I wanted to remind anyone who is interested in attending the 7th Annual Conference for Young Women Affected by Breast Cancer that it is being held this weekend in Arlington, Virginia.

I will be attending and plan on giving updates over the weekend on the many different seminars and workshops. This will be my fifth conference since I was diagnosed in December 2001. It is such an amazing experience.

The seminars and workshops are very informative and you can pick and choose different topics depending on where you are in the treatment process or if you are newly diagnosed with breast cancer or have had a recurrence. There is something for everyone who is a young breast cancer survivor.

I also enjoy being in a room filled with women who are now not just other young survivors but friends.

My friend Deb and I were diagnosed only a few days apart and met on the YSC message boards. She came to visit me this weekend and we celebrated reaching the milestone of five years of survivorship!

www.youngsurvivorsconference.org

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.