[Becky]

Dear Lani

I agree and thank you for all your scientific posts. It was terrible to read about Michelle this morning but then you, Hopeful and Jean posted articles that I found fascinating. Although they were unrelated, the more I thought about them, they ended up related in my little biochemical mind. I'll explain. The articles were about what makes DCIS morph into invasive cancer, another was that BRCA negative women have more contralateral abnormalites than BRCA positive women (I'll think of the last one as I type).

As I thought about the DCIS (which is a favorite topic of mine and the fact that each and every one of us had DCIS at one time), I thought about Dean Ornish's Breast health book that I read even prior to starting chemo. I had started to take Omega 3 several months prior to diagnosis (as heart disease runs in my family) but Ornish's book recommended taking 8 per day and I was taking 1. He said that you need to take that many per day for at least 4 months to change the fatty microenvironment in the breast (so the ratio is right). Well, these 2 things clicked for me with the DCIS article today. You can change your microenvironment. This is why some DCIS becomes invasive or even why there are different grades and why food can be medicine as well as exercise. Epigenetics - how the environment acts on your genes. Turning on a gene when it should be off and vice versa. Then the BRCA article! Well, women who are BRCA are born with a mutation on one of two matched chromosomes. When the match "mutates", then cancer occurs. However, BRCA negative women may have a problem with the microenvironment of the ducts and lobes caused by "whatever". But that "whatever" is everywhere. Not just one specific place in the breast. It is affecting all the fatty microenvironment. If it is off, it is off and that may be why it is more likely these women have more than one bad area in the breasts. It is fascinating to think about and in a way, how you can influence it. For example (and I am only thinking out loud), does taking the spice/supplement Tumeric (which in mice slows and stops bc tumor growth) actually act as a "chemo" or does it modify the microenvironment so that tumor suppressor genes stay on instead of turn off (due to some other modifying chemical in the microenvironment that should have not been there).

I am not a doctor nor a researcher but if I can think this way, certainly they are (or some of them are) to come up with the answers that get closer to prevention and cure/permanent remission.

Every paper and study that we each come up with is related - even if they don't seem to be (6 degrees of separation) and this site is so great for at least getting the info out there and getting it in here. I am probably going on too long so I'll end for now. Thanks for listening