A new American Cancer Society study has found a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality.

The researchers revealed that people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee.

But they said that more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work.

Previous epidemiologic studies have suggested that coffee intake is associated with reduced risk of oral/pharyngeal cancer. To explore the finding further, researchers examined associations of caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea intake with fatal oral/pharyngeal cancer in the Cancer Prevention Study II, a prospective U.S. cohort study begun in 1982 by the American Cancer Society.

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Younger women who wait at least 15 years after their first menstrual period to give birth to their first child may reduce their risk of an aggressive form of breast cancer by up to 60 percent, researchers say.

“We found that the interval between menarche and age at first live birth is inversely associated with the risk of triple-negative breast cancer,” Christopher I. Li from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said.

While relatively uncommon, triple-negative breast cancer is a particularly aggressive subtype of the disease that does not depend on hormones such as estrogen to grow and spread.

This type of cancer, which accounts for only 10 percent to 20 percent of all breast cancers, does not express the genes for estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) or HER2/neu and therefore does not respond to hormone-blocking drugs such as Tamoxifen.

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A new study has found that eating fatty and sugary foods causes chemical changes in the brain even before obesity occurs, suggesting that going on a diet might be similar to going through drug withdrawal.

The study was conducted by Dr. Stephanie Fulton of the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated CRCHUM Hospital Research Centre.

“By working with mice, whose brains are in many ways comparable to our own, we discovered that the neurochemistry of the animals who had been fed a high fat, sugary diet were different from those who had been fed a healthy diet,” Fulton explained.

“The chemicals changed by the diet are associated with depression. A change of diet then causes withdrawal symptoms and a greater sensitivity to stressful situations, launching a vicious cycle of poor eating,” she stated.

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The best to way to resuscitate a cardiac arrest victim is to apply chest compressions, say Japanese researchers.

They noted that mouth-to-mouth is often ineffective if performed by an untrained member of the public. It also gets in the way of the crucial chest compression’s need to keep the victim’s heart beating.

They said chest compressions alone could save more lives – and reduce the risk of brain damage, the Daily Mail reported.

They found that CPR recipients were actually more likely to survive with good brain function if they received hands-only or compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) compared with traditional CPR with chest compressions and rescue breathing.

The latest findings suggest hands-only CPR is more effective than traditional CPR in emergency situations, adding that not only is hands-only CPR easier to learn, it is more comfortable to perform on a stranger.

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Dr. Rajan, a practioner of over two decades, is an expert in treating diseases affecting the face – particularly pimples, moles, warts etc. He also performs cosmetic peels, microdermabrasion etc.

An alumnus of University of Bombay, he has obtained his qualifications from the reputed Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College.

He conducts counseling sessions on matters relating to sex, marital issues and sexually transmitted diseases (STD)

Dr. Rajan answered Sify readers’ queries related to skin and sexually transmitted diseases in an exlusive chat. Read the transcript below.

Dear Sir, I have small pimples on my penis front portion. I had sex with a girl having diff partners & I used condom Can it be cured
It is difficult to diagnose your condition from this description. Please consult an expert at your earliest.

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