The Princess of Wales wants to stay cancer-free. What does this mean?
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Catherine, Princess of Wales, has announced she has now completed a course of preventive chemotherapy.
The news comes nine months after the princess first revealed she was being treated for an unspecified form of cancer.
In the new video message released by Kensington Palace, Princess Catherine says she’s focused on doing what she can to stay “cancer-free”. She acknowledges her cancer journey is not over and the “path to recovery and healing is long”.
While we don’t know the details of the princess’s cancer or treatment, it raises some questions about how we declare someone fully clear of the disease. So what does being – and staying – “cancer-free” mean?
What’s the difference between being cancer-free and in remission?
Medically, “cancer-free” means two things. First, it means no cancer cells are able to be detected in a patient’s body using the available testing methods. Second, there is no cancer left in the patient.
These might sound basically the same. But this second aspect of “cancer-free” can be complicated, as it’s essentially impossible to be sure no cancer cells have survived a treatment.
It only takes a few surviving cells for the cancer to grow back. But these cells may not be detectable via testing, and can lie dormant for some time. The possibility of some cells still surviving means it is more accurate to say a patient is “in remission”, rather than “cancer-free”.
Remission means there is no detectable cancer left. Once a patient has been in remission for a certain period of time, they are often considered to be fully “cancer-free”.
Princess Catherine was not necessarily speaking in the strict medical sense. Nonetheless, she is clearly signalling a promising step in her recovery.
What happens during remission?
During remission, patients will usually undergo surveillance testing to make sure their cancer hasn’t returned. Detection tests can vary greatly depending on both the patient and their cancer type.
Many tests involve simply looking at different organs to see if there are cancer cells present, but at varying levels of complexity.
Some cancers can be detected with the naked eye, such as skin cancers. In other cases, technology is needed: colonoscopies for colorectal cancers, X-ray mammograms for breast cancers, or CT scans for lung cancers. There are also molecular tests, which test for the presence of cancer cells using protein or DNA from blood or tissue samples.
For most patients, testing will continue for years at regular intervals. Surveillance testing ensures any returning cancer is caught early, giving patients the best chance of successful treatment.
Remaining in remission for five years can be a huge milestone in a patient’s cancer journey. For most types of cancer, the chances of cancer returning drop significantly after five years of remission. After this point, surveillance testing may be performed less frequently, as the patients might be deemed to be at a lower risk of their cancer returning.
Measuring survival rates
Because it is very difficult to tell when a cancer is “cured”, clinicians may instead refer to a “five-year survival rate”. This measures how likely a cancer patient is to be alive five years after their diagnosis.
For example, data shows the five-year survival rate for bowel cancer among Australian women (of all ages) is around 70%. That means if you had 100 patients with bowel cancer, after five years you would expect 70 to still be alive and 30 to have succumbed to the disease.
These statistics can’t tell us much about individual cases. But comparing five-year survival rates between large groups of patients after different cancer treatments can help clinicians make the often complex decisions about how best to treat their patients.
The likelihood of cancer coming back, or recurring, is influenced by many factors which can vary over time. For instance, approximately 30% of people with lung cancer develop a recurrent disease, even after treatment. On the other hand, breast cancer recurrence within two years of the initial diagnosis is approximately 15%. Within five years it drops to 10%. After ten, it falls below 2%.
These are generalisations though – recurrence rates can vary greatly depending on things such as what kind of cancer the patient has, how advanced it is, and whether it has spread.
Staying cancer-free
Princess Catherine says her focus now is to “stay cancer-free”. What might this involve?
How a cancer develops and whether it recurs can be influenced by things we can’t control, such as age, ethnicity, gender, genetics and hormones.
However, there are sometimes environmental factors we can control. That includes things like exposure to UV radiation from the sun, or inhaling carcinogens like tobacco.
Lifestyle factors also play a role. Poor diet and nutrition, a lack of exercise and excessive alcohol consumption can all contribute to cancer development.
Research estimates more than half of all cancers could potentially be prevented through regular screening and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (not to mention preventing other chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes).
Recommendations to reduce cancer risk are the same for everyone, not just those who’ve had treatment like Princess Catherine. They include not smoking, eating a nutritious and balanced diet, exercising regularly, cutting down on alcohol and staying sun smart.
Amali Cooray, PhD Candidate in Genetic Engineering and Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) ; John (Eddie) La Marca, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) , and Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Whole – by Dr. T. Colin Campbell
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Most of us have at least a broad idea of what we’re supposed to be eating, what nutrients we should be getting. Many of us look at labels, and try to get our daily dose of this and that and the other.
And what we don’t get from food? There are supplements.
Dr. Campbell thinks we can do better:
Perhaps most critical in this book, where it stands out from others (we may already know, for example, that we should try to eat diverse plants and whole foods) is its treatment of why many supplements aren’t helpful.
We tend to hear “supplements are a waste of money” and sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. How to know the difference?
Key: things directly made from whole food sources will tend to be better. Seems reasonable, but… why? The answer lies in what else those foods contain. An apple may contain a small amount of vitamin C, less than a vitamin C tablet, but also contains a whole host of other things—tiny phytonutrients, whose machinations are mostly still mysteries to us—that go with that vitamin C and help it work much better. Lab-made supplements won’t have those.
There’s a lot more to the book… A chunk of which is a damning critique of the US healthcare system (the author argues it would be better named a sicknesscare system). We also learn about getting a good balance of macro- and micronutrients from our diet rather than having to supplement so much.
The style is conversational, while not skimping on the science. The author has had more than 150 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and is no stranger to the relevant academia. Here, however, he focuses on making things easily comprehensible to the lay reader.
In short: if you’ve ever wondered how you’re doing at getting a good nutritional profile, and how you could do better, this is definitely the book for you.
Click here to check out “Whole” on Amazon today, and level up your daily diet!
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Junk Food Turns Public Villain as Power Shifts in Washington
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The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.
For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food, and ultra-processed food.
Now attitudes are changing. Some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up to battle “Big Food,” or the companies that make most of the food and beverages consumed in the United States. Nominees for top health agencies are taking aim at ultra-processed foods that account for an estimated 70% of the nation’s food supply. Based on recent statements, a variety of potential politically charged policy options to regulate ultra-processed food may land on the Trump team menu, including warning labels, changes to agribusiness subsidies, and limits on which products consumers can buy with government food aid.
The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by conservatives who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.
It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.
“They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’”
“Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches, and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems, and early death.
Nutrition and health leaders are optimistic that a reckoning is already underway. Kennedy has pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches, restrict certain food additives such as dyes in cereal, and shift federal agricultural subsidies away from commodity crops widely used in ultra-processed foods.
The intensifying focus in Washington has triggered a new level of interest on the legal front as lawyers explore cases to take on major foodmakers for selling products they say result in chronic disease.
Bryce Martinez, now 18, filed a lawsuit in December against almost a dozen foodmakers such as Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Co., and Nestle USA. He developed diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16, and is seeking to hold them accountable for his illnesses. According to the suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the companies knew or should have known ultra-processed foods were harmful and addictive.
The lawsuit noted that Martinez grew up eating heavily advertised, brand-name foods that are staples of the American diet — sugary soft drinks, Cheerios and Lucky Charms, Skittles and Snickers, frozen and packaged dinners, just to name a few.
Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz didn’t return emails seeking comment for this article. The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for makers of consumer packaged goods, disputed the allegations.
“Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy, in a statement.
Other law firms are on the hunt for children or adults who believe they were harmed by consuming ultra-processed foods, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits.
One Indiana personal injury firm says on its website that “we are actively investigating ultra processed food (UPF) cases.” Trial attorneys in Texas also are looking into possible legal action against the federal regulators they say have failed to police ultra-processed foods.
“If you or your child have suffered health problems that your doctor has linked directly to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, we want to hear your story,” they say on their website.
Meanwhile, the FDA on Jan. 14 announced it is proposing to require a front-of-package label to appear on most packaged foods to make information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content easily visible to consumers.
And on Capitol Hill, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sounding the alarm over ultra-processed food. Sanders introduced legislation in 2024 that could lead to a federal ban on junk food advertising to children, a national education campaign, and labels on ultra-processed foods that say the products aren’t recommended for children. Booker cosigned the legislation along with Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a December hearing examining links between ultra-processed food and chronic disease during which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called for more funding for research.
Food companies have tapped into “the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction,” Califf said at the hearing.
Sanders, who presided over the hearing, said there’s “growing evidence” that “these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive,” and he asserted that ultra-processed foods have driven epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and hundreds of billions of dollars in medical expenses.
Research on food and addiction “has accumulated to the point where it’s reached a critical mass,” said Kelly Brownell, an emeritus professor at Stanford who is one of the editors of a scholarly handbook on the subject.
Attacks from three sides — lawyers, Congress, and the incoming Trump administration, all seemingly interested in taking up the fight — could lead to enough pressure to challenge Big Food and possibly spur better health outcomes in the U.S., which has the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries.
“Maybe getting rid of highly processed foods in some things could actually flip the switch pretty quickly in changing the percentage of the American public that are obese,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the previous Trump administration, in remarks at a December event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Claims that Big Food knowingly manufactured and sold addictive and harmful products resemble the claims leveled against Big Tobacco before the landmark $206 billion settlement was reached in 1998.
“These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys, and games, along with social media advertising,” Rene Rocha, one of the lawyers at Morgan & Morgan representing Martinez, told KFF Health News.
The 148-page Martinez lawsuit against foodmakers draws from documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies that owned some of the biggest brands in the food industry.
Similar allegations were made against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers before they agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in a 2021 settlement with states.
The FDA ultimately put restrictions on the labeling and marketing of tobacco, and the opioid epidemic led to legislation that increased access to lifesaving medications to treat addiction.
But the Trump administration’s zeal in taking on Big Food may face unique challenges.
The ability of the FDA to impose regulation is hampered in part by funding. While the agency’s drug division collects industry user fees, its division of food relies on a more limited budget determined by Congress.
Change can take time because the agency moves at what some critics call a glacial pace. Last year, the FDA revoked a regulation allowing brominated vegetable oil in food products. The agency determined in 1970 that the additive was not generally recognized as safe.
Efforts to curtail the marketing of ultra-processed food could spur lawsuits alleging that any restrictions violate commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. And Kennedy — if he is confirmed as HHS secretary — may struggle to get support from a Republican-led Congress that champions less federal regulation and a president-elect who during his previous term served fast food in the White House.
“The question is, will RFK be able to make a difference?” said David L. Katz, a doctor who founded True Health Initiative, a nonprofit group that combats public health misinformation. “No prior administration has done much in this space, and RFK is linked to a particularly anti-regulatory administration.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. population is recognized as among the most obese in the world and has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions among high-income countries.
“There is a big grassroots effort out there because of how sick we are,” said Jerold Mande, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture from 2009 to 2011. “A big part of it is people shouldn’t be this sick this young in their lives. You’re lucky if you get to 18 without a chronic disease. It’s remarkable.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
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Your Bones Were Made For Moving Too!
We know that to look after bone health, resistance training is generally what’s indicated. Indeed, we mentioned it yesterday, and we’ve talked about it before:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
We also know that if you have osteoporosis already, some exercises are a better or worse idea than others:
Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
However! New research suggests that also getting in your recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise slows bone density loss.
The study by Dr. Tiina Savikangas et al. looked at 299 people in their 70s (just over half being women) and found that, over the course of a year, bone mineral density loss was inversely correlated with moderate exercise as recorded by an accelerometer (as found in most fitness-tracking wearables and smartphones).
In other words: those who got more minutes of exercise, kept more bone mineral density.
As well as monitoring bone mineral density, the study also looked at cross-sectional area, but that remained stable throughout.
As for how much is needed:
❝Even short bursts of activity can be significant for the skeleton, so we also looked at movement in terms of the number and intensity of individual impacts. For example, walking and running cause impacts of different intensities.
We found that impacts that were comparable to at least brisk walking were associated with better preservation of bone mineral density.❞
Read more: Impacts during everyday physical activity can slow bone loss ← pop-science source, interviewing the lead researcher
On which note, we’ve a small bone to pick…
As a small correction, the pop-science source says that the subjects’ ages ranged from 70 to 85 years; the paper, meanwhile, clearly shows that the age-range was 74.4±3.9 years (shown in the “Results” table), rounded to 74.4 ± 4 years, in the abstract. So, certainly no participant was older than 78 years and four months.
Why this matters: the age range itself may be critical or it might not, but what is important is that this highlights how we shouldn’t just believe figures cited in pop-science articles, and it’s always good to click through to the source!
This paper is a particularly fascinating read if you have time, because—unlike a lot of studies—they really took great care to note what exactly can and cannot be inferred from the data, and how and why.
Especially noteworthy was the diligence with which they either controlled for, or recognized that they could not control for, far more variables than most studies even bother to mention.
This kind of transparency is critical for good science, and we’d love to see more of it!
Want to apply this to your life?
Tracking minutes-of-movement is one of the things that fitness trackers are best at, so connect your favourite app (one of these days we’ll do a fitness tracker comparison article) and get moving!
And as for the other things that fitness trackers do? As it turns out, they do have their strengths and weaknesses, which are good to bear in mind:
Take care!
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Built to Move – by Kelly starrett & Juliet Starrett
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In our everyday lives, for most of us anyway, it’s not too important to be able to run a marathon or leg-press a car. Rather more important, however, are such things as:
- being able to get up from the floor comfortably
- reach something on a high shelf without twinging a shoulder
- being able to put our socks on without making a whole plan around this task
- get accidentally knocked by an energetic dog or child and not put our back out
- etc
Starrett and Starrett, of “becoming a supple leopard” fame, lay out for us how to make sure our mobility stays great. And, if it’s not already where it needs to be, how to get there.
The “ten essential habits” mentioned in the subtitle “ten essential habits to help you move freely and live fully”, in fact also come with ten tests. No, not in the sense of arduous trials, but rather, mobility tests.
For each test, it’s explained to us how to score it out of ten (this is an objective assessment, not subjective). It’s then explained how to “level up” whatever score we got, with different advices for different levels of mobility or immobility. And if we got a ten, then of course, we just build the appropriate recommended habit into our daily life, to keep it that way.
The writing style is casual throughout, and a strong point of the book is its very clear illustrations, too.
Bottom line: if you’d like to gain/maintain good mobility (at any age), this book gives a very reliable outline for doing so.
Click here to check out Built to Move, and take care of your body!
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Continuous Glucose Monitors Without Diabetes: Pros & Cons
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The “Glucose Goddess”, biochemist Jessie Inchauspé, gives us the low-down:
Knowledge is power (but watch out)
A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) is a device that continually monitors glucose levels, without the need to stab one’s finger every few hours to test blood.
It was designed for diabetics, especially for those with Type 1 Diabetes, where around-the-clock monitoring is necessary for appropriate insulin dosing.
For non-diabetics, they can be a good way of learning what our body’s response to various foods and activities is like, the better to be able to tweak our habits to avoid undue glucose spikes (which are harmful for our pancreas, liver, heart, brain, kidneys, and more).
How it works: there’s a sensor that sits on the arm (or elsewhere, but the arm is a popular placement) with a little probe that goes under the skin. It’s applied using a device that inserts it automatically using a needle (you only need to press a button, you don’t need to guide the needle yourself); the needle then retracts, leaving the soft, flexible probe in place. Having been attached, that sensor can now stay in place for 2 weeks (usually; depends on brand, but for example FreeStyle Libre, the most popular brand, the sensors last 2 weeks), and yes, it’s fine to bathe/shower/etc with it. When you want an update from your CGM, you scan it with your phone (or you can buy a dedicated reader, but that is more expensive and unnecessary), and it uploads the data since your last scan.
Pros: it’s convenient and gives a lot of data, so even if you only use it for a short period of time (for example, a month) you can get a very good idea of what affects your blood sugar levels and how. Also, because of the constant nature of the monitoring, it helps avoid accidental sample bias of the kind that can occur with manual testing, by testing a little too soon or too late, and missing a spike/dip.
Cons: it can be expensive, depending on where you live and what options are available for you locally, so you might not want to do it long-term (since that would require buying two sensors per month). It’s also, for all its wealth of data, slightly less accurate than fingerprick testing—that’s because it takes an interstitial reading instead of directly from the blood. For this reason, if you test both ways, you may find a discrepancy of about 3mg/dL. Given that the healthy range is about 70–140mg/dL, a discrepancy of 3mg/dL is probably not going to be important, but it is a thing to mention can (and probably will) happen.
Patterns to bear in mind (with any kind of blood sugar monitoring):
- Dawn phenomenon: a natural glucose rise upon waking.
- Exercise-induced spikes (normal due to energy demands).
- Fat in meals slowing glucose absorption.
- Different foods can sometimes cause a double-wave after dinner (because glucose from different foods is absorbed differently, and/or different foods affect insulin response independent of glucose)
- Steep, rapid spikes that are more harmful than gradual, sustained increases.
- Vitamin C spikes: temporary chemical interference with the sensor, not actual glucose rises.
- Nighttime glucose dips (often false readings caused by sleeping position).
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Take care!
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Unleashing My Superpowers – by Dr. Patience Mpofu
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Dr. Patience Mpofu is on a mission to provide women and girls with the inside-information, knowledge, resources, and strategies to break through the glass ceiling. She writes from her experience in STEM, but her lessons are applicable in any field.
Her advices range from the internal (how to deal with imposter syndrome) to the external (how to overcome cultural biases); she also explains and illustrates the importance of both role models and mentors.
While a lot of the book is half instruction manual, half memoir of her incredible life and career (to illustrate her points), and is well-worth reading—and/or perhaps worth gifting to a girl you know with ambitions in STEM?
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