Health Tips and Advisories

This is my true story, nothing altered. These are facts, as they relate to
my experience, my opinions based on what I have read and felt. I am
relating them to warn other young health-conscious women who are
unwittingly harming themselves. In 1989, I graduated from high school in
Texas and couldn't wait to hit the big college city. One of the changes I
wanted to make was to eat healthier.

Once I moved to health-conscious Austin, Texas, I began to fortify my body
with the best and healthiest foods I could find. Tofu was the main
ingredient in every healthy dish and I bought soya milk almost every day
used it for everything from cereal to smoothies or just to drink for a
quick snack. I bought soya muffins, miso soup with tofu, soybeans, soybean,
sprouts, etc. All the literature in all the health and fitness magazines
said that soya protected you against everything from heart disease to
breast cancer. It was the magical isoflavones, the estrogen-like hormones
that all worked to help you stay young and healthy. I looked great, I was
working out all the time, but my menstrual cycle was off. At 20, I started
taking birth control pills to regulate my menstrual cycle.

In addition to this I began to suffer from painful periods. I began to get
puffy, it was as though I was losing my muscle tone. I began to suffer from
depression and getting hot flashes. I mistook all this for PMS since my
periods were irregular. By the time I was 25, my periods were so bad, I
couldn't walk. The birth control pills never made them regular or less
painful so I decided to stop taking them.

I went on like this for another two years until I realized my pain wasn't
normal. At 27, my gynecologist found two cysts in my uterus. Both were the
size of tennis balls. I went through surgery to have them removed and thank God they were benign. The gynecologist told me to go back on birth control pills. I didn't. In 1998, he discovered a lump in my breast. Again, I went through surgery and again it was benign. In November 2000 my glands swelled up and my gums became inflamed. Thinking I had a tooth infection I went to the dentist who told me that teeth were not the problem. After a dose of antibiotics the swelling still did not go down. At this point I could feel a tiny nodule on the right side of my neck. I told my mother I had thyroid trouble. She thought I was being silly. No one in the family suffered from thyroid trouble. Going on a hunch I saw a specialist who diagnosed me with Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. After a series of tests he told me it was
cancer. My fianc� and I sat stunned. We were not prepared and I was so
scared. We scheduled surgery right away. The specialist told us that it
would only be after the operation that a pathologist would be able to tell
us for sure if it was cancer. They found a tumor at my right lobe composed
of irregular cells and another smaller tumor growing on the left, so the
entire thyroid was removed. They told me that after undergoing radioactive iodine I would be safe and assured me that I could live a long life. After treatment I began to search for the cause of all these problems. I never once thought it could be all the soya I had consumed for nearly ten years. After all, soya is healthy. I came upon a web page that linked thyroid problems to soya intake and the conspiracy of soya marketed as a health food when in fact it is only a toxic by-product of the vegetable oil industry. This was insane, after all, the health and fitness magazines had said nothing about soya being harmful. I visited a herbalist who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1985. She informed me that soya was the culprit. She had a hysterectomy due to cysts and other uterine problems. A few months later another acquaintance who had consumed soya came down with thyroid cancer. A girl in England I met through the Internet in a thyroid cancer forum had just undergone surgery and she was only 19. What was going on? Breast cancer is linked to estrogen. What mimics estrogen in the female body, SOYA! But I never suspected soya because until now I never once found a single article that stated soya could be dangerous. Women who took soya prior to thyroid problems will continue to take it after if they are not aware of what soya actually does, what it contains and how it reacts in the female body. I think this is the reason that women with thyroid cancer often develop breast cancer later. My co-worker is big into soya and I see her losing hair and gaining weight despite a walking workout during her break and after work, and apples and oranges for lunch. She just had cysts removed from her uterus too. I warned her to stay off soya. I referred her to websites but until it is on the evening news on all four networks, women will suffer. Since the thyroidectomy, I do not touch soya, haven't for two years.

These might be true..pero sa tingin ko nasobrahan lang xa..parati nmn , basta too much of anything eh nde maganda..kkya maigi nang nalalasing agad kesa sa nasosobrahan..hehe..

The main ingredient in cigarettes is tobacco. Tobacco is a green, leafy plant that is grown in warm climates. Farmers use many chemicals to grow tobacco. They use fertilizers to make the soil rich and insecticides to kill the insects that eat the tobacco plant.

After the tobacco plants are picked, they are dried, and machines break up the leaves into small pieces. Artificial flavorings and other chemicals are added. Some chemicals are put in cigarettes to keep them burning; otherwise, they would go out.

There are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes. 51 of them are known to be carcinogenic. A carcinogen is something that causes cancer. Cancer is a disease that often kills those who have it. There are many types of cancer: breast, lung, larynx, stomach, prostrate, kidney, leukemia (cancer of the blood), etc. In all kinds of cancer, the cells keep dividing and forming new, abnormal cells. These cells are not normal or healthy.

Our bodies are made up of thousands of cells. In a healthy person, new cells are made only when the body needs them. In a person with cancer, the abnormal cells destroy the normal cells, invading them like an army. If cells divide when new cells are not needed, a growth or hard mass forms. It could be small like a pea or large like a grapefruit. A cancerous growth is called a malignant tumor.

Cancer usually kills a person when it spreads to other parts of the body. Sometimes cancer cells break away from a malignant tumor and find their way into the bloodstream. They travel to another part of the body or organ like a kidney or lung. There they start multiplying and dividing and form new cancerous tumors. For example, if a woman who has a malignant tumor in her breast does not have it removed while it is small, part of the tumor might break away and go into her bloodstream. From there it may travel to her brain and give her brain cancer.

Chemicals in cigarettes and cigarette smoke are known to cause not only cancer but also other serious health problems. Many of the chemicals are poisonous. If a person ate one pack of cigarettes, he/she would die.

Familiar Chemicals in Cigarettes

Chemical

Found in:

carbon monoxide = car exhaust

nicotine = bug sprays

tar = material to make roads

arsenic = rat poison

ammonia = cleaning products

hydrogen cyanide = gas chamber poison

cyanide = deadly poison

acetone = nail polish remover

butane = cigarette lighter fluid

DDT = insecticides

formaldehyde = to preserve dead bodies

sulfuric acid = car batteries

cadmium = used to recharge batteries

freon = damages earth's ozone layer

geranic acid = a fragrance

methoprene = a pesticide

maltitol = a sweetener not permitted to be used in foods in the U.S.



Three of the most widely known chemicals are nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide. Nicotine is a strong poisonous drug. It is the main ingredient in insecticides or bug sprays. In its pure form, just one drop on a person's tongue would kill him/her.

Tar is the oily material which remains after tobacco passes through the filter. When a smoker inhales, a lot of the tar sticks to and blackens the lungs.

Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas. A smoker inhales this gas which is also found in the exhaust of a car. This gas interferes with our respiratory (breathing) and circulatory (heart, arteries, and veins) systems. When we breathe in air through our nose and mouth, the air passes down the windpipe (trachea) and bronchial tubes into the lungs. The cilia which are made up of small hairs and mucous (a sticky fluid also found in the nose) help to clean this air as it moves down and into the lungs. The cilia remove small pieces of dirt, dust, and germs.