A brisk 20-minute walk could reduce the risk of seven types of cancer by a fifth, scientists claim

The usual bullshit.  The people who took more exercise were probably healthier to start with.  Sick people are not likely to be keen joggers

A study suggests that people who do just two-and-a-half hours of moderate exercise a week have lower odds of getting seven types of cancer.

That could be a brisk daily walk of just over 20 minutes or a non-strenuous bicycle ride.

This amount of exercise was found to reduce the risk of liver cancer by 18 per cent, or almost a fifth, in both sexes. That rose to 27 per cent for the equivalent of five hours a week of moderate exercise.

The breast cancer risk for women fell by 6 per cent for two-and-a-half hours of moderate exercise, or 10 per cent for five hours.

The risk of kidney cancer in both sexes fell by 11 per cent for two-and-a-half hours hours of moderate exercise, or 17 per cent for five hours.

The results suggest exercise partly cuts cancer risk because it helps weight loss. But active people, even when they do not lose weight, could gain protection against some cancers.

The researchers followed the 755,549 people in the study for a decade on average. Dr Alpa Patel, a co-author of the study from the American Cancer Society, said: ‘The exciting thing about these results is that they demonstrate engaging in a short amount of regular moderate-intensity activity, like a brisk walk, can provide tremendous benefits for the risk of getting various types of cancer.

‘That is good news for the many people who, when they hear they should exercise more for their health or cancer prevention, think that means something drastic like having to start training for a marathon.’

The NHS recommends people get at least two-and-a-half hours of moderate physical activity a week, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.

Researchers looked at whether people were active for seven-and-a-half to 15 ‘metabolic equivalent’ hours a week.

This works out at between two-and-a-half and five hours of moderate activity, such as walking or light cycling, or 75 and 150 minutes of vigorous exercise, such as tennis or jogging.

Women who did the recommended amount of activity were up to 18 per cent less likely to get womb cancer than those who were inactive.

They were also up to 18 per cent less likely to get non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Men who did the recommended amount of physical activity were up to 14 per cent less likely to get colon cancer.

Both sexes saw a reduced risk of up to 19 per cent for the blood cancer myeloma.

SOURCE 

Journal abstract follows

Amount and Intensity of Leisure-Time Physical Activity and Lower Cancer Risk

Charles E. Matthews et al

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE
To determine whether recommended amounts of leisure-time physical activity (ie, 7.5-15 metabolic equivalent task [MET] hours/week) are associated with lower cancer risk, describe the shape of the dose-response relationship, and explore associations with moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity.

METHODS
Data from 9 prospective cohorts with self-reported leisure-time physical activity and follow-up for cancer incidence were pooled. Multivariable Cox regression was used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs of the relationships between physical activity with incidence of 15 types of cancer. Dose-response relationships were modeled with restricted cubic spline functions that compared 7.5, 15.0, 22.5, and 30.0 MET hours/week to no leisure-time physical activity, and statistically significant associations were determined using tests for trend (P < .05) and 95% CIs (< 1.0).

RESULTS
A total of 755,459 participants (median age, 62 years [range, 32-91 years]; 53% female) were followed for 10.1 years, and 50,620 incident cancers accrued. Engagement in recommended amounts of activity (7.5-15 MET hours/week) was associated with a statistically significant lower risk of 7 of the 15 cancer types studied, including colon (8%-14% lower risk in men), breast (6%-10% lower risk), endometrial (10%-18% lower risk), kidney (11%-17% lower risk), myeloma (14%-19% lower risk), liver (18%-27% lower risk), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (11%-18% lower risk in women). The dose response was linear in shape for half of the associations and nonlinear for the others. Results for moderate- and vigorous-intensity leisure-time physical activity were mixed. Adjustment for body mass index eliminated the association with endometrial cancer but had limited effect on other cancer types.

CONCLUSION
Health care providers, fitness professionals, and public health practitioners should encourage adults to adopt and maintain physical activity at recommended levels to lower risks of multiple cancers.

SOURCE 






Boxer Amir Khan 'shocked' by savage reaction to his family Christmas photo

Boxer Amir Khan has confessed to being "shocked" by the abuse aimed at him by trolls over an Instagram post wishing people a Merry Christmas.

The family snap has drawn the ire of some followers as it depicts the avowed Muslim celebrating what is largely seen as a Christian holiday.



Former world boxing champion Khan and his fiancee Faryal Makhdoom, 28, were joined by daughters Lamaisah, five, and Alanya, one, in the cute photo, The Sun reports.

Wearing matching pyjamas, each family member donned a shirt with antlers and a red nose stitched on the front – Khan's reading "Daddy Deer".

But sick trolls targeted the Brit, 33, and his family and claimed they should not be enjoying Christmas.

One comment on the original Instagram post decried Khan as a "bloody disgrace to our religion".

Such responses prompted Khan to tweet on Thursday: "So shocked by all the hate I’m getting on my Twitter & Instagram for wishing everyone Merry Christmas and posting a picture with my family in Christmas outfits.

"Just want to tell those people ‘I don’t give a f**k’."

However, Khan also had plenty of supporters defending his right to celebrate Christmas, even though he is Muslim.

One Twitter user commented: "I became Muslim 31 years ago, and always look forward to celebrating Christmas with my large Christian family at my parents' house just as they enjoy celebrating Eid with us. Sharing and celebrating together is what unites us and removes the divide/hate we see in society."

Born in England, Khan is of Pakistani origin and has spoken on several occasions about seeking greater acceptance for his faith in the UK.

Earlier in the year, he spoke in the aftermath of the New Zealand terrorist attack about how he wants there to be further "understanding" of his religion because "there is a lot of hatred in a lot of people towards Muslims"

SOURCE 

He seems to have missed the point. It is intolerance FROM  Muslims that he experienced






So you’re a vegan ... but are you, really?

The number of animals that die each and every day to produce vegan food is astonishing.

There’s a lot to be said for veganism. For the thinking eater, it gets around a whole bunch of ethical grey areas. If you care about what you put in your mouth, it is probably the most black and white way to approach the whole meat thing. There are no grey areas about so-called “ethical” meat, or questions over exactly how “free range” are the hens when there are 10,000 chickens to the ­hectare. Not eating meat, not buying products that come from animals — surely that means you’re doing better not only for those animals directly affected, but also the environment, and your health?

But while veganism is on the rise in Western nations, it’s still far from mainstream. Why, then, is it so hard to convince people of its worth if it really is a win all round? The vegan philosophy is, at its heart, quite often about ­reducing suffering. By not eating ­animals, you — by definition — reduce suffering. It’s a lovely idea. And I wish it were that simple.

Let’s start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season.

And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of ­animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 ­possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most ­animals killed for crop protection are.)

So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That’s not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That’s mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in.

Collydean’s owners assure me it wouldn’t be financially viable for them to grow peas without killing animals. Which means that every time we eat peas, farmers have controlled the “pest” species on our behalf, and animals have died in our name.

The number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing. Consider wheat, a common crop in Australia. And let’s look at the nutrient density of the food in question, because not all foods are created equal. According to an article by Mike Archer, Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW, roughly 25 times more sentient beings die to produce a kilo of protein from wheat than a kilo of protein from beef. Thanks to monocultures, mice plagues and our modern farming systems, a hell of a lot of small animals die to produce wheat. Yes, most of them are rodents, but surely in the vegan world all warm-blooded life should be honoured equally?

On average, 1 billion mice are poisoned every year in Western Australia alone. According to a 2005 Senate report, if we didn’t kill mice the cost of food would rise drastically; even with heavy baiting programs, mice cost the Australian economy about a $36 million a year.

Let’s look at birds. Over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers in NSW killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their fields. That’s right, to grow rice. That’s in addition to the animals indirectly affected, such as those that once thrived in the waterways drained by such a heavily irrigated crop on a dry continent.

That’s how farming works. To grow something, other things are affected. Sometimes it’s an animal, sometimes it’s a helluva lot of animals. The most animals that die on Fat Pig Farm, our property in the Huon Valley south of Hobart, are the snails and slugs that would destroy our garden if left unchecked. We kill close to 5000 moths, slugs and snails each year to grow vege­tables, and thousands and thousands of aphids.

Insects bear the brunt of all annual vegetable production. And the most exploited insect of all is the European honeybee. True vegans don’t eat honey because it’s the result of the domestication, and utilisation, of the European honeybee. They don’t eat it because eating honey is “stealing” honey from the hive, and because bees die in the process of beekeepers managing the hives and extracting the honey. And they’re right, bees do die in that process.

Problem is, honeybees are very, very good pollinators, and a whole heap of crops are pretty much reliant on these bees to produce fruit — and even more crops would suffer from far lower production due to poor fertility if we didn’t have bees. About one-third of all crops globally benefit from direct interaction with pollinators, of which ­European honeybees are by far the most efficient.

Whether we eat honey or not, we are the beneficiaries of the work of the domesticated European honeybee. In their absence, some crops would come close to failure, and others increase substantially in cost. Gobs of bees die every year doing the work of pollination for us. According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards. And that’s the carnage from just one crop.

What about vegan wine, you say? It doesn’t use fish bladders, or milk extracts, or egg as a fining agent (ingredients used to clarify many wines, beers and ciders). But don’t forget the harvest. Come with me to watch grapes being picked, watch as huge tubs of plump grapes are tipped into the crusher along with mice, spiders, lizards, snakes and frogs. Sadly, vegan wine is a furphy.

Let’s move on to peanut butter, that wonderful practical protein staple. Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to ­Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than ­Australian data), 125g of pasta (a ­single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.

I don’t bring this up for the “ick” factor, but simply to show the true impact and cost of food production. When you eat, you’re never truly vegan. When humans grow and process food, any food, other things die — and often we eat them.

Vegans are welcome to voice their opinion that raising and eating meat has consequences. Indeed, some of those consequences, from the personal to the animal to the environment, are worth serious thinking about. It’s quite possible that eating less meat might mean less suffering. But don’t be fooled into thinking that being vegan hurts no animal.

More HERE 





Peloton ‘Scandal’ Shows How Mentally Unfit We’ve Become

We are fast approaching the end of 2019, and as we close the book on a turbulent decade, nothing summarizes the state of our culture and our unhealthy relationship with contrived outrage quite like the Peloton ad controversy and the wave of hysteria that has followed in its wake.

Imagine if we could channel that outrage instead into addressing our nation’s obesity crisis.

If you are not familiar with the ad or simply cannot believe that America—land of the free, home of the brave—is full of adults who are distressed over an exercise bike, a quick Google search will fill you in on the situation.

You will also find columnists in highly read publications and joyless hordes on social media claiming to be offended by Peloton’s latest ad, in which a husband dares to gift his already-slim wife a Peloton stationary bike for Christmas.

The commercial has been described as sexist, tone deaf, body-shaming, and reflective of outdated social norms—with every new critique against it more fantastical than the last. The backlash against the ad has been so severe that the exercise equipment company lost nearly a billion dollars in market value since the spot’s release.

This widespread hysteria is beyond absurd on many levels.

First, it serves as yet another shining example of one of our society’s worst qualities: the endless search for conflict in any and everything. It highlights our uncanny ability to turn a positive into a negative, a neutral into a catastrophe. What surely started as a creative and unassuming idea in Peloton’s marketing department has been stripped of its intention and extrapolated to fit the narratives and agendas of radical extremists.

Second, the people claiming the ad is sexist are actually doing their cause more harm than good. Making much ado about nothing and targeting a company in bad faith is not an effective way to move the needle on any agenda. It inserts offense into an otherwise harmless scenario and detracts from legitimate claims of sexism that surface.

Fake news falsely alleging prejudice only serves to create an air of skepticism around these types of accusations; it is akin to crying wolf.

Instead of manufacturing dissent about a milquetoast fitness ad, imagine if those screaming the loudest dedicated a fraction of the same energy to combating the country’s alarming and rising obesity epidemic. It is now estimated that 71% of Americans are overweight, with nearly 40% qualifying as obese.

Americans should be cheering for the growth of Peloton and its clear benefits rather than waging a search-and-destroy campaign against the company for a trivial commercial.

One positive aspect of this whole ordeal was Peloton’s early response to those claiming to be offended. Peloton did not grovel and capitulate and apologize to the mob like so many others before them. Instead, they issued a blanket sorry-you-feel-that-way statement.

In this age of overwrought indignation and attention-seeking fits of rage, too many brands and businesses immediately apologize and run for cover. Ironically, this rarely earns them forgiveness for whatever alleged offenses they have committed and only invites more finger-wagging and exaggerated claims of wrongdoing.

Ultimately, this Peloton saga is a tempest in a teapot, but it does signal where we are and the danger that lies ahead if we don’t make some healthier choices. Through constant needling and media-spurred mania, we have arrived at a place where we Americans are as flabby mentally as we are physically.

The age-old expression “a sound mind in a sound body” underscores the intrinsic connection between physical exercise and mental dexterity. Given the abysmal physical shape of our citizens, it is not surprising that we would have an equally abysmal mental state as well.

It is time to shake the dust off our gym shoes and get back to a healthy routine—if not for our physical benefit, then at least for our collective sanity.

If anything, Americans should get off Peloton’s case and instead get onto one of the company’s bikes.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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