Exercise is the key to a health body and a healthy mind.

It is believed that one hour of daily vigorous exercise or two hours of less strenuous activity is now linked to a lower risk of colon cancer, according to the results of a recent study.

Cycling, Jogging, running, pumping iron, swimming, and even housecleaning can do the trick, as demonstrated by research conducted with 413,000 people in 10 European countries.

Of those studied, people with the highest level of exercise were 22 percent less likely to develop cancer and 35 percent less likely to develop tumors on the right side of the colon. Those of normal weight enjoyed a greater benefit, but exercise was also beneficial for the overweight and obese. Exercise did not have a protective effect against rectal cancer.

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Angelina Jolie is making even more headlines than usual as she speaks openly about falling in love with Brad Pitt. She also confirmed that her mother is battling ovarian cancer.

Jolie says in an interview with CNN host Larry King that her 56-year-old mom, Marcheline Bertrand, is doing good and she expects her to win her fight against the disease.

“She has fought for six years and she’s a remarkable woman, she’s very, very strong and her spirit remains unbroken.”

Jolie’s Larry King interview was aired on Monday, December 18.

Emmy award-winning actor and curmudgeonly patriarch of Everybody Loves Raymond Peter Boyle, who recovered from a stroke almost two decades ago, passed away last night after a battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.

On Everybody Loves Raymond, Boyle played the inflexible, narrow-minded, and often abrasive yet somehow lovable Frank Barone, whose signature “holy crap” comment to so many family events and his own antics made the character most memorable.

Boyle began his acting career in theater, going on to appear in movies such as Young Frankenstein, Johnny Dangerously, While You Were Sleeping, Monster’s Ball, Malcolm X, Taxi Driver and most recently as Father Time in Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

Boyle is survived by his wife Loraine and daughters Lucy and Amy. He was 71.

Touch imprint cytology (TIC) lymph node assessment during breast cancer surgery could prove to have advantages over the current standard lymph node assessment. TIC can be important to the breast cancer patient because usually the results from the lymph node dissection can take up to a week. It causes a lot of anxiety and stress waiting to find out if the breast cancer has metastasized to the lymph nodes. TIC would provide immediate results during the sentinel node extraction.

An economic assessment that was published in the November 15, 2006 issue of Cancer says TIC is less costly than standard lymph node assessment. They studied the cost effectiveness of the two techniques and found that especially in larger tumors TIC is more effective.

Conotoxin is toxin made by cone snails, which are fish eating snails that inhabit tropical coral reefs. Each of the 500 species of cone snail produces roughly 50 to 100 distinct conotoxins which they use to immobilize prey. Researchers believe that this sea snail venom could be used to create a pain medication to replace morphine.

Conotoxin has not yet been tested on humans but when tested on animals conotoxin could produce pain relief without the nasty side effects. The researchers believe that with more studies and testing on humans that conotoxin has the potential to completely revolutionize pain treatment for cancer patients and chronic pain sufferers.

Morphine can have a range of side effects including nausea, drowsiness and movement defects. If the research proves successful they hope the treatment will allow sufferer’s to lead a normal life, pain free.

The drug sildenafil, better known as Viagra has been shown in mice to support the immune system’s response to cancer cells. Mice with colon and breast tumors showed that the tumor size decreased two and threefold when treated with sildenafil compared with the mice that did not receive the drug. The researchers also believe that they have evidence that sildenafil is effective on the immune system because in mice engineered to lack an immune system the tumors were unaffected. Tissue samples taken from head and neck cancer and multiple myeloma patients showed similar results.Viagra is a class of drugs used to treat impotence. It is known to stimulate nitric oxide which hinder the effects of a specialized cell that can divert the immune system away from the tumor. The researchers are trying to figure out how cancer cells can avoid detection by the immune system. T-cells that mount the attack on cancer cells are manipulated by the cancer cells and prevent them from being seen by the immune system. Viagra can unmask the cancer cells and let the immune system recognize and attack them.

For the fourth straight year, Minnesota tops the state health rankings, according to the annual United Health Foundation report, which also shows Americans are 0.3 percent healthier in 2006 than they were in 2005.

The United Health Foundation survey has been around for 17 years and for 11 of these years, Minnesota has been at the top of the healthy list.

Rankings are based on factors such as access to health care, incidence of preventable disease, smoking rates, child poverty rates, and motor vehicle deaths. Minnesota boasts a low rate of uninsured (8.4 percent), a low rate of child poverty (10 percent), and a low infant mortality rate (5.1 deaths per 1,000 live births).

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In a recent study at Denmark, it was found that cell phones don’t cause cancer. This major study tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, many of them users for more than 10 years and some for more than 20 years.

In the largest ever study to yield good news about the safety of cell phones, scientists matched phone records to the Danish Cancer Registry, a listing that records every citizen who gets the disease and recently these study results were revealed.

Cell-phone users are no more likely than anyone else to develop cancer. However, the lead researcher of this massive investigation says doubts will surely linger. There is really no biological basis for concern about radio waves, he says. But people still worry.

Cell phones beam radiofrequency energy that can penetrate the outer edge of the brain, causing suspicion about the origin of various cancers. Most research has found no link between cell phones and cancer, but the phones have never been given a definite clean bill of health either.

“As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become reassured that these devices are safe,” says one cell phone researcher.

Germany’s biggest Drug makers Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corp. and US Partners Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. said that Phase III skin cancer tests of their Nexavar (sorafenib) tablets failed to meet their primary endpoint of improving progression-free survival (PFS).

The addition of the drug Nexavar to chemotherapy failed to improve the survival of skin cancer patients.

“We are disappointed, first and foremost, for the patients with refractory metastatic melanoma for whom treatment options are so limited,” Onyx chief executive Hollings Renton said in a statement.

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British scientists have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of ovarian cancer by discovering a way to reverse the resistance to drugs that denies thousands of women patients each year a chance of survival.

Ovarian Cancer is a common disease and one of the hardest to treat. Around 70 per cent of patients cannot be cured because they develop resistance to the chemotherapy which targets the malignant cells.

Professor Hani Gabra and his team at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London have discovered four major gene pathways that could reverse the resistance. This opens up the prospect of developing a drug to block these pathways and allow the chemotherapy to carry on working. The drugs in question, cisplatin and carboplatin – also known as platinum chemotherapy – are given as injections after surgery.

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