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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Bad Luck Twice Over
Not exactly a cheery recommendation this – really, when has cancer been anything but bad news? But to know and not just suspect that it has always walked hand-in-hand with "bad luck" is depressing, to say the least. This new knowledge potentially transforms how scientists and doctors will look at cancer prevention in the future.
Last week, US researchers published a study in the journal Science that flatly attributes two-thirds of cancers to "random mistakes in DNA" that occur when normal cells make copies of themselves. This perhaps explains why some of the healthiest people in the world are stricken by cancer. The researchers likened this to typos that occur even when the best of typists are working on the best of keyboards.
Curiously, this is the same group of researchers who in 2015 published a similar study in the same journal that asserted that such "DNA typos" cause more cancers than previously thought. This caused much brouhaha in the cancer community where traditionally it is believed that most cancers are caused by lifestyle and environmental factors, and thus more preventable. Fingers were pointed at the researchers for looking at cancers only in the US.
This new study though, is based on genetic sequencing and cancer studies from 69 countries. “Cancer might occur no matter how perfect the environment,” says the study author Dr Bert Vogelstein. With the help of a mathematical model, the researchers say 66% of cancers occur due to random mistakes, 29% due to lifestyle and environment factors and 5% due to heredity.
The researchers, this time around, have been careful enough to assert that though most cancers are due to bad luck, people should continue to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle to avoid preventable cancers. The biggest takeaway from these findings though, is about how there ought to be more focus on early detection of cancers rather than other prevention strategies.
