JUST SAYIN’-You know the old adage, “Do as I say and not as I do.” Well, sometimes we want our listeners to do exactly what our words suggest. Over the years we have all come to recognize the importance of teachers and how they have always been and should be our role models. Apparently, the City of Hope and its other organizations agree with this assertion and, therefore, have been studying teachers for nearly 20 years in its key cancer study.
Back in the mid-90’s, a partnership of several research organizations began a long-term study on the causes and risks involving cancers (particularly breast cancer) in women. The protocol used as subjects, over 133,000 female teachers from California (ages from the 20’s to the 90’s—and into the 100’s over the past 19 years). Teachers were selected because of their “uniformly high level of education … their experience with survey instruments, their diversity of exposures and geographic residences, and the relative ease with which they can be followed in California.”
The involvement of the participants (who receive no remuneration) is purely voluntary.
City of Hope, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Irvine, and the Cancer Prevention Institute of California have combined to test out a variety of hypotheses with regard to the far-ranging causes of cancers—what cancer “victims” have in common and what is significantly different.
Dr. James Lacey is the lead investigator on a new project in the study (Dr. Leslie Bernstein is the principal investigator) on the teacher survey team and has led the study team for almost 20 years. Lacey perceives the City of Hope as being in the forefront of innovative research (using cutting-edge technologies and forward-thinking practitioners) and hopes that the results emanating from these studies will serve as a model for all involved in this field of study.
Funding has come from grants from the National Cancer Institute (NHI) and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
The areas of study include diet (including vitamin supplements), sleep habits, alcohol use, hormone therapy (including creams), oral contraceptives, physical activity, menstrual and reproductive factors, family history of cancer and other diseases, exposures to electromagnetic fields (including x-rays), environmental contact (such as to pesticides), and smoking (including second-hand smoke).
Cancer incidence within the various minority communities is additionally being addressed in these studies. Results from these participants are compared to those of “non-minority” groups.
The studies also pay attention to the rural sectors and to the poor.
It has been found that the majority of deaths among these teachers is attributable to heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, and lung cancer. It seems, however, that California women teachers have a higher rate of breast cancer diagnoses than other women in the State.
On the plus side, teachers who take care of themselves obviously do better than those who are more-or-less indifferent to the factors which can keep them healthy:
- lower cervical cancer (women teachers get regular PAP smears)
- lower cancer incidence through maintaining reasonable weight
- three to four hours of physical activity per week can reduce the threat of stroke by 20% and of breast cancer (such exercise can neutralize the ill-effects of HRT as well). Extreme exercise has repeatedly been found to be more deleterious to one’s health than moderate exercise or, at the least, has no added benefits. Moderate exercise is preferable (such as walking over running).
- greater access to appropriate healthcare (thus prevention reduces onset, and care increases rates of recovery)
- some studies have demonstrated that breast cancer rates decrease with decreased use of menopausal hormone therapies
On the other hand, if women insist on continuing the following practices, we are inviting potentially catastrophic health consequences:
- consuming two or more glasses of alcohol each day (one glass, however, seems to be good for the heart)
- women delaying getting pregnant until they complete their formal education or initiate their career goals
- women having fewer children
- smoking and second-hand smoking produce more examples of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Non-smoking teachers witness lower rates of cancer (95% of women teachers are non-smokers—67% of whom never smoked and 28% have given up smoking)
- delayed onset of puberty increase thyroid cancers in young women (think of our young Olympic gymnasts)
- obesity causing higher incidence of pancreatic cancer
Sometimes women cannot avoid certain circumstances that increase their risks of acquiring cancer:
- American women are living longer so have a greater opportunity to contract a cancer
- stress affects cancer onset (and, boy oh boy, are teachers under increasingly unbearable stress—leading to many teachers leaving the profession!)
- air pollutants adding to cardiovascular incidents
- multi-generational hereditary factors are contributors to onset of cancers
- acquiring certain rare cancers (school environments where asbestos is or has been present in the buildings)
As a teacher, I was privileged to be asked to participate in this study begun in 1995. I answered a multiple-choice set of questions and have filled out subsequent ones over the years. I recently was chosen to be among the 20,000 (out of the original 133,000 who were initially surveyed) to donate some blood for testing.
The expertise of the phlebotomist who came to my house was the best experience I have ever had from such a professional. She was knowledgeable and friendly and welcomed all questions. Kudos to the program for selecting the very best experts to staff their teams.
She referred me to Dr. Lacey for more information, touting how accessible he always is. He shared the following:
“Collecting these samples today will enable us to look for new biomarkers and genetic markers that we hope can be used to better predict who is at risk of developing cancer and other diseases that affect women. The goal is to find those clues that are in a person’s blood or in their DNA [some participants donated saliva samples] and use them [samples] to detect cancer earlier and, we hope, prevent cancer in the first place.”
The program is closed to new participants but you can follow its progress on-line. Furthermore, I sincerely hope that if you have the opportunity to participate in other such programs, you will jump at the chance to do something really important for yourself, your community, and, of course, for science.
Just sayin’.
MORE INFO:
- www.calteachersstudy.org
- Dr. James Lacey, Lead Investigator: [email protected]; 626-256-4673
- Dr. Leslie Bernstein, Principal Investigator: [email protected]
- City of Hope: cityofhope.org; 626-471-7316
(Rosemary Jenkins is a Democratic activist and chair of the Northeast Valley Green Alliance. Jenkins has written Leticia in Her Wedding Dress and Other Poems, A Quick-and-Easy Reference to Correct Grammar and Composition and Vignettes for Understanding Literary and Related Concepts. She also writes for CityWatch.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 42
Pub: May 23, 2014
