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WHAT LURKS IN THE WOODS

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Ken

Nicole Bell, author of, What Lurks in the Woods: The Struggles and Hope in the Midst of Chronic Illness, recounts her late husband’s struggle with Lyme disease and Alzheimer’s.

Nicole Bell is a mom and successful entrepreneur who has advanced her professional career as an engineer and program manager. She became an executive in a fast-growing medical device company, where she built a world-class team in surgical robotics. But in 2017, Nicole’s husband was diagnosed with a devastating disease, and she was forced into her most challenging roles yet: caregiver and medical proxy. Unsatisfied with the doctors’ answers, Nicole set out on a journey using her engineering mindset to search for the root causes of her husband’s illness. She eventually found them and sought treatment—a process that changed her and her entire view of modern medicine.

About the Author — Nicole Danielle Bell
Nicole grew up near Boston and earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT and a Master’s of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. She currently lives near Raleigh, North Carolina, with her two children and dogs.

My story started with a tick bite. How I lost my husband to undiagnosed Lyme disease
When my husband’s cognitive abilities began to decline, doctors thought he had early onset Alzheimer’s. We later learned he had multiple tick-borne infections.

June 1, 2022, 10:01 AM EDT / Updated June 5, 2023.

By Nicole Bell, as told to Genevieve Brown – Search (bing.com)
It was 2016 when I got a call at work. It was the house alarm company. My husband, Russ, who picked up the kids from school each day, had arrived home and wasn’t able to turn the blaring alarm off. I got home later that day and everything was fine.
But I noticed Russ asking repetitive questions. Forgetting what time to pick up the kids. And he couldn’t remember the alarm code — the same one we had used for years.

In the time leading up to the alarm company incident, things between Russ and me had not been good. He was moody and irritable. He was angry. I thought we were headed toward divorce. But now I know those were the very first signs of tick-borne illness.

Bell describes her late husband as “outdoorsy,” and said she immediately thought of ticks when his mental abilities began to suffer. But when bloodwork showed up normal and a doctor misdiagnosed him with Alzheimer’s, tick-borne illnesses fell off her radar.

Because Russ was very outdoorsy, and because I knew he had ticks on him over the years, Lyme disease was actually one of the first things that came to mind when I started looking into the symptoms of my husband’s cognitive decline. The thing was, though, that Russ had never had a fever or a rash associated with ticks that we knew of, and when tested with the standard Lyme screener had come up negative.

We also got bloodwork from an integrative medicine doctor to take a deeper look at what was happening with Russ. It showed nothing out of the ordinary. Tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme, fell off my radar. Russ went to a neurologist for cognitive testing and his decline was far worse than I even suspected. He wasn’t able to do simple math patterns that my 6-year-old could easily do at the time. He was a computer scientist and electrical engineer.
I was flabbergasted. The neurologist said he either had a stroke event or Alzheimer’s.

An MRI showed no stroke event.
A PET scan showed severe deficiencies in metabolism patterns, consistent with late-stage Alzheimer’s. He was 60. Early onset Alzheimer’s, however, is not typically a quick decline without a genetic component, which Russ didn’t have. In Russ’ case, though, the decline was swift. But after about nine months, I accepted the diagnosis.
That is, until I spoke to my brother, Scott, whose wife had been suffering from chronic illness for years and also had just been diagnosed with multiple tick-borne illnesses.
Scott told me, “I think this is what’s going on with Russ.”

Russ was tested with a PCR test, the same way we now test for COVID-19, which looked
for the organism itself rather than the antibodies. Russ had three tick-borne infections —
the three Bs as they’re known — Borrelia (otherwise known as Lyme disease), Bartonella
and Babesia.

(Editor’s note: While Bell does not know which tick-borne infection caused the illness resembling Alzheimer’s, Elizabeth Landsverk, M.D., who specializes in the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer’s, told TODAY that untreated Lyme disease can cause brain fog and neurological symptoms that mirror the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, as well as “toxic scarring to the brain.”)

We had wasted 15 months. Still, there was hope.
Infections, at least, can be treated. So that’s what we did. And the next year can only be described as a roller coaster. Antibiotics would help, and then Russ would come off them and decline. Some of the more well-known symptoms of Lyme came up — joint pain, swelling in his knees. But cognitively, he continued to decline.

After 18 months of treatment, I made the most difficult decision of my life —
to move Russ to a respite care facility. It was three years ago this month.
For a time, Russ was OK. He had socialization I couldn’t provide at home.

He was receiving good medical care.
I visited him almost every day and helped with showering and things of that nature.
It went on that way until March 2020. Then COVID hit, and I couldn’t see Russ for six months.

“The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant,” Bell said of her late husband. “The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant,” Bell said of her late husband. I finally did see him because he was moved to a hospital because of a seizure.
It was September of 2020. He had lost so much weight. He was hunched over. The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant. People asked if I thought he recognized me. I didn’t think so. Russ passed away in January of 2022.

Throughout this journey, I journaled. I had lost my partner, the person I communicated with every day. Journaling my experiences was an outlet. It was during 2020 that I wrote my memoir, “What Lurks in the Woods.” It was published on Oct. 23, 2021 — Russ’s 65th birthday. I wanted to honor his life, but also to raise awareness for tick-borne illnesses. They don’t always present in a typical manner, and if you or a loved one is experiencing sudden mood changes, anxiety or depression, I encourage you to find a Lyme-literate doctor through the database of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). I wish I had done that sooner.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Episode 216: What Lurks in the Woods – an interview with Nicole Bell – Tick Boot Camp
Can you briefly summarize your husband’s experience with Lyme disease & Alzheimer’s?
Russ’s first symptoms were personality changes. He became moody, irritable, and sometimes outright nasty. He’d retired early to be “Mr. Mom” to our two young children, so I rationalized it as unhappiness with that choice. We went to therapy, but it didn’t help, and I thought divorce was imminent. Then in 2016, I realized his memory was failing.
He forgot simple things, like the code to our house alarm and the time to pick up the kids. After a series of doctors, he was diagnosed with late-stage early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. We were just figuring out something was wrong, but his disease was deeply entrenched.

How many doctors did you have to see,
and how long did it take to get an accurate Lyme diagnosis?
Like most Lyme patients, it was a journey. We started with an integrative practitioner,
who tested him for various causes, including Lyme. But Russ tested negative for Lyme
on a Western Blot, and all of his other lab work was “normal.” The doctor referred us
to a neurologist, and that’s when Russ was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
But the diagnosis never made sense to us because Russ had no genetic predisposition or comorbidities. We went to four different neurologists, searching for alternate answers.
We got nothing. One of them told me, “Shit Happens,” when I begged for an explanation.
I still cringe at that moment. Ironically, the doctor who figured it out was my brother.
He encouraged me to get Russ tested with a lab specializing in Lyme instead of the CDC-recommended Western Blot. That’s when we finally got our answers. Russ tested positive for the three B’s—Borrelia, Bartonella, and Babesia, the bacteria causing Lyme disease and two common co-infections. But over 15 months had passed, we had wasted critical time.


What made your brother suspicious that it was Lyme disease?
Well, his wife had suffered from health issues for years. They finally figured out she
was battling Lyme and several coinfections, and he started researching the conditions.
He found research papers linking Lyme to Alzheimer’s and instinctively knew it was the cause of Russ’s decline.
Lyme was my first thought when I realized Russ was sick. Russ was a hunter and was always in the woods. I pulled dozens of ticks off him over the years, but he never had the tell-tale fever and rash. Still, we suspected tick-borne illness as a cause, and I asked that very first doctor to test him. But his Western Blot came back negative, and we went in search of other answers.
You desperately searched for answers regarding your husband’s diagnosis.
You also faced many doctors who brushed you off. What have you learned from this,
and how should others speak up for themselves in similar situations?

I believe patients need to be their own advocates. If a doctor isn’t genuinely interested in uncovering the root causes of your illness, then get another doctor. We wasted over a year with neurologists who chastised me for digging deeper. I wish we’d spent that time with a functional practitioner committed to finding causes rather than treating symptoms.
What would you like doctors to know?
As for doctors, I would want them to know two things. First, the standard CDC test for Lyme is grossly inadequate. A study in 2020 demonstrated that it is only 29% accurate.
I can’t think of any other disease where this type of performance would be deemed acceptable and “the gold standard.” Second, ticks carry so much more than Lyme.
There are dozens of bacteria, viruses, and parasites that ticks transmit. Doctors need to educate themselves and consider these tick-borne illnesses when diagnosing patients.
Tell us about your new book! What made you speak out and share your story?
The book started as something for my family and me. I began journaling to cope with the craziness that chronic illness brings. The more I wrote, the more I realized that processing our journey through writing was helping me heal. Along the way, writing took on a more significant meaning, and I knew that our story could also help others.

How about those without?

What can others with Lyme & chronic illness hope to get out of reading about it?
I think people suffering from tick-borne illness will connect with the rollercoaster of suffering from a disease that many believe doesn’t exist. I’m an engineer, and I came to the space open-minded and craving facts. I used that scientific mindset to show how broken our medical system is but in a real-life, engaging way.
But honestly, for those suffering from Lyme, the book’s best use may not be for them—it may be for the people around them. Our story can engender support by letting their loved ones walk the life of tick-borne illness. Many folks outside the Lyme world have said our story opened their eyes. And I now know people who got tested because of the book and tested positive. While I’m not happy they have tick-borne diseases, I’m glad our story helped them get answers.

When and where can we buy it?
It is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in paperback and eBook.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Lurks-Woods-Struggle-Chronic/dp/1955711011/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-lurks-in-the-woods-nicole-bell/1140009487
What did Russ’s treatment protocol look like?
We were treated with broad-spectrum oral and IV antibiotics for over six months.
We then transitioned to a more targeted set of antibiotics, including newer therapies such as Dapsone. All the while, he was on supplements and herbs to support his immune system, detoxify, and restore much-needed vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately, despite working with well-respected Lyme doctors, we couldn’t reverse
the course of his disease. In May of 2019, I couldn’t care for him at home any longer and placed him in a residential care facility. His decline continued, and he passed away from his illness on January 14, 2022. The journey has been heartbreaking and has left our two kids, ages 8 and 11, without their dad.

How did your family and friends act during this time?
In the beginning, we isolated ourselves. Dementia is challenging to live with, particularly when afflicted so young. Russ didn’t want people to see his decline, and his mood swings were so intense that I didn’t think I could get help from others. Not reaching out to friends and family for assistance was one of my biggest mistakes.
Since I’ve opened up about our experience, friends and family have been a fantastic support network for me. We’ve developed a loving tribe for which we are immensely grateful.
What if any recommendation do you have for convincing the NIH, CDC, and IDSA that Lyme and tick-borne diseases are chronic and constitute a major, growing epidemic in the United States?
I’ve worked in medical devices for the past 15 years, and a common expression at the FDA is, “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” I think data is the key. We need to support organizations like GLA that fund critical research initiatives in Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. In the end, science will win. Research has shown and will continue to show that tick-borne pathogens are at the root of many chronic illnesses. As this scientific evidence mounts, NIH, CDC, and ISDA will change their position. I’m so thankful for GLA and the work you do to get us there.

What do you wish you had known when you first started?
How would you encourage patients embarking upon their Lyme journey?
I tell people that they need to own their wellness journey. I know this sounds intimidating because most of us aren’t doctors or experts in disease. But you don’t need to be an expert in medicine or even a tick-borne illness; you only need to be an expert in yourself.
You know when you feel good or bad, and it’s up to you to communicate it.

Watch how you respond to treatment.
Keep a symptoms journal. Summarize everything you notice in a way the doctor can understand. If you have the right doctor, they will partner with you to find the roots of your disease and restore your health.
The other thing I would say is don’t ignore symptoms. We wasted precious time rationalizing the early changes in Russ. If we’d dug in sooner and demanded answers,
I think Russ would still be with us. I hope others can learn from our journey so that their story ends differently.
***
A note from GLA:
It is critical that we share our heroic accounts with this disease,
both good and bad. Like a growing chorus, accounts like Russ’s will tip the scales.
Lyme has claimed innumerable victims, but as we continue to share our voices,
we can ensure that their legacies are not in vain and pave the way for answers.

Our hope is that Russ’s story is a call to action and underlines why GLA’s work is so necessary. On behalf of Russ, it is our great task to continue his fight by conquering Lyme disease, once and for all. In consideration of Russ’s story, we would direct you
or anyone you know experiencing symptoms to find an LLMD as early as possible.
Visit the GLA referral program for assistance.

Bite Me: How Lyme Disease Stole My Childhood, Made Me Crazy, and Almost Killed Me: Hilfiger, Ally, Hilfiger, Tommy: 9781455567058: Amazon.com: Books
Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by Kris Newby, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
Lyme disease patients fight for their lives while academics fight each other. That’s just wrong. (nbcnews.com)
10 “Everyday” Habits That Are Slowly Killing You. Are You Doing Something About Them? (msn.com)
Dr. Steven Phillips, MD and co-author of the best-selling book, Chronic – Bing video
Search Results for Lyme Disease | Cancer Quick Facts (solitarius.org)
These Small Life Changes Could Help You Live to 100 (msn.com)

Russ-Nicole-Pre-Wedding-Dinner (3) — Nicole Bell, author of, What Lurks in the Woods: The Struggles and Hope in the Midst of Chronic Illness, recounts her late husband’s struggle with Lyme disease and Alzheimer’s.

Nicole Bell is a mom and successful entrepreneur who has advanced her professional career as an engineer and program manager. She became an executive in a fast-growing medical device company, where she built a world-class team in surgical robotics. But in 2017, Nicole’s husband was diagnosed with a devastating disease, and she was forced into her most challenging roles yet: caregiver and medical proxy. Unsatisfied with the doctors’ answers, Nicole set out on a journey using her engineering mindset to search for the root causes of her husband’s illness. She eventually found them and sought treatment—a process that changed her and her entire view of modern medicine.

About the Author — Nicole Danielle Bell
Nicole grew up near Boston and earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT and a Master’s of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. She currently lives near Raleigh, North Carolina, with her two children and dogs.

My story started with a tick bite. How I lost my husband to undiagnosed Lyme disease
When my husband’s cognitive abilities began to decline, doctors thought he had early onset Alzheimer’s. We later learned he had multiple tick-borne infections.

June 1, 2022, 10:01 AM EDT / Updated June 5, 2023.

By Nicole Bell, as told to Genevieve Brown – Search (bing.com)
It was 2016 when I got a call at work. It was the house alarm company. My husband, Russ, who picked up the kids from school each day, had arrived home and wasn’t able to turn the blaring alarm off. I got home later that day and everything was fine.
But I noticed Russ asking repetitive questions. Forgetting what time to pick up the kids. And he couldn’t remember the alarm code — the same one we had used for years.

In the time leading up to the alarm company incident, things between Russ and me had not been good. He was moody and irritable. He was angry. I thought we were headed toward divorce. But now I know those were the very first signs of tick-borne illness.

Bell describes her late husband as “outdoorsy,” and said she immediately thought of ticks when his mental abilities began to suffer. But when bloodwork showed up normal and a doctor misdiagnosed him with Alzheimer’s, tick-borne illnesses fell off her radar.

Because Russ was very outdoorsy, and because I knew he had ticks on him over the years, Lyme disease was actually one of the first things that came to mind when I started looking into the symptoms of my husband’s cognitive decline. The thing was, though, that Russ had never had a fever or a rash associated with ticks that we knew of, and when tested with the standard Lyme screener had come up negative.

We also got bloodwork from an integrative medicine doctor to take a deeper look at what was happening with Russ. It showed nothing out of the ordinary. Tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme, fell off my radar. Russ went to a neurologist for cognitive testing and his decline was far worse than I even suspected. He wasn’t able to do simple math patterns that my 6-year-old could easily do at the time. He was a computer scientist and electrical engineer.
I was flabbergasted. The neurologist said he either had a stroke event or Alzheimer’s.

An MRI showed no stroke event.
A PET scan showed severe deficiencies in metabolism patterns, consistent with late-stage Alzheimer’s. He was 60. Early onset Alzheimer’s, however, is not typically a quick decline without a genetic component, which Russ didn’t have. In Russ’ case, though, the decline was swift. But after about nine months, I accepted the diagnosis.
That is, until I spoke to my brother, Scott, whose wife had been suffering from chronic illness for years and also had just been diagnosed with multiple tick-borne illnesses.
Scott told me, “I think this is what’s going on with Russ.”

Russ was tested with a PCR test, the same way we now test for COVID-19, which looked
for the organism itself rather than the antibodies. Russ had three tick-borne infections —
the three Bs as they’re known — Borrelia (otherwise known as Lyme disease), Bartonella
and Babesia.

(Editor’s note: While Bell does not know which tick-borne infection caused the illness resembling Alzheimer’s, Elizabeth Landsverk, M.D., who specializes in the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer’s, told TODAY that untreated Lyme disease can cause brain fog and neurological symptoms that mirror the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, as well as “toxic scarring to the brain.”)

We had wasted 15 months. Still, there was hope.
Infections, at least, can be treated. So that’s what we did. And the next year can only be described as a roller coaster. Antibiotics would help, and then Russ would come off them and decline. Some of the more well-known symptoms of Lyme came up — joint pain, swelling in his knees. But cognitively, he continued to decline.

After 18 months of treatment, I made the most difficult decision of my life —
to move Russ to a respite care facility. It was three years ago this month.
For a time, Russ was OK. He had socialization I couldn’t provide at home.

He was receiving good medical care.
I visited him almost every day and helped with showering and things of that nature.
It went on that way until March 2020. Then COVID hit, and I couldn’t see Russ for six months.

“The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant,” Bell said of her late husband. “The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant,” Bell said of her late husband. I finally did see him because he was moved to a hospital because of a seizure.
It was September of 2020. He had lost so much weight. He was hunched over. The man who had once been so engaging — the life of the party — was vacant. People asked if I thought he recognized me. I didn’t think so. Russ passed away in January of 2022.

Throughout this journey, I journaled. I had lost my partner, the person I communicated with every day. Journaling my experiences was an outlet. It was during 2020 that I wrote my memoir, “What Lurks in the Woods.” It was published on Oct. 23, 2021 — Russ’s 65th birthday. I wanted to honor his life, but also to raise awareness for tick-borne illnesses. They don’t always present in a typical manner, and if you or a loved one is experiencing sudden mood changes, anxiety or depression, I encourage you to find a Lyme-literate doctor through the database of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). I wish I had done that sooner.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Episode 216: What Lurks in the Woods – an interview with Nicole Bell – Tick Boot Camp
Can you briefly summarize your husband’s experience with Lyme disease & Alzheimer’s?
Russ’s first symptoms were personality changes. He became moody, irritable, and sometimes outright nasty. He’d retired early to be “Mr. Mom” to our two young children, so I rationalized it as unhappiness with that choice. We went to therapy, but it didn’t help, and I thought divorce was imminent. Then in 2016, I realized his memory was failing.
He forgot simple things, like the code to our house alarm and the time to pick up the kids. After a series of doctors, he was diagnosed with late-stage early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. We were just figuring out something was wrong, but his disease was deeply entrenched.

How many doctors did you have to see,
and how long did it take to get an accurate Lyme diagnosis?
Like most Lyme patients, it was a journey. We started with an integrative practitioner,
who tested him for various causes, including Lyme. But Russ tested negative for Lyme
on a Western Blot, and all of his other lab work was “normal.” The doctor referred us
to a neurologist, and that’s when Russ was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
But the diagnosis never made sense to us because Russ had no genetic predisposition or comorbidities. We went to four different neurologists, searching for alternate answers.
We got nothing. One of them told me, “Shit Happens,” when I begged for an explanation.
I still cringe at that moment. Ironically, the doctor who figured it out was my brother.
He encouraged me to get Russ tested with a lab specializing in Lyme instead of the CDC-recommended Western Blot. That’s when we finally got our answers. Russ tested positive for the three B’s—Borrelia, Bartonella, and Babesia, the bacteria causing Lyme disease and two common co-infections. But over 15 months had passed, we had wasted critical time.


What made your brother suspicious that it was Lyme disease?
Well, his wife had suffered from health issues for years. They finally figured out she
was battling Lyme and several coinfections, and he started researching the conditions.
He found research papers linking Lyme to Alzheimer’s and instinctively knew it was the cause of Russ’s decline.
Lyme was my first thought when I realized Russ was sick. Russ was a hunter and was always in the woods. I pulled dozens of ticks off him over the years, but he never had the tell-tale fever and rash. Still, we suspected tick-borne illness as a cause, and I asked that very first doctor to test him. But his Western Blot came back negative, and we went in search of other answers.
You desperately searched for answers regarding your husband’s diagnosis.
You also faced many doctors who brushed you off. What have you learned from this,
and how should others speak up for themselves in similar situations?

I believe patients need to be their own advocates. If a doctor isn’t genuinely interested in uncovering the root causes of your illness, then get another doctor. We wasted over a year with neurologists who chastised me for digging deeper. I wish we’d spent that time with a functional practitioner committed to finding causes rather than treating symptoms.
What would you like doctors to know?
As for doctors, I would want them to know two things. First, the standard CDC test for Lyme is grossly inadequate. A study in 2020 demonstrated that it is only 29% accurate.
I can’t think of any other disease where this type of performance would be deemed acceptable and “the gold standard.” Second, ticks carry so much more than Lyme.
There are dozens of bacteria, viruses, and parasites that ticks transmit. Doctors need to educate themselves and consider these tick-borne illnesses when diagnosing patients.
Tell us about your new book! What made you speak out and share your story?
The book started as something for my family and me. I began journaling to cope with the craziness that chronic illness brings. The more I wrote, the more I realized that processing our journey through writing was helping me heal. Along the way, writing took on a more significant meaning, and I knew that our story could also help others.

How about those without?

What can others with Lyme & chronic illness hope to get out of reading about it?
I think people suffering from tick-borne illness will connect with the rollercoaster of suffering from a disease that many believe doesn’t exist. I’m an engineer, and I came to the space open-minded and craving facts. I used that scientific mindset to show how broken our medical system is but in a real-life, engaging way.
But honestly, for those suffering from Lyme, the book’s best use may not be for them—it may be for the people around them. Our story can engender support by letting their loved ones walk the life of tick-borne illness. Many folks outside the Lyme world have said our story opened their eyes. And I now know people who got tested because of the book and tested positive. While I’m not happy they have tick-borne diseases, I’m glad our story helped them get answers.

When and where can we buy it?
It is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in paperback and eBook.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Lurks-Woods-Struggle-Chronic/dp/1955711011/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-lurks-in-the-woods-nicole-bell/1140009487
What did Russ’s treatment protocol look like?
We were treated with broad-spectrum oral and IV antibiotics for over six months.
We then transitioned to a more targeted set of antibiotics, including newer therapies such as Dapsone. All the while, he was on supplements and herbs to support his immune system, detoxify, and restore much-needed vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately, despite working with well-respected Lyme doctors, we couldn’t reverse
the course of his disease. In May of 2019, I couldn’t care for him at home any longer and placed him in a residential care facility. His decline continued, and he passed away from his illness on January 14, 2022. The journey has been heartbreaking and has left our two kids, ages 8 and 11, without their dad.

How did your family and friends act during this time?
In the beginning, we isolated ourselves. Dementia is challenging to live with, particularly when afflicted so young. Russ didn’t want people to see his decline, and his mood swings were so intense that I didn’t think I could get help from others. Not reaching out to friends and family for assistance was one of my biggest mistakes.
Since I’ve opened up about our experience, friends and family have been a fantastic support network for me. We’ve developed a loving tribe for which we are immensely grateful.
What if any recommendation do you have for convincing the NIH, CDC, and IDSA that Lyme and tick-borne diseases are chronic and constitute a major, growing epidemic in the United States?
I’ve worked in medical devices for the past 15 years, and a common expression at the FDA is, “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” I think data is the key. We need to support organizations like GLA that fund critical research initiatives in Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. In the end, science will win. Research has shown and will continue to show that tick-borne pathogens are at the root of many chronic illnesses. As this scientific evidence mounts, NIH, CDC, and ISDA will change their position. I’m so thankful for GLA and the work you do to get us there.

What do you wish you had known when you first started?
How would you encourage patients embarking upon their Lyme journey?
I tell people that they need to own their wellness journey. I know this sounds intimidating because most of us aren’t doctors or experts in disease. But you don’t need to be an expert in medicine or even a tick-borne illness; you only need to be an expert in yourself.
You know when you feel good or bad, and it’s up to you to communicate it.

Watch how you respond to treatment.
Keep a symptoms journal. Summarize everything you notice in a way the doctor can understand. If you have the right doctor, they will partner with you to find the roots of your disease and restore your health.
The other thing I would say is don’t ignore symptoms. We wasted precious time rationalizing the early changes in Russ. If we’d dug in sooner and demanded answers,
I think Russ would still be with us. I hope others can learn from our journey so that their story ends differently.
***
A note from GLA:
It is critical that we share our heroic accounts with this disease,
both good and bad. Like a growing chorus, accounts like Russ’s will tip the scales.
Lyme has claimed innumerable victims, but as we continue to share our voices,
we can ensure that their legacies are not in vain and pave the way for answers.

Our hope is that Russ’s story is a call to action and underlines why GLA’s work is so necessary. On behalf of Russ, it is our great task to continue his fight by conquering Lyme disease, once and for all. In consideration of Russ’s story, we would direct you
or anyone you know experiencing symptoms to find an LLMD as early as possible.
Visit the GLA referral program for assistance.

Bite Me: How Lyme Disease Stole My Childhood, Made Me Crazy, and Almost Killed Me: Hilfiger, Ally, Hilfiger, Tommy: 9781455567058: Amazon.com: Books
Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by Kris Newby, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
Lyme disease patients fight for their lives while academics fight each other. That’s just wrong. (nbcnews.com)
10 “Everyday” Habits That Are Slowly Killing You. Are You Doing Something About Them? (msn.com)
Dr. Steven Phillips, MD and co-author of the best-selling book, Chronic – Bing video
Search Results for Lyme Disease | Cancer Quick Facts (solitarius.org)
These Small Life Changes Could Help You Live to 100 (msn.com)

Dr Alan MacDonald speaks about Lyme disease – Bing video
Dr Alan MacDonald Lyme – Bing video

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Secretariat: 50 Years Later

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Ken

The Darley Arabian (foaled c. 1700)
Was one of three dominant foundation sires of modern Thoroughbred horse racing bloodstock. The other two founders were the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk. This bay Arabian horse was bought in Aleppo, Syria, by Thomas Darley in 1704 and shipped to Aldby Park in England, as a present for his brother.^[1]

One author in 1840 described Darley Arabian’s arrival in England during the reign of Queen Anne as the event which “forms the great epoch from which the history of the Turf [as in “turf racing“] should be dated”.^[2]
There he stood at stud, usually private but sometimes open to outside mares. He was the leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland in 1722. By all accounts, the Darley Arabian stood about 15 hands high and was of substantial beauty and refinement.^[3]

The Darley Arabian sired the undefeated Flying Childers.
He also sired Bartlett’s Childers, an unraced brother of Flying Childers, who was the great-grandsire of the extremely influential Eclipse. The Darley Arabian was to become the most important sire in the history of the English Thoroughbred.^[3] His son Bulle Rock was the first Thoroughbred to be exported to America, in 1730.^[4]
Most Thoroughbreds can be traced back to Darley Arabian. In 95% of modern Thoroughbred racehorses, the Y chromosome can be traced back to this single stallion.^[5][6] This is mainly through his descendant, Eclipse, who is the direct male ancestor of 95% of all thoroughbreds and in the pedigree of many of the rest.^[7]

Bob Coglianese, Credit: with taking the famous photograph
from the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

Secretariat Was in A League of His Own at The Belmont.
The 1973 Belmont Stakes was the 105th running of the Belmont Stakes
at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, held on June 9, 1973.
Facing a field of five horses, Secretariat won by 31 lengths, the largest margin of victory in Belmont history, in front of a crowd of 69,138 spectators. His winning time of 2 minutes and 24 seconds still stands as the American record for a mile and a half on dirt. The event was televised and broadcast over the radio.
The length is commonly used in Thoroughbred horse racing, where it describes the distance between horses in a race. Horses may be described as winning by several lengths, as in the notable example of Secretariat, who won the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. In 2013, the New York Racing Association placed a blue-and-white checkered pole at Belmont Park to mark that winning margin; using Equibase’s official measurement
of a length—8 feet 2 inches (2.49 m)—the pole was placed 253 feet 2 inches.
[84 yards 14 inches] or (77.17 m) from the finish line.^[2]

Secretariat was widely viewed as the favorite to win by most sportswriters and people; however, the added distance and the possibility of running too slow for a distance or running too fast too soon could potentially cause him to lose. Out of the starting gate, Secretariat and Sham traded the lead.
Around the three-quarters mile marker Sham began to fade and Secretariat began to extend an advantage. Twice a Prince and My Gallant overtook Sham to take second and third, respectively. Sham finished last, behind Pvt. Smiles, who was in last before Sham slowed severely.

Remembering … Sham (horseracingnation.com)
Sham spent most of his long stallion career at Spendthrift Farm, where he enjoyed a successful, but not spectacular career as a stallion, before later moving on to Walmac Farm. He sired many stakes winners, but none of his progeny would possess the great talent or the heart of their sire. It would be that great heart that eventually gave way.
On the morning of April 3, 1993, Sham was found dead in his stall, by a heart attack.
Sham was 23. An autopsy would reveal his heart to be about twice the normal size for a thoroughbred. Ironic or telling, only Secretariat‘s heart was found to be bigger. He may have been second to Secretariat in life, and then in death, but there should be no shame in that. Sham was a fantastic horse, who in his greatness brought out the ultimate greatness from our sport’s very best.

The victory in the Belmont, when combined with Secretariat’s previous victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, meant he completed the Triple Crown
of Thoroughbred Racing. This was significant, as Secretariat became the ninth horse
to complete the feat and broke a 25-year drought where no horse had completed the achievement.
According to Jockey Club records, Secretariat sired 341 winners (51.4%) and 54 stakes winners (8.1%) from 663 named foals; Thoroughbred Times credited Secretariat with 57 stakes winners. He had a notable influence on breeding through his maternal grandsons A.P. Indy, Chief’s Crown, Choctaw Ridge, Dehere, Gone West, Storm Cat and Summer Squall. Ron Turcotte Jockey FOX – Search (bing.com)

Secretariat sired 663 horses while this woman tracked them down.
Here’s how she finds them.

Maggie Menderski, Louisville Courier Journal
March 17, 2023·

Secretariat sired 663 progenies between 1975 and 1990.
That’s an almost incomprehensible amount of children of which to keep track.
Over the past 50 years, journalist and author Patricia McQueen has become an expert on the topic. She has been tracking Secretariat’s bloodline and its impact on the horseracing world for decades. Secretariat is arguably the greatest racehorse of all time. He set the record for the fastest run of the Kentucky Derby in 1973, which still holds today.
This month, she released a book called “Secretariat’s Legacy,” which deep dives into some of his most successful offspring and highlights some of his last living daughters and sons.

A little less than two months away from the 50th anniversary of his record-setting
Kentucky Derby win, McQueen says of that 660-plus, there are only two known to be living today.

These survivors stayed largely out of the public eye following their unsuccessful racing careers. Trusted Company, a mare, is 34 years old and lives at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. Maritime Traveler was from Secretariat’s final crop in 1990, and it was
only last year that he emerged from his quiet life on a Florida farm.
The end of his offspring: A day with Secretariat’s last known daughter, Trusted Company
McQueen says the more she wrote articles about “Secretariats,” as she calls his progeny, the more links she found to his daughters and sons that were still alive.

The Triple Crown winner’s final crop was born in 1990 the year after he died.
Secretariat’s youngest surviving daughters and sons turned 33 this year —
which is very old for a horse.

Jockey Ron Turcotte guides Secretariat toward the finish line to win the 1973 Kentucky Derby. Could there be any other unknown Secretariats? Maybe.

Here’s what to know about McQueen’s research and her search for the daughters
and sons of Secretariat. How long has McQueen been following Secretariat’s offspring?

Trusted Company is the 34-year-old daughter of Secretariat that stays at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023

McQueen started paying attention to Secretariat’s offspring with the first crop of foals in 1975. She kept scrapbooks with clippings from his racing career and his early stud career. Once Secretariat died, she pivoted and began photographing as many of his last crop as possible. McQueen has always had an interest in his descendants, she said, and she started thinking about writing a book in the early 2000s.

Secretariat was an exceptional animal and that meant there were high expectations for
his career as a sire. Many of those fell short. “I always felt he was unfairly called a ‘bad sire’ and wanted to do something about it,” McQueen said. “I really ramped up the research in the past dozen years.” What kind of research did McQueen do to find the 11 survivors she featured in her book?

Trusted Company is the 34-year-old daughter of Secretariat that stays at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023

It is extremely difficult to find horses that are in private hands, McQueen said.
Larger farms where horses are used for breeding stock are much easier to follow.
“If a mare never had foals, and a stallion had no progeny, and for geldings [a castrated male horse], it’s almost impossible (to find them) other than through word of mouth,” McQueen said. More often than not, people with ties to the Secretariats found her.
She published an article about Innkeeper in 2016 on thoroughbredracing.com when the youngest Secretariats were already 26 years old. That story brought out a few more links
to the iconic Triple Crown winner, including Fast Market, who was the last known stakes winner among Secretariat’s progeny. Interest and contacts continued to bloom from there.
You may like: Jog, bit, breeze? Horse racing terms to keep you in the know for Kentucky Derby 2023. How did McQueen stumble upon Trusted Company?

Bev Dee, owner of Bright Futures Farm, feeds cookies to
– Trusted Company. March 2, 2023

By mid-2018 McQueen thought she had found all the remaining Secretariats, so she was surprised when a woman, who worked in animal welfare in New Jersey, contacted her about some horses who needed to be rehomed.
One of the horses in the herd, Trusted Company, was believed to be one of Secretariat’s progeny. McQueen didn’t really have any experience in retirement care for horses, but this person had found articles she had written about Secretariat’s other offspring.
Through her work as a journalist, McQueen made a connection at Bright Futures Farms, a nonprofit sanctuary for elderly horses. She met the founder, Bev Dee, while photographing Fast Market, and she liked how Dee cared for elderly horses no one else seemed to want. Together Dee and McQueen researched Trusted Company and verified her identity through foal photos accessed through the Jockey Club Registry. Trusted Company
lived in a foster home until Dee had the space to bring her to Bright Futures in 2018.

How did McQueen learn about Maritime Traveler?

Bev Dee, owner of Bright Futures Farm, looks at a book called Secretariat’s Legacy.
Trusted Company is highlighted as the last daughter of the great Secretariat.

In the fall of 2022, a new, astute administrative assistant at Bridlewood Farm in Florida read a story McQueen had written about what were believed to be the final two living Secretariats at the time: Trusted Company, and Border Run, who died in late 2022.
The clerk knew of an old stallion on the property with a tie to Secretariat, and she reached out to McQueen, who previously photographed Maritime Traveler in 1993.
You may like:Who has won the most Kentucky Derby races?
Kentucky Derby trivia facts you should know
Maritime Traveler had a pitiful racing career, and he’d been living at Bridlewood for
years as a “tease,” which is a horse who helps identify when mares are ready to breed.
McQueen published her story about finding a Maritime Traveler on thoroughbredracing.com in February.

Does McQueen think there are any more Secretariat progenies out there?

Trusted Company, right, and Catch This T are best friends at Bright Futures Farm
in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023.

McQueen says surprises like Trusted Company and Maritime Traveler are just “magical.”
She thought she’d discovered the last of the survivors as early as 2018, but Maritime Traveler didn’t resurface until late last year.
“It’s true that it’s not ‘impossible'” to find another one, McQueen said in March.
“But it is highly unlikely. Age 33 is very, very old for a thoroughbred.”
How do I find McQueen’s book and articles about Secretariat’s offspring?
McQueen’s book “Secretariat’s Legacy” is available online at secretariatslegacy.com.
She also has several articles available online at thoroughbredracing.com.
Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you’ve got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description —
she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com
or 502-582-4053.

This article originally appeared in Louisville Courier Journal:
How is author tracking Kentucky Derby winner Secretariat’s offspring?

‘It was love at first sight, and love at first ride’ –
Ron Turcotte’s experience of being Secretariat’s jockey | Belmont Stakes
No, climate change alone doesn’t cause forest fires | Watch (msn.com)
Kenny Rogers Farewell Concert Celebration « Internet Archive
Dying with disease rather than from it (msn.com)
New York ~ New York Song – Bing video

The Darley Arabian (foaled c. 1700)
Was one of three dominant foundation sires of modern Thoroughbred horse racing bloodstock. The other two founders were the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk. This bay Arabian horse was bought in Aleppo, Syria, by Thomas Darley in 1704 and shipped to Aldby Park in England, as a present for his brother.^[1]

One author in 1840 described Darley Arabian’s arrival in England during the reign of Queen Anne as the event which “forms the great epoch from which the history of the Turf [as in “turf racing“] should be dated”.^[2]
There he stood at stud, usually private but sometimes open to outside mares. He was the leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland in 1722. By all accounts, the Darley Arabian stood about 15 hands high and was of substantial beauty and refinement.^[3]

The Darley Arabian sired the undefeated Flying Childers.
He also sired Bartlett’s Childers, an unraced brother of Flying Childers, who was the great-grandsire of the extremely influential Eclipse. The Darley Arabian was to become the most important sire in the history of the English Thoroughbred.^[3] His son Bulle Rock was the first Thoroughbred to be exported to America, in 1730.^[4]
Most Thoroughbreds can be traced back to Darley Arabian. In 95% of modern Thoroughbred racehorses, the Y chromosome can be traced back to this single stallion.^[5][6] This is mainly through his descendant, Eclipse, who is the direct male ancestor of 95% of all thoroughbreds and in the pedigree of many of the rest.^[7]

Bob Coglianese, Credit: with taking the famous photograph
from the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

Secretariat Was in A League of His Own at The Belmont.
The 1973 Belmont Stakes was the 105th running of the Belmont Stakes
at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, held on June 9, 1973.
Facing a field of five horses, Secretariat won by 31 lengths, the largest margin of victory in Belmont history, in front of a crowd of 69,138 spectators. His winning time of 2 minutes and 24 seconds still stands as the American record for a mile and a half on dirt. The event was televised and broadcast over the radio.
The length is commonly used in Thoroughbred horse racing, where it describes the distance between horses in a race. Horses may be described as winning by several lengths, as in the notable example of Secretariat, who won the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. In 2013, the New York Racing Association placed a blue-and-white checkered pole at Belmont Park to mark that winning margin; using Equibase’s official measurement
of a length—8 feet 2 inches (2.49 m)—the pole was placed 253 feet 2 inches.
[84 yards 14 inches] or (77.17 m) from the finish line.^[2]

Secretariat was widely viewed as the favorite to win by most sportswriters and people; however, the added distance and the possibility of running too slow for a distance or running too fast too soon could potentially cause him to lose. Out of the starting gate, Secretariat and Sham traded the lead.
Around the three-quarters mile marker Sham began to fade and Secretariat began to extend an advantage. Twice a Prince and My Gallant overtook Sham to take second and third, respectively. Sham finished last, behind Pvt. Smiles, who was in last before Sham slowed severely.

Remembering … Sham (horseracingnation.com)
Sham spent most of his long stallion career at Spendthrift Farm, where he enjoyed a successful, but not spectacular career as a stallion, before later moving on to Walmac Farm. He sired many stakes winners, but none of his progeny would possess the great talent or the heart of their sire. It would be that great heart that eventually gave way.
On the morning of April 3, 1993, Sham was found dead in his stall, by a heart attack.
Sham was 23. An autopsy would reveal his heart to be about twice the normal size for a thoroughbred. Ironic or telling, only Secretariat‘s heart was found to be bigger. He may have been second to Secretariat in life, and then in death, but there should be no shame in that. Sham was a fantastic horse, who in his greatness brought out the ultimate greatness from our sport’s very best.

The victory in the Belmont, when combined with Secretariat’s previous victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, meant he completed the Triple Crown
of Thoroughbred Racing. This was significant, as Secretariat became the ninth horse
to complete the feat and broke a 25-year drought where no horse had completed the achievement.
According to Jockey Club records, Secretariat sired 341 winners (51.4%) and 54 stakes winners (8.1%) from 663 named foals; Thoroughbred Times credited Secretariat with 57 stakes winners. He had a notable influence on breeding through his maternal grandsons A.P. Indy, Chief’s Crown, Choctaw Ridge, Dehere, Gone West, Storm Cat and Summer Squall. Ron Turcotte Jockey FOX – Search (bing.com)

Secretariat sired 663 horses while this woman tracked them down.
Here’s how she finds them.

Maggie Menderski, Louisville Courier Journal
March 17, 2023·

Secretariat sired 663 progenies between 1975 and 1990.
That’s an almost incomprehensible amount of children of which to keep track.
Over the past 50 years, journalist and author Patricia McQueen has become an expert on the topic. She has been tracking Secretariat’s bloodline and its impact on the horseracing world for decades. Secretariat is arguably the greatest racehorse of all time. He set the record for the fastest run of the Kentucky Derby in 1973, which still holds today.
This month, she released a book called “Secretariat’s Legacy,” which deep dives into some of his most successful offspring and highlights some of his last living daughters and sons.

A little less than two months away from the 50th anniversary of his record-setting
Kentucky Derby win, McQueen says of that 660-plus, there are only two known to be living today.

These survivors stayed largely out of the public eye following their unsuccessful racing careers. Trusted Company, a mare, is 34 years old and lives at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. Maritime Traveler was from Secretariat’s final crop in 1990, and it was
only last year that he emerged from his quiet life on a Florida farm.
The end of his offspring: A day with Secretariat’s last known daughter, Trusted Company
McQueen says the more she wrote articles about “Secretariats,” as she calls his progeny, the more links she found to his daughters and sons that were still alive.

The Triple Crown winner’s final crop was born in 1990 the year after he died.
Secretariat’s youngest surviving daughters and sons turned 33 this year —
which is very old for a horse.

Jockey Ron Turcotte guides Secretariat toward the finish line to win the 1973 Kentucky Derby. Could there be any other unknown Secretariats? Maybe.

Here’s what to know about McQueen’s research and her search for the daughters
and sons of Secretariat. How long has McQueen been following Secretariat’s offspring?

Trusted Company is the 34-year-old daughter of Secretariat that stays at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023

McQueen started paying attention to Secretariat’s offspring with the first crop of foals in 1975. She kept scrapbooks with clippings from his racing career and his early stud career. Once Secretariat died, she pivoted and began photographing as many of his last crop as possible. McQueen has always had an interest in his descendants, she said, and she started thinking about writing a book in the early 2000s.

Secretariat was an exceptional animal and that meant there were high expectations for
his career as a sire. Many of those fell short. “I always felt he was unfairly called a ‘bad sire’ and wanted to do something about it,” McQueen said. “I really ramped up the research in the past dozen years.” What kind of research did McQueen do to find the 11 survivors she featured in her book?

Trusted Company is the 34-year-old daughter of Secretariat that stays at Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023

It is extremely difficult to find horses that are in private hands, McQueen said.
Larger farms where horses are used for breeding stock are much easier to follow.
“If a mare never had foals, and a stallion had no progeny, and for geldings [a castrated male horse], it’s almost impossible (to find them) other than through word of mouth,” McQueen said. More often than not, people with ties to the Secretariats found her.
She published an article about Innkeeper in 2016 on thoroughbredracing.com when the youngest Secretariats were already 26 years old. That story brought out a few more links
to the iconic Triple Crown winner, including Fast Market, who was the last known stakes winner among Secretariat’s progeny. Interest and contacts continued to bloom from there.
You may like: Jog, bit, breeze? Horse racing terms to keep you in the know for Kentucky Derby 2023. How did McQueen stumble upon Trusted Company?

Bev Dee, owner of Bright Futures Farm, feeds cookies to
– Trusted Company. March 2, 2023

By mid-2018 McQueen thought she had found all the remaining Secretariats, so she was surprised when a woman, who worked in animal welfare in New Jersey, contacted her about some horses who needed to be rehomed.
One of the horses in the herd, Trusted Company, was believed to be one of Secretariat’s progeny. McQueen didn’t really have any experience in retirement care for horses, but this person had found articles she had written about Secretariat’s other offspring.
Through her work as a journalist, McQueen made a connection at Bright Futures Farms, a nonprofit sanctuary for elderly horses. She met the founder, Bev Dee, while photographing Fast Market, and she liked how Dee cared for elderly horses no one else seemed to want. Together Dee and McQueen researched Trusted Company and verified her identity through foal photos accessed through the Jockey Club Registry. Trusted Company
lived in a foster home until Dee had the space to bring her to Bright Futures in 2018.

How did McQueen learn about Maritime Traveler?

Bev Dee, owner of Bright Futures Farm, looks at a book called Secretariat’s Legacy.
Trusted Company is highlighted as the last daughter of the great Secretariat.

In the fall of 2022, a new, astute administrative assistant at Bridlewood Farm in Florida read a story McQueen had written about what were believed to be the final two living Secretariats at the time: Trusted Company, and Border Run, who died in late 2022.
The clerk knew of an old stallion on the property with a tie to Secretariat, and she reached out to McQueen, who previously photographed Maritime Traveler in 1993.
You may like:Who has won the most Kentucky Derby races?
Kentucky Derby trivia facts you should know
Maritime Traveler had a pitiful racing career, and he’d been living at Bridlewood for
years as a “tease,” which is a horse who helps identify when mares are ready to breed.
McQueen published her story about finding a Maritime Traveler on thoroughbredracing.com in February.

Does McQueen think there are any more Secretariat progenies out there?

Trusted Company, right, and Catch This T are best friends at Bright Futures Farm
in Pennsylvania. March 2, 2023.

McQueen says surprises like Trusted Company and Maritime Traveler are just “magical.”
She thought she’d discovered the last of the survivors as early as 2018, but Maritime Traveler didn’t resurface until late last year.
“It’s true that it’s not ‘impossible'” to find another one, McQueen said in March.
“But it is highly unlikely. Age 33 is very, very old for a thoroughbred.”
How do I find McQueen’s book and articles about Secretariat’s offspring?
McQueen’s book “Secretariat’s Legacy” is available online at secretariatslegacy.com.
She also has several articles available online at thoroughbredracing.com.
Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you’ve got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description —
she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com
or 502-582-4053.

This article originally appeared in Louisville Courier Journal:
How is author tracking Kentucky Derby winner Secretariat’s offspring?

‘It was love at first sight, and love at first ride’ –
Ron Turcotte’s experience of being Secretariat’s jockey | Belmont Stakes
No, climate change alone doesn’t cause forest fires | Watch (msn.com)
Kenny Rogers Farewell Concert Celebration « Internet Archive
Dying with disease rather than from it (msn.com)
New York ~ New York Song – Bing video

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Targeted Therapy

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Ken

Two New Cancer Wonder Drugs Show ‘Unprecedented’ Results in Boosting Survival Rates

Short Story by David Wetzel • 8h ago
Two new cancer pills that could greatly improve survival rates and prevent
recurrence among cancer patients were showcased this week in Chicago.
Osimertinib, a lung cancer drug, and Ribociclib, a breast cancer pill, were
also introduced this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology,
an annual meeting.

A doctor. By: MEGA© Knewz

Osimertinib, which is to be taken once daily, was found to drop the risk
of deaths in lung cancer patients by 50 percent in a long-running international study.
Ribociclib, meanwhile, rapidly increased the survival rate in breast cancer patients and was shown to prevent the disease from recurring in patients.

“Targeted therapies have been a major advance in treating deadly cancers,” Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Fox News Digital.
“Osimertinib targets an abnormal protein on the surface of some cancers (in this case lung) and targets it for destruction,” he explained. “Ribociclib targets abnormal growth hormones in breast cancer, and is being used earlier in the treatment process to boost survival.”

Controlled Drugs in Pill Form. Pexels/Pixabay© Knewz

Osimertinib, also known as Tagrisso and produced by AstraZeneca,
was studied by a team at the Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut.

Related video: Report: Shortage of Cancer Drugs (Dailymotion) – Search (bing.com)
Results from the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 4, focused on patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type
of lung cancer.

That form is also known to have high recurrence rates in the later stages.
“ADAURA (the name of the trial) used osimertinib in the setting of lung cancer where patients already had surgery, and the results are impressive,” Dr. Roy Herbst, who led the study, said in a news release. “We’re moving this effective drug therapy into the earliest stages of disease.”

The study focused on 628 patients, and 88 percent of them who took osimertinib after surgery survived for another five years. That’s compared to 78 percent from the group
who took a placebo. The Ribociclib study, meanwhile, was done by researchers from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Center in Los Angeles.

Ribociclib, also known as Kisqali, was found to extend survival rates and decrease
the rate of recurrence in patients. The researchers found those who took Ribociclib
reduced their chance of recurrence by 25 percent.

Pills. By: MEGA© Knewz

“Adding Ribociclib to hormonal therapy led to a significant improvement in
iDFS (invasive disease-free survival),” a news release stated. “The three-year
iDFS rates were 90.4% in the Ribociclib group compared with 87.1% in the
hormonal therapy alone group. “Overall, the addition of Ribociclib reduced
the risk for recurrence by 25%.”

The mortality rate was 51 percent lower for those who took the drug.
“This has led to an unprecedented – and honestly amazing – 88% five-year survival
in these lung cancer patients, a considerable improvement from the 78% seen in the placebo,” Dr. Suresh Nair, a physician in chief at the Lehigh Valley Topper Cancer Institute in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said.

A doctor. By: MEGA — Two New Cancer Wonder Drugs Show ‘Unprecedented’ Results in Boosting Survival Rates

Short Story by David Wetzel • 8h ago
Two new cancer pills that could greatly improve survival rates and prevent
recurrence among cancer patients were showcased this week in Chicago.
Osimertinib, a lung cancer drug, and Ribociclib, a breast cancer pill, were
also introduced this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology,
an annual meeting.

A doctor. By: MEGA© Knewz

Osimertinib, which is to be taken once daily, was found to drop the risk
of deaths in lung cancer patients by 50 percent in a long-running international study.
Ribociclib, meanwhile, rapidly increased the survival rate in breast cancer patients and was shown to prevent the disease from recurring in patients.

“Targeted therapies have been a major advance in treating deadly cancers,” Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Fox News Digital.
“Osimertinib targets an abnormal protein on the surface of some cancers (in this case lung) and targets it for destruction,” he explained. “Ribociclib targets abnormal growth hormones in breast cancer, and is being used earlier in the treatment process to boost survival.”

Controlled Drugs in Pill Form. Pexels/Pixabay© Knewz

Osimertinib, also known as Tagrisso and produced by AstraZeneca,
was studied by a team at the Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut.

Related video: Report: Shortage of Cancer Drugs (Dailymotion) – Search (bing.com)
Results from the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 4, focused on patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type
of lung cancer.

That form is also known to have high recurrence rates in the later stages.
“ADAURA (the name of the trial) used osimertinib in the setting of lung cancer where patients already had surgery, and the results are impressive,” Dr. Roy Herbst, who led the study, said in a news release. “We’re moving this effective drug therapy into the earliest stages of disease.”

The study focused on 628 patients, and 88 percent of them who took osimertinib after surgery survived for another five years. That’s compared to 78 percent from the group
who took a placebo. The Ribociclib study, meanwhile, was done by researchers from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Center in Los Angeles.

Ribociclib, also known as Kisqali, was found to extend survival rates and decrease
the rate of recurrence in patients. The researchers found those who took Ribociclib
reduced their chance of recurrence by 25 percent.

Pills. By: MEGA© Knewz

“Adding Ribociclib to hormonal therapy led to a significant improvement in
iDFS (invasive disease-free survival),” a news release stated. “The three-year
iDFS rates were 90.4% in the Ribociclib group compared with 87.1% in the
hormonal therapy alone group. “Overall, the addition of Ribociclib reduced
the risk for recurrence by 25%.”

The mortality rate was 51 percent lower for those who took the drug.
“This has led to an unprecedented – and honestly amazing – 88% five-year survival
in these lung cancer patients, a considerable improvement from the 78% seen in the placebo,” Dr. Suresh Nair, a physician in chief at the Lehigh Valley Topper Cancer Institute in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said.

Researchers say fasting can rejuvenate your immune system and weaken cancer cells.

WCPO – 9 brings you the latest trusted news and information for the greater Cincinnati Tri-State area, including Northern Kentucky and Indiana. ‘Starving away’ cancer: One of our reporters tried it – YouTube

The REAL Cure for Cancer – YouTube

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Don’t Smoke

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Ken

Earl died a long time smoker in 2003 from lung cancer. RIP 1942-2003

What Does Smoking Do To Your Body – Bing video
A systematic review of the influence of smoking cessation on prognosis after early-stage lung cancer diagnosis found that five-year survival rates in 65-year-old patients were estimated to be 33% in continuing smokers and 70% in those who stopped.
If you continue to smoke it increases your risk of a secondary cancer immensely.
And by Drinking and smoking together raises the risk of these cancers many times more than drinking or smoking alone. This might be because alcohol can help harmful chemicals in tobacco get inside the cells that line the mouth, throat, and esophagus. Alcohol may also limit how these cells can repair damage to their DNA
caused by the chemicals in tobacco.

Half of my IQ is because of Wilson’s knowledge on Home Improvement.
Bing Videos | The Life and Sad Ending of Earl Hindman – YouTube

Earl John Hindman (/ˈhaɪndmən/; October 20, 1942 – December 29, 2003)^[1] was
an American actor, best known for his role on the television sitcom Home Improvement, which ran from 1991 to 1999). Hindman played the role of the kindly unseen neighbor Wilson W. Wilson, Jr.; more accurately, Wilson was partially seen, because of a running gag that only the top of his face was visible as he talked to his neighbor from the other side of a tall fence. ^[2]Hindman died of lung cancer on December 29, 2003, at the age of 61, in Stamford, Connecticut.^[5]

Wilson Quotes Home Improvement – Bing video
Here’s an article about it from his hometown of Stamford, CT.

In memory of Earl Hindman – YouTube
By Gabrielle Birkner | Stamford Advocate
Posted December 30, 2003, 10:47 AM EST.

STAMFORD, Conn. — Fans of the popular sitcom “Home Improvement,”
might not recognize Earl Hindman’s face. It was the actor’s voice that would almost always give him away, said his wife of 27 years, the Rev. Molly McGreevy, of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Stamford. “Earl had a very deep voice,” she said. “It was very rich, very warm and very recognizable.”

Mr. Hindman, 61, of Stamford, who died of lung cancer Monday, Dec. 29, at Stamford Hospital, was best known for his role as the wise and eccentric neighbor, Wilson, was on “Home Improvement.” The television series ran for eight years on ABC and starred Tim Allen. On the show, Mr. Hindman’s face was always partially obstructed by the fence that separated his home from that of the sitcom’s main character, Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, played by Allen.

Before “Home Improvement” went off the air in 1999, Mr. Hindman — a Stamford resident since 1976 — commuted back and forth to tapings in Los Angeles. “When they were taping, he’d be in L.A. for two or three weeks, and then he’d be back for about two weeks,” McGreevy said. Before landing the job on “Home Improvement,” Mr. Hindman played Lt. Bob Reed for 14 years on the ABC soap opera, “Ryan’s Hope.”

“He was the kind of actor you depended on,” said Helen Gallagher, one of his “Ryan’s Hope” co-stars. “He was a very steady and very talented actor and such a down-to-earth human being.” Mr. Hindman’s friends and family said yesterday the actor was remarkably unaffected by the relative fame his television work brought him. “He was not impressed with himself — not in the least,” McGreevy said. “He was a person who was never changed by success.”

Even as his acting career flourished, McGreevy said her husband remained a modest man who enjoyed stamp and coin collecting, listening to country music and playing poker with his friends. He also liked to build models from his collection of Erector sets, which he bought on the online auction site, eBay.

Three weeks ago, while undergoing chemotherapy,
Mr. Hindman shared a room with another cancer patient who was an avid
“Home Improvement” fan. “When she heard Earl’s name, she said, ‘Oh my God.
That’s my favorite show,’ ” McGreevy recalled. “We spent the whole rest of the
chemo session laughing. . . . He was the funniest human being I ever met.
Even after 27 years of marriage, he could always crack me up.”

Ilene Kristen, who played Hr. Hindman’s sister on “Ryan’s Hope, recalled the actor’s sense of humor. “He was a hoot,” she said. “He had great comedic timing — and just a naturally funny person.” Mr. Hindman was versatile and performed in a range of theater, film and television productions. “He had this tremendous ability to do both half-hour sitcom work and classics like Shakespeare and Moliere,” said Paul Hilepo of Hartig Hilepo Agency, which represented Mr. Hindman.

During a career that spanned more than three decades:
Mr. Hindman took the stage in “Henry V” at the New York Shakespeare Festival,
acted in films, including ” 3 Men and a Baby” & “Silverado,” made numerous guest
appearances on such drama series as “Kojak” and “Law and Order.” Most recently,
he performed in “Julius Caesar” at the Theatre for a New Audience in New York City.
His performance won him the Actor’s Equity Callaway Prize for best performance in
a professional production of a classic play.

Born Oct. 20, 1942, in Bisbee, Ariz., he was the son of Eula Hindman. Tucson, Ariz., and the late Burl Hindman. Before moving to Stamford, Mr. Hindman lived in New York City and Tucson. In addition to his mother and his wife, he is survived by a sister, Anna Dean Shields of Payson, Ariz.; and a brother, Ray Hindman of Tucson. Private funeral services for Mr. Hindman will be at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Stamford.

For the last decade of the 20th century, “Home Improvement” was a reliably pleasant, well-rated ABC family sitcom embraced by millions of American households. The show chronicled the ups and some downs of the suburban Detroit Taylor clan, with an accident prone TV personality father (Tim Allen, whose stand-up routine was the basis for the show), mostly understanding wife (Patricia Richardson), and three boys (all played by actors with triple names: Taran Noah Smith, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Zachery Ty Bryan) to rear and raise.

With the help of their wise neighbor (Earl Hindman), handyman sidekick (Richard Karn), “tool girls” (Pamela Anderson, and later Debbe Dunning), friends and family, things also needed fixing, and they used all the (Binford) tools at their disposal to build them back up over 8 seasons and 204 episodes. “Tool Time” was the home improvement show within the show “Home Improvement,” and both shows made a star out of Tim Allen, an actress out of Pamela Anderson, a mystery out of what Earl Hindman’s face actually looked like and a video game for Super Nintendo.

“Improvement” also gave us that signature gruffly grunt Tim Taylor constantly used to reinforce his manliness, putting to shame all other grunts in the world. The show garnered 34 Emmy nominations, and won 7 (mainly in the “Lighting Direction” category — because whenever anybody thinks back on the show, the first thing they marvel at is how well it was lit).

“Home Improvement” closed up shop in 1999, but continues on in heavy syndication to this day. As with any show that runs for over 200 episodes, its fanbase came to love the charming characters it visited with week after week — and like any show that has been
off the air for multiple decades, some beloved characters are no longer with us today.
So, let’s look back and say farewell to the “Home Improvement” actors you may not
know passed away.

Earl Hindman as Wilson W. Wilson Jr.
When Tim and his family sought advice or needed to vent, they often went into their backyard and talked things over with their ever dependable, omniscient and plainspoken philosophic neighbor Wilson W. Wilson, played by Earl Hindman. The character was based on Tim Allen’s childhood neighbor, who was too short to see over the fence, as well as the mythopoetic men’s movement leader and writer Robert Bly. Wilson was forever obscured by a fence and a hat, which was the show’s long-running gag that grew even more complicated and humorous as they let him out of the house and into the world more often.

After (mostly) appearing in every episode, his face was finally revealed to the audience in the series finale curtain call. Not being fully seen on camera initially upset Hindman’s own mother, but she settled into his role and then would get upset when she could see his face. “I’m becoming the best-known unknown actor,” Hindman said. But he certainly enjoyed the anonymity — “I like being able to go out and not be recognized and harassed like everybody else would be.”

Hindman’s face started to get recognized back in the ’70s, coming into sight in “The Parallax View,” dishing on the soap “The Doctors,” causing train delays in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” and later playing Johnny Cash’s brother in the 1983 TV movie “Murder in Coweta County,” and J.T. in “Silverado.” Outside of “Home Improvement.”

Hindman had his most well-known role as detective Bob Reid on the soap “Ryan’s Hope,” where a haircut for another project once caused a brouhaha with the show’s producers. Fittingly, his final contribution to television was lending his voice as the narrator of the “Tim Allen Presents: A User’s Guide to ‘Home Improvement'” retrospective from 2003. That same year, Hindman died of lung cancer, at age 61.

Read More: HOW TO DETOXIFY YOUR LUNGS – Detoxification for Smokers
https://www.looper.com/home-improvement-actors-you-may-not-know-passed-away/
Earl Hindman: How the ‘Home Improvement’ Wilson Actor Died (popculture.com)
The Reason Wilson From Home Improvement Never Showed His Face (looper.com)
Home Improvement: The Series Finale (1999) FULL VHS : Internet Archive

Earl died a long time smoker in 2003 from lung cancer. RIP 1942-2003

What Does Smoking Do To Your Body – Bing video
A systematic review of the influence of smoking cessation on prognosis after early-stage lung cancer diagnosis found that five-year survival rates in 65-year-old patients were estimated to be 33% in continuing smokers and 70% in those who stopped.
If you continue to smoke it increases your risk of a secondary cancer immensely.
And by Drinking and smoking together raises the risk of these cancers many times more than drinking or smoking alone. This might be because alcohol can help harmful chemicals in tobacco get inside the cells that line the mouth, throat, and esophagus. Alcohol may also limit how these cells can repair damage to their DNA
caused by the chemicals in tobacco.

Half of my IQ is because of Wilson’s knowledge on Home Improvement.
Bing Videos | The Life and Sad Ending of Earl Hindman – YouTube

Earl John Hindman (/ˈhaɪndmən/; October 20, 1942 – December 29, 2003)^[1] was
an American actor, best known for his role on the television sitcom Home Improvement, which ran from 1991 to 1999). Hindman played the role of the kindly unseen neighbor Wilson W. Wilson, Jr.; more accurately, Wilson was partially seen, because of a running gag that only the top of his face was visible as he talked to his neighbor from the other side of a tall fence. ^[2]Hindman died of lung cancer on December 29, 2003, at the age of 61, in Stamford, Connecticut.^[5]

Wilson Quotes Home Improvement – Bing video
Here’s an article about it from his hometown of Stamford, CT.

In memory of Earl Hindman – YouTube
By Gabrielle Birkner | Stamford Advocate
Posted December 30, 2003, 10:47 AM EST.

STAMFORD, Conn. — Fans of the popular sitcom “Home Improvement,”
might not recognize Earl Hindman’s face. It was the actor’s voice that would almost always give him away, said his wife of 27 years, the Rev. Molly McGreevy, of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Stamford. “Earl had a very deep voice,” she said. “It was very rich, very warm and very recognizable.”

Mr. Hindman, 61, of Stamford, who died of lung cancer Monday, Dec. 29, at Stamford Hospital, was best known for his role as the wise and eccentric neighbor, Wilson, was on “Home Improvement.” The television series ran for eight years on ABC and starred Tim Allen. On the show, Mr. Hindman’s face was always partially obstructed by the fence that separated his home from that of the sitcom’s main character, Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, played by Allen.

Before “Home Improvement” went off the air in 1999, Mr. Hindman — a Stamford resident since 1976 — commuted back and forth to tapings in Los Angeles. “When they were taping, he’d be in L.A. for two or three weeks, and then he’d be back for about two weeks,” McGreevy said. Before landing the job on “Home Improvement,” Mr. Hindman played Lt. Bob Reed for 14 years on the ABC soap opera, “Ryan’s Hope.”

“He was the kind of actor you depended on,” said Helen Gallagher, one of his “Ryan’s Hope” co-stars. “He was a very steady and very talented actor and such a down-to-earth human being.” Mr. Hindman’s friends and family said yesterday the actor was remarkably unaffected by the relative fame his television work brought him. “He was not impressed with himself — not in the least,” McGreevy said. “He was a person who was never changed by success.”

Even as his acting career flourished, McGreevy said her husband remained a modest man who enjoyed stamp and coin collecting, listening to country music and playing poker with his friends. He also liked to build models from his collection of Erector sets, which he bought on the online auction site, eBay.

Three weeks ago, while undergoing chemotherapy,
Mr. Hindman shared a room with another cancer patient who was an avid
“Home Improvement” fan. “When she heard Earl’s name, she said, ‘Oh my God.
That’s my favorite show,’ ” McGreevy recalled. “We spent the whole rest of the
chemo session laughing. . . . He was the funniest human being I ever met.
Even after 27 years of marriage, he could always crack me up.”

Ilene Kristen, who played Hr. Hindman’s sister on “Ryan’s Hope, recalled the actor’s sense of humor. “He was a hoot,” she said. “He had great comedic timing — and just a naturally funny person.” Mr. Hindman was versatile and performed in a range of theater, film and television productions. “He had this tremendous ability to do both half-hour sitcom work and classics like Shakespeare and Moliere,” said Paul Hilepo of Hartig Hilepo Agency, which represented Mr. Hindman.

During a career that spanned more than three decades:
Mr. Hindman took the stage in “Henry V” at the New York Shakespeare Festival,
acted in films, including ” 3 Men and a Baby” & “Silverado,” made numerous guest
appearances on such drama series as “Kojak” and “Law and Order.” Most recently,
he performed in “Julius Caesar” at the Theatre for a New Audience in New York City.
His performance won him the Actor’s Equity Callaway Prize for best performance in
a professional production of a classic play.

Born Oct. 20, 1942, in Bisbee, Ariz., he was the son of Eula Hindman. Tucson, Ariz., and the late Burl Hindman. Before moving to Stamford, Mr. Hindman lived in New York City and Tucson. In addition to his mother and his wife, he is survived by a sister, Anna Dean Shields of Payson, Ariz.; and a brother, Ray Hindman of Tucson. Private funeral services for Mr. Hindman will be at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Stamford.

For the last decade of the 20th century, “Home Improvement” was a reliably pleasant, well-rated ABC family sitcom embraced by millions of American households. The show chronicled the ups and some downs of the suburban Detroit Taylor clan, with an accident prone TV personality father (Tim Allen, whose stand-up routine was the basis for the show), mostly understanding wife (Patricia Richardson), and three boys (all played by actors with triple names: Taran Noah Smith, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Zachery Ty Bryan) to rear and raise.

With the help of their wise neighbor (Earl Hindman), handyman sidekick (Richard Karn), “tool girls” (Pamela Anderson, and later Debbe Dunning), friends and family, things also needed fixing, and they used all the (Binford) tools at their disposal to build them back up over 8 seasons and 204 episodes. “Tool Time” was the home improvement show within the show “Home Improvement,” and both shows made a star out of Tim Allen, an actress out of Pamela Anderson, a mystery out of what Earl Hindman’s face actually looked like and a video game for Super Nintendo.

“Improvement” also gave us that signature gruffly grunt Tim Taylor constantly used to reinforce his manliness, putting to shame all other grunts in the world. The show garnered 34 Emmy nominations, and won 7 (mainly in the “Lighting Direction” category — because whenever anybody thinks back on the show, the first thing they marvel at is how well it was lit).

“Home Improvement” closed up shop in 1999, but continues on in heavy syndication to this day. As with any show that runs for over 200 episodes, its fanbase came to love the charming characters it visited with week after week — and like any show that has been
off the air for multiple decades, some beloved characters are no longer with us today.
So, let’s look back and say farewell to the “Home Improvement” actors you may not
know passed away.

Earl Hindman as Wilson W. Wilson Jr.
When Tim and his family sought advice or needed to vent, they often went into their backyard and talked things over with their ever dependable, omniscient and plainspoken philosophic neighbor Wilson W. Wilson, played by Earl Hindman. The character was based on Tim Allen’s childhood neighbor, who was too short to see over the fence, as well as the mythopoetic men’s movement leader and writer Robert Bly. Wilson was forever obscured by a fence and a hat, which was the show’s long-running gag that grew even more complicated and humorous as they let him out of the house and into the world more often.

After (mostly) appearing in every episode, his face was finally revealed to the audience in the series finale curtain call. Not being fully seen on camera initially upset Hindman’s own mother, but she settled into his role and then would get upset when she could see his face. “I’m becoming the best-known unknown actor,” Hindman said. But he certainly enjoyed the anonymity — “I like being able to go out and not be recognized and harassed like everybody else would be.”

Hindman’s face started to get recognized back in the ’70s, coming into sight in “The Parallax View,” dishing on the soap “The Doctors,” causing train delays in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” and later playing Johnny Cash’s brother in the 1983 TV movie “Murder in Coweta County,” and J.T. in “Silverado.” Outside of “Home Improvement.”

Hindman had his most well-known role as detective Bob Reid on the soap “Ryan’s Hope,” where a haircut for another project once caused a brouhaha with the show’s producers. Fittingly, his final contribution to television was lending his voice as the narrator of the “Tim Allen Presents: A User’s Guide to ‘Home Improvement'” retrospective from 2003. That same year, Hindman died of lung cancer, at age 61.

Read More: HOW TO DETOXIFY YOUR LUNGS – Detoxification for Smokers
https://www.looper.com/home-improvement-actors-you-may-not-know-passed-away/
Earl Hindman: How the ‘Home Improvement’ Wilson Actor Died (popculture.com)
The Reason Wilson From Home Improvement Never Showed His Face (looper.com)
Home Improvement: The Series Finale (1999) FULL VHS : Internet Archive

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Malignant Flu

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Ken

A Malignant Flu May Soon Evolve to Infect and Kill Humans, Report Says
© Getty Images

Vaccines for Your Children By Age | CDC
I get it when I was a kid I had Measels, Mumps and chicken pox on my list, but I lived through them. But today those childhood disease rarely happens because of vaccines. However. the mandatory vaccine requirements can make a kid feel like a pin cushion
and be a bit overwhelming.

A mink farm in Spain is the site of research regarding the spread of avian influenza.
Researchers believe the bird flu was transmitted across minks in the farm—a troubling mammal-to-mammal spread. The outbreak at mink farms opens a new worry for health researchers. Scientists fear that that mammal-to-mammal transmission could lead to global catastrophe.

RELATED VIDEO: How to deal with the Influenza virus
which is spreading across states (India Today) – Bing video

Last fall, on a mink farm in Spain, H5N1 (avian influenza) spread across the animals.
The outbreak also resulted in the death or culling of the entire group of 50,000 minks.
Why should you care? Because it may have marked the first known case of mammal-to-mammal transmission of the deadly virus known as the bird flu, according to a new study. And that doesn’t portend anything good for humans.
The bird flu has proven scary enough with its occasional spread from birds to mammals of all sorts, but the study published in Eurosurveillance calls the latest devastation of mink illnesses and deaths especially concerning. “Our findings also indicate that an onward transmission of the virus to other minks may have taken place in the affected farm,”
the study authors write.

That raises the alarm that humans could be next.
“This signals the very real potential for the emergence of mammal-to-mammal transmission,” Michelle Wille, a University of Sydney researcher, tells CBC News.
“It could have deadly consequences,” Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist, tells CBC News. “This is an infection that has epidemic and pandemic potential.
I don’t know if people recognize how big a deal this is.” Well, that’s comforting.

Well, that’s comforting.
The H5N1 avian influenza is notorious for a near 100-percent mortality rate in birds. While mammals aren’t catching the virus at the same rate as birds, they aren’t immune
to the effects: bird flu has a global WHO mortality rate of greater than 50 percent for humans.
So far, the human infections link to contact with an infected bird, which is why the mammal-to-mammal possibility becomes the troubling part of this entire scenario.
If a mammal, such as a mink, can become an intermediary host, the virus can then
mutate to pose an even greater risk to other mammals, including humans.

“And so what’s concerning about this.”
Louise Moncla, a University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine assistant professor, tells CBC News, “is that this is exactly the kind of scenario you would expect
to see that could lead to this type of adaptation, that could allow these viruses to replicate better in other mammals—like us.”After weeks of suffering from fatigue and shortness of breath in the fall of 2016, Hunter Brady went to the doctor, who diagnosed him with the flu. But when the 16-year-old’s prescribed treatment didn’t relieve his symptoms, a second opinion revealed the Florida boy had stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. Fatigue, chills, fever, weight loss, swollen lymph nodes and persistent cough are common symptoms of the flu. But they also are common symptoms of some cancers, especially hematologic malignancies, such as lymphoma and leukemia.

As flu season approaches, there may be rare cases when patients who think they have
the flu are later diagnosed with cancer, says Mashiul Chowdhury, MD, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA), though he says there is no need for anyone to be alarmed, stressing that the occurrences are rare.
“The symptoms of the flu or an infection often are similar to symptoms of cancer because some of the mechanisms are quite similar,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “Your immune system is down. So, you feel a malaise, you have a fever. Then you go to get a chest X-ray and you get a bad surprise—cancer.”

Cases of common symptoms.
While it is rare for cancer to be inaccurately diagnosed as the flu, several cases have made headlines. For instance: In 2012, a woman who fought through weeks of flu symptoms was later treated at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, for thyroid cancer.
In 2016, Jaime Luis Gomez, known as rapper Taboo and a former member of pop group The Black Eyed Peas, said in an interview that he thought his pain, headaches and shortness of breath were brought on by the flu. He was later diagnosed with stage 2 testicular cancer.
The inaccurate diagnoses should not cause panic. Dr. Chowdhury says patients who
have been diagnosed with the flu or have flu-like symptoms should not be alarmed or immediately think they have something other than the flu. But if symptoms worsen or do not get better after two weeks, they should see a doctor. “If you have an infection, and this is especially important for older people, and it lasts longer than the average period, then there should be concern,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “Then you need to go tell your doctor this is not going away.”

Cancer may increase flu risk.
It’s also important to know that patients who are undergoing cancer treatment may
be at a higher risk for catching the flu, because their immune system may be weak.
As flu season approaches, here are some tips for cancer patients and their caregivers
that may help reduce the risk of getting sick: Get the flu vaccine.

The American Cancer Society says flu vaccines are safe for cancer patients.
But check with your doctor first. Make sure your family members and caregivers
also are vaccinated. Avoid crowds or wear a mask if you must be in a large group.

Wash hands frequently.
If you think you may have been exposed to the flu, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. A doctor may choose to prescribe prophylactic antibiotics that may ease symptoms or prevent the flu from developing. Learn more about the flu-like symptoms associated with leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Dr. Steven Pergam of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center receiving his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine on December 29, 2020. Image: courtesy of Dr. Steven Pergam.

COVID-19 Vaccines and People with Cancer.
Many people being treated for cancer have questions about COVID-19 vaccines and
how COVID may affect their cancer treatment. This Q&A was developed in consultation
with Steven Pergam, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, to answer some of those questions. Dr. Pergam was a co-leader of a committee formed by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) that developed recommendations on COVID-19 vaccination in cancer patients
If you have a question that isn’t answered here, click the “Chat Now” button in the box below to connect with an NCI information specialist. CDC, NCCN, and other cancer-related organizations urge cancer patients to get COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots. Why?
Data show that people with cancer and others with weakened immune systems are at
high risk for severe complications from COVID-19. Vaccines have been shown to decrease the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, even among people with cancer.
Plus, we now have evidence that the virus can persist in immunocompromised people, which may lead to the rise of new variants. Therefore, vaccinating these individuals—
and the population as a whole—continues to be important to slow the spread of the
virus and save lives.

COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention recommends that everyone aged
6 months and older stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination. That includes most people with underlying medical conditions, including cancer.
Are there any patients undergoing active cancer treatment who should not get vaccinated?
For patients who have just had a stem cell transplant or received CAR T-cell therapy, who are typically receiving immunosuppressive therapy, we continue to recommend that they delay COVID-19 vaccination (or revaccination as is recommended for patients undergoing these therapies) until at least 3 months after they’ve completed treatment. That’s based on data that [other] vaccines have had limited efficacy during periods when these patients are their most immunosuppressed.

All other patients who are being treated for cancer, including those getting aggressive chemotherapy, should get vaccinated and boosted without delay. Will receiving the vaccine during cancer treatment make the cancer treatment less effective?
No. There is no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, make cancer therapy less effective. And survivors, those not undergoing active cancer treatment.
Are there any reasons they shouldn’t get vaccinated?
Many cancer survivors have weakened immune systems, so they may be at high risk of severe and/or persistent COVID-19. Cancer survivors also tend to be older and have other comorbidities—heart disease, kidney or lung dysfunction—so they’re going to have other reasons that will put them at risk for developing severe COVID-19.
These are all reasons for them to get vaccinated.

COVID-19: What People with Cancer Should Know

Learn how to protect yourself from COVID-19 and find the latest guidance
on vaccines and boosters. And what about those who may be undergoing treatment soon, such as somebody just diagnosed with cancer or whose treatment has been delayed by the pandemic?
The best approach is to get the vaccine as soon as you can. However, we do recommend delays for patients undergoing stem cell transplant and those getting CAR T-cell therapy. In addition, cancer patients who are about to undergo surgery should wait a few days to up to 2 weeks after surgery to get vaccinated. This helps doctors know whether any symptoms—for example, a fever—are due to the surgery or the vaccine.

Can COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer?
Can the vaccines cause cancer to recur or make it more aggressive?
There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, lead to recurrence, or
lead to disease progression. Furthermore, COVID-19 vaccines do not change your DNA (i.e., your genetic code). Can getting vaccinated cause a rise in tumor markers or signs of cancer recurrence just after a vaccination?
We are not aware of any evidence that suggests vaccines can affect cancer biomarkers in this way. However, we do know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can lead to enlarged lymph nodes, particularly those in your armpit, called axillary lymph nodes. Developing new swelling in the armpit of your vaccinated arm a few days after getting your shot likely means the vaccine is producing a good immune response.

Some recently vaccinated people who have had imaging scans have had these lymph
nodes “light up,” so our committee recommends talking to your cancer care team about any upcoming scans to make sure that they are aware of your recent vaccine.

They may want to delay your scan unless it is urgent.
If you do get swelling after being vaccinated, and it doesn’t go away after about a week, make sure to tell your doctor.I have lymphedema from lymph node surgery in one of my arms.

Can I still get the shot in that arm?
Patients with lymphedema or those who have had a lymph node dissection in one arm,
say for treatment of breast cancer, should get vaccinated in the other arm. Patients with lymphedema are at increased risk of infection and should avoid vaccinations in the affected arm.

If you have lymphedema in both arms, then the thigh can also be used as an alternate
site for vaccine injection. In either case, if you have any lymphedema or have had a lymph node dissection, make sure you tell the personnel working at the vaccination site and they can vaccinate you in your other arm.
Is one COVID-19 vaccine better than another for people with cancer or cancer survivors?
In most situations, the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are preferred over the protein subunit Novavax vaccine or the adenovirus-vector Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine. However, the Novavax or Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine can be used in people who cannot or will not receive an mRNA vaccine.
Are researchers collecting data on how effective the vaccines are in people with cancer?

A number of research groups are studying COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in people with cancer, from those with solid tumors to those receiving bone marrow transplants.
For example, there are researchers looking at people who have blood cancers, like CLL or CML, because they are more likely to have immunodeficiency over a long period of time. Data from immunosuppressed patient populations have indicated that additional COVID-19 vaccine doses in the primary series and boosters can help improve immune responses in some people with cancer.

How do my patients respond to these vaccines?
Every cancer doctor wants to know the answer to the question:
There are lots of analyses that still need to be done—and so many subgroups of cancer patients and cancer treatments that require additional study. The more data we have that characterize vaccine responses in individual cancer populations, the better we can advise patients. Do COVID-19 vaccines provide less protection to cancer patients or survivors?

COVID-19 Vaccine Protection Limited in Some People with Cancer

Vaccines appear to be least effective in people with blood cancers, studies find.

Studies show that, compared with people who have never had cancer, COVID vaccines may be less effective in some people with cancer—in particular, patients with blood cancers (such as leukemia and lymphoma) or those receiving aggressive chemotherapy that weakens their immune systems.
The expectation is that most patients will respond to the vaccine.
Patients with cancer may not see the 90% protection from hospitalization
[from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines] seen in the general public.
But any amount of protection is still a major benefit—particularly since these vaccines are best at preventing major complications from COVID-19. Guidelines for the general public change based on community risk, novel variants & vaccine levels throughout the country.

However, layers of prevention remain important for people with cancer, even if they
are vaccinated, particularly those with hematologic malignancies, those who are getting chemotherapy or radiation, and those with other health conditions known to increase risk for COVID-19. We continue to recommend that these patients wear masks when in public places and avoid large get-togethers and crowds. These efforts are important because if you get COVID-19 it may lead to delays in your cancer treatment.
Existing COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent COVID-19 in all of those who get vaccinated, but they can prevent cancer patients from developing severe COVID-19 disease or hospitalization. What about family members and caregivers of those with cancer?

Is it important that they get vaccinated?
This is an underappreciated question. If you think about a vaccine strategy, if some
people with cancer aren’t going to be fully protected by the COVID-19 vaccine, one of the best ways to protect them is to give the vaccine to people who will respond well. And that means anybody who they spend time with. So, anybody who is a caregiver, a loved one, or is in close contact with somebody with cancer, it’s important for them to get vaccinated and boosted, wear masks when out and about, avoid crowds, and take any other preventive measures.

These steps can help decrease a caregiver’s risk of developing symptomatic infections
and symptomatic people are more likely to transmit the virus to people around them.
Vaccines and other precautions are also thought to help prevent transmission.
So, when caregivers and loved ones take precautions, they may be less likely to get the virus and bring it home. How do you see the approach to vaccination and booster shots changing over the coming months and years?
We know that immunity to coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, wanes over time. Additionally, viral variants like Omicron can emerge that are better able to escape our immune responses. For these reasons, yearly boosters may be needed. Further research into the frequency and timing of additional boosters is ongoing, as are studies looking at more “variant-specific” boosters.

BONUS: Are vaccines Safe for Cancer Patients – Bing video

Cancer patients and the COVID-19 vaccines — A Malignant Flu May Soon Evolve to Infect and Kill Humans, Report Says
© Getty Images

Vaccines for Your Children By Age | CDC
I get it when I was a kid I had Measels, Mumps and chicken pox on my list, but I lived through them. But today those childhood disease rarely happens because of vaccines. However. the mandatory vaccine requirements can make a kid feel like a pin cushion
and be a bit overwhelming.

A mink farm in Spain is the site of research regarding the spread of avian influenza.
Researchers believe the bird flu was transmitted across minks in the farm—a troubling mammal-to-mammal spread. The outbreak at mink farms opens a new worry for health researchers. Scientists fear that that mammal-to-mammal transmission could lead to global catastrophe.

RELATED VIDEO: How to deal with the Influenza virus
which is spreading across states (India Today) – Bing video

Last fall, on a mink farm in Spain, H5N1 (avian influenza) spread across the animals.
The outbreak also resulted in the death or culling of the entire group of 50,000 minks.
Why should you care? Because it may have marked the first known case of mammal-to-mammal transmission of the deadly virus known as the bird flu, according to a new study. And that doesn’t portend anything good for humans.
The bird flu has proven scary enough with its occasional spread from birds to mammals of all sorts, but the study published in Eurosurveillance calls the latest devastation of mink illnesses and deaths especially concerning. “Our findings also indicate that an onward transmission of the virus to other minks may have taken place in the affected farm,”
the study authors write.

That raises the alarm that humans could be next.
“This signals the very real potential for the emergence of mammal-to-mammal transmission,” Michelle Wille, a University of Sydney researcher, tells CBC News.
“It could have deadly consequences,” Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist, tells CBC News. “This is an infection that has epidemic and pandemic potential.
I don’t know if people recognize how big a deal this is.” Well, that’s comforting.

Well, that’s comforting.
The H5N1 avian influenza is notorious for a near 100-percent mortality rate in birds. While mammals aren’t catching the virus at the same rate as birds, they aren’t immune
to the effects: bird flu has a global WHO mortality rate of greater than 50 percent for humans.
So far, the human infections link to contact with an infected bird, which is why the mammal-to-mammal possibility becomes the troubling part of this entire scenario.
If a mammal, such as a mink, can become an intermediary host, the virus can then
mutate to pose an even greater risk to other mammals, including humans.

“And so what’s concerning about this.”
Louise Moncla, a University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine assistant professor, tells CBC News, “is that this is exactly the kind of scenario you would expect
to see that could lead to this type of adaptation, that could allow these viruses to replicate better in other mammals—like us.”After weeks of suffering from fatigue and shortness of breath in the fall of 2016, Hunter Brady went to the doctor, who diagnosed him with the flu. But when the 16-year-old’s prescribed treatment didn’t relieve his symptoms, a second opinion revealed the Florida boy had stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. Fatigue, chills, fever, weight loss, swollen lymph nodes and persistent cough are common symptoms of the flu. But they also are common symptoms of some cancers, especially hematologic malignancies, such as lymphoma and leukemia.

As flu season approaches, there may be rare cases when patients who think they have
the flu are later diagnosed with cancer, says Mashiul Chowdhury, MD, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA), though he says there is no need for anyone to be alarmed, stressing that the occurrences are rare.
“The symptoms of the flu or an infection often are similar to symptoms of cancer because some of the mechanisms are quite similar,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “Your immune system is down. So, you feel a malaise, you have a fever. Then you go to get a chest X-ray and you get a bad surprise—cancer.”

Cases of common symptoms.
While it is rare for cancer to be inaccurately diagnosed as the flu, several cases have made headlines. For instance: In 2012, a woman who fought through weeks of flu symptoms was later treated at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, for thyroid cancer.
In 2016, Jaime Luis Gomez, known as rapper Taboo and a former member of pop group The Black Eyed Peas, said in an interview that he thought his pain, headaches and shortness of breath were brought on by the flu. He was later diagnosed with stage 2 testicular cancer.
The inaccurate diagnoses should not cause panic. Dr. Chowdhury says patients who
have been diagnosed with the flu or have flu-like symptoms should not be alarmed or immediately think they have something other than the flu. But if symptoms worsen or do not get better after two weeks, they should see a doctor. “If you have an infection, and this is especially important for older people, and it lasts longer than the average period, then there should be concern,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “Then you need to go tell your doctor this is not going away.”

Cancer may increase flu risk.
It’s also important to know that patients who are undergoing cancer treatment may
be at a higher risk for catching the flu, because their immune system may be weak.
As flu season approaches, here are some tips for cancer patients and their caregivers
that may help reduce the risk of getting sick: Get the flu vaccine.

The American Cancer Society says flu vaccines are safe for cancer patients.
But check with your doctor first. Make sure your family members and caregivers
also are vaccinated. Avoid crowds or wear a mask if you must be in a large group.

Wash hands frequently.
If you think you may have been exposed to the flu, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. A doctor may choose to prescribe prophylactic antibiotics that may ease symptoms or prevent the flu from developing. Learn more about the flu-like symptoms associated with leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Dr. Steven Pergam of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center receiving his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine on December 29, 2020. Image: courtesy of Dr. Steven Pergam.

COVID-19 Vaccines and People with Cancer.
Many people being treated for cancer have questions about COVID-19 vaccines and
how COVID may affect their cancer treatment. This Q&A was developed in consultation
with Steven Pergam, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, to answer some of those questions. Dr. Pergam was a co-leader of a committee formed by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) that developed recommendations on COVID-19 vaccination in cancer patients
If you have a question that isn’t answered here, click the “Chat Now” button in the box below to connect with an NCI information specialist. CDC, NCCN, and other cancer-related organizations urge cancer patients to get COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots. Why?
Data show that people with cancer and others with weakened immune systems are at
high risk for severe complications from COVID-19. Vaccines have been shown to decrease the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, even among people with cancer.
Plus, we now have evidence that the virus can persist in immunocompromised people, which may lead to the rise of new variants. Therefore, vaccinating these individuals—
and the population as a whole—continues to be important to slow the spread of the
virus and save lives.

COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention recommends that everyone aged
6 months and older stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination. That includes most people with underlying medical conditions, including cancer.
Are there any patients undergoing active cancer treatment who should not get vaccinated?
For patients who have just had a stem cell transplant or received CAR T-cell therapy, who are typically receiving immunosuppressive therapy, we continue to recommend that they delay COVID-19 vaccination (or revaccination as is recommended for patients undergoing these therapies) until at least 3 months after they’ve completed treatment. That’s based on data that [other] vaccines have had limited efficacy during periods when these patients are their most immunosuppressed.

All other patients who are being treated for cancer, including those getting aggressive chemotherapy, should get vaccinated and boosted without delay. Will receiving the vaccine during cancer treatment make the cancer treatment less effective?
No. There is no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, make cancer therapy less effective. And survivors, those not undergoing active cancer treatment.
Are there any reasons they shouldn’t get vaccinated?
Many cancer survivors have weakened immune systems, so they may be at high risk of severe and/or persistent COVID-19. Cancer survivors also tend to be older and have other comorbidities—heart disease, kidney or lung dysfunction—so they’re going to have other reasons that will put them at risk for developing severe COVID-19.
These are all reasons for them to get vaccinated.

COVID-19: What People with Cancer Should Know

Learn how to protect yourself from COVID-19 and find the latest guidance
on vaccines and boosters. And what about those who may be undergoing treatment soon, such as somebody just diagnosed with cancer or whose treatment has been delayed by the pandemic?
The best approach is to get the vaccine as soon as you can. However, we do recommend delays for patients undergoing stem cell transplant and those getting CAR T-cell therapy. In addition, cancer patients who are about to undergo surgery should wait a few days to up to 2 weeks after surgery to get vaccinated. This helps doctors know whether any symptoms—for example, a fever—are due to the surgery or the vaccine.

Can COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer?
Can the vaccines cause cancer to recur or make it more aggressive?
There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, lead to recurrence, or
lead to disease progression. Furthermore, COVID-19 vaccines do not change your DNA (i.e., your genetic code). Can getting vaccinated cause a rise in tumor markers or signs of cancer recurrence just after a vaccination?
We are not aware of any evidence that suggests vaccines can affect cancer biomarkers in this way. However, we do know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can lead to enlarged lymph nodes, particularly those in your armpit, called axillary lymph nodes. Developing new swelling in the armpit of your vaccinated arm a few days after getting your shot likely means the vaccine is producing a good immune response.

Some recently vaccinated people who have had imaging scans have had these lymph
nodes “light up,” so our committee recommends talking to your cancer care team about any upcoming scans to make sure that they are aware of your recent vaccine.

They may want to delay your scan unless it is urgent.
If you do get swelling after being vaccinated, and it doesn’t go away after about a week, make sure to tell your doctor.I have lymphedema from lymph node surgery in one of my arms.

Can I still get the shot in that arm?
Patients with lymphedema or those who have had a lymph node dissection in one arm,
say for treatment of breast cancer, should get vaccinated in the other arm. Patients with lymphedema are at increased risk of infection and should avoid vaccinations in the affected arm.

If you have lymphedema in both arms, then the thigh can also be used as an alternate
site for vaccine injection. In either case, if you have any lymphedema or have had a lymph node dissection, make sure you tell the personnel working at the vaccination site and they can vaccinate you in your other arm.
Is one COVID-19 vaccine better than another for people with cancer or cancer survivors?
In most situations, the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are preferred over the protein subunit Novavax vaccine or the adenovirus-vector Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine. However, the Novavax or Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine can be used in people who cannot or will not receive an mRNA vaccine.
Are researchers collecting data on how effective the vaccines are in people with cancer?

A number of research groups are studying COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in people with cancer, from those with solid tumors to those receiving bone marrow transplants.
For example, there are researchers looking at people who have blood cancers, like CLL or CML, because they are more likely to have immunodeficiency over a long period of time. Data from immunosuppressed patient populations have indicated that additional COVID-19 vaccine doses in the primary series and boosters can help improve immune responses in some people with cancer.

How do my patients respond to these vaccines?
Every cancer doctor wants to know the answer to the question:
There are lots of analyses that still need to be done—and so many subgroups of cancer patients and cancer treatments that require additional study. The more data we have that characterize vaccine responses in individual cancer populations, the better we can advise patients. Do COVID-19 vaccines provide less protection to cancer patients or survivors?

COVID-19 Vaccine Protection Limited in Some People with Cancer

Vaccines appear to be least effective in people with blood cancers, studies find.

Studies show that, compared with people who have never had cancer, COVID vaccines may be less effective in some people with cancer—in particular, patients with blood cancers (such as leukemia and lymphoma) or those receiving aggressive chemotherapy that weakens their immune systems.
The expectation is that most patients will respond to the vaccine.
Patients with cancer may not see the 90% protection from hospitalization
[from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines] seen in the general public.
But any amount of protection is still a major benefit—particularly since these vaccines are best at preventing major complications from COVID-19. Guidelines for the general public change based on community risk, novel variants & vaccine levels throughout the country.

However, layers of prevention remain important for people with cancer, even if they
are vaccinated, particularly those with hematologic malignancies, those who are getting chemotherapy or radiation, and those with other health conditions known to increase risk for COVID-19. We continue to recommend that these patients wear masks when in public places and avoid large get-togethers and crowds. These efforts are important because if you get COVID-19 it may lead to delays in your cancer treatment.
Existing COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent COVID-19 in all of those who get vaccinated, but they can prevent cancer patients from developing severe COVID-19 disease or hospitalization. What about family members and caregivers of those with cancer?

Is it important that they get vaccinated?
This is an underappreciated question. If you think about a vaccine strategy, if some
people with cancer aren’t going to be fully protected by the COVID-19 vaccine, one of the best ways to protect them is to give the vaccine to people who will respond well. And that means anybody who they spend time with. So, anybody who is a caregiver, a loved one, or is in close contact with somebody with cancer, it’s important for them to get vaccinated and boosted, wear masks when out and about, avoid crowds, and take any other preventive measures.

These steps can help decrease a caregiver’s risk of developing symptomatic infections
and symptomatic people are more likely to transmit the virus to people around them.
Vaccines and other precautions are also thought to help prevent transmission.
So, when caregivers and loved ones take precautions, they may be less likely to get the virus and bring it home. How do you see the approach to vaccination and booster shots changing over the coming months and years?
We know that immunity to coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, wanes over time. Additionally, viral variants like Omicron can emerge that are better able to escape our immune responses. For these reasons, yearly boosters may be needed. Further research into the frequency and timing of additional boosters is ongoing, as are studies looking at more “variant-specific” boosters.

BONUS: Are vaccines Safe for Cancer Patients – Bing video

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nicola Mendelson

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Ken

A close-up of Nicola Mendelsohn’s face is used to show a portion of the lymphatic system, depicted in purple veins. Credit: Nicola Mendelsohn

ON ANNIVERSARY OF HER OWN DIAGNOSIS, FACEBOOK EXECUTIVE LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO BRING ATTENTION TO FOLLICULAR LYMPHOMA – Bing video
In November 2016, Sometimes when you live a hectic life you neglect your life and forget how to take care of yourself. Her American colleagues’ political problems were very far from her mind. Mendelsohn had discovered an unusual lump near her groin. She didn’t think anything of it, but a doctor suggested she get a scan. That Friday, she put her phone down and came back to see missed call after missed call from her doctor. She knew the news couldn’t be good.

She spiraled, imagining the very worst, thinking about what she would tell her four kids.
“I felt a physical feeling that this is really bad—like you’ve been hit in the solar plexus,”
she remembers. The results were as bad as she feared: The small lump was one of several tumors all over her body. She had follicular lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer that 25,000 Americans are diagnosed with each year.

That was almost seven years ago.
After that horrible weekend, Mendelsohn vowed never to feel that hopeless again. Her doctor first monitored her cancer’s progression, then she began treatment that continued until the pandemic, when Mendelsohn isolated at home because of her weakened immune system. Now, at age 51, she has no evidence of disease, and advocates for patients with the under-researched and underfunded illness.
A cancer diagnosis can be a clarifying experience that prompts patients to reorder their lives. Work can become an afterthought. Mendelsohn also had that moment of clarity, except her diagnosis reinforced that she wanted to keep things as they were. She loved her life; her ad savvy aligned with Facebook’s purported mission to connect the world—a cause she deeply believes in.

Her theater-kid energy had endeared her to colleagues and London’s creative community.
“People want Nicola to win,” says Michael Kassan, the well-connected CEO of MediaLink, a strategic advisory firm. Throughout the ordeal, Mendelsohn kept working and continued to climb the ranks at Facebook, and now Meta. This February, Meta promoted Mendelsohn to head of its global business group, an influential job handling relationships with the large advertisers that contributed the bulk of Meta’s $114 billion in ad revenue last year.
She also oversees its partnership network and global business engineering team. With the departures of executives like Sandberg and Marne Levine, Mendelsohn, who reports to COO Javier Olivan, has become one of the most senior women at the global tech giant.

In her eight years as vice president of EMEA, Mendelsohn oversaw 1,500% revenue growth to almost $28 billion annually. (Facebook recorded 1,700% growth in the same period.) She opened new offices and set up business operations in Norway, Israel, and South Africa. Mendelsohn centralized various “Africa” initiatives, from broadband access to user growth, to launch Facebook’s first office on the continent; in Israel, she capitalized on the startup culture to build products for small companies.
Along the way, Mendelsohn earned the respect of her bosses and her more technical colleagues. In addition to maintaining relationships with advertisers, she liaised between those customers and Facebook engineering teams, suggesting new features and products. “She understands our products. She understands the metrics. She understands what advertisers are looking for. But she also understands people and what makes them click,” says Sandberg, Mendelsohn’s former boss and Meta’s COO until she stepped down last August.

Mendelsohn never planned to go into the advertising business.
© Provided by Fortune

Mendelsohn became indispensable, weighing in on matters beyond her purview;
while the 2020 advertiser boycott was a U.S. issue, her industry expertise from Europe made her a critical strategist in Facebook’s response. Nick Clegg, the U.K. deputy prime minister turned Facebook president of global affairs, remembers Mendelsohn’s ability to distinguish between general media uproar over Facebook’s role in politics and the key issues that advertisers wanted addressed, like their content appearing next to hate speech. “Some people might get into a tailspin. Others just shrug their shoulders,” Clegg says. “[She could] see wood for the trees.”

RELATED: What It’s Like Living With Incurable Cancer | GLAMOUR UK – YouTube

So well articulated. Brilliant attitude to overcoming FL.
Your strength, determination, love and admiration of those close to you will be with you on this journey. That strength, courage, honesty and warmth has completely blown me away. Beyond inspiring and interviewed so beautifully and sensitively by you Deborah Joseph… A true warrior & inspiration to others – your resilience and strength is amazing much love to you both xoxo



Perfect post for lots of follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma warriors loved it.
Only three years into her tenure at Facebook in 2016, Mendelsohn had made a name for herself. So when she received her diagnosis, she had allies in her corner.  Mendelsohn’s “legendary energy,” as Clegg describes it, hasn’t faltered throughout our conversation at Meta’s NYC office. Until we get to a big topic: her cancer. Mendelsohn’s voice drops into
a lower register; she gets quieter and sits back in her chair.
She’s told the story of her diagnosis before—to her bosses, to her employees, to supporters of the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation she started. But remembering the first time she told her four children gives her pause. She rests her head in her hands.
A week after Mendelsohn’s diagnosis, she and Jonathan sat the kids down around their dining room table in London. Her oldest child and only daughter, Gabi, was 20; her youngest son, Zac, was 11. “He was so little,” Mendelsohn remembers, her voice wavering. They had waited a week to figure out all the facts and so as not to ruin an elder son’s birthday party.

They told the kids that their mom had cancer. “I couldn’t get the words out,” Mendelsohn remembers. “Everything was happening in slow motion.” They couldn’t comfort the family by saying she would start treatment right away; her doctors recommended treating the cancer only when it progresses to a certain point. Zac asked if their mom was going to die.
The question was impossible to answer. Follicular lymphoma is considered incurable.
No chemotherapy can ever guarantee that the cancer is entirely gone. Half of patients diagnosed make it five years; one-third live another 15 years.

After its initial slow progression, the disease “takes off” in the lymph nodes and bone marrow, explains Dr. Jonathan Simons, an oncologist and former professor of hematology who helped Mendelsohn establish the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation. For 18 months, Mendelsohn’s diagnosis was a fact of life as she and her family waited for doctors’
go-ahead to start treatment.
She couldn’t do anything besides improve her diet and start exercising
(boxing, walking, dancing). After she began chemotherapy, Mendelsohn didn’t have the stereotypical experience. Her long, thick hair thinned, but she never had to wear the wig she bought in anticipation of losing all of it. And she didn’t take time off work.
She says she never considered it even as Facebook endured the public’s wrath.
She brought her laptop to treatment sessions and conducted meetings virtually. (She’s co founded a pledge to support workers battling cancer with Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun.) She was determined to maintain the life she’d built—at home and at work—despite the diagnosis: “Still married to the same guy, same job,” she jokes.

The pandemic cut short the final stage of her treatment—immunotherapy.
She isolated in her London home, including from her youngest son when he went back to school. Her low B-cell count meant that COVID vaccines didn’t work on her. In April 2021 she received a drug that produced synthetic antibodies, allowing her to get back outside.
Later that year she was promoted from VP of EMEA to VP of the global business group, a precursor to her current role, and moved to New York. She’s had no evidence of the cancer since 2018, but the nature of follicular lymphoma means the word “remission” doesn’t really apply.
Mendelsohn says her dedication to Facebook was less about furthering her career and more about advancing the company’s mission. For the ultimate people person, the possibilities that come with reaching 3 billion people each day were hard to give up.
She’s a true believer in the good that can come from connecting people, a throwback to the earliest days of social media before the risks—fast-moving misinformation, the spread of hate speech—became clear. She finds meaning in supporting businesses, providing U.S. advertisers with $3.31 in revenue for every dollar they spend on Meta platform ads.

“These are the kinds of numbers that get me and my team out of bed every day,”
she told the press in May.  This year has tested even the most ardent Meta supporter.
After a COVID-era boom, the global advertising market has contracted, and Meta’s revenue growth has slowed.
In mid-2022, Meta reported a decline in year-over-year revenue for the first time since its 2012 IPO. The 1% year-over-year dip—accompanied by a 36% drop in profit—was a wake-up call. CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 the “year of efficiency.” Translation: layoffs.
Meta has initiated at least four separate rounds of cuts since November, slashing more than 21,000 workers, about 24% of its workforce. Meta also faces threats that will outlast the calendar year. Its platforms are losing relevance among younger generations enraptured by rival TikTok.
More generally, users have grown distrustful of social media; content from influencers and brands—not friends—floods their feeds. It’s possible that the social part of the social media era—which Facebook pioneered—has peaked.

That heavy question is for Zuckerberg to ponder.
Mendelsohn is chipping away at the smaller, operational challenges on her plate.
In May, Meta’s layoffs hit the business groups where Mendelsohn is a leader alongside Justin Osofsky, who oversees smaller businesses. She responded to low worker morale (made worse by the cuts’ staggered rollout) by spinning the focus on efficiency as a return to the good old days of Facebook.
“This is kind of getting us back to our roots, getting us back to being much more agile, much nimbler,” she says. Meta can now “create and innovate new products in new and faster ways than we’ve done before.” Outside Meta, the economic outlook is grim too. Worldwide digital ad spending is forecast to reach $601 billion this year, but the pace
of growth is slowing, according to Insider Intelligence.

Between Facebook and Instagram, Meta eats up 20% of advertisers’ digital budget.
In a downturn, they want proof that that strategy is paying off. Executives at Meta’s regular Global Client Council meetings of 25 top advertisers—which Mendelsohn hosts—once focused on hate speech.
Now they’re concerned about the return on their investment. “Where do we spend our money? How do we spend our money most effectively? Is it Facebook, Instagram Reels,
or TikTok?” asks Lindsay Pattison, chief client officer for the British advertising and communications firm WPP.

A 2020 privacy tweak by Apple has made that gloomy ad climate worse.
That year, Apple sent iOS users a prompt that asked if they wanted to be tracked when using Facebook and other apps. Meta estimated that such policies would cost it $10 billion in revenue. It has automated more of the advertising experience, helping to offset the cost for advertisers. Still, Mendelsohn goes after Apple: “A number of different businesses have cited bankruptcy [because] they weren’t able to target their customers directly,” she says, citing a hypothetical small-town pizza shop. But the Apple changes “impacted our business as well,” she acknowledges. Then there’s TikTok.
If the ByteDance-owned app can figure out how to monetize at the same level as Meta, it will earn billions more each year. “Could that come at the expense of someone else?” asks Bernstein Research analyst Mark Shmulik. “You just can’t ignore it, because they’re not standing still over at TikTok.”

Mendelsohn says she’s focused on increasing value for advertisers:
“They’re coming where they can get the growth, and they get that from us.” Meta is hardly ignoring TikTok, yet some of its efforts to compete with the app may be cannibalizing its own business. Videos posted on Reels, Meta’s answer to TikTok, are longer than Stories, which means fewer opportunities to play ads in between posts—and lower monetization.
Yet Meta claims users are watching more Reels—140 billion plays a day across Instagram and Facebook—and spending less time on the feed, which cuts into ad revenue. Mendelsohn says Facebook saw the same pattern when it introduced Stories, which initially monetized at a lower level than static image posts. Instagram Reels’ monetization efficiency improved 30% last quarter, Zuckerberg said in Meta’s most recent earnings report.

“[Meta is] in a pivotal moment—revenue growth has stalled.
They’re not growing. They’re having massive cuts,” says Jefferies analyst Brent Thill. “They’re trying to experiment with new business models. But at the end of the day, the main engine is advertising, which is a really tough place right now given the economy.” Mendelsohn says Zuckerberg’s new obsession—A.I.—can help solve those problems in small ways. The average Meta advertiser saw 20% higher conversions in the fourth quarter of 2022 mainly because of A.I., she says.
In May, Meta announced the planned rollout of its “A.I. Sandbox” of tools: A.I. that adjusts brightness and text placement to increase ad performance, plus generative A.I. that writes copy and creates image backgrounds. Automating the nitty-gritty lets marketers spend more time on the skills that give them a “competitive advantage,” like developing campaigns and targeting the right users.

After months of disappointing earnings, Meta delivered good news in April.
It reported 3% year-over-year sales growth, its first increase in almost a year and a sign it’s rebounding from the blow of Apple’s rule change and beginning to gain market share in short-form video. Today, Mendelsohn’s cancer isn’t all-consuming. “Now I don’t think about it every day,” she says.
“That’s something I never could have imagined when I was diagnosed.” What she does think about is finding a cure for follicular lymphoma, something she “absolutely” expects in her lifetime. A cure could be applied to other diseases that share follicular lymphoma’s DNA structure, like breast cancer. Simons calls Mendelsohn the “Michael J. Fox of follicular lymphoma.” The visibility—and money—a top Meta exec can bring to an under-resourced disease could change the lives of the 1.2 million people with this illness.

Still, a question looms: What if researchers don’t find a cure? Follicular lymphoma
recurs in the average patient six to eight times, with increasing frequency. Mendelsohn is encouraged that her disease hasn’t returned for five years. Her young age at the time of her diagnosis makes her “not the typical follicular lymphoma patient,” which gives her hope that the other stats won’t apply either.
Mendelsohn’s upbeat outlook can at times feel at odds with the prospects in front of her. She’s not sure where the disposition comes from—“I’ve just always felt incredibly grateful, from being a child,” she says—but says it’s a by-product of focusing on what she can control, rather than “the very big thing.” That approach makes the challenges on her plate—whether living with cancer or the future of one of the world’s largest tech companies—a little easier to handle.

Today she flies around the world every week. She jetted between New York, Israel, Palo Alto, and King Charles III’s coronation in a one-month span this year. She set a goal to visit 100 countries, and crossed the 100th off her list with a holiday vacation to St. Lucia. And she remains as committed to the future of Meta as ever, metaverse included.
“I can’t imagine being anywhere else,” she says. “I love Mark’s vision of where the next stage will get us to.” Mendelsohn says. “I’m getting on with my life,” ‘Online and off. “

This article appears in the June/July 2023 issue of Fortune with the headline,
“Meta’s true believer.” This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Can Using This Popular Sweetener Damage Your DNA? (msn.com)

Now she oversees the bulk of Meta’s $114 billion in ad revenue each year as head of its global business group. Only three years into her tenure at Facebook in 2016, Mendelsohn had made a name for herself. So when she received her diagnosis, she had allies in her corner.
Mendelsohn’s “legendary energy,” as Clegg describes it, hasn’t faltered throughout our conversation at Meta’s NYC office. Until we get to a big topic: her cancer. Mendelsohn’s voice drops into a lower register; she gets quieter and sits back in her chair.
She’s told the story of her diagnosis before—to her bosses, to her employees, to supporters of the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation she started. But remembering the first time she told her four children gives her pause. She rests her head in her hands. A week after Mendelsohn’s diagnosis, she and Jonathan sat the kids down around their dining room table in London. Her oldest child and only daughter, Gabi, was 20; her youngest son, Zac, was 11.
“He was so little,” Mendelsohn remembers, her voice wavering. They had waited a week to figure out all the facts and so as not to ruin an elder son’s birthday party. They told the kids that their mom had cancer. “I couldn’t get the words out,” Mendelsohn remembers. “Everything was happening in slow motion.” They couldn’t comfort the family by saying she would start treatment right away; her doctors recommended treating the cancer only when it progresses to a certain point.

Zac asked if their mom was going to die.
The question was impossible to answer.
Follicular lymphoma is considered incurable. No chemotherapy can ever guarantee that the cancer is entirely gone. Half of patients diagnosed make it five years; one-third live another 15 years. After its initial slow progression, the disease “takes off” in the lymph nodes and bone marrow, explains Dr. Jonathan Simons, an oncologist and former professor of hematology who helped Mendelsohn establish the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation.
For 18 months, Mendelsohn’s diagnosis was a fact of life as she and her family waited for doctors’ go-ahead to start treatment. She couldn’t do anything besides improve her diet and start exercising (boxing, walking, dancing). After she began chemotherapy, Mendelsohn didn’t have the stereotypical experience. Her long, thick hair thinned, but she never had to wear the wig she bought in anticipation of losing all of it. And she didn’t take time off work.
She says she never considered it even as Facebook endured the public’s wrath. She brought her laptop to treatment sessions and conducted meetings virtually. (She’s co founded a pledge to support workers battling cancer with Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun.) She was determined to maintain the life she’d built—at home and at work—despite the diagnosis: “Still married to the same guy, same job,” she jokes.

The pandemic cut short the final stage of her treatment—immunotherapy. She isolated in her London home, including from her youngest son when he went back to school. Her low B-cell count meant that COVID vaccines didn’t work on her. In April 2021 she received a drug that produced synthetic antibodies, allowing her to get back outside.
Later that year she was promoted from VP of EMEA to VP of the global business group, a precursor to her current role, and moved to New York. She’s had no evidence of the cancer since 2018, but the nature of follicular lymphoma means the word “remission” doesn’t really apply.

Today, Mendelsohn’s cancer isn’t all-consuming.
“Now I don’t think about it every day,” she says. “That’s something I never could have imagined when I was diagnosed.” What she does think about is finding a cure for follicular lymphoma, something she “absolutely” expects in her lifetime. A cure could be applied to other diseases that share follicular lymphoma’s DNA structure, like breast cancer. Simons calls Mendelsohn the “Michael J. Fox of follicular lymphoma.”
The visibility—and money—a top Meta exec can bring to an under-resourced disease could change the lives of the 1.2 million people with this illness. Still, a question looms: What if researchers don’t find a cure? Follicular lymphoma recurs in the average patient six to eight times, with increasing frequency. Mendelsohn is encouraged that her disease hasn’t returned for five years.

Her young age at the time of her diagnosis makes her “not the typical follicular lymphoma patient,” which gives her hope that the other stats won’t apply either. Mendelsohn’s upbeat outlook can at times feel at odds with the prospects in front of her. She’s not sure where the disposition comes from—“I’ve just always felt incredibly grateful, from being a child,” she says—but says it’s a by-product of focusing on what she can control, rather than “the very big thing.”
That approach makes the challenges on her plate—whether living with cancer or the future of one of the world’s largest tech companies—a little easier to handle. What it’s like living with an incurable cancer. Diagnosed with an incurable cancer on November 18 2016, Nicola Mendelsohn tells GLAMOUR’s EIC (who happens to be her sister-in-law) why she’s making it her mission to find a cure.

By Deborah Joseph
2 April 2023

World Cancer Day, held every 4 February, is the global uniting initiative led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) to raise awareness and improve education around cancer and reimagine a world where millions of preventable cancer deaths are saved and access to life-saving cancer treatment and care is equitable for all – no matter who you are or where you live.

Created in 2000, World Cancer Day has grown into a positive movement for everyone, everywhere to unite under one voice to face one of our greatest challenges in history.
To mark the day, we are revising an interview we did with Nicola Mendelsohn, who tells GLAMOUR’s EIC (who happens to be her sister-in-law) why she’s making it her mission to find a cure.

Follicular Lymphoma. You know that blood cancer affects around one million people globally. The disease that often has no visible symptoms. The cancer that hangs like a life sentence over those who have it, even though they can look as healthy as you and me. Still no idea what I’m talking about? Don’t worry. It’s not you. It’s cancer. Follicular Lymphoma is the incurable cancer we’ve all never even heard of.

The one that wrecks lives, renders those living with it powerless. And one previously believed too rare to be worthy of a cure. That is, until Nicola Mendelsohn, the super boss, VP of Facebook EMEA, mother of four – and for full disclosure – my sister-in-law, was diagnosed with it three years ago, after finding a pea-sized lump in her groin. “I didn’t have any other symptoms,” she recalls. “I was busy living life, busy with work, busy with the kids. I called a friend who’s a doctor and she said, ‘Lumps come and go on women.
If it’s still there in three weeks’ time, come and see me.”

It was still there, so Nicola was sent for a CT scan. “After the scan I went home and didn’t think anything else of it, until a few hours later, when I saw I had a lot of missed calls from the doctor who’d done the scan, but also my friend. I remember telling my husband Jon,
I think this is bad news. My friend called and asked if I’d spoken to the other doctor.
When I said no, she said, ‘I’m coming round’. She told me they’d found tumors up and down the inside of my body.”

As it was a weekend, no further tests could be done. “We decided not to tell anyone, until we knew exactly what we were dealing with. And it was also the weekend of my eldest son, Danny’s 18th birthday. It was the worst weekend of my life. I wasn’t thinking rationally, it was horrendous. I thought of all the worst things that could happen. I lost half a stone in weight from worrying, and not sleeping and crying and trying to put a facade of normal on.”

Within a week she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Follicular Lymphoma, the most common of the non-Hodgkin cancers, but one which most people can barely pronounce. “I was lucky to be diagnosed very quickly, which is very unusual for a blood cancer,” she recalls. “It can often take up to three years, with the person getting sicker. Especially for women, the symptoms often get passed off as, oh you’re tired, you must be too busy, or, oh you’re getting hot sweats at night, it must be the menopause. But sometimes, these symptoms can actually be blood cancer.”

“Telling my children was very hard,” she says, with tears in her eyes.
“It’s difficult even retelling it now. It was a Sunday morning, eight days after I’d been diagnosed. We got the kids together. I was very emotional, I could barely get my words out. Jon was very helpful. The kids just looked so sad. Zac, my youngest, who was 11 at the time, looked at me and said, ‘Are you going to die, mum?’
My response was, I’m going to try my very best not to.
But I didn’t lie to him. All the advice says you should be as honest as possible with your children.” She was also extremely honest with her friends, family, and also, her employer, Facebook.

The diagnosis was naturally shocking and devastating for everyone who knew her well, of course, but also for those who knew of her through her work. For a businesswoman with such a high-profile position to be so open about living with an incurable cancer is unusual. I will never forget the day Nicola came to my home to tell me, and my husband, her brother to tell us her news. We were shell-shocked.

But she led the way.
She was tearful but remained strong, focused and most of all, positive. Where did she find that strength from? “I think I found the most support and strength from getting on with my normal life. Just getting on and doing the things I’ve always done.” As her sister-in-law – we wondered if she’d take a step back, slow down at work. “That was never going to happen” she laughs.

“Facebook was incredibly supportive. They told me to do whatever I needed to do. Take as much time off as I need. But for me taking time off would have been the worst thing for me. I’d just sit at home thinking about my own mortality. I wanted to keep working as much as I possibly could. So they’ve treated me pretty much as normal because they’ve taken their cues from me.“

Nicola expected to head straight into chemotherapy, but was advised against it at the time. “Initially, my mindset was all around, I’ve got to beat this. When you hear about cancer, you hear about cutting it out and blasting it, and then you’ll get better” she says. “But the more I researched into the course of initial treatment, I discovered something called ‘watch and wait’. Which means not doing anything at all and letting the doctors assess the progression of the cancer. At that point they think you’ll need treatment, then they’ll suggest it. There is no change in the overall life expectancy if you treat now, or treat in the future, it doesn’t make any difference.”

READ MORE: I beat cancer but had a breakdown when I got the all-clear

Nicola managed to go on ‘watch and wait’ for 18 months, by which point some of her tumors had grown dangerously close to her kidneys, and there was a concern it would give her kidney failure. “So I started treatment.” This, she will admit, was one of the hardest moments for her. “I’d created a false expectation for myself, that I wouldn’t need treatment for at least two years, so it was a blow.” For the past year, she has undergone fourteen rounds of chemotherapy and is currently on a two-year maintenance therapy, which involves immunotherapy every eight weeks.

One of the biggest ironies around this, is that despite this diagnosis, and the chemotherapy, Nicola looks better than she’s ever looked in her life. She doesn’t look ill. She isn’t living her life as an ill person, which is what, for some, makes this an invisible cancer. Thanks to a much healthier lifestyle, that has involved cutting out sugar from her diet – she used to eat more sweets than anyone she knows – reflexology, acupuncture, mindfulness and exercise – she looks incredible.

I did everything I could to make my body strong.
“I realize I’ve been very lucky in that I haven’t suffered from symptoms and also, didn’t react as badly as others to the chemotherapy, I didn’t lose my hair. I read a tip that if you bought your wig before your hair fell out it would be a nicer experience. My hair has thinned, but I’m very happy my wig is still hanging in my wardrobe, and I’ve never had to wear it. But I know the same can not be said for everyone who goes through the same treatment.”

As well as working her way through her diagnosis, she found an unexpected source of strength and support, also through Facebook. “About three months after I was diagnosed, I wonder if there’s a Facebook group for Follicular Lymphoma. I searched and lo and behold there was one called Living With Follicular Lymphoma. It had recently been set up by a woman called Nicky who lived in Australia. It had a few hundred members.

I contacted her and said, I think I can help. The group now has over six thousand members and is honestly the single best place for advice and support. It’s a place where people go to rant and know everyone in the group will one hundred percent understand what you’re going through.” Three years on from her diagnosis, Nicola has done what she always does with other areas of her life – tackled it head on.

She has decided to find a cure for her own cancer. “I decided if not me, then who and if not now, then when. So yes, the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation is now a thing. We have to raise a lot of money and also, raise awareness. So Follicular Lymphoma, Follicular Lymphoma…please remember those words.” The word inspiration is bandied around a lot these days, but really, to watch someone you love and admire remain so strong in the face of an incurable cancer, is truly incredible to witness.

How does she do it?
I will always be in awe of her ability to stay positive and focused and to keep perspective, no matter what. “You know, I’ve always felt very grateful for the life that I have. The family I have and the friends and opportunities that I have. I have always tried to squeeze into every day as much as is humanly possible. That’s how I love living my life and nothing has changed.

I saw the darkness of what happens when your mind starts to wander, it’s so easy to go down that spiral of what if. It’s hard to get out of that pit of despair once you go down it. It made me physically ill doing it. I’m not going to do that. However many weeks, months, years I have left, I’m going to live my best life possible. And I’m going to make it my mission to find a cure for Follicular Lymphoma to help others who are diagnosed with it now and in the future.”

For more info and details on how to donate visit..

Website www.theflf.org
Facebook: @FollicularLymphomaFoundation
Instagram: @FollicularLymphomaFoundation
Twitter: @Cure_FL
Hashtag across all channels: #CureFL

A close-up of Nicola Mendelsohn’s face is used to show a portion of the lymphatic system, depicted in purple veins. Credit: Nicola Mendelsohn

ON ANNIVERSARY OF HER OWN DIAGNOSIS, FACEBOOK EXECUTIVE LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO BRING ATTENTION TO FOLLICULAR LYMPHOMA – Bing video
In November 2016, Sometimes when you live a hectic life you neglect your life and forget how to take care of yourself. Her American colleagues’ political problems were very far from her mind. Mendelsohn had discovered an unusual lump near her groin. She didn’t think anything of it, but a doctor suggested she get a scan. That Friday, she put her phone down and came back to see missed call after missed call from her doctor. She knew the news couldn’t be good.

She spiraled, imagining the very worst, thinking about what she would tell her four kids.
“I felt a physical feeling that this is really bad—like you’ve been hit in the solar plexus,”
she remembers. The results were as bad as she feared: The small lump was one of several tumors all over her body. She had follicular lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer that 25,000 Americans are diagnosed with each year.

That was almost seven years ago.
After that horrible weekend, Mendelsohn vowed never to feel that hopeless again. Her doctor first monitored her cancer’s progression, then she began treatment that continued until the pandemic, when Mendelsohn isolated at home because of her weakened immune system. Now, at age 51, she has no evidence of disease, and advocates for patients with the under-researched and underfunded illness.
A cancer diagnosis can be a clarifying experience that prompts patients to reorder their lives. Work can become an afterthought. Mendelsohn also had that moment of clarity, except her diagnosis reinforced that she wanted to keep things as they were. She loved her life; her ad savvy aligned with Facebook’s purported mission to connect the world—a cause she deeply believes in.

Her theater-kid energy had endeared her to colleagues and London’s creative community.
“People want Nicola to win,” says Michael Kassan, the well-connected CEO of MediaLink, a strategic advisory firm. Throughout the ordeal, Mendelsohn kept working and continued to climb the ranks at Facebook, and now Meta. This February, Meta promoted Mendelsohn to head of its global business group, an influential job handling relationships with the large advertisers that contributed the bulk of Meta’s $114 billion in ad revenue last year.
She also oversees its partnership network and global business engineering team. With the departures of executives like Sandberg and Marne Levine, Mendelsohn, who reports to COO Javier Olivan, has become one of the most senior women at the global tech giant.

In her eight years as vice president of EMEA, Mendelsohn oversaw 1,500% revenue growth to almost $28 billion annually. (Facebook recorded 1,700% growth in the same period.) She opened new offices and set up business operations in Norway, Israel, and South Africa. Mendelsohn centralized various “Africa” initiatives, from broadband access to user growth, to launch Facebook’s first office on the continent; in Israel, she capitalized on the startup culture to build products for small companies.
Along the way, Mendelsohn earned the respect of her bosses and her more technical colleagues. In addition to maintaining relationships with advertisers, she liaised between those customers and Facebook engineering teams, suggesting new features and products. “She understands our products. She understands the metrics. She understands what advertisers are looking for. But she also understands people and what makes them click,” says Sandberg, Mendelsohn’s former boss and Meta’s COO until she stepped down last August.

Mendelsohn never planned to go into the advertising business.
© Provided by Fortune

Mendelsohn became indispensable, weighing in on matters beyond her purview;
while the 2020 advertiser boycott was a U.S. issue, her industry expertise from Europe made her a critical strategist in Facebook’s response. Nick Clegg, the U.K. deputy prime minister turned Facebook president of global affairs, remembers Mendelsohn’s ability to distinguish between general media uproar over Facebook’s role in politics and the key issues that advertisers wanted addressed, like their content appearing next to hate speech. “Some people might get into a tailspin. Others just shrug their shoulders,” Clegg says. “[She could] see wood for the trees.”

RELATED: What It’s Like Living With Incurable Cancer | GLAMOUR UK – YouTube

So well articulated. Brilliant attitude to overcoming FL.
Your strength, determination, love and admiration of those close to you will be with you on this journey. That strength, courage, honesty and warmth has completely blown me away. Beyond inspiring and interviewed so beautifully and sensitively by you Deborah Joseph… A true warrior & inspiration to others – your resilience and strength is amazing much love to you both xoxo



Perfect post for lots of follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma warriors loved it.
Only three years into her tenure at Facebook in 2016, Mendelsohn had made a name for herself. So when she received her diagnosis, she had allies in her corner.  Mendelsohn’s “legendary energy,” as Clegg describes it, hasn’t faltered throughout our conversation at Meta’s NYC office. Until we get to a big topic: her cancer. Mendelsohn’s voice drops into
a lower register; she gets quieter and sits back in her chair.
She’s told the story of her diagnosis before—to her bosses, to her employees, to supporters of the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation she started. But remembering the first time she told her four children gives her pause. She rests her head in her hands.
A week after Mendelsohn’s diagnosis, she and Jonathan sat the kids down around their dining room table in London. Her oldest child and only daughter, Gabi, was 20; her youngest son, Zac, was 11. “He was so little,” Mendelsohn remembers, her voice wavering. They had waited a week to figure out all the facts and so as not to ruin an elder son’s birthday party.

They told the kids that their mom had cancer. “I couldn’t get the words out,” Mendelsohn remembers. “Everything was happening in slow motion.” They couldn’t comfort the family by saying she would start treatment right away; her doctors recommended treating the cancer only when it progresses to a certain point. Zac asked if their mom was going to die.
The question was impossible to answer. Follicular lymphoma is considered incurable.
No chemotherapy can ever guarantee that the cancer is entirely gone. Half of patients diagnosed make it five years; one-third live another 15 years.

After its initial slow progression, the disease “takes off” in the lymph nodes and bone marrow, explains Dr. Jonathan Simons, an oncologist and former professor of hematology who helped Mendelsohn establish the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation. For 18 months, Mendelsohn’s diagnosis was a fact of life as she and her family waited for doctors’
go-ahead to start treatment.
She couldn’t do anything besides improve her diet and start exercising
(boxing, walking, dancing). After she began chemotherapy, Mendelsohn didn’t have the stereotypical experience. Her long, thick hair thinned, but she never had to wear the wig she bought in anticipation of losing all of it. And she didn’t take time off work.
She says she never considered it even as Facebook endured the public’s wrath.
She brought her laptop to treatment sessions and conducted meetings virtually. (She’s co founded a pledge to support workers battling cancer with Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun.) She was determined to maintain the life she’d built—at home and at work—despite the diagnosis: “Still married to the same guy, same job,” she jokes.

The pandemic cut short the final stage of her treatment—immunotherapy.
She isolated in her London home, including from her youngest son when he went back to school. Her low B-cell count meant that COVID vaccines didn’t work on her. In April 2021 she received a drug that produced synthetic antibodies, allowing her to get back outside.
Later that year she was promoted from VP of EMEA to VP of the global business group, a precursor to her current role, and moved to New York. She’s had no evidence of the cancer since 2018, but the nature of follicular lymphoma means the word “remission” doesn’t really apply.
Mendelsohn says her dedication to Facebook was less about furthering her career and more about advancing the company’s mission. For the ultimate people person, the possibilities that come with reaching 3 billion people each day were hard to give up.
She’s a true believer in the good that can come from connecting people, a throwback to the earliest days of social media before the risks—fast-moving misinformation, the spread of hate speech—became clear. She finds meaning in supporting businesses, providing U.S. advertisers with $3.31 in revenue for every dollar they spend on Meta platform ads.

“These are the kinds of numbers that get me and my team out of bed every day,”
she told the press in May.  This year has tested even the most ardent Meta supporter.
After a COVID-era boom, the global advertising market has contracted, and Meta’s revenue growth has slowed.
In mid-2022, Meta reported a decline in year-over-year revenue for the first time since its 2012 IPO. The 1% year-over-year dip—accompanied by a 36% drop in profit—was a wake-up call. CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 the “year of efficiency.” Translation: layoffs.
Meta has initiated at least four separate rounds of cuts since November, slashing more than 21,000 workers, about 24% of its workforce. Meta also faces threats that will outlast the calendar year. Its platforms are losing relevance among younger generations enraptured by rival TikTok.
More generally, users have grown distrustful of social media; content from influencers and brands—not friends—floods their feeds. It’s possible that the social part of the social media era—which Facebook pioneered—has peaked.

That heavy question is for Zuckerberg to ponder.
Mendelsohn is chipping away at the smaller, operational challenges on her plate.
In May, Meta’s layoffs hit the business groups where Mendelsohn is a leader alongside Justin Osofsky, who oversees smaller businesses. She responded to low worker morale (made worse by the cuts’ staggered rollout) by spinning the focus on efficiency as a return to the good old days of Facebook.
“This is kind of getting us back to our roots, getting us back to being much more agile, much nimbler,” she says. Meta can now “create and innovate new products in new and faster ways than we’ve done before.” Outside Meta, the economic outlook is grim too. Worldwide digital ad spending is forecast to reach $601 billion this year, but the pace
of growth is slowing, according to Insider Intelligence.

Between Facebook and Instagram, Meta eats up 20% of advertisers’ digital budget.
In a downturn, they want proof that that strategy is paying off. Executives at Meta’s regular Global Client Council meetings of 25 top advertisers—which Mendelsohn hosts—once focused on hate speech.
Now they’re concerned about the return on their investment. “Where do we spend our money? How do we spend our money most effectively? Is it Facebook, Instagram Reels,
or TikTok?” asks Lindsay Pattison, chief client officer for the British advertising and communications firm WPP.

A 2020 privacy tweak by Apple has made that gloomy ad climate worse.
That year, Apple sent iOS users a prompt that asked if they wanted to be tracked when using Facebook and other apps. Meta estimated that such policies would cost it $10 billion in revenue. It has automated more of the advertising experience, helping to offset the cost for advertisers. Still, Mendelsohn goes after Apple: “A number of different businesses have cited bankruptcy [because] they weren’t able to target their customers directly,” she says, citing a hypothetical small-town pizza shop. But the Apple changes “impacted our business as well,” she acknowledges. Then there’s TikTok.
If the ByteDance-owned app can figure out how to monetize at the same level as Meta, it will earn billions more each year. “Could that come at the expense of someone else?” asks Bernstein Research analyst Mark Shmulik. “You just can’t ignore it, because they’re not standing still over at TikTok.”

Mendelsohn says she’s focused on increasing value for advertisers:
“They’re coming where they can get the growth, and they get that from us.” Meta is hardly ignoring TikTok, yet some of its efforts to compete with the app may be cannibalizing its own business. Videos posted on Reels, Meta’s answer to TikTok, are longer than Stories, which means fewer opportunities to play ads in between posts—and lower monetization.
Yet Meta claims users are watching more Reels—140 billion plays a day across Instagram and Facebook—and spending less time on the feed, which cuts into ad revenue. Mendelsohn says Facebook saw the same pattern when it introduced Stories, which initially monetized at a lower level than static image posts. Instagram Reels’ monetization efficiency improved 30% last quarter, Zuckerberg said in Meta’s most recent earnings report.

“[Meta is] in a pivotal moment—revenue growth has stalled.
They’re not growing. They’re having massive cuts,” says Jefferies analyst Brent Thill. “They’re trying to experiment with new business models. But at the end of the day, the main engine is advertising, which is a really tough place right now given the economy.” Mendelsohn says Zuckerberg’s new obsession—A.I.—can help solve those problems in small ways. The average Meta advertiser saw 20% higher conversions in the fourth quarter of 2022 mainly because of A.I., she says.
In May, Meta announced the planned rollout of its “A.I. Sandbox” of tools: A.I. that adjusts brightness and text placement to increase ad performance, plus generative A.I. that writes copy and creates image backgrounds. Automating the nitty-gritty lets marketers spend more time on the skills that give them a “competitive advantage,” like developing campaigns and targeting the right users.

After months of disappointing earnings, Meta delivered good news in April.
It reported 3% year-over-year sales growth, its first increase in almost a year and a sign it’s rebounding from the blow of Apple’s rule change and beginning to gain market share in short-form video. Today, Mendelsohn’s cancer isn’t all-consuming. “Now I don’t think about it every day,” she says.
“That’s something I never could have imagined when I was diagnosed.” What she does think about is finding a cure for follicular lymphoma, something she “absolutely” expects in her lifetime. A cure could be applied to other diseases that share follicular lymphoma’s DNA structure, like breast cancer. Simons calls Mendelsohn the “Michael J. Fox of follicular lymphoma.” The visibility—and money—a top Meta exec can bring to an under-resourced disease could change the lives of the 1.2 million people with this illness.

Still, a question looms: What if researchers don’t find a cure? Follicular lymphoma
recurs in the average patient six to eight times, with increasing frequency. Mendelsohn is encouraged that her disease hasn’t returned for five years. Her young age at the time of her diagnosis makes her “not the typical follicular lymphoma patient,” which gives her hope that the other stats won’t apply either.
Mendelsohn’s upbeat outlook can at times feel at odds with the prospects in front of her. She’s not sure where the disposition comes from—“I’ve just always felt incredibly grateful, from being a child,” she says—but says it’s a by-product of focusing on what she can control, rather than “the very big thing.” That approach makes the challenges on her plate—whether living with cancer or the future of one of the world’s largest tech companies—a little easier to handle.

Today she flies around the world every week. She jetted between New York, Israel, Palo Alto, and King Charles III’s coronation in a one-month span this year. She set a goal to visit 100 countries, and crossed the 100th off her list with a holiday vacation to St. Lucia. And she remains as committed to the future of Meta as ever, metaverse included.
“I can’t imagine being anywhere else,” she says. “I love Mark’s vision of where the next stage will get us to.” Mendelsohn says. “I’m getting on with my life,” ‘Online and off. “

This article appears in the June/July 2023 issue of Fortune with the headline,
“Meta’s true believer.” This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Can Using This Popular Sweetener Damage Your DNA? (msn.com)

Now she oversees the bulk of Meta’s $114 billion in ad revenue each year as head of its global business group. Only three years into her tenure at Facebook in 2016, Mendelsohn had made a name for herself. So when she received her diagnosis, she had allies in her corner.
Mendelsohn’s “legendary energy,” as Clegg describes it, hasn’t faltered throughout our conversation at Meta’s NYC office. Until we get to a big topic: her cancer. Mendelsohn’s voice drops into a lower register; she gets quieter and sits back in her chair.
She’s told the story of her diagnosis before—to her bosses, to her employees, to supporters of the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation she started. But remembering the first time she told her four children gives her pause. She rests her head in her hands. A week after Mendelsohn’s diagnosis, she and Jonathan sat the kids down around their dining room table in London. Her oldest child and only daughter, Gabi, was 20; her youngest son, Zac, was 11.
“He was so little,” Mendelsohn remembers, her voice wavering. They had waited a week to figure out all the facts and so as not to ruin an elder son’s birthday party. They told the kids that their mom had cancer. “I couldn’t get the words out,” Mendelsohn remembers. “Everything was happening in slow motion.” They couldn’t comfort the family by saying she would start treatment right away; her doctors recommended treating the cancer only when it progresses to a certain point.

Zac asked if their mom was going to die.
The question was impossible to answer.
Follicular lymphoma is considered incurable. No chemotherapy can ever guarantee that the cancer is entirely gone. Half of patients diagnosed make it five years; one-third live another 15 years. After its initial slow progression, the disease “takes off” in the lymph nodes and bone marrow, explains Dr. Jonathan Simons, an oncologist and former professor of hematology who helped Mendelsohn establish the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation.
For 18 months, Mendelsohn’s diagnosis was a fact of life as she and her family waited for doctors’ go-ahead to start treatment. She couldn’t do anything besides improve her diet and start exercising (boxing, walking, dancing). After she began chemotherapy, Mendelsohn didn’t have the stereotypical experience. Her long, thick hair thinned, but she never had to wear the wig she bought in anticipation of losing all of it. And she didn’t take time off work.
She says she never considered it even as Facebook endured the public’s wrath. She brought her laptop to treatment sessions and conducted meetings virtually. (She’s co founded a pledge to support workers battling cancer with Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun.) She was determined to maintain the life she’d built—at home and at work—despite the diagnosis: “Still married to the same guy, same job,” she jokes.

The pandemic cut short the final stage of her treatment—immunotherapy. She isolated in her London home, including from her youngest son when he went back to school. Her low B-cell count meant that COVID vaccines didn’t work on her. In April 2021 she received a drug that produced synthetic antibodies, allowing her to get back outside.
Later that year she was promoted from VP of EMEA to VP of the global business group, a precursor to her current role, and moved to New York. She’s had no evidence of the cancer since 2018, but the nature of follicular lymphoma means the word “remission” doesn’t really apply.

Today, Mendelsohn’s cancer isn’t all-consuming.
“Now I don’t think about it every day,” she says. “That’s something I never could have imagined when I was diagnosed.” What she does think about is finding a cure for follicular lymphoma, something she “absolutely” expects in her lifetime. A cure could be applied to other diseases that share follicular lymphoma’s DNA structure, like breast cancer. Simons calls Mendelsohn the “Michael J. Fox of follicular lymphoma.”
The visibility—and money—a top Meta exec can bring to an under-resourced disease could change the lives of the 1.2 million people with this illness. Still, a question looms: What if researchers don’t find a cure? Follicular lymphoma recurs in the average patient six to eight times, with increasing frequency. Mendelsohn is encouraged that her disease hasn’t returned for five years.

Her young age at the time of her diagnosis makes her “not the typical follicular lymphoma patient,” which gives her hope that the other stats won’t apply either. Mendelsohn’s upbeat outlook can at times feel at odds with the prospects in front of her. She’s not sure where the disposition comes from—“I’ve just always felt incredibly grateful, from being a child,” she says—but says it’s a by-product of focusing on what she can control, rather than “the very big thing.”
That approach makes the challenges on her plate—whether living with cancer or the future of one of the world’s largest tech companies—a little easier to handle. What it’s like living with an incurable cancer. Diagnosed with an incurable cancer on November 18 2016, Nicola Mendelsohn tells GLAMOUR’s EIC (who happens to be her sister-in-law) why she’s making it her mission to find a cure.

By Deborah Joseph
2 April 2023

World Cancer Day, held every 4 February, is the global uniting initiative led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) to raise awareness and improve education around cancer and reimagine a world where millions of preventable cancer deaths are saved and access to life-saving cancer treatment and care is equitable for all – no matter who you are or where you live.

Created in 2000, World Cancer Day has grown into a positive movement for everyone, everywhere to unite under one voice to face one of our greatest challenges in history.
To mark the day, we are revising an interview we did with Nicola Mendelsohn, who tells GLAMOUR’s EIC (who happens to be her sister-in-law) why she’s making it her mission to find a cure.

Follicular Lymphoma. You know that blood cancer affects around one million people globally. The disease that often has no visible symptoms. The cancer that hangs like a life sentence over those who have it, even though they can look as healthy as you and me. Still no idea what I’m talking about? Don’t worry. It’s not you. It’s cancer. Follicular Lymphoma is the incurable cancer we’ve all never even heard of.

The one that wrecks lives, renders those living with it powerless. And one previously believed too rare to be worthy of a cure. That is, until Nicola Mendelsohn, the super boss, VP of Facebook EMEA, mother of four – and for full disclosure – my sister-in-law, was diagnosed with it three years ago, after finding a pea-sized lump in her groin. “I didn’t have any other symptoms,” she recalls. “I was busy living life, busy with work, busy with the kids. I called a friend who’s a doctor and she said, ‘Lumps come and go on women.
If it’s still there in three weeks’ time, come and see me.”

It was still there, so Nicola was sent for a CT scan. “After the scan I went home and didn’t think anything else of it, until a few hours later, when I saw I had a lot of missed calls from the doctor who’d done the scan, but also my friend. I remember telling my husband Jon,
I think this is bad news. My friend called and asked if I’d spoken to the other doctor.
When I said no, she said, ‘I’m coming round’. She told me they’d found tumors up and down the inside of my body.”

As it was a weekend, no further tests could be done. “We decided not to tell anyone, until we knew exactly what we were dealing with. And it was also the weekend of my eldest son, Danny’s 18th birthday. It was the worst weekend of my life. I wasn’t thinking rationally, it was horrendous. I thought of all the worst things that could happen. I lost half a stone in weight from worrying, and not sleeping and crying and trying to put a facade of normal on.”

Within a week she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Follicular Lymphoma, the most common of the non-Hodgkin cancers, but one which most people can barely pronounce. “I was lucky to be diagnosed very quickly, which is very unusual for a blood cancer,” she recalls. “It can often take up to three years, with the person getting sicker. Especially for women, the symptoms often get passed off as, oh you’re tired, you must be too busy, or, oh you’re getting hot sweats at night, it must be the menopause. But sometimes, these symptoms can actually be blood cancer.”

“Telling my children was very hard,” she says, with tears in her eyes.
“It’s difficult even retelling it now. It was a Sunday morning, eight days after I’d been diagnosed. We got the kids together. I was very emotional, I could barely get my words out. Jon was very helpful. The kids just looked so sad. Zac, my youngest, who was 11 at the time, looked at me and said, ‘Are you going to die, mum?’
My response was, I’m going to try my very best not to.
But I didn’t lie to him. All the advice says you should be as honest as possible with your children.” She was also extremely honest with her friends, family, and also, her employer, Facebook.

The diagnosis was naturally shocking and devastating for everyone who knew her well, of course, but also for those who knew of her through her work. For a businesswoman with such a high-profile position to be so open about living with an incurable cancer is unusual. I will never forget the day Nicola came to my home to tell me, and my husband, her brother to tell us her news. We were shell-shocked.

But she led the way.
She was tearful but remained strong, focused and most of all, positive. Where did she find that strength from? “I think I found the most support and strength from getting on with my normal life. Just getting on and doing the things I’ve always done.” As her sister-in-law – we wondered if she’d take a step back, slow down at work. “That was never going to happen” she laughs.

“Facebook was incredibly supportive. They told me to do whatever I needed to do. Take as much time off as I need. But for me taking time off would have been the worst thing for me. I’d just sit at home thinking about my own mortality. I wanted to keep working as much as I possibly could. So they’ve treated me pretty much as normal because they’ve taken their cues from me.“

Nicola expected to head straight into chemotherapy, but was advised against it at the time. “Initially, my mindset was all around, I’ve got to beat this. When you hear about cancer, you hear about cutting it out and blasting it, and then you’ll get better” she says. “But the more I researched into the course of initial treatment, I discovered something called ‘watch and wait’. Which means not doing anything at all and letting the doctors assess the progression of the cancer. At that point they think you’ll need treatment, then they’ll suggest it. There is no change in the overall life expectancy if you treat now, or treat in the future, it doesn’t make any difference.”

READ MORE: I beat cancer but had a breakdown when I got the all-clear

Nicola managed to go on ‘watch and wait’ for 18 months, by which point some of her tumors had grown dangerously close to her kidneys, and there was a concern it would give her kidney failure. “So I started treatment.” This, she will admit, was one of the hardest moments for her. “I’d created a false expectation for myself, that I wouldn’t need treatment for at least two years, so it was a blow.” For the past year, she has undergone fourteen rounds of chemotherapy and is currently on a two-year maintenance therapy, which involves immunotherapy every eight weeks.

One of the biggest ironies around this, is that despite this diagnosis, and the chemotherapy, Nicola looks better than she’s ever looked in her life. She doesn’t look ill. She isn’t living her life as an ill person, which is what, for some, makes this an invisible cancer. Thanks to a much healthier lifestyle, that has involved cutting out sugar from her diet – she used to eat more sweets than anyone she knows – reflexology, acupuncture, mindfulness and exercise – she looks incredible.

I did everything I could to make my body strong.
“I realize I’ve been very lucky in that I haven’t suffered from symptoms and also, didn’t react as badly as others to the chemotherapy, I didn’t lose my hair. I read a tip that if you bought your wig before your hair fell out it would be a nicer experience. My hair has thinned, but I’m very happy my wig is still hanging in my wardrobe, and I’ve never had to wear it. But I know the same can not be said for everyone who goes through the same treatment.”

As well as working her way through her diagnosis, she found an unexpected source of strength and support, also through Facebook. “About three months after I was diagnosed, I wonder if there’s a Facebook group for Follicular Lymphoma. I searched and lo and behold there was one called Living With Follicular Lymphoma. It had recently been set up by a woman called Nicky who lived in Australia. It had a few hundred members.

I contacted her and said, I think I can help. The group now has over six thousand members and is honestly the single best place for advice and support. It’s a place where people go to rant and know everyone in the group will one hundred percent understand what you’re going through.” Three years on from her diagnosis, Nicola has done what she always does with other areas of her life – tackled it head on.

She has decided to find a cure for her own cancer. “I decided if not me, then who and if not now, then when. So yes, the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation is now a thing. We have to raise a lot of money and also, raise awareness. So Follicular Lymphoma, Follicular Lymphoma…please remember those words.” The word inspiration is bandied around a lot these days, but really, to watch someone you love and admire remain so strong in the face of an incurable cancer, is truly incredible to witness.

How does she do it?
I will always be in awe of her ability to stay positive and focused and to keep perspective, no matter what. “You know, I’ve always felt very grateful for the life that I have. The family I have and the friends and opportunities that I have. I have always tried to squeeze into every day as much as is humanly possible. That’s how I love living my life and nothing has changed.

I saw the darkness of what happens when your mind starts to wander, it’s so easy to go down that spiral of what if. It’s hard to get out of that pit of despair once you go down it. It made me physically ill doing it. I’m not going to do that. However many weeks, months, years I have left, I’m going to live my best life possible. And I’m going to make it my mission to find a cure for Follicular Lymphoma to help others who are diagnosed with it now and in the future.”

For more info and details on how to donate visit..

Website www.theflf.org
Facebook: @FollicularLymphomaFoundation
Instagram: @FollicularLymphomaFoundation
Twitter: @Cure_FL
Hashtag across all channels: #CureFL

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5 Myths About Nutrition

Posted on June 4, 2023 by Ken

http://www.begreatwithin.com/

The human mind has magnificent power it can empower us, or it can enslave us.
It can take us to the deep end of torment or take us to the heights of great euphoria.
We just have to learn how to manifest that power and put it to good use.
The mind can conceive anything we think of anything we imagine, anything we visualize.
The mind is indeed powerful; it is the transformative thoughts of our mind that will take us to our destination; the destination of either greatness or failure. As Albert Einstein once said, ” the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination”. Your mind has to arrive at the destination before your life does, change your mind, change your life.
Even Romans 12:22 states, “Do not conform to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Everything starts in the mind and the world
is responding to who you believe you are. If you want to be great in all aspects of your life, start thinking of yourself as one with greatness within and manifest the power of your mind.

The Power of the Hustle.
Is one of the keys to achieving massive success in life and getting where you want to be; you can’t just sit around and expect things to happen as they wouldn’t. Things just don’t work out by chance, you have got to have a map, a plan, and a sense of direction. Your dreams aren’t going to come true, if you do not hustle. It has to be o% talk and 100% walk. Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
So, Get out there my friend.
You have to stay focused, stay humble, and always hustle your heart out.
Hustle like there is a fire in your belly, hustle till you become the boss of you, hustle till everyone knows your name, hustle as David slew Goliath, hustle on a consistent and persistent basis. You can manifest the power of the hustle within you, think outside
of the box and make it happen.
All you need is your “why factor”, that thing that gets you up in the morning and pushes you towards achievement and making things happen. The bible says that knock and the door will open and seek and you shall find. You see, friends, hustle is not the lazy, but for the hungry. Get out there and hustle!  Never Give Up | Cancer Quick Facts (solitarius.org)
USA, Oh No They Didn’t! 10 Hilariously ANNOYING American Habits That Drive the World Crazy (msn.com)

U.S. States With The Highest Cancer Rates – WorldAtlas

In 2016, Cancer rates in the US are highest in the eastern side of the country. Kentucky
had the highest incidence with 512 people out of 100,000 developing the disease every year. One of the poorest states in the nation, it has not sufficiently invested in cancer prevention and detection; therefore, the state also has the highest rate of deaths from cancer. Kentucky was founded on the tobacco industry, a legacy that remains today as nearly a quarter of the population smokes cigarettes. This smoking habit explains why lung cancer is higher here than any other state in the nation.
The second highest cancer rate is found in Delaware where 490.6 out of every 100,000 residents will develop the disease annually. After being named as one of the states with the highest rates of cancer, Delaware increased its screening and prevention programs which has helped to improve survival and diagnoses rates. Common cancers here are colorectal and prostate. Both can be prevented through early detection.

Number 3 on the list is Pennsylvania.
In this state, the incidence of cancer is 483.1.
Cancer is one of the most common chronic diseases here and the second leading cause
of death (after heart disease). The most commonly diagnosed type of cancer is prostate followed by lung, breast, and colorectal. Lifestyle behaviors are again to blame, residents here report high tobacco use and unhealthy diets.

The other states with the highest cancer rates include New York (482), New Jersey (479.5), Louisiana (477.5), Minnesota (475), Iowa (470.2), Arkansas (470) and Connecticut (469).

The U.S. states with the highest smoking % were October 26, 2022

In 2022, States With the Highest Cancer Rates | Stacker # Bold Print.

West Virginia, 23.8%; #7
Kentucky, 23.6%; #1
Louisiana, 21.9%; #3
Ohio, 20.8%; #14
Mississippi, 20.4%; #11
Alabama #27 and Arkansas 20.2% (tie); Ark #4
Tennessee, 19.9%; #26
Missouri, 19.6%; #29
Indiana, 19.2%.  #43

12 Worst Tasting Beers People Voted Best Served by Pouring Down Your Sink (msn.com)
Grab Your Treadmill. These Are the Unhealthiest States in the US Ranked From 1 to 50.
Which states drink the most beer? Here’s how all 50 states (plus D.C.) rank (msn.com)
The Human Microbiome Is Going Extinct, Scientists Say. The End Will Be Devastating.
Nutritionists Say This Sweet Snack Is Surprisingly Metabolism-Boosting (msn.com)
15 Things You Think Are Bad, But Actually Aren’t. Give Them A Chance. (msn.com)
We Taste-Tested Every Single Gatorade Flavor—Here’s What Came Out On Top 🙁
15 Eating Habits That Are Destroying Your Body Without You Knowing (msn.com)
15 American Dialectical Differences That Confused Travelers the Most (msn.com)
19 Misconceptions About America that The Rest of The World Believe (msn.com)
30 Over-Consumed Foods That Are Equally Bad For Anyone’s Health and Wallet.
12 So-Called Healthy Habits That Are Actually Really Bad For You (msn.com)

10 Everyday Poisons People Consume Without a Second Thought (msn.com)
Iconic American destinations that have been ruined by tourists (msn.com)
80 Best Small Lake Towns in the U.S. | Far & Wide (farandwide.com)
Climate change is unleashing ancient “zombie viruses” (msn.com) 🙂
The Harsh Truth About EVs That No One Is Telling You (msn.com)
7 Fatal Health Mistakes People Make After Age 50 (msn.com)
Map of Cigarette Use Among Adults | STATE System | CDC
Smoking Rates by State 2023 (worldpopulationreview.com)
What’s America’s Favorite Beer Brand? (farandwide.com)
Rates By State | American Lung Association
The 50 Best Beers in the World (msn.com)
Annoying habits MSN – Search (bing.com)

Green Juicing Lose Weight, Detoxify Your Body Boost Your Immune System
By Adetayo Ogunsanya Pharmd, RPh

I am a pharmacist licensed in 5 states all in good standing.
I love to write, and I have written different e-books that I hope that can help
you through your career. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me.
I offer writing consultations, career advice and coaching, and I am available for general consulting. Green Juicing is the e-book for you.
Are you looking for recipes that can simplify your life and make your day to day much easier? Well, if you are, add this e-book to your collection and try out some delicious recipes. Books by Adetayo Ogunsanya (Author of Practice Questions for Success).

I’m a dietitian by Caroline Kee – Search (bing.com)
^Source:These 5 myths about nutrition are actually hurting your health Story.
Wellness is defined as the state or quality of being in good health. Wellness culture, on
the other hand, is more complicated. According to Christy Harrison, registered dietitian nutritionist and author of new book “The Wellness Trap,” wellness culture is more about the belief that our bodies cannot function or regulate well enough on their own and require products, diets or self-discipline to do so.

“Wellness culture posits certain behaviors as the path to achieving (moral goodness),” Harrison tells TODAY.com, adding that it promotes a standard for taking care of your body that can be unattainable — or even harmful.
Wellness culture has exploded in the last decade, in part thanks to social media, and
is reaching an increasingly younger audience, Harrison says. But many of the beliefs circulating online, especially those around nutrition, have little to no evidence to back them up. Here are some of the most pervasive nutrition myths that wellness culture has tricked us into believing, says Harrison, and why you should ditch them immediately.

We need to “detox” our bodies.
The word detox — to rid the body of toxins or substances — has been co-opted
by wellness culture, according to Harrison. Whether it’s from sugar, solid foods or
social media, these so-called detoxes are touted as ways to cleanse the body.

“It’s a very harmful wellness trend,” says Harrison, adding that detoxes usually involve extreme or restrictive behaviors. Juice cleanses, supplements and fasting are all marketed as ways to detox the body, says Harrison, even though the body is designed to detoxify itself. “Your liver and kidneys are great at removing toxins in your body without any intervention from you,” says Harrison.

Extreme cleanses won’t make these organs work better, she adds, and they certainly
aren’t a necessary maintenance measure. “Wellness culture kind of views the liver and kidneys as being like filters in the sink that get clogged with gunk,” she says. “A lot of
the language is about needing to detox or clean them out to make them work properly.”

But this simply isn’t true, she stresses.
“Unless you have liver or kidney disease or rare cases of acute poisoning … you don’t have to do anything for your liver and kidneys to function,” she adds. Concerns about toxins pushed by wellness culture are often overblown and fraught with misunderstanding, says Harrison. “There’s this scaremongering about toxins in our food and our environment that we need to supposedly detox from regularly,” she says.  NOTE: I DISAGREE

The juice cleanse “cure”
Juices have evolved from an easy way to drink your produce into a panacea that can heal or reverse a range of ailments, says Harrison. “There’s no good scientific evidence behind (juice cleanses), yet they’re still being touted as a cure-all,” she adds. A red flag with any wellness trend, says Harrison, is if it’s promoted as a cure or a way to help with a wide array of diverse conditions.  NOTE: JUICING DOESN’T CURE ANYTHING IT TREATS YOUR BODY!

Celery juice in particular remains a popular trend among wellness influencers and celebrities, she adds, with many claiming it provides benefits like rapid weight loss, improved gut health, higher energy levels and clearer skin. “There’s probably a dozen chronic health conditions celery juice is purported to help or even cure,” she explains,
such as autoimmune diseases, skin conditions, allergies or digestive disorders.

But the research supporting these assertions is profoundly lacking, she adds.
While fruits and vegetables provide the body with vitamins and nutrients, juicing them doesn’t enhance these benefits, TODAY.com previously reported. Juices can be a great addition to a diet alongside whole, nutritious foods, but drinking them as a substitute
or a cleanse really isn’t worth it. Celery: Ask Health Professionals Q & A (msn.com)

“Clean eating is always better.”
Wellness culture has created an obsession with the cleanliness and purity of what we put into our bodies, says Harrison. It’s even spilled over from food into personal care, beauty and home cleaning products. The premise of clean eating is to focus on eating whole foods, avoid processed foods, cut back on sugars, limit saturated or trans fats, and limit or avoid alcohol and caffeine.

It’s one thing to try to get more nutritious foods in your diet, but clean eating is often problematic in disguise, Harrison says. Some clean eating diets involve eliminating entire food groups (like grains or dairy, for example) and overly restrictive behaviors, says Harrison. What’s most worrisome, she adds, is how this can lead to disordered eating habits or full-blown orthorexia.

Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with healthy
eating and associated restrictive behaviors, according to the National Institutes of Health.
It often involves a fixation with the cleanness of foods, TODAY.com previously reported.

Although it is not yet formally recognized as a mental disorder, the term orthorexia has been around since 1998, per the National Eating Disorders Association, and rates have been on the rise since. “Research is still limited, but there’s some evidence showing that it’s quite high in health-conscious populations,” says Harrison. “For example, the overall prevalence of orthorexia in exercising populations was a staggering 51% according to a systematic review published this February.

All processed food is bad
The moralization of food — or labeling certain foods as “good” or “bad” — is one of the most harmful aspects of wellness culture, says Harrison. “There is no good versus bad food,” she explains. Some foods are more nutritious than others, but this binary fails to capture the full picture of a food’s nutritional value.

Assigning moral value to foods can also create guilt or shame around eating them, Harrison adds — phrases like “guilt-free” or “cheat meals” reinforce this. “Demonization of processed foods and sugar are the biggest ones,” says Harrison. “It makes people feel like if they eat any of those foods, that they’re going to have immediate health consequences or they’re poisoning themselves.”

Not only is this a myth, she adds, it can lead to disordered eating tendencies.
Processed foods are those that have undergone some processing from their natural state, which includes anything from candy and cookies to tinned fish or canned vegetables, TODAY.com reported previously. One step up from these are ultra-processed foods, which have undergone extensive transformation and have been linked to increased risk of certain cancers.

Harrison acknowledges that while research suggests eating too much processed food or sugar can be associated with poor health outcomes, she doesn’t believe it warrants the level of fearmongering around certain foods pushed by many in the wellness industry.
“It’s not like the people having the best health outcomes in those studies are always eating zero sugar or zero processed foods,” says Harrison. Moderation is key — the occasional bag of chips or candy bar is no reason to fret.

There’s a supplement for that
No matter your ailment, you can probably find a supplement somewhere claiming to fix it. Wellness culture often pushes the idea that taking vitamins and dietary supplements is a more “natural” solution to attain good health, according to Harrison.

However, the benefits of dietary supplements for the general population have been widely contested. And research continues to show the vitamin pills and gummies advertised to keep us healthy might not do much at all, TODAY.com previously reported.

In addition, supplements can be harmful for a number of reasons, says Harrison. They can come with unpleasant side effects and even health risks in high doses. Another downside is that the supplement industry in the United States is largely unregulated, she adds.

Vitamins and dietary supplements are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as foods, not drugs. The FDA does not approve the safety or
effectiveness of supplements, nor the accuracy of their labels, before they
are sold to the public, TODAY.com previously reported.

Harrison explains that supplement manufacturers aren’t allowed to claim that their products cure or heal diseases, but they can make vague statements, for example that they “boost energy” or provide “immune support.” – Search (bing.com)

“It’s scary because there’s no one really looking out for us in terms of what goes into supplements before they go to market,” says Harrison. Nutritionists Say This Sweet
Snack Is Surprisingly Metabolism-Boosting (msn.com)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Chloe Mustaki: Resilience

Posted on June 4, 2023 by Ken

SET FOR INTERNATIONAL DEBUT AFTER CANCER BATTLE

CHLOE NAOMI MUSTAKI (BORN 29 JULY 1995 in Lima, Ohio.)
IN AUGUST 2014, CHLOE MUSTAKI WAS DIAGNOSED WITH HODGKIN’S LYMPHOMA. THIS IS A TYPE OF BLOOD CANCER IN THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM. FIVE YEARS ON, MUSTAKI HAS EARNED HER FIRST SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CALL-UP TO THE IRISH WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM.
IRELAND TAKE ON UKRAINE IN THEIR SECOND EURO 2021 QUALIFIER AFTER BEATING MONTENEGRO 2-0 EARLIER THIS MONTH. IN WHAT IS SET TO BE A RECORD CROWD AT TALLAGHT STADIUM TOMORROW, 8 OCTOBER, IRELAND ARE AIMING TO REACH THEIR FIRST EVER MAJOR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT.

CHLOE MUSTAKI: LET’S TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL AND RESILIENCE | HERSPORT.IE
RECEIVED HER FIRST SENIOR-CALL UP AFTER AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY. NEWLY APPOINTED MANAGER VERA PAUW AND ASSISTANT-MANAGER EILEEN GLEESON HAVE TAKEN NOTE OF MUSTAKI’S IMPRESSIVE FORM. MUSTAKI SIGNED WITH SHELBOURNE FC IN MARCH EARLIER THIS YEAR.
SHE WENT ON TO CAPTAIN IRELAND AT THE WORLD UNIVERSITY GAMES
TEAM DURING THE SUMMER, WHERE DESPITE BEING THE LOWEST RANKED UNIVERSITY TEAM IN THE TOURNAMENT, MUSTAKI CAPTAINED THE SIDE TO
A FOURTH-PLACE FINISH.

The 24-year-old started her playing career at Park Celtic before making the move to
St. Joseph’s as a teenager. Attending St. Andrews College, the midfielder then made the switch to Peamount United winning the first ever Women’s National League in 2011.
A supremely talented footballer, Mustaki received International Player of The Year at
U17 level. However, in what was supposed to be one of the best times in her career.
2014 proved to be one of the hardest periods in her life.
Mustaki had captained the U19 international team to history as they became the first-
ever Irish side to qualify for the U19 European Championships, unbeaten through their
six qualifying games.
They were drawn into a heavyweight group with outsiders giving them no hope. Ireland were pitted against previous winners England and Sweden as well as the runners-up from the tournament two-years prior, Spain.

The results?
Republic of Ireland 1 – 0 Spain.
Republic of Ireland 2 -1 England.
Republic of Ireland 2 -1 Sweden.

The Netherlands eventually beat Ireland and ended the dream, as they went on to win the tournament. Ireland were history-makers and defied all odds. Yet something was not quite right with Mustaki. She felt she had let her team-mates down. Her performances at the European Championships were below the expectations and high standards she had set previously.
The lively midfielder is known for her box-to-box prowess and ability to control the game. Her energetic performances in midfield are also a key facet to her game. Yet in Norway something was off – her energy levels were shot.After returning back from the competition and at a loss to understand why she didn’t perform to her usual high standards, Mustaki went back to her daily routine.

Two weeks later she visited her GP to have a prescription renewed and blood test taken.

After being called back for a second set of tests, a chest X-ray showed a six centimetre tumour in her chest. Mustaki was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Like anyone, she was scared. Mustaki took time out of college and began chemotherapy sessions, which she described as torture.
These sessions began in September and carried on every two weeks through to February. After a long and grueling period, she received the news she was cancer free. Unconceivable relief, unimaginable reassurance. Astonishingly, Mustaki kept football in her life during her treatment. She felt if she let go of football, she would have lost everything.
Within five weeks of being given the good news, she was back playing for UCD Waves, under the management of now Republic of Ireland assistant-manager Eileen Gleeson. Since then, Mustaki has continued to make her barnstorming comeback. She was part
of the UCD Waves team who made it to the FAI Cup final in 2017.

Mustaki cruelly missed out on the final the last time UCD Waves made it to the final,
in 2014, as she was undergoing chemotherapy. Now, Mustaki is set to finally realise
her dream of representing Ireland at senior level after a long and grueling journey.
Had illness not interrupted her career, there is no doubt Mustaki would have several
international caps already however she is still young.
Mustaki says she feels “great now” and has never been in a better place.  “Obviously,
it was a tough time in my life back then but I got through it and am for the better now, health-wise everything’s perfect, thank God “I think it’s changed me for the good and the bad, to be honest. “It’s definitely made me stronger, it’s interesting seeing what life can bring in terms of good and bad.”
On her future: “I just moved to London a few weeks ago for work. “In terms of football
I’m looking to sign for a club in England soon so not sure where that’ll be but hopefully,
it’ll bring me forward and improve my quality of football.”

Inspirational Chloe Mustaki Overcame Injuries And Cancer

The Republic of Ireland bowed out of the Pinatar Cup over the weekend but Chloe Mustaki can hold her head high. The 26-year-old Shelbourne standout earned her first Irish cap in a much-changed side that lost 1-0 to Russia. She was named Player of the Match in the aftermath.
Mustaki was born in America but spent most of her childhood in Cabinteely in Dublin. She played for Park Celtic and St Joseph’s as a youngster. Having made her Women’s National League debut for Peamount at the age of 16, she couldn’t have thought it would take ten years to break onto the national stage.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport, Mustaki tried to put into words what it felt like to put on the green jersey. “Everyone came up to congratulate me after the game, and I think everyone knows how much it means to me.” “Not just the ACL, but the lymphoma when I was younger as well. Finishing my under-19 career and then two weeks later being diagnosed with cancer,” she said.

COYGIG Pod Ep.19 | Chloe Mustaki | Cancer vs ACL mental battle, Ireland call-up and state of the WNL

Mustaki was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma days after captaining
the Republic of Ireland under-19 side at the European Championships in 2014.
That Irish team made it to the semi-finals of the competition but ended up losing
4-0 to the Netherlands. But Mustaki knew something wasn’t right.
She went to her GP two weeks after the tournament to see what was wrong,
citing a lack of energy. She recalled her cancer diagnosis speaking to the Irish Times in 2016: (My GP) rang me the next day and told me that something was up. He said he’d like to take another set (of blood tests). At worst I thought I might be anemic or something.
I went in for a consultation with my mom. He explained what he thought was going on.
I remember getting quite upset because I could sense something was serious.

Then he sent me for a chest X-ray.
There was a six-centimetre tumour in my chest. Mustaki endured a tough couple of months of chemotherapy, losing her hair and suffering from the ill effects of Hodgkin’s. Eight months later, she was back out on the pitch. She still trained with UCD Waves during the 2014-2015 season and watched her teammates win the FAI Women’s Cup
final as Áine O’Gorman paraded her shirt number at the Aviva Stadium.
She spent the next few seasons between the Women’s National League, the Division 1 Féminine in France and the FA Women’s Championship. However, her career in England at Charlton barely got going, as she suffered a serious ACL injury training with the Republic of Ireland squad in early 2020. That sidelined her for the best part of a year until Shelbourne came calling for her once again. Mustaki was a feature of the Women’s National League winning side last year.

Mustaki’s Long Road
Her performances for Shelbourne caught the eye of Vera Pauw, and she earned her way back into the Republic of Ireland squad for their La Manga adventure in the Pinatar Cup. Ten years after her league debut and nearly eight years since her cancer diagnosis, she wore a senior jersey for the girls in green for the first time.
“Emotionally everyone knew how much it meant to me,” she told RTÉ. It was a strange feeling on the bus on the way back to the hotel, reading messages on my phone from family, friends and everyone around me.” “Knowing how much it meant to me and congratulating me for sticking to it. I’ll probably think back to that night forever. It was a night and day to remember.” The Republic of Ireland will get to feature in a third-place playoff against Wales this week. It’s given them an opportunity for a runout before the World Cup qualifiers return in April.
While Chloe Mustaki is proud of her crowning night after all she’s had to endure,
she’s looking forward to being involved more in the Irish set up in the coming months.
“I absolutely want to be in every single camp over the next year and a half as we prepare for the World Cup, but I have to be proud of how far I’ve come.” Chloe added, “Seven months ago, I was struggling to get through training sessions, pain-free, with Shels. I’ll do my best to be involved but there are so many talented players involved at the moment.”

Being open and honest about it, my salary was halved’ – Mustaki’s football focus.
CHLOE MUSTAKI’S STORY is well-documented at this stage.

Republic of Ireland international Chloe Mustaki on her move to Bristol City, football and identity, and chasing the World Cup dream. The Republic of Ireland international has beat cancer and serious injury to represent her country on the biggest stages, now finding herself on the cusp of realising the World Cup dream and enjoying Championship football with Bristol City.
Mustaki, who can operate in defence or midfield, made the move across the water from Shelbourne this summer; her first goal for her new club last weekend putting the wind in her sails ahead of Tuesday’s historic World Cup play-off against Scotland at Hampden Park [KO 8pm, live on RTÉ 2]. It’s fair to say it’s been a whirlwind few weeks, but the 27-year-old Dubliner is enjoying the journey, back to her brilliant best after a devastating ACL injury in 2020.
“It was a bit of a leap of faith to go full-time for me because, I don’t know, it was just never something I really thought I would do at a younger age,” she explains. “It was a big change for me but I’m actually loving it so it was a great decision in the end. “When I tore my ACL, things changed for me a bit. I had to work really, really hard to come back from that.
I think just the time and effort that I put into that made me think.

‘Why not go and try full-time football for a couple of years?’
“I just thought, ‘Flipping hell, why not?’ I’ll be working until whatever age
I’ll be working to, so why not take a few years out and give football everything?
Obviously if I hadn’t had my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis, maybe I would have taken that leap of faith a bit earlier, but life happened the way it happened, and I just found that this was the right time to give it a go.
“Obviously women’s football is growing at an alarming rate now.
So it’s maybe something I might be able to do for longer than a year or two, depending on how the form goes.  “I have my undergraduate, my Masters, everything I need under my belt to feel comfortable. I have everything I need to fall back on if it doesn’t work.” They were the big factors. A smaller one was her feeling that full-time football was “necessary” for the progression of her international career, the standard having “sky-rocketed” of late.
“We’re really far off at the moment in Ireland,” she frowns at one point.
But back to leaving the day job. Mustaki was working full-time in recruitment before her move to Bristol, having previously studied Commerce and French and International Management.

This is a free shot, of sorts.
“It definitely made me feel a lot calmer about walking away from a full-time job,” she nods. “Being open and honest about it, my salary was halved walking away and that’s a massive thing to do. But you’re only young once and I won’t get this opportunity again.
I’m coming into my late 20s now, so it was now or never. “What harm in enjoying myself for a few years? If I can save some money, fair enough. And if I can’t, then I’ll put in the work once I’m done with football to make up for lost time.”

TOM MAHER / INPHO Mustaki on the ball against Finland.

She’s doing so at the minute on the flipside. Perhaps ironically, injury absentees may offer an opportunity to add to her four senior Ireland caps next week, while she has played in each of Bristol’s four Championship games so far this season, helping them to the top of the table. The mental adjustment has been tricky though, Mustaki admits. You’d imagine she had more time before, but she weirdly had less than she had imagined while settling in.
“But now I have got used to my surroundings and I have most of my things set up, I’ll be able to have more time mentally to go out in the evenings and enjoy my time away from football,” she smiles, planning art classes and cookery classes, with her new car as a help. “That’s the main thing. It’s always a worry. Because my time was always split between academics and football.
The idea of playing football full-time and having everything riding on how you perform, how you train, whether you win or lose on Sunday – that was a massive deal for me and kind of the reason why I didn’t push it early on. “I need to be careful and to make sure that I have outlets outside of football that can keep me happy if a result doesn’t go our way or if I don’t perform the way I hope to perform.”

So she’s never wanted football to be the whole of her identity?
“Pretty much,” she nods. “The way I was brought up, my parents were very academically focused and were making sure I got that degree under my belt. “If you think about it, I’m 27 and when I was finishing up school at 18, women’s football just wasn’t where it is now. That’s only eight or nine years ago. The idea of taking that leap of faith and not getting that degree under my belt was just not possible. The idea that I could make good money in football at the age of 18, it just wasn’t realistic.
You were talking 0.5% of women who were able to make a life-long career and were able to save enough money. So for me, it just wasn’t even an option in my head. “But the past five years, so much has happened in women’s football. It’s sad for me because I feel like I’m probably on the later stages of that and I probably won’t get the full rewards of it. But it’s fantastic for someone like Jess Ziu, at 20/21, and in four or five years’ time, there will hopefully be major money in the women’s game.
So it is really exciting for girls who are finishing school now. But eight or nine years ago, realistically I felt I had to get a degree or two under my belt before I could even think about going full-time.” Time and time again during the interview, she comes back to the fact that women’s football is “exploding” at the minute and that World Cup qualification would be a watershed moment for the game in Ireland.

ANDERS HOVEN / INPHO Mustaki (6) captained the U19s at the 2014 Euros.

It would mean a first-ever major tournament for the senior women’s team,
Mustaki having skippered the U19s on their historic run to the semi-finals of the 2014 European Championships. “My memories from that tournament are very mixed. On one end, I captained the girls to a European semi-final so it was definitely a defining moment of my career, something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
“But then on the back of that, I got a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’ve very mixed emotions when I think back to that tournament but it was a hugely proud moment for me and having the likes of Katie [McCabe] in that squad, and Clare Shine, and other girls as well. An unbelievable experience, I’ll never forget it all round but mixed emotions.”
Here’s to more positive ones.

And Mustaki and co. will embrace it.

With that comes pressure, but pressure is a privilege.
“We can’t shy away from the fact that it’s going to be the biggest game of all of our lives,” she concludes. “We dream of being in this position. This is exactly where we wanted to be when we started the campaign. “We were so close to the Euros a couple of years ago. So much investment, time and effort has been put in that we’ll give it our best shot next Tuesday. I don’t think we feel too much pressure, we feel ready for it, we’re doing everything we can to prepare in advance of that.

“Look, it’s a game that we’ll cherish. Hopefully it will be a good result.”
She’s played in every age group for Ireland and was made to wait for two years for her senior bow because of these issues. The 26-year-old, who was born in America in Lima, Ohio and raised in south Dublin spoke about how much it meant to her this weekend. “Everyone came up to congratulate me after the game, and I think everyone knows how much it means to me,”
“Not just the ACL, but the lymphoma when I was younger as well. Finishing my under-19 career and then two weeks later being diagnosed with cancer. Coming back from that and then being so close to my first senior cap and then tearing my ACL. “Emotionally everyone knew how much it meant to me. It was a strange feeling on the bus on the way back to the hotel, reading messages on my phone from family, friends and everyone around me.

“Knowing how much it meant to me and congratulating me for sticking to it.
I’ll probably think back to last night for a long time. “It was a night and day to remember,” she added. Under Vera Pauw Ireland’s women’s team are on the verge of a play-offs for a major tournament, this hasn’t happened since 2008.
I’ll probably think back to last night for a long time,” she said. “I am really proud of myself, and I don’t really pat myself on the back too much. I need to focus on being happy where I’m at. “As competitive individuals we always strive for the next step.

On this Cancer Survivors Day, I am excited to announce,
“I am now a Breakthrough Cancer Research ambassador!”
Welcome to the Breakthrough family @CMustaki
Fantastic to have you on our team

Amazing Chloe
Fantastic well done  @BreakthroCancer
#BreakthroughCancerResearch #MakeMoreSurvivors

@BreakthroCancer
is an Irish medical research charity focused on poor prognosis cancers.
They aim to make more survivors, like me, and continuously drive for new,
better, kinder, smarter ways to diagnose and treat cancer.

Find out more about the charity on their website.
What is Immunotherapy? | Cancer Research Institute
#BreakthroughCancerResearch #MakeMoreSurvivors

SET FOR INTERNATIONAL DEBUT AFTER CANCER BATTLE

CHLOE NAOMI MUSTAKI (BORN 29 JULY 1995 in Lima, Ohio.)
IN AUGUST 2014, CHLOE MUSTAKI WAS DIAGNOSED WITH HODGKIN’S LYMPHOMA. THIS IS A TYPE OF BLOOD CANCER IN THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM. FIVE YEARS ON, MUSTAKI HAS EARNED HER FIRST SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CALL-UP TO THE IRISH WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM.
IRELAND TAKE ON UKRAINE IN THEIR SECOND EURO 2021 QUALIFIER AFTER BEATING MONTENEGRO 2-0 EARLIER THIS MONTH. IN WHAT IS SET TO BE A RECORD CROWD AT TALLAGHT STADIUM TOMORROW, 8 OCTOBER, IRELAND ARE AIMING TO REACH THEIR FIRST EVER MAJOR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT.

CHLOE MUSTAKI: LET’S TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL AND RESILIENCE | HERSPORT.IE
RECEIVED HER FIRST SENIOR-CALL UP AFTER AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY. NEWLY APPOINTED MANAGER VERA PAUW AND ASSISTANT-MANAGER EILEEN GLEESON HAVE TAKEN NOTE OF MUSTAKI’S IMPRESSIVE FORM. MUSTAKI SIGNED WITH SHELBOURNE FC IN MARCH EARLIER THIS YEAR.
SHE WENT ON TO CAPTAIN IRELAND AT THE WORLD UNIVERSITY GAMES
TEAM DURING THE SUMMER, WHERE DESPITE BEING THE LOWEST RANKED UNIVERSITY TEAM IN THE TOURNAMENT, MUSTAKI CAPTAINED THE SIDE TO
A FOURTH-PLACE FINISH.

The 24-year-old started her playing career at Park Celtic before making the move to
St. Joseph’s as a teenager. Attending St. Andrews College, the midfielder then made the switch to Peamount United winning the first ever Women’s National League in 2011.
A supremely talented footballer, Mustaki received International Player of The Year at
U17 level. However, in what was supposed to be one of the best times in her career.
2014 proved to be one of the hardest periods in her life.
Mustaki had captained the U19 international team to history as they became the first-
ever Irish side to qualify for the U19 European Championships, unbeaten through their
six qualifying games.
They were drawn into a heavyweight group with outsiders giving them no hope. Ireland were pitted against previous winners England and Sweden as well as the runners-up from the tournament two-years prior, Spain.

The results?
Republic of Ireland 1 – 0 Spain.
Republic of Ireland 2 -1 England.
Republic of Ireland 2 -1 Sweden.

The Netherlands eventually beat Ireland and ended the dream, as they went on to win the tournament. Ireland were history-makers and defied all odds. Yet something was not quite right with Mustaki. She felt she had let her team-mates down. Her performances at the European Championships were below the expectations and high standards she had set previously.
The lively midfielder is known for her box-to-box prowess and ability to control the game. Her energetic performances in midfield are also a key facet to her game. Yet in Norway something was off – her energy levels were shot.After returning back from the competition and at a loss to understand why she didn’t perform to her usual high standards, Mustaki went back to her daily routine.

Two weeks later she visited her GP to have a prescription renewed and blood test taken.

After being called back for a second set of tests, a chest X-ray showed a six centimetre tumour in her chest. Mustaki was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Like anyone, she was scared. Mustaki took time out of college and began chemotherapy sessions, which she described as torture.
These sessions began in September and carried on every two weeks through to February. After a long and grueling period, she received the news she was cancer free. Unconceivable relief, unimaginable reassurance. Astonishingly, Mustaki kept football in her life during her treatment. She felt if she let go of football, she would have lost everything.
Within five weeks of being given the good news, she was back playing for UCD Waves, under the management of now Republic of Ireland assistant-manager Eileen Gleeson. Since then, Mustaki has continued to make her barnstorming comeback. She was part
of the UCD Waves team who made it to the FAI Cup final in 2017.

Mustaki cruelly missed out on the final the last time UCD Waves made it to the final,
in 2014, as she was undergoing chemotherapy. Now, Mustaki is set to finally realise
her dream of representing Ireland at senior level after a long and grueling journey.
Had illness not interrupted her career, there is no doubt Mustaki would have several
international caps already however she is still young.
Mustaki says she feels “great now” and has never been in a better place.  “Obviously,
it was a tough time in my life back then but I got through it and am for the better now, health-wise everything’s perfect, thank God “I think it’s changed me for the good and the bad, to be honest. “It’s definitely made me stronger, it’s interesting seeing what life can bring in terms of good and bad.”
On her future: “I just moved to London a few weeks ago for work. “In terms of football
I’m looking to sign for a club in England soon so not sure where that’ll be but hopefully,
it’ll bring me forward and improve my quality of football.”

Inspirational Chloe Mustaki Overcame Injuries And Cancer

The Republic of Ireland bowed out of the Pinatar Cup over the weekend but Chloe Mustaki can hold her head high. The 26-year-old Shelbourne standout earned her first Irish cap in a much-changed side that lost 1-0 to Russia. She was named Player of the Match in the aftermath.
Mustaki was born in America but spent most of her childhood in Cabinteely in Dublin. She played for Park Celtic and St Joseph’s as a youngster. Having made her Women’s National League debut for Peamount at the age of 16, she couldn’t have thought it would take ten years to break onto the national stage.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport, Mustaki tried to put into words what it felt like to put on the green jersey. “Everyone came up to congratulate me after the game, and I think everyone knows how much it means to me.” “Not just the ACL, but the lymphoma when I was younger as well. Finishing my under-19 career and then two weeks later being diagnosed with cancer,” she said.

COYGIG Pod Ep.19 | Chloe Mustaki | Cancer vs ACL mental battle, Ireland call-up and state of the WNL

Mustaki was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma days after captaining
the Republic of Ireland under-19 side at the European Championships in 2014.
That Irish team made it to the semi-finals of the competition but ended up losing
4-0 to the Netherlands. But Mustaki knew something wasn’t right.
She went to her GP two weeks after the tournament to see what was wrong,
citing a lack of energy. She recalled her cancer diagnosis speaking to the Irish Times in 2016: (My GP) rang me the next day and told me that something was up. He said he’d like to take another set (of blood tests). At worst I thought I might be anemic or something.
I went in for a consultation with my mom. He explained what he thought was going on.
I remember getting quite upset because I could sense something was serious.

Then he sent me for a chest X-ray.
There was a six-centimetre tumour in my chest. Mustaki endured a tough couple of months of chemotherapy, losing her hair and suffering from the ill effects of Hodgkin’s. Eight months later, she was back out on the pitch. She still trained with UCD Waves during the 2014-2015 season and watched her teammates win the FAI Women’s Cup
final as Áine O’Gorman paraded her shirt number at the Aviva Stadium.
She spent the next few seasons between the Women’s National League, the Division 1 Féminine in France and the FA Women’s Championship. However, her career in England at Charlton barely got going, as she suffered a serious ACL injury training with the Republic of Ireland squad in early 2020. That sidelined her for the best part of a year until Shelbourne came calling for her once again. Mustaki was a feature of the Women’s National League winning side last year.

Mustaki’s Long Road
Her performances for Shelbourne caught the eye of Vera Pauw, and she earned her way back into the Republic of Ireland squad for their La Manga adventure in the Pinatar Cup. Ten years after her league debut and nearly eight years since her cancer diagnosis, she wore a senior jersey for the girls in green for the first time.
“Emotionally everyone knew how much it meant to me,” she told RTÉ. It was a strange feeling on the bus on the way back to the hotel, reading messages on my phone from family, friends and everyone around me.” “Knowing how much it meant to me and congratulating me for sticking to it. I’ll probably think back to that night forever. It was a night and day to remember.” The Republic of Ireland will get to feature in a third-place playoff against Wales this week. It’s given them an opportunity for a runout before the World Cup qualifiers return in April.
While Chloe Mustaki is proud of her crowning night after all she’s had to endure,
she’s looking forward to being involved more in the Irish set up in the coming months.
“I absolutely want to be in every single camp over the next year and a half as we prepare for the World Cup, but I have to be proud of how far I’ve come.” Chloe added, “Seven months ago, I was struggling to get through training sessions, pain-free, with Shels. I’ll do my best to be involved but there are so many talented players involved at the moment.”

Being open and honest about it, my salary was halved’ – Mustaki’s football focus.
CHLOE MUSTAKI’S STORY is well-documented at this stage.

Republic of Ireland international Chloe Mustaki on her move to Bristol City, football and identity, and chasing the World Cup dream. The Republic of Ireland international has beat cancer and serious injury to represent her country on the biggest stages, now finding herself on the cusp of realising the World Cup dream and enjoying Championship football with Bristol City.
Mustaki, who can operate in defence or midfield, made the move across the water from Shelbourne this summer; her first goal for her new club last weekend putting the wind in her sails ahead of Tuesday’s historic World Cup play-off against Scotland at Hampden Park [KO 8pm, live on RTÉ 2]. It’s fair to say it’s been a whirlwind few weeks, but the 27-year-old Dubliner is enjoying the journey, back to her brilliant best after a devastating ACL injury in 2020.
“It was a bit of a leap of faith to go full-time for me because, I don’t know, it was just never something I really thought I would do at a younger age,” she explains. “It was a big change for me but I’m actually loving it so it was a great decision in the end. “When I tore my ACL, things changed for me a bit. I had to work really, really hard to come back from that.
I think just the time and effort that I put into that made me think.

‘Why not go and try full-time football for a couple of years?’
“I just thought, ‘Flipping hell, why not?’ I’ll be working until whatever age
I’ll be working to, so why not take a few years out and give football everything?
Obviously if I hadn’t had my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis, maybe I would have taken that leap of faith a bit earlier, but life happened the way it happened, and I just found that this was the right time to give it a go.
“Obviously women’s football is growing at an alarming rate now.
So it’s maybe something I might be able to do for longer than a year or two, depending on how the form goes.  “I have my undergraduate, my Masters, everything I need under my belt to feel comfortable. I have everything I need to fall back on if it doesn’t work.” They were the big factors. A smaller one was her feeling that full-time football was “necessary” for the progression of her international career, the standard having “sky-rocketed” of late.
“We’re really far off at the moment in Ireland,” she frowns at one point.
But back to leaving the day job. Mustaki was working full-time in recruitment before her move to Bristol, having previously studied Commerce and French and International Management.

This is a free shot, of sorts.
“It definitely made me feel a lot calmer about walking away from a full-time job,” she nods. “Being open and honest about it, my salary was halved walking away and that’s a massive thing to do. But you’re only young once and I won’t get this opportunity again.
I’m coming into my late 20s now, so it was now or never. “What harm in enjoying myself for a few years? If I can save some money, fair enough. And if I can’t, then I’ll put in the work once I’m done with football to make up for lost time.”

TOM MAHER / INPHO Mustaki on the ball against Finland.

She’s doing so at the minute on the flipside. Perhaps ironically, injury absentees may offer an opportunity to add to her four senior Ireland caps next week, while she has played in each of Bristol’s four Championship games so far this season, helping them to the top of the table. The mental adjustment has been tricky though, Mustaki admits. You’d imagine she had more time before, but she weirdly had less than she had imagined while settling in.
“But now I have got used to my surroundings and I have most of my things set up, I’ll be able to have more time mentally to go out in the evenings and enjoy my time away from football,” she smiles, planning art classes and cookery classes, with her new car as a help. “That’s the main thing. It’s always a worry. Because my time was always split between academics and football.
The idea of playing football full-time and having everything riding on how you perform, how you train, whether you win or lose on Sunday – that was a massive deal for me and kind of the reason why I didn’t push it early on. “I need to be careful and to make sure that I have outlets outside of football that can keep me happy if a result doesn’t go our way or if I don’t perform the way I hope to perform.”

So she’s never wanted football to be the whole of her identity?
“Pretty much,” she nods. “The way I was brought up, my parents were very academically focused and were making sure I got that degree under my belt. “If you think about it, I’m 27 and when I was finishing up school at 18, women’s football just wasn’t where it is now. That’s only eight or nine years ago. The idea of taking that leap of faith and not getting that degree under my belt was just not possible. The idea that I could make good money in football at the age of 18, it just wasn’t realistic.
You were talking 0.5% of women who were able to make a life-long career and were able to save enough money. So for me, it just wasn’t even an option in my head. “But the past five years, so much has happened in women’s football. It’s sad for me because I feel like I’m probably on the later stages of that and I probably won’t get the full rewards of it. But it’s fantastic for someone like Jess Ziu, at 20/21, and in four or five years’ time, there will hopefully be major money in the women’s game.
So it is really exciting for girls who are finishing school now. But eight or nine years ago, realistically I felt I had to get a degree or two under my belt before I could even think about going full-time.” Time and time again during the interview, she comes back to the fact that women’s football is “exploding” at the minute and that World Cup qualification would be a watershed moment for the game in Ireland.

ANDERS HOVEN / INPHO Mustaki (6) captained the U19s at the 2014 Euros.

It would mean a first-ever major tournament for the senior women’s team,
Mustaki having skippered the U19s on their historic run to the semi-finals of the 2014 European Championships. “My memories from that tournament are very mixed. On one end, I captained the girls to a European semi-final so it was definitely a defining moment of my career, something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
“But then on the back of that, I got a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’ve very mixed emotions when I think back to that tournament but it was a hugely proud moment for me and having the likes of Katie [McCabe] in that squad, and Clare Shine, and other girls as well. An unbelievable experience, I’ll never forget it all round but mixed emotions.”
Here’s to more positive ones.

And Mustaki and co. will embrace it.

With that comes pressure, but pressure is a privilege.
“We can’t shy away from the fact that it’s going to be the biggest game of all of our lives,” she concludes. “We dream of being in this position. This is exactly where we wanted to be when we started the campaign. “We were so close to the Euros a couple of years ago. So much investment, time and effort has been put in that we’ll give it our best shot next Tuesday. I don’t think we feel too much pressure, we feel ready for it, we’re doing everything we can to prepare in advance of that.

“Look, it’s a game that we’ll cherish. Hopefully it will be a good result.”
She’s played in every age group for Ireland and was made to wait for two years for her senior bow because of these issues. The 26-year-old, who was born in America in Lima, Ohio and raised in south Dublin spoke about how much it meant to her this weekend. “Everyone came up to congratulate me after the game, and I think everyone knows how much it means to me,”
“Not just the ACL, but the lymphoma when I was younger as well. Finishing my under-19 career and then two weeks later being diagnosed with cancer. Coming back from that and then being so close to my first senior cap and then tearing my ACL. “Emotionally everyone knew how much it meant to me. It was a strange feeling on the bus on the way back to the hotel, reading messages on my phone from family, friends and everyone around me.

“Knowing how much it meant to me and congratulating me for sticking to it.
I’ll probably think back to last night for a long time. “It was a night and day to remember,” she added. Under Vera Pauw Ireland’s women’s team are on the verge of a play-offs for a major tournament, this hasn’t happened since 2008.
I’ll probably think back to last night for a long time,” she said. “I am really proud of myself, and I don’t really pat myself on the back too much. I need to focus on being happy where I’m at. “As competitive individuals we always strive for the next step.

On this Cancer Survivors Day, I am excited to announce,
“I am now a Breakthrough Cancer Research ambassador!”
Welcome to the Breakthrough family @CMustaki
Fantastic to have you on our team

Amazing Chloe
Fantastic well done  @BreakthroCancer
#BreakthroughCancerResearch #MakeMoreSurvivors

@BreakthroCancer
is an Irish medical research charity focused on poor prognosis cancers.
They aim to make more survivors, like me, and continuously drive for new,
better, kinder, smarter ways to diagnose and treat cancer.

Find out more about the charity on their website.
What is Immunotherapy? | Cancer Research Institute
#BreakthroughCancerResearch #MakeMoreSurvivors

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Is Climate Change Happening

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Ken

Climate change: How do we know it is happening and caused by humans?
Scientists and politicians say we are facing a planetary crisis because of climate change.

But what’s the evidence for global warming and
how do we know it’s being caused by humans?

How do we know the world is getting warmer?
Our planet has been warming rapidly since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
The average temperature at the Earth’s surface has risen about 1.1C since 1850. Furthermore, each of the last four decades has been warmer than any that preceded it, since the middle of the 19th Century.

These conclusions come from analyses of millions of measurements gathered in different parts of the world. The temperature readings are collected by the weather stations on land,
on ships and by satellites.

Multiple independent teams of scientists have reached the same result –
a spike in temperatures coinciding with the onset of the industrial era.

Turkey was one of the places hit by devastating wildfires.

Ohio river drought 1908 – Bing images
Scientists can reconstruct temperature fluctuations even further back in time.
Tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and corals all record a signature of the past climate.
This provides much-needed context to the current phase of warming. In fact, scientists estimate the Earth hasn’t been this hot for about 125,000 years.

How do we know humans are responsible for global warming?
Greenhouse gases – which trap the Sun’s heat – are the crucial link between temperature rise and human activities. The most important is carbon dioxide (CO2), because of its abundance in the atmosphere.

We can also tell it’s CO2 trapping the Sun’s energy.
Satellites show less heat from the Earth escaping into space at precisely the wavelengths
at which CO2 absorbs radiated energy. Burning fossil fuels and chopping down trees lead to the release of this greenhouse gas. Both activities exploded after the 19th Century, so it’s unsurprising that atmospheric CO2 increased over the same period.

There’s a way we can show definitively where this extra CO2 came from.

The carbon produced by burning fossil fuels has a distinctive chemical ring nature.
Tree rings and polar ice both record changes in atmospheric chemistry. When examined they show that carbon – specifically from fossil sources – has risen significantly since 1850. Analysis shows that for 800,000 years, atmospheric CO2 did not rise above 300 parts per million (ppm).
But since the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration has soared to its current level of nearly 420 ppm. Computer simulations, known as climate models, have been used to show what would have happened to temperatures without the massive amounts of greenhouse gases released by humans.

What does net zero mean?

Is the UK on track to meet its climate targets?
They reveal there would have been little global warming – and possibly some cooling – over the 20th and 21st Centuries, if only natural factors had been influencing the climate.
Only when human factors are introduced can the models explain increases in temperature.

The number of weather-related disasters has increased by a factor
of five over 50 years. What impact are humans having on the planet?

The level of heating Earth has experienced already is predicted to cause significant changes to the world around us. Real-world observations of these changes match
patterns scientists expect to see with human-induced warming.

They include: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melting rapidly?
The number of weather-related disasters has increased by a factor of five
over 50 years Global sea levels rose 20cm (8ins) in the last century and are still rising
Since the 1800s, the oceans have become about 40% more acid, affecting marine life.

But wasn’t it warmer in the past?
There have been several hot periods during the Earth’s past.
Around 92 million years ago, for example, temperatures were so high there were
no polar ice caps and crocodile-like creatures lived as far north as the Canadian Arctic.
That should not comfort anyone, however, because humans were not around.
At times in the past, sea level was 25m (80ft) higher than the present. A rise of 5-8m
(16-26ft) is considered enough to submerge most of the world’s coastal cities.

There is abundant evidence for mass extinctions of life during these periods.
And climate models suggest that, at times, the tropics could have become “dead zones”,
too hot for most species to survive.
These fluctuations between hot and cold have been caused by a variety of phenomena, including the way the Earth wobbles as it orbits the Sun over long periods, volcanic eruptions and short-term climate cycles such as El Niño.
For many years, groups of so-called climate “sceptics”
have cast doubt on the scientific basis of global warming.
However, virtually all scientists who publish regularly in peer-reviewed
journals now agree on the current causes of climate change.
A key UN report released in 2021 said it “is unequivocal that
human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land”.

Analysis: Record-Breaking Ocean Temperatures – TaiwanPlus News
Also, the world’s oceans are warmer this time of year than any other
year on record: Wild Scandinavia: Fire and Ice Season 1 Episode 3 Video
How many glaciers in glacier national park – Search (bing.com)
Remember the Ice Age Ended 11,000 years ago and The Glaciers
are still melting not over night?

The COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow in November is seen as crucial if climate change is to be brought under control. Almost 200 countries are being asked for their plans to cut emissions, and it could lead to major changes to our everyday lives.

Six ways the UK could tackle climate change
Why the COP26 climate summit is important
What will climate change look like for you?
Will the UK meet its climate targets?
How extreme weather is linked to climate change
IS Climate Change Really Happening – Bing video

Goreham vs Gore Goes Viral –  https://youtu.be/mtHreJbr2WM – Search (bing.com)
Opening up the Climate Change Science Debate says Friends of Science (prweb.com)

Steve Goreham – YouTube is a speaker, author, and researcher on environmental issues as well as an engineer and business executive. He is a frequently invited guest on radio and television as well as a freelance writer. He’s the Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America (CSCA), a non-political association of scientists, engineers, and also citizens dedicated to informing Americans about the realities of climate science and energy economics. CSCA is the US affiliate of the International Climate Science Coalition.

Steve’s first Book was Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic (New Lenox Books, 2010), a complete, in-depth discussion of the science, politics, and energy policy implications of the man-made global warming debate. Steve continues to be astonished every day by unfounded claims of looming global warming catastrophe.
His newest book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism (New Lenox Books, 2012), was written to bring the latest facts to the reader, but to also poke fun at mankind far down the primrose path of global warming fantasy.
Steve Goreham. – Search (bing.com) holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He has more than 30 years of experience at Fortune 100 and private companies in engineering and executive roles. He is a husband and father of three and resides in Illinois.

Willy chats w/ Wayne Allyn Root, John Lott and Steve Goreham.
Sunday Night LIVE w/ Billy Cunningham 7/24/22 – Bill Cunningham …
WebJul 24, 2022 · 01:48:51 – 7/24/22: Books (stevegoreham.com)

“The governments of the world have adopted Climatism and discarded reality.
Acres of solar cells sit idle at night and on cloudy days. Thousands of 300-foot-high wind towers interrupt the vistas of coastline, field, and hill, standing motionless for two-thirds of their existence. Thirty percent of America’s corn crop is burned up on U.S. highways, while people in developing nations struggle to get enough to eat. Billions of dollars in government subsidies are spent each year to fund solar, wind, and biofuel industries, which could not compete and would not exist without these subsidies. Yet, these renewable sources supply only a pitifully small amount of the world’s energy needs.
All this in the absurd attempt to control a trace gas and stop global warming.”

—Climatism!, Chapter 13
William Daniel Cunningham (born December 11, 1947) is an American radio
and television talk show host, conservative commentator, attorney, and entrepreneur. On the radio, he hosts The Big One Show with Bill Cunningham, heard weekdays on AM 700 WLW in Cincinnati, and Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham, a program syndicated nationally by Premiere Radio Networks. (Both WLW and Premiere Networks are subsidiaries of iHeartMedia, Inc.)

Uncovering the Truth About How Long EV Batteries Really Last (msn.com)

13 Things You Didn’t Know About Alaska That Will Surprise You (msn.com)

Big Oil’s Dirty Deception: 10 Electric Car Myths Unveiled (msn.com)

Wild Scandinavia: Fire and Ice Season 1 Episode 3 Video

Climate Change is a Hoax

The climate emergency narrative is fortunately starting to crumble.

The #ClimateScam is being exposed for what it truly is:
a government excuse for higher taxation, wealth redistribution, and control over a reduced compliant peasant population. Interesting! Why do our politicians think they know more than an astrophysicist regarding climate? #ClimateCult #ClimateScam

More truth:

Astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn, dispels the fairytale that carbon dioxide controls world temperatures: Humans have a tendency to believe anything that emanates from an authoritative figure. This aspect of human behavior remains consistent throughout various contexts. “If you only listen to those who share your ideas you’re not thinking, you’re a fanatic.”

Independent scientists not taking government money,

Money is the place to start when you don’t understand scientific advice. And all control is based on a false narrative. Is truth now a thing of the past & falsifiers a thing of the future … Astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn, “The problem with the current climate change narrative is that it’s false…. We need to debunk this climate hoax. I am for protecting the planet but not with such absurd and harmful ideology.

Stephen Hawking’s famous theory of how black holes die could mean
our entire universe is doomed to evaporate, a new study found (msn.com)

The communist Zionist NWO central bankers are utilizing manipulated data and the corrupted scientists they finance to target the energy manufacturing and food production of western freedom based nations with dictatorial controls  Its a POWER GRAB based on a LIE

I’ve been saying this for years: data shows temps preceding CO2 fluctuations is more common than the other way around.
We’ve known this for years. Carbon dioxide is the literal food of plants, one of two primary components to photosynthesis – which generates oxygen. Without significant CO2 levels in the atmosphere, humans don’t exist. Cultural marxists want human depopulation, death, and enslavement.

Turn down the world then?

Or accept we are not God?

C02 does NOT affect earth’s temperature.
We’ve been told a pack of lies for decades now. Absolutely correct
I thought there was almost universal agreement between scientists on climate change? Just another lie from elites for the purpose of manipulating reality to line their pockets somehow. “The problem with the current climate change narrative is that it’s false.
It claims that carbon dioxide controls world temperatures, whereas actual data
shows that it’s world temperatures which control the carbon dioxide concentration.”

Net Zero is Net Nonsense

See what three degrees of global warming looks like – YouTube
Is it ethical to push a false narrative if you’ve been genuinely taken
in by it and base your entire political ethos on it?
Maybe, but it doesn’t make it right. Just like covid – the globalists ’solution’
on climate is a con based on lies. #ClimateScam #co2isyourfriend #co2betterfertilzerthanmanure #co2lifegivinggas #scienceisneversettled

Stop the Climate Scam. Climate Scam Inc:
.@JohnKerry
.@BillGates
.@ProfKlausSchwab
.@algore
.@wef
.@UN
.@IPCC_CH
.@EU_Commission
.@MikeHudema
.@JoeBiden
.@DNC
#Climate #Scam

Climate change is an IQ test to see how dumb / obedient you are.

Bottomline: Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn dismisses the fairytale that
carbon dioxide controls the world’s temperature: #AdmitTheyLiedToYou

“The problem with the current narrative about climate change is that it’s wrong.
It claims that carbon dioxide is controlling the world’s temperature, when the actual
data show that the world’s temperature is controlling the concentration of carbon dioxide.”

Please watch and share and don’t comply with the nonsense.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o8rGb87p260…

For more content like this, visit: https://wide-awake-media.com #ClimateScam #ClimateCult #NetZero
MUSIC ALWAYS MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER
Burt Bacharach A Life in Song 720p – video Dailymotion

Climate change: How do we know it is happening and caused by humans?
Scientists and politicians say we are facing a planetary crisis because of climate change.

But what’s the evidence for global warming and
how do we know it’s being caused by humans?

How do we know the world is getting warmer?
Our planet has been warming rapidly since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
The average temperature at the Earth’s surface has risen about 1.1C since 1850. Furthermore, each of the last four decades has been warmer than any that preceded it, since the middle of the 19th Century.

These conclusions come from analyses of millions of measurements gathered in different parts of the world. The temperature readings are collected by the weather stations on land,
on ships and by satellites.

Multiple independent teams of scientists have reached the same result –
a spike in temperatures coinciding with the onset of the industrial era.

Turkey was one of the places hit by devastating wildfires.

Ohio river drought 1908 – Bing images
Scientists can reconstruct temperature fluctuations even further back in time.
Tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and corals all record a signature of the past climate.
This provides much-needed context to the current phase of warming. In fact, scientists estimate the Earth hasn’t been this hot for about 125,000 years.

How do we know humans are responsible for global warming?
Greenhouse gases – which trap the Sun’s heat – are the crucial link between temperature rise and human activities. The most important is carbon dioxide (CO2), because of its abundance in the atmosphere.

We can also tell it’s CO2 trapping the Sun’s energy.
Satellites show less heat from the Earth escaping into space at precisely the wavelengths
at which CO2 absorbs radiated energy. Burning fossil fuels and chopping down trees lead to the release of this greenhouse gas. Both activities exploded after the 19th Century, so it’s unsurprising that atmospheric CO2 increased over the same period.

There’s a way we can show definitively where this extra CO2 came from.

The carbon produced by burning fossil fuels has a distinctive chemical ring nature.
Tree rings and polar ice both record changes in atmospheric chemistry. When examined they show that carbon – specifically from fossil sources – has risen significantly since 1850. Analysis shows that for 800,000 years, atmospheric CO2 did not rise above 300 parts per million (ppm).
But since the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration has soared to its current level of nearly 420 ppm. Computer simulations, known as climate models, have been used to show what would have happened to temperatures without the massive amounts of greenhouse gases released by humans.

What does net zero mean?

Is the UK on track to meet its climate targets?
They reveal there would have been little global warming – and possibly some cooling – over the 20th and 21st Centuries, if only natural factors had been influencing the climate.
Only when human factors are introduced can the models explain increases in temperature.

The number of weather-related disasters has increased by a factor
of five over 50 years. What impact are humans having on the planet?

The level of heating Earth has experienced already is predicted to cause significant changes to the world around us. Real-world observations of these changes match
patterns scientists expect to see with human-induced warming.

They include: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melting rapidly?
The number of weather-related disasters has increased by a factor of five
over 50 years Global sea levels rose 20cm (8ins) in the last century and are still rising
Since the 1800s, the oceans have become about 40% more acid, affecting marine life.

But wasn’t it warmer in the past?
There have been several hot periods during the Earth’s past.
Around 92 million years ago, for example, temperatures were so high there were
no polar ice caps and crocodile-like creatures lived as far north as the Canadian Arctic.
That should not comfort anyone, however, because humans were not around.
At times in the past, sea level was 25m (80ft) higher than the present. A rise of 5-8m
(16-26ft) is considered enough to submerge most of the world’s coastal cities.

There is abundant evidence for mass extinctions of life during these periods.
And climate models suggest that, at times, the tropics could have become “dead zones”,
too hot for most species to survive.
These fluctuations between hot and cold have been caused by a variety of phenomena, including the way the Earth wobbles as it orbits the Sun over long periods, volcanic eruptions and short-term climate cycles such as El Niño.
For many years, groups of so-called climate “sceptics”
have cast doubt on the scientific basis of global warming.
However, virtually all scientists who publish regularly in peer-reviewed
journals now agree on the current causes of climate change.
A key UN report released in 2021 said it “is unequivocal that
human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land”.

Analysis: Record-Breaking Ocean Temperatures – TaiwanPlus News
Also, the world’s oceans are warmer this time of year than any other
year on record: Wild Scandinavia: Fire and Ice Season 1 Episode 3 Video
How many glaciers in glacier national park – Search (bing.com)
Remember the Ice Age Ended 11,000 years ago and The Glaciers
are still melting not over night?

The COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow in November is seen as crucial if climate change is to be brought under control. Almost 200 countries are being asked for their plans to cut emissions, and it could lead to major changes to our everyday lives.

Six ways the UK could tackle climate change
Why the COP26 climate summit is important
What will climate change look like for you?
Will the UK meet its climate targets?
How extreme weather is linked to climate change
IS Climate Change Really Happening – Bing video

Goreham vs Gore Goes Viral –  https://youtu.be/mtHreJbr2WM – Search (bing.com)
Opening up the Climate Change Science Debate says Friends of Science (prweb.com)

Steve Goreham – YouTube is a speaker, author, and researcher on environmental issues as well as an engineer and business executive. He is a frequently invited guest on radio and television as well as a freelance writer. He’s the Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America (CSCA), a non-political association of scientists, engineers, and also citizens dedicated to informing Americans about the realities of climate science and energy economics. CSCA is the US affiliate of the International Climate Science Coalition.

Steve’s first Book was Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic (New Lenox Books, 2010), a complete, in-depth discussion of the science, politics, and energy policy implications of the man-made global warming debate. Steve continues to be astonished every day by unfounded claims of looming global warming catastrophe.
His newest book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism (New Lenox Books, 2012), was written to bring the latest facts to the reader, but to also poke fun at mankind far down the primrose path of global warming fantasy.
Steve Goreham. – Search (bing.com) holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He has more than 30 years of experience at Fortune 100 and private companies in engineering and executive roles. He is a husband and father of three and resides in Illinois.

Willy chats w/ Wayne Allyn Root, John Lott and Steve Goreham.
Sunday Night LIVE w/ Billy Cunningham 7/24/22 – Bill Cunningham …
WebJul 24, 2022 · 01:48:51 – 7/24/22: Books (stevegoreham.com)

“The governments of the world have adopted Climatism and discarded reality.
Acres of solar cells sit idle at night and on cloudy days. Thousands of 300-foot-high wind towers interrupt the vistas of coastline, field, and hill, standing motionless for two-thirds of their existence. Thirty percent of America’s corn crop is burned up on U.S. highways, while people in developing nations struggle to get enough to eat. Billions of dollars in government subsidies are spent each year to fund solar, wind, and biofuel industries, which could not compete and would not exist without these subsidies. Yet, these renewable sources supply only a pitifully small amount of the world’s energy needs.
All this in the absurd attempt to control a trace gas and stop global warming.”

—Climatism!, Chapter 13
William Daniel Cunningham (born December 11, 1947) is an American radio
and television talk show host, conservative commentator, attorney, and entrepreneur. On the radio, he hosts The Big One Show with Bill Cunningham, heard weekdays on AM 700 WLW in Cincinnati, and Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham, a program syndicated nationally by Premiere Radio Networks. (Both WLW and Premiere Networks are subsidiaries of iHeartMedia, Inc.)

Uncovering the Truth About How Long EV Batteries Really Last (msn.com)

13 Things You Didn’t Know About Alaska That Will Surprise You (msn.com)

Big Oil’s Dirty Deception: 10 Electric Car Myths Unveiled (msn.com)

Wild Scandinavia: Fire and Ice Season 1 Episode 3 Video

Climate Change is a Hoax

The climate emergency narrative is fortunately starting to crumble.

The #ClimateScam is being exposed for what it truly is:
a government excuse for higher taxation, wealth redistribution, and control over a reduced compliant peasant population. Interesting! Why do our politicians think they know more than an astrophysicist regarding climate? #ClimateCult #ClimateScam

More truth:

Astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn, dispels the fairytale that carbon dioxide controls world temperatures: Humans have a tendency to believe anything that emanates from an authoritative figure. This aspect of human behavior remains consistent throughout various contexts. “If you only listen to those who share your ideas you’re not thinking, you’re a fanatic.”

Independent scientists not taking government money,

Money is the place to start when you don’t understand scientific advice. And all control is based on a false narrative. Is truth now a thing of the past & falsifiers a thing of the future … Astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn, “The problem with the current climate change narrative is that it’s false…. We need to debunk this climate hoax. I am for protecting the planet but not with such absurd and harmful ideology.

Stephen Hawking’s famous theory of how black holes die could mean
our entire universe is doomed to evaporate, a new study found (msn.com)

The communist Zionist NWO central bankers are utilizing manipulated data and the corrupted scientists they finance to target the energy manufacturing and food production of western freedom based nations with dictatorial controls  Its a POWER GRAB based on a LIE

I’ve been saying this for years: data shows temps preceding CO2 fluctuations is more common than the other way around.
We’ve known this for years. Carbon dioxide is the literal food of plants, one of two primary components to photosynthesis – which generates oxygen. Without significant CO2 levels in the atmosphere, humans don’t exist. Cultural marxists want human depopulation, death, and enslavement.

Turn down the world then?

Or accept we are not God?

C02 does NOT affect earth’s temperature.
We’ve been told a pack of lies for decades now. Absolutely correct
I thought there was almost universal agreement between scientists on climate change? Just another lie from elites for the purpose of manipulating reality to line their pockets somehow. “The problem with the current climate change narrative is that it’s false.
It claims that carbon dioxide controls world temperatures, whereas actual data
shows that it’s world temperatures which control the carbon dioxide concentration.”

Net Zero is Net Nonsense

See what three degrees of global warming looks like – YouTube
Is it ethical to push a false narrative if you’ve been genuinely taken
in by it and base your entire political ethos on it?
Maybe, but it doesn’t make it right. Just like covid – the globalists ’solution’
on climate is a con based on lies. #ClimateScam #co2isyourfriend #co2betterfertilzerthanmanure #co2lifegivinggas #scienceisneversettled

Stop the Climate Scam. Climate Scam Inc:
.@JohnKerry
.@BillGates
.@ProfKlausSchwab
.@algore
.@wef
.@UN
.@IPCC_CH
.@EU_Commission
.@MikeHudema
.@JoeBiden
.@DNC
#Climate #Scam

Climate change is an IQ test to see how dumb / obedient you are.

Bottomline: Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn dismisses the fairytale that
carbon dioxide controls the world’s temperature: #AdmitTheyLiedToYou

“The problem with the current narrative about climate change is that it’s wrong.
It claims that carbon dioxide is controlling the world’s temperature, when the actual
data show that the world’s temperature is controlling the concentration of carbon dioxide.”

Please watch and share and don’t comply with the nonsense.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o8rGb87p260…

For more content like this, visit: https://wide-awake-media.com #ClimateScam #ClimateCult #NetZero
MUSIC ALWAYS MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER
Burt Bacharach A Life in Song 720p – video Dailymotion

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Science Based Nutrition™

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Ken

About Us | Science Based Nutrition

Science Based Nutrition™ is an innovative, science-based look at nutritional strengths & weaknesses through an individual’s blood test as well as other objective diagnostic tools. This objective approach can offer a clear plan for determining and monitoring nutritional recommendations.

Setting the Standard of Objectivity in Nutritional Healthcare. No general screening test
is more efficient, effective and affordable than a comprehensive blood chemistry panel.
It allows the healthcare provider to establish a baseline of biomarkers to track the health and nutritional needs of their patients. Getting a comprehensive blood test is essential to understanding a patient’s current health. Science Based Nutrition – YouTube

Science Based Nutrition™ has been helping doctors provide state of the art healthcare to patients for over 25 years. With hundreds of doctors across the U.S. using our program, patients can easily gain access to a Doctor that uses our patented system to deliver the highest quality nutritional healthcare using objective documentation.

Van D Merkle DC, DABCI, DCBCN, CCN

Dr. Van D. Merkle is a Certified Clinical Nutritionist and a Doctor of Chiropractic.
He has practiced in the Dayton, Ohio area for over 40 years. A Diplomate on the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition and a Diplomate on the Chiropractic Board of Internists, he is also a member of The International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists. Dr. Merkle has been host of the live, call-in talk show “Take 2 Healthcare” formerly known as “Back To Health, Your Guide to Better Living” for over 25 years and frequently speaks to local groups and professionals around the country.

Dr. Van D. Merkle is President of Science Based Nutrition™
Is the creator of the patented Science Based Nutrition™ program. Dr. Merkle has been in chiropractic practice for over 40 years and is Board Certified in Clinical Nutrition and is a Diplomat of the Chiropractic Board of Internists and Diplomat of the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition.

On August 7, 2007, the United States of America granted Science Based Nutrition™
a patent for a ‘System and Method For Medical Diagnosis’, the computerized analysis
system that is used in every Science Based Nutrition™ report.
Science Based Nutrition™
5795 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3140

Andrew R. Dyer, D.C., D.A.B.C.A., D.C.B.C.N.

Dr. Dyer joined the Take2Healthcare team in September of 2005 but before that…
Dr. Dyer completed his Bachelor of Science Degree in biology at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2001.
Then it was on to National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Illinois
for his Doctor of Chiropractic training. During the four-year program at NUHS,
another Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Biology was also earned.
He completed his Doctor of Chiropractic degree in April of 2005.
Dr. Dyer has been a licensed Chiropractic Acupuncturist in Ohio since November 2009 and completed the 300+ hour training course and examination to earn the distinction – Diplomate from the American Board of Chiropractic Acupuncture. In 2017, Dr. Dyer completed another 300+ hour course in Clinical Nutrition to earn the distinction – Diplomate from the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition.
In the years to come, Dr. Dyer will be committed to bring safe, effective,
non-drug care to all those who seek his services. He is also serving as the
immediate past President of the American Board of Chiropractic Acupuncture group.
He has been a frequent co-host of “Take 2 Healthcare” also formerly known as
“Back to Health: Your Better Guide to Living” for the last 16 years.
He enjoys seeing patients of all ages and mapping out a treatment plan for them with
in any of the three disciplines (nutrition, acupuncture, chiropractic) that he practices.
* Dr. Dyer is available as a guest speaker for civic, church and local groups who desire
an expert on nutritional, acupuncture and chiropractic healthcare.
Dr. Dyer’s Article on CoQ10 in Nutritional Perspectives

Call the office to discuss further details.
5785 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3241

American Academy of Thermology Physician Member Certified

Dr. Natalie N. Yahle
Doctor of Chiropractic

Started with Take 2 Healthcare after graduating from Logan College of Chiropractic in
Saint Louis, Missouri in 2010. At Logan she received her Doctor of Chiropractic while
also earning a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences. She also earned a bachelor’s degree
from the University of Dayton completed 2007.
Dr. Yahle achieved the status of American Academy of Thermology Physician Member Certified in 2018. Becoming Member Certified indicates that she and Take 2 Healthcare are consistent with policies and procedures established by accepted internationally peer reviewed medical panels from the American Academy of Thermology. She earned her certification in thermal imaging (thermography) through the International Academy of Clinical Thermology in 2011 and offers a vast array of thermal imaging services from breast to full body.
Dr. Yahle has competed in many athletics including volleyball, cross country, basketball, and track. She continued her track career at a collegiate level competing in the heptathlon and mid-distance events.
Dr. Yahle and her husband have 3 children and enjoy exercising, walking her dog, and cooking! Contact the office if you are interested in having Dr. Yahle speaks at a public event or group!

Common topics include:
Breast Cancer
Thermography
Diabetes
Weight Loss
Hormones
Heart Disease
Testimonials

Take2 Healthcare on the Radio
95.7 FM Saturday 11am until 12 pm
A 78year old patient came into Take2 Healthcare with prostate cancer.
When he came in his Prostate Specific Antigen test was at 119. After 5 months his PSA
test came back at 90. The patient has had no chemo, radiation, or hormone therapy.
How? Listen now and find out! Radio Shows – Take 2 Healthcare

5785 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3241

Why is the Science of Nutrition Ignored in Medicine? | T. Colin Campbell | TEDxCornellUniversity – YouTube 777,000 views Dec 3, 2018 Bing Videos
Professor Campbell is a well-established researcher and author.
His popular book (co-authored with his son, a physician) titled The China Study (2005) has been translated into more than 50 foreign languages and has sold well over 2 million copies. His second book, Whole (2013), was a New York Times best seller.
Campbell has conducted experimental research on the effect of food and nutrition on the development of cancer and related diseases. His research program was relatively large, and his findings were published in more than 300 peer reviewed professional papers.
He also participated as a member of several expert panels on health of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and related public agencies.
He has been in his professional career for more than 60 years.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx | Bing Videos

About Us | Science Based Nutrition

Science Based Nutrition™ is an innovative, science-based look at nutritional strengths & weaknesses through an individual’s blood test as well as other objective diagnostic tools. This objective approach can offer a clear plan for determining and monitoring nutritional recommendations.

Setting the Standard of Objectivity in Nutritional Healthcare. No general screening test
is more efficient, effective and affordable than a comprehensive blood chemistry panel.
It allows the healthcare provider to establish a baseline of biomarkers to track the health and nutritional needs of their patients. Getting a comprehensive blood test is essential to understanding a patient’s current health. Science Based Nutrition – YouTube

Science Based Nutrition™ has been helping doctors provide state of the art healthcare to patients for over 25 years. With hundreds of doctors across the U.S. using our program, patients can easily gain access to a Doctor that uses our patented system to deliver the highest quality nutritional healthcare using objective documentation.

Van D Merkle DC, DABCI, DCBCN, CCN

Dr. Van D. Merkle is a Certified Clinical Nutritionist and a Doctor of Chiropractic.
He has practiced in the Dayton, Ohio area for over 40 years. A Diplomate on the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition and a Diplomate on the Chiropractic Board of Internists, he is also a member of The International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists. Dr. Merkle has been host of the live, call-in talk show “Take 2 Healthcare” formerly known as “Back To Health, Your Guide to Better Living” for over 25 years and frequently speaks to local groups and professionals around the country.

Dr. Van D. Merkle is President of Science Based Nutrition™
Is the creator of the patented Science Based Nutrition™ program. Dr. Merkle has been in chiropractic practice for over 40 years and is Board Certified in Clinical Nutrition and is a Diplomat of the Chiropractic Board of Internists and Diplomat of the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition.

On August 7, 2007, the United States of America granted Science Based Nutrition™
a patent for a ‘System and Method For Medical Diagnosis’, the computerized analysis
system that is used in every Science Based Nutrition™ report.
Science Based Nutrition™
5795 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3140

Andrew R. Dyer, D.C., D.A.B.C.A., D.C.B.C.N.

Dr. Dyer joined the Take2Healthcare team in September of 2005 but before that…
Dr. Dyer completed his Bachelor of Science Degree in biology at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2001.
Then it was on to National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Illinois
for his Doctor of Chiropractic training. During the four-year program at NUHS,
another Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Biology was also earned.
He completed his Doctor of Chiropractic degree in April of 2005.
Dr. Dyer has been a licensed Chiropractic Acupuncturist in Ohio since November 2009 and completed the 300+ hour training course and examination to earn the distinction – Diplomate from the American Board of Chiropractic Acupuncture. In 2017, Dr. Dyer completed another 300+ hour course in Clinical Nutrition to earn the distinction – Diplomate from the Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition.
In the years to come, Dr. Dyer will be committed to bring safe, effective,
non-drug care to all those who seek his services. He is also serving as the
immediate past President of the American Board of Chiropractic Acupuncture group.
He has been a frequent co-host of “Take 2 Healthcare” also formerly known as
“Back to Health: Your Better Guide to Living” for the last 16 years.
He enjoys seeing patients of all ages and mapping out a treatment plan for them with
in any of the three disciplines (nutrition, acupuncture, chiropractic) that he practices.
* Dr. Dyer is available as a guest speaker for civic, church and local groups who desire
an expert on nutritional, acupuncture and chiropractic healthcare.
Dr. Dyer’s Article on CoQ10 in Nutritional Perspectives

Call the office to discuss further details.
5785 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3241

American Academy of Thermology Physician Member Certified

Dr. Natalie N. Yahle
Doctor of Chiropractic

Started with Take 2 Healthcare after graduating from Logan College of Chiropractic in
Saint Louis, Missouri in 2010. At Logan she received her Doctor of Chiropractic while
also earning a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences. She also earned a bachelor’s degree
from the University of Dayton completed 2007.
Dr. Yahle achieved the status of American Academy of Thermology Physician Member Certified in 2018. Becoming Member Certified indicates that she and Take 2 Healthcare are consistent with policies and procedures established by accepted internationally peer reviewed medical panels from the American Academy of Thermology. She earned her certification in thermal imaging (thermography) through the International Academy of Clinical Thermology in 2011 and offers a vast array of thermal imaging services from breast to full body.
Dr. Yahle has competed in many athletics including volleyball, cross country, basketball, and track. She continued her track career at a collegiate level competing in the heptathlon and mid-distance events.
Dr. Yahle and her husband have 3 children and enjoy exercising, walking her dog, and cooking! Contact the office if you are interested in having Dr. Yahle speaks at a public event or group!

Common topics include:
Breast Cancer
Thermography
Diabetes
Weight Loss
Hormones
Heart Disease
Testimonials

Take2 Healthcare on the Radio
95.7 FM Saturday 11am until 12 pm
A 78year old patient came into Take2 Healthcare with prostate cancer.
When he came in his Prostate Specific Antigen test was at 119. After 5 months his PSA
test came back at 90. The patient has had no chemo, radiation, or hormone therapy.
How? Listen now and find out! Radio Shows – Take 2 Healthcare

5785 Far Hills Ave, Dayton, OH 45429 ·
(937) 433-3241

Why is the Science of Nutrition Ignored in Medicine? | T. Colin Campbell | TEDxCornellUniversity – YouTube 777,000 views Dec 3, 2018 Bing Videos
Professor Campbell is a well-established researcher and author.
His popular book (co-authored with his son, a physician) titled The China Study (2005) has been translated into more than 50 foreign languages and has sold well over 2 million copies. His second book, Whole (2013), was a New York Times best seller.
Campbell has conducted experimental research on the effect of food and nutrition on the development of cancer and related diseases. His research program was relatively large, and his findings were published in more than 300 peer reviewed professional papers.
He also participated as a member of several expert panels on health of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and related public agencies.
He has been in his professional career for more than 60 years.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx | Bing Videos

What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Ginger Everyday – YouTube

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