(Source: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions ) Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C - and potentially other antioxidants - can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors ¯ just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation.

The conventional wisdom of how antioxidants such as vitamin C help prevent cancer growth is that they grab up volatile oxygen free radical molecules and prevent the damage they are known to do to our delicate DNA. The Hopkins study, led by Chi Dang, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and oncology and Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research, unexpectedly found that the antioxidants’ actual role may be to destabilize a tumor’s ability to grow under oxygen-starved conditions. Their work is detailed this week in Cancer Cell.

I thought it would be interesting to ask a back surgeon a few questions about fitness, weight control and back problems. I contacted famed NYC Dr. Nathaniel L. Tindel. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his residency at Lenox Hill Hospital.  He is a Board Certified Orthopaedic Surgeon who practices in New York City and Long Island.  Dr. Tindel is affiliated with Lenox Hill Hospital and is an assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine and chief of spinal surgery, at the Jacobi Medical Center. From 2001-2006, Dr. Tindel was the Director of the Spine Service in the Department of Orthopaedics Surgery at the Montefiore Medical Center.  He has been honored by New York Magazine as a top doctor in the New York metropolitan area.

He is the Director of the New York Center for Spinal Disorders that offers comprehensive evaluation and treatment for all back and neck problems including back and/or neck pain, scoliosis, back related trauma, fractures, deformity, infection, cancer, osteoporosis, sciatica. (www.nycenterforspinaldisorders.com).

Dr. Tindel’s first book I’ve Got Your Back: The Truth about Spine Surgery Straight for a Surgeon was published in January 2007 by New American Library and is entering its second printing. The book is designed to help patients make the match between a particular back problem and the treatment option most likely to work for them. 

Researchers in the Netherlands have identified a chemical agent that may be a, if not the, culprit in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), or “popcorn worker’s lung,” a severe occupational lung disease first noted in 2001 among workers at an American plant that makes microwaveable popcorn.

The research, which examined a population of workers at a chemical plant that produced diacetyl (a key component of butter flavoring), was reported in the first issue for September of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

Artificial food color and additives (AFCA) commonly found in children's food exacerbate hyperactive behaviours in children at least up to middle childhood, according to an article published by The Lancet. Importantly, these adverse effects are reported in children in the general population and across a wide range of severities of hyperactivity, and not just in those with extreme hyperactivity (ADHD) as established in previous studies.

Evidence from a previous study* suggests increased levels of hyperactivity, measured by parental ratings for 3-year-old children on a specific mix of food additives. However, whether these effects can be seen with a wider range of measures of hyperactivity and in older children is unknown. The question is important because of the possible benefit a reduction in the level of hyperactivity in the general population, by the removal of AFCA from children's diets, would create.