You might think, like many people do, that smokeless tobacco products are safe alternatives to cigarettes. Wrong.

According to researchers at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, smokeless tobacco users are exposed to higher amounts of carcinogenic molecules than cigarette smokers. In a study of 182 users of chewing tobacco or oral snuff and 420 cigarette smokers, they found snuff users were exposed to higher levels of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) than smokers. NNK is a human carcinogen known to produce lung cancer. In laboratory animals, it also contributes to cancers of the pancreas, nasal mucosa, and liver.

Published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, this study serves to remind us that there is only one safe alternative to smoking -- not smoking.

I just heard someone say that time doesn't heal all wounds -- it just makes them worse. I guess it depends on the wound. I imagine losing a child is one wound that never really heals. But I've found that my cancer wounds -- both physical and emotional -- have healed with time. And a trip down memory lane proves it.

Two years ago I wrote about my wounds, fresh and raw and painful, on my Breast Cancer blog.

Confession
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005

It's been reported that procrastination is on the rise. Not only that, but it makes people poorer, fatter, and unhappier too.

It took 10 years of research when it was projected to take only five years -- procrastination at its best -- to come to this conclusion. And now Canadian industrial psychologist and University of Calgary professor Piers Steel is talking about his giant 30-page study that appears in this month's Psychological Bulletin.

Something must be done about this problem, says Steel, who reveals 26 percent of the American public consider themselves chronic procrastinators. This is up from five percent in 1978 and is likely due to the tempting diversions facing us in this day and age -- TVs, cell phones, video games, iPods, the Internet, and Blackberries.

It's no surprise with such temptations that a quarter of Americans say they procrastinate. When it comes to the sexes, men are worse than women -- about 54 out of 100 chronic procrastinators are men -- and the young are more like to procrastinate than the old. Three out of four college students consider themselves procrastinators. And it seems perfectionists procrastinate less because they don't like to delay.

Steel says procrastination wastes time. And it's costly too.

"The U.S. gross national product would probably rise by $50 billion if the icon and sound that notifies people of new e-mail suddenly disappear," he said.

Steel found a delay in filing taxes on average costs a person $400 a year. Last-minute Christmas shopping with credit cards was five times higher in 1999 than in 1991. Clearly, procrastination is expensive.

Procrastination also has physical and emotional costs. Procrastinators tend to be less healthy, less wealthy, and less happy. They are also harder to heal of their problems than alcoholics.

Steel, who plans to one day compare the procrastination practices in various countries and cultures, says his field has benefits. The more he knows about the problem, the less he indulges in delay tactics. He did, however, acknowledge that his study was completed five years late. But what he likes about this study is this -- "If you take a day off from it, you can always say it's field research."

A new study shows that African Americans have the lowest colon cancer survival rate. The researchers think the racial gap may be due to a few different factors including colon cancer screening and treatments given.

The study included 14,000 adults diagnosed with colon cancer or rectal cancer. Eleven percent where African Americans, all had health insurance. They were the most likely to die of their disease, were more likely to be diagnosed with advanced tumors and less likely than whites to undergo colorectal cancer surgery.

Tumor stage and treatment seem to account for the racial gap in survival but the researchers think there might be other factors they are not aware of at this time.

A publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology says that the expression of HER3 is associated with a significantly worse survival in patients with ovarian cancer. HER3 is a component of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). The EGFR pathway is a biologic pathway within cells that is involved in cell growth and replication.

Ovarian cancer is considered to be a deadly cancer because a majority of patients are not diagnosed until they reach the later stages. Once the cancer has metastasized it is much harder to treat. To allow treatment to be more individualized the researchers wanted to know if HER3 expression can detect a more aggressive cancer.

This information can lead to patients pursuing more aggressive treatments or participation in a clinical trial evaluating new therapeutic approaches.

Even though its always promising to find out new information, I would be much more excited to hear that there are better detection methods for ovarian cancer in the early stages. They might find a way to block the expression of HER3 but as in breast cancer with HER2 over expression and Herceptin it never seems to pan out to be the miracle cure we are hoping for.

Its better to nip that cancer in the bud!