dream of Wendie Jo Sperber in creating a place of warmth and comfort for others struggling to survive cancer continues.

Cancer, regardless of the type, is the result of two occurrences:

• Mutations of our genetic material (DNA and RNA).
• Failure of our immune system to detect and destroy the resulting genetic mutation.
  

Everyone has thousands of pre-cancerous cells occurring all the time. In most people, their immune systems are healthy enough to detect and destroy these before they grow into cancer. The cancer patient's immune system is not doing this job properly. The latest research tells us that when levels of one or more of the eight necessary glyconutrients (mannose, fucose, xylose, glucose, galactose, n-acetyl-neuramic acid, n-acetyl-glucosamine, and n-acetyl-glalactosamine) become low, cancer can result.

For example, abnormal mannose and N-acetylglucosamine sugars have been found in breast and colon cancer cells.  In addition, a lack of these glyconutrients have been linked to the spread of cancer cells throughout the body.  What we now know is that we are all deficient in dietary glyconutrients today, thus opening us up to cancer, and other diseases.

• Glyconutrients stimulate macrophage and immune killer cells to destroy cancer (this is the first line of defense).
• They increase the production of substances like interferon to target and destroy malignant cells.
• They activate T-cells to recognize invaders and destroy them (second line of defense).
• They help to regulate when cells die off (apoptosis). When this safety mechanism fails, cancer cells are allowed to keep replicating.
  

There are some top oncologists who are using glyconutrients in their daily practice -- insisting that their patients get on these life-changing supplements.  The discovery of glyconutrients and how cells communicate just occurred a few years ago, long after your doctor left medical school.  Unfortunately, glyconutrients are not in the educational program by pharmaceutical companies presented to your doctor because they are natural supplements, not drugs.  The American Medical Association, AMA, has sanctioned continuing medical education seminars so doctors can begin learning this vital new information. The AMA have never sanctioned seminars for any natural supplement technology before -- that's how important the medical community believes glyconutrients to be.

Can you teach empathy and compassion? If you are a parent, the answer is yes. As a parent, you teach empathy and compassion to your children by the example of treating them with empathy and compassion; and in involving them in acts of compassion in the care for others. I believe caring for a pet in the home is one of the traditional ways of helping children learn empathy and compassion. Another is family participation in volunteerism and community-betterment projects.

Can you teach empathy and compassion to medical students as a university course? Medical schools are willing to try, and are hiring actors to train doctors good bedside manners when they have to give bad news. "A lot of these medical students are brainiacs who can absorb all the information they learn in class, but they don't know how to talk to people,'' says Joshua Stager, program coordinator at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

I think that is an over-generalization, and slightly less-than-generous statement in reference to the character and demeanor of all medical students -- but then again -- if you have watched the television show House, maybe a course in bedside manner is a very good thing for some medical students. Medical schools see enough of a need for education in empathy and compassion they are requiring these classes as part of medical training. Interestingly, a new section of a medical student's national licensing exam now includes tests on bedside manner.