Transcript of The Natural Moms Talk Radio Program - Episode 79
Aired - 4/14/2008
More info - http://momstalkradio.com/category/natural-moms-talk-radio/
CARRIE: You’re listening to Natural Moms Talk Radio for the week of Monday, April 14th, 2008. This is show #79.
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MALE ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Natural Moms Talk Radio. Available whenever you want here at http://www.naturalmomstalkradio.com. It’s the #1 source for the natural mom and instinctive parent. You’re the expert for your baby and we’re here to help with interviews, stories and information. Now, here’s your host, Carrie Lauff.
CARRIE: Welcome, my name is Carrie Lauff and I am your host. This week on the show I am talking with Lynne Eldridge, MD. The author of “Avoiding cancer one day at a time - practical advice for preventing cancer”. You know, we tend to think of cancer as this big scary, mysterious thing that‘s kind of in the back of our minds. We all have loved ones, maybe relatives, friends who have had cancer, maybe older relatives who have died from it. And it is scary. But the interesting thing about cancer that I’m learning from reading this book, is that about 85% of it is environmentally related. Meaning that we can control many of those things. And that’s why Lynne wrote this book, to tell us what we can do, everyday, with the many, many choices that we make. And small things and large, to lessen our cancer risk. We will be back in just a moment to hear from Lynne Eldridge.
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FEMALE ANNOUNCER: FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Carrie wants to help you get rolling with an online business. If you want to find a way to make money with your interests, you need to pick up The Natural Mom’s Business Guide. Visit http://www.naturalmombusinessguide.com today.
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MALE ANNOUNCER: You’re tuned to Natural Moms Talk Radio available 24/7 here at http://naturalmomstalkradio.com . Let’s get back to the show. Here’s Carrie Lauff.
CARRIE: You’re back with Carrie at Natural Moms Talk Radio and we are joined this week by Lynne Eldridge MD, the author of “Avoiding cancer one day at a time - practical advice for preventing cancer”. Good morning Lynne.
LYNNE: Good morning Carrie. Thank you so much for having me with you today.
CARRIE: Well I’m happy to be talking about this. Cancer is like this big, huge dirty word that we don’t want to think about. But probably every single person that’s listening to this has a loved one that has had cancer or who has cancer, or who has passed away from it. So it touches all of our lives. And it sounds like defiantly that it’s touched your life. Tell us, what made you want to write a book about preventing cancer?
LYNNE: You know, it started actually when I was only 12. I wrote the book with my brother and our grandmother passed away from breast cancer. And it was interesting because I have so many colleagues that had something like that happen early in life, and they wanted to find the cure. But my brother and I both always wanted to find the cause. And we kind of went through life and I ended up going to medical school and he became an epidemiologist. And we worked again at the end of my residency in Hawaii looking at pesticide exposures and people. There were cancer clusters and looked at it thinking, there was exposure and we’re not hearing about it? Then got back into our lives again and more and more people in our lives were developing cancer. I had so many patients. These were young women with young children that were developing breast cancer and they were basically doing everything right, everything I was. We know that 90% of cancers have an environmental component to the cause. So we really wanted to find a resource that we could share with all of our loved ones saying these are all the things you could possibly do to prevent it. One in 2 men now will get cancer. One in 3 women. That doesn’t include skin cancer. What kind of things can we be doing with that 90% of environmental. And there are so many things we don’t hear.
Kind of a little bit of an example, we didn’t set out to write a book, we set out to find this and couldn’t find something that covered the whole gamut from nutrition to environment. And I always kind of felt like we’d hear things. But what really stood out in my mind was I was speaking on Cancer prevention in Austria a few years ago and trying to find out why leukemia in children, which my 13-year old has a friend with leukemia and it’s just devastating. The family they were basically doing everything right. But their risk was much, much lower with children developing leukemia. So we did kind of our own little uncontrolled study looking at classrooms. And the first school we went into I thought I was in the Carlton Ritz on the French Riviera. It was beautiful. Filled with houseplants. Every room was filled with houseplants. And I talked to the school master and she said, well, we’re doing it because of your research. And I scratched my head a little bit. What research? And it turns out we’ve spent a lot of money for NASA to study the ability of houseplants to absorb carcinogens in the air. And that’s important. Indoor air is the 4th leading environment cause of cancer according to the Environmental Protection Agency. What really is near and dear to my heart with so many friends that home school and work at home is that women who work at home are 54% more likely to develop cancer. But simple houseplants in our home, formaldehyde is one of the biggies and it’s … You know, I love your website. You’ve got great resources and we really want to look at our household cleaners. But there’s some things we just can’t escape. Upholstery has formaldehyde in it. But simple houseplants, even like a normal spider plant in a single room can absorb like 90% of those carcinogens. And I love things like that in cancer prevention because it doesn’t take any willpower, it’s aesthetically pleasing and easy to do.
CARRIE: You know, speaking of lungs and breathing and indoor issues, I was surprised to hear that Radon is one of the leading causes of lung cancer. That’s just something I had not given much thought to. That’s on my big to do list, to buy a Radon test kit. I really appreciated that information. Because how many people know that?
LYNNE: They don’t. And let’s put it in perspective a little. It’s kind of interesting. I was speaking to college students at Ohio State a couple of weeks ago and none of them had heard about Radon even though it’s one of the hot spots in the country. Radon is the leading cause of cancer in non-smokers. But one way to look at it is that if we checked every home in the United States for Radon, and treated it if there was a problem, we could save at least 5 times as many people from developing cancer than if every woman, child and two-year old was immunized against HPV.
CARRIE: Wow.
LYNNE: And you know we hear about HPV, the pharmaceutical companies advertise. So we hear about that but we don’t hear about Radon which something …you know, there’s not even any ethical dilemmas with that. You can go to your hardware store and pick up a Radon detection kit for $10 and you put it in your home for about 48 hours. Winter is the perfect time to do it. And send it out and if there’s abnormal levels people can call 1-800-SOS-RADON. Which goes right to the Environmental Protection Agency. And they can offer a lot of assistance and what to do.
CARRIE: That’s very valuable information. Because as you’ve mentioned, women who are raising young children spend a lot of time indoors. Most of my listeners are stay at home or work at home moms. So that’s really important for us to know. What I like about your book is that it has such a proactive stance, instead of being gloomy and depressing. There are so many, many things that we can do every single day to decrease our risk. So let’s talk about that as it impacts mothers of young children. Tell us what some of those things are that we can do. You mentioned houseplants…
LYNNE: Houseplants, we’ll go through a list. But the thing is, there are simple things we can do. If we start blaming corporations and industries and pharmaceutical companies we’re not going to get anywhere.
CARRIE: Right.
LYNNE: It’s going to take a grassroots effort with us moms. Arsenic-treated wood is one we should be aware of. Basically, until 2003 outdoor play structures about 90% of them were built with arsenic-treated wood. It’s what gives the wood you know that green tint that it’s not going to decompose. The Environmental Working Group has estimated that 1 in 500 children now will get cancer just from playing on those. Arsenic is absorbed, it’s not something that dissipates over time. If you have a 20-year old play structure you can still absorb it. It doesn’t mean that we have to all go out and burn down any play structures that were built prior to 2003, but if you seal them, at least once a year, that can take care of the problem. And you don’t have to worry about those little hands absorbing it.
CARRIE: So how would we know? We think we’re doing a good thing by taking the kids outside to play or by taking them to the park or playground. How do you know by looking at a play structure whether it’s been treated with arsenic? Is there a way to know?
LYNNE: Not necessarily. The way I would look at is if it was built prior to 2003 when arsenic-treated wood was banned in the United States. I would go with the assumption that it was treated.
CARRIE: Okay.
LYNNE: Since 90% is. You can test. The Environmental Working Group has that. And actually, I will send out an email to you so you can have on your website, resources where people, it’s also in the book, where they can tap in and find test kits if they are really concerned. Some people like to test the soil underneath. And that’s another thing, you don’t want to have a garden underneath one of these play structures. But there’s also so many other simple tips. Just the sealing it can make a huge difference and then you don’t have to worry. With a good water-based polyurethane type of stain, so you’re not running into problems with the type of stain too, can be helpful. And if your children are playing at somebody else’s house or on wooden structures at a playground, making sure they wash their hands as soon as they get home is really good. Tablecloths if you’re at a picnic table anywhere, putting down a tablecloth can be a real good way of just eliminating exposure.
CARRIE: Okay.
LYNNE: So that’s one with moms that can be really helpful. Going back to the indoor air, and I love your website because you have so many good resources with alternatives to traditional household cleaners. We think a lot of those are safe and a lot of them aren’t. There was a study, the Silent Spring Institute in conjunction with Harvard University and the University of Southern California, last spring went through all of the different chemicals that have been shown to cause breast cancer in animals, not just humans. And out of those chemicals 60 of them are in household cleaners.
CARRIE: Wow.
LYNNE: So the alternatives are very important. Cosmetics we’re hearing so much about. And I love how you have medicinal aides on your website. But it can be so confusing in talking with people, how can you read these labels, sometimes they don’t even list the chemicals. The Enviornmental Working Group has a wonderful website [corrected] http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.
CARRIE: Okay, I’ve seen that.
LYNNE: There’s thousands and thousands of products. I was alarmed a little boy came over and was staying with one of my children, overnight and brought his special shampoo in. And there’s two known carcinogens that we found in it. It was ranked 10 out of 10 as far as bad. The website does rank everything and give it a grade from 1 to 10. Another one really dear to my heart right now is moms is radiation and children. A study last year showed that girls that have chest x-rays before they’re 20, if they carry the mutation for breast cancer, brca1 and brca 2, which is about 6-7% of breast cancers, they are 4 times more likely to develop breast cancer in their life. The problem is, we don’t test young girls to see if they’re genetically predisposed to breast cancer. So we don’t know who those people are. And sometimes chest x-rays can be life saving. But after working in a clinic for many years I know many times partners would say to the nurse, get a chest x-ray before I see the child, they’ve got a cough. And that’s something we want to stop and say, wait, is this really necessary. Is it going to alter treatment?
Pediatric cat scans, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about those in the news, we all are. They’ve predicted now that 2% of little kids will get cancer in their lifetimes just from cat scans as children. And it’s another area where we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. My 13-year old had appendicitis on Christmas Eve and it can be a life saving procedure. It basically says if you need surgery or not. But I was the neurotic mother that got in there and checked and made sure the machine was up to date. We picked a children’s hospital because a lot of the cat scanners are set for adults, and that’s something to ask a technician if you ever go in. Is it set for a child’s size? So they get much less radiation. And always asking that question, is there some other procedure that could be done that could ultrasound be done, is it possible to wait? Really asking your health care provider if a radiation study is totally needed.
CARRIE: And that’s hard for many people to do, but we have to. We have to be the mama bear and we have to not just blindly go along with whatever we’re told sometimes.
LYNNE: We do. And we have to question doctors in this country some times, and this comes from somebody who has practiced medicine for several years. There’s more and more technology available. More and more that we know and less and less time to spend with patients. And nobody’s perfect. I tell people, physicians have expertise in different areas just like painters and plumbers. And you want to ask questions.
CARRIE: And a good doctor won’t be offended by that. He’ll want a patient that you know. I posted on my blog the other week about a good experience that I had with my dental hygienist. I was so impressed with her because I have some problems with my gums but it’s not a serious thing, it’s an irritation, and she was convinced that it was probably because of cinnamon. She said we’re seeing a lot of people who use a lot of cinnamon in their toothpaste, chew cinnamon gum, eat cinnamon, and for some people it really irritates their gums. And she said go home and do some research about that and see what you think. And I thought, boy that’s different.
LYNNE: That is so wonderful.
CARRIE: Yeah, and I told her, I put cinnamon in my homemade tooth powder. And she said, you need to stop doing that. She said the homemade tooth powder is just fine, but leave out the cinnamon.
LYNNE: That’s wonderful. Think if she wasn’t doing it. What happens so many times is you end up having periodontal surgery and all those other things.
CARRIE: Exactly. Right, overkill.
LYNNE: That’s so wonderful.
CARRIE: Another thing I had dog-eared in the book here is about water and testing your water if you have a well. We had our well tested several years ago but it’s probably time to do it again. And you have some other tips here about making sure that your water is safe. What else, thinking specifically about moms and children, can we do every day? What about some of the things having to do with diet and nutrition?
LYNNE: Diet and nutrition. Studies show that if you increase your fruits and vegetable intake from 1-2 servings up to 5-9 it halves the risk of cancer. And that’s cancers in general. And I know a lot of us have picky eaters, but as moms getting creative, trying to find a way, even if your child doesn’t like it, to hide those fruits and vegetables. My mother has a wonderful spaghetti she makes the kids and they call it the hamburger spaghetti that they love. And what it is is chopped up cauliflower. And they think it’s hamburger. And grandma makes the best. So there are little clever ways that you can disguise those. Nutrition is so so so important.
CARRIE: And you know one other thing on that topic, about vegetables, it’s interesting that often times children prefer raw and just the simply prepared veggies. And I was just reading these books the other day that I really enjoy, they’re called Your One Year Old, Your Two Year Old, Your Three Year Old, Your Four Year Old, etc. up to age ten. And then it goes to Your 10-14-year old. But every year, these are wonderful books and they were written about 20 years ago, but they are great for any parent to kind of set their mind at ease about specific developmental quirks about a particular age group. And one of the things that’s typical of young children is that they don’t like multiple combinations. They might very easily eat a raw carrot or a raw celery or fruit, but if you cook that same exact fruit or vegetable sometimes they’ll reject it. So I thought, maybe we just need to keep it simple.
LYNNE: Great tips.
CARRIE: Give them some raw carrot sticks and see what happens. Learning about the different developmental milestones and the age groups might be a good way to kind of skirt around that, having to hide things. Because I know some people, there’s been a lot of controversy about the whole deceptive thing. And I think there’s nothing wrong with it. I say, as a mom, go for it. You’ve got the right to hide the food. (laughing) You know better.
LYNNE: Children do sometimes pick very healthy things.
CARRIE: Sometimes they do. They’ll surprise you sometimes. But perhaps it’s that we are trying too hard sometimes.
LYNNE: Another thing with kids is taking them shopping, I love doing this with this kids, .It’s like, you can pick out anything you want as long as it’s in the periphery of the grocery store. And when they try things they’re so much more likely to, if they pick it out, they’re so much more likely to eat it.
CARRIE: And to not give up. You know some studies have shown that if you introduce the same food about 15 times they’ll eventually eat a little. And it may not be their favorite, but just keep trying, just a taste. Or just keep introducing it and they’ll eventually catch on.
LYNNE: And don’t give up. I’m kind of known as the mom with kids that come over here, for having strange foods. But just keep introducing and putting things out there for them. And not assume that they’re not going to like it.
Let’s go back to the water because you mentioned that. And something the American Dental Association a year ago, came out and recommended that children given formula between the age of birth and one not receive fluoridated water. And that didn’t get the press I thought it would. The reason for that is the American Dental Association said it does not help children’s teeth and it actually increases the risk of osteosarcoma. Which is a pretty rare bone cancer. And that’s one reason why sometimes having a water filter, and you don’t necessarily need to go and by an expensive reverse osmosis system, they do have some reverse osmosis systems that are $30 where you can just filter it on your counter. That also gets rid of chlorine, which there’s some debate over chlorine, and chlorinated water is actually wonderful in some ways. It has probably decreased h-pylory the bacteria that causes stomach cancer significantly in the United States. But yet, chlorinated water is also considered a breast cancer carcinogen in women. And simply taking that chlorinated water out of the faucet and filtering it gets rid of the chlorine. So you can get the benefits of it, but still not have to drink it in your water.
CARRIE: And I think there’s more chlorine than we might realize because I know about 15 months ago I moved from an area where I had city water to a place with well water and my hair has turned back to its natural color. (laughing) It was getting so light, highlights, and I think it was because of the chlorine in the water when I showered. Now it’s almost black again.
LYNNE: And that’s for people that have city water. Just getting a simple filter, we have one on the shower, having city water, which filters out chlorine can make a big difference. In fact they say a lot of the water, a lot of the chlorine we’re getting is through the skin when we’re taking showers. But it’s a very simple thing to do. We don’t know the level of risk and we probably won’t for 30 years. Until our kids are grown up. So we kind of want to be careful now when they’re this age.
Another one with young children where we’re going to hear a little bit more is cell phones. I think we want to be cautious. I know two of mine have cell phones but basically they’re wonderful for emergencies or if they’re at friends houses I know I can find them. But really putting limits. Right now all of the Scandinavian countries, the UK, Germany and France have recommended children only use cell phones to calls to parents. It’s not based on some huge major study that shows brain cancer has for sure increased. We don’t know. But it’s based on this precautionary principle. We know if tobacco came out when cell phones did we’d be saying, well we don’t really think smoking causes cancer. But wait a few years. There’s a new study that just came out a few weeks ago too with parotid [?] gland tumors. The parotid [?] gland right in front of our ear that swells up, used to swell up when people get mumps. Cancer of that gland is about 50% more common in people who use cell phones a lot. Heavy use.
CARRIE: Really?
LYNNE: That’s brand new out of Israel.
CARRIE: Well another issue about kids and cell phones, I know I’m very concerned about my teenage boys. I’ve pretty much made up my mind that there won’t be any 16-year old boys driving in my home. (laughing) They’ll have to be 18. It’s bad enough about the statistics about 16-year old boys driving. And teenage girls too, but specifically it’s worse with boys. But then if you add the element of a cell phone in there, we know the studies that have shown that when you’re talking on the cell phone and driving you’re about the same as an intoxicated person.
LYNNE: Right, right, equivalent to being drunk and driving.
CARRIE: So that’s another issue about that. I mean cancer we kind of think about it as a, what’s the word, it’s a ticking time bomb. But something like driving is a hand grenade. Instant bad, what am I trying to say? It can be instant death. Or instant catastrophic results. So …
LYNNE: Hopefully they will, in some states now they’re banning it. In Minnesota children can’t use cell phones until they’re 18 if they drive. There’s also the issue they were saying with childhood obesity. Lots and lots of kids are replacing their time doing homework and being active with time spent on their cell phones. They can be wonderful if your child is off somewhere in an emergency. Just dial your number or 911.
CARRIE: Yeah, or mom come get me I’m not comfortable in this situation. And that’s kind of what you say in your book is that we need to kind of think about all of the research and do everything we can, but we can’t get hung up on one thing. Because we’ll go overboard. Like you mentioned earlier, we’ll throw out the baby with the bathwater. So we have to be balanced and think about the big picture.
LYNNE: And people ask me did you ever have a hot dog at a ball game? (laughing) And sure, it’s moderation.
CARRIE: And you have to think about that your emotions are also important. If you’re constantly stressed and thinking oh this is going to kill me, well that’s going to kill you, that constant stress. If you went out with your family and had a wonderful time and made memories, well that decreases your cancer risk.
LYNNE: It certainly does and that’s so important. Since we’re talking to moms, there’s two studies - a brand new one that just came out on women who are more stressed are twice as likely to have HPV the virus that causes cervical cancer persist in their body. And there was one in Sweden that showed that women that were more stressed had double the risk of breast cancer. But in both of those studies it wasn’t objective stress, they went through and they weighed out job changes and all the different stressors in our life. And it was the same for both groups, but it was the women who perceived stress more, who felt more stressed out, were more likely to develop cancer. So that’s my area, where I’ve really had to stop and sit back and take ownership. Because I’m a type-A first, born daughter. And we get stressed out easily (laughing). Be the neurotic mothers and worry about everything their children are doing. So what I do when I start to get to that, I have my list of 10 right now. And when I’m feeling stressed out I start with, let’s see, we didn’t run out of toilet paper today, the dog didn’t eat the kids homework, and usually I’m laughing so hard by the time I finish my list that I forget about being stressed. Finding ways that we can take care of ourselves as moms is so important.
CARRIE: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you also have some great resources on your site http://www.avoidcancernow.com and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us Lynne. This has been a very valuable conversation and hopefully it will give people some action tips to go on and some comfort too and encouragement to realize that it is more in our hands than we realize.
LYNNE: Oh it is. Just having that little bit of awareness without being totally neurotic can make a big difference for us, for ourselves and our families.
CARRIE: Thanks again.
LYNNE: Thank you so much and thanks for all you do.
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MALE ANNOUNCER: Helping you be more confident as a natural mom, this is Natural Moms Talk Radio. Featuring helpful information on everything for the instinctive parent. Here’s Carrie Lauff.
CARRIE: Thank you so much for tuning in this week. Next week on the show I am proud to speak with Deanna Duke. You might know her as the Crunchy Chicken. She has a very popular blog where she shares eco-friendly living tips and she’s recently launched a new non-profit project called Goods for Girls. And I blogged about this a couple of weeks ago. I just thought it was fantastic and I wanted to speak with her. And help her spread the word about what she’s doing. So I’m not going to tell you too much, you can wait till next week, okay? I’d like to thank my top, not my top five, I’m sorry I can’t stop saying that, but five of my referring partners. I just pick these randomly. Who ever is loving me enough to send me a little traffic or to link to my show or talk about me on their blog. I want to give them a word of thanks on the program and on the website. So here they are http://www.naturemoms.com, http://www.becausemomsaidso.com, http://thenaturalmommy.blogspot.com , http://www.thesimpledollar.com, and http://natural-moms.com. Well that’s it. If you haven’t visited the blog lately, come by. I’m talking about how I’m opting out of spring cleaning. But paradoxically I also share some green your spring cleaning tips. I know that may sound a bit hypocritical, but you’ll have to read the post to understand what I mean. And I also reviewed, it’s not really a product, but I guess you could call it a product, many of you have heard of the Westin A Price Foundation. I discovered Westin A Price and his philosophies on nutrition and stuff when I read his book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” about 3 years ago. And it totally blew me away. And I couple of months ago I joined the foundation which has started to disseminate his findings and his wisdom. It’s also a nonprofit group and I wrote a pretty lengthy article about it and how much I’m enjoying it and their publication called Wise Traditions and a little bit more about the nutrition philosophy. So come by and read that and let me know what you think. There’s a cool new pod cast in the blog-osphere, podcastaphere, I don’t know what it’s called - The Internet Airwaves. Diana Walker has been a guest on Natural Moms Talk Radio in the past and she’s a fellow internet marketing mom and mom mastermind member and friend. And she’s a cravings coach . She teaches people, women especially, how to overcome their cravings. And she’s now sharing her wisdom on a pod cast. So go check that out. You’ll find the link from my blog also. And until next time, hug those babies.
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FEMALE ANNOUNCER: The show you were just listening to is part of Moms Radio Network. A network of internet shows and podcasts of interest to moms. If you’d like to find more great audio content to listen to online or to download to your mp3 player, visit http://www.momsradionetwork.com.
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