Evolution to your rescue -- Q&A with Dr. William Meller

When you think of evolution, you probably imagine a fish that becomes a bird that becomes a primate. You might also think back to cavemen, or early ancestors who held answers to our genetic makeup today.

However, when it comes to your health, you might think that medicine has…well, evolved to a point where we, as a species, no longer need to listen to cues from days of old. Modern medicine will fix us.

Dr. William Meller, a board-certified internist who runs a medical practice in Santa Barbara, argues to the contrary. He writes in his new book, "Evolution Rx: A Practical Guide to Harnessing Our Innate Capacity for Health and Healing," that health concerns today are best remedied by listening to our bodies more, and paying attention to evolutionary clues that explain exactly what we should do and how we should take care of ourselves.

“Sunlight is life,” he writes, for example. We know we need the sun to survive, and yet many of us shun it -- it has become a common practice to stay out of the sun as much as possible and lather on sunscreen everywhere we go.

Meller explains that sunlight actually helps us more than it harms, by creating vitamin D and lightening our mood.

“This book is really giving people a touchstone of our own history," he says of his book. "I was trying to get across to the general public to really look at this and be skeptical of their doctor and the alternative stuff.”

Meller also looks at human behavior and explains how evolution causes us to gossip, take risks -- even desire physical symmetry in our partners.

The author took time out to talk about his book.

LAT: In your chapter “Sunrise, Sunset,” you write about people needing sunlight, possibly more than we are getting. What about skin cancer? We are told to stay out of the sun as much as possible. 

Meller: This is the dominant, conventional thought pattern: that the sun would kill us if we didn’t block it out, or at least age us faster.

The fear of skin cancer is vastly overblown. Basal cells and squamous cells are directly related to your genetic makeup. Very easy to recognize. They almost never metastasize.

Melanoma -- the one that scares us. That one is keeping us out of the sun. It is directly related to genetics and not how much sun exposure we get. It is extremely hard to treat. 

But because of this fear of the sun, we absolutely have an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency and osteoporosis. And maybe even depression and other cancers.

Osteoporosis is a huge problem among older, white women because they are staying out of the sun because they don’t want to age faster. Vitamin D packs calcium into your bones. Fifteen minutes, three times a week -- it doesn’t take a lot of sun exposure, and it's really extremely beneficial.

LAT: Gossip -- is it in our genes?

Meller: Humans lived in very, very small groups. Talking about others -- who they slept with, who found the berries, who made the tools -- that was valuable information. That’s what we’re talking about -- secrets about other people: Can they be counted on? Can they be trusted?

We all do it, whether we participate or not, we all listen to it.

But now gossip has been taken and turned into an industry -- People magazine, TMZ, Perez Hilton. It’s an industry that’s based on some extrapolation of the same interest we get from gossip. Now it’s gone beyond the family unit into the tribe of celebrity. I’m not saying it should stop; it will never stop. But let’s understand that it’s natural to human beings.

LAT: Diet -- you advocate low carb instead of low fat. Why? What does this have to do with evolution?

Meller: We found places like caves that people lived in for 30 or 40,000 years. The caves sometimes got sealed off by a landslide, so they were preserved well. We’d go in and sift through the sand and get a good sense of what they ate. We’d look at the bones of these people and determine what they ate. Looking at that evidence and our own physiological makeup, we learned that carbohydrates were extremely rare in human diets. If you look back, they didn’t have grains. At most, they ate grains two out of the 52 weeks of the year. It was mostly hunting and gathering.

We ended up without any shut-off mechanism in the body. So when you eat carbohydrates, you often have a desire for more. Not true with fats and meats.

LAT: Does evolution favor risk-takers?

Meller: Humans have always been adventurous. If we weren’t, we’d still be sitting under one tree in Africa, eating one type of thing. We needed to spread out and conquer different areas. Only the people who were willing to take the risks to go to new places and leave the home went on to the new areas. We were able to populate the world by moving about a mile a year.

The adventurers have always asked: What’s over the next hill? You need a balance, though, because taking risks can get you killed.

LAT: On the topic of living longer, you have a chapter called “Don’t Eat. Do Drink. Be Merry.” Talk about that a bit.

Meller: Longevity is something humans have been interested in since day one. We’ve always decided we want to live longer. Lifespan varies from family to family, however. Most of the things that shorten our lives are risks that we take or things that we do to ourselves.

In the largest studies that have been done, one to two alcoholic drinks per day seem to be beneficial. There are definitely arguments against this. Alcohol is a toxin. It’s a poison. But in small amounts, the toxins in the alcohol stimulate our bodies to fight off other toxins.

LAT: And what about eating less?

Meller: It’s a very interesting line of research that showed if you starved worms, they would live longer. They tried it in crickets, and it worked in crickets. Now it is being tested on primates. There are people out there who are doing this to themselves. They are thin and cold all the time.

In cases where people are well-fed, they reproduce at large rates. When you are starved, you can’t reproduce as much. Our bodies have a mode -- if you can’t get enough nutrition, it goes into a self-preservation mode.

LAT: You write about shoes. Are all shoes bad for our feet? You also mention Crocs. Talk about those in particular.

Meller: Shoes have been used to bind people’s feet up for years. Without high heels, there would be no bunions. Feet are very, very conformable at a very young age. Whatever you wear on your feet, your foot becomes comfortable and used to it.

People who don’t wear shoes -- their feet look different than all people who wear shoes.

There are many people walking around in foot pain. The answer seems to be in looser-fitting, softer shoes that are not going to cause your foot to change to be like the shoe.

Crocs are very soft and loose and easy on the feet.

LAT: What about coughing. Does coughing get the germs out?

Meller: Back in the day, 50 years ago, no one coughed in public. It was considered an embarrassment. “Cover your mouth” is what people would say.

That idea has now been perverted into: Cough it up. The idea being, if you have phlegm, you should get it out.

Phlegm is actually our defense. Without coughing, viruses die out because they are not spread. When we cough, we are spreading germs to those nearest and dearest to us, and we are getting rid of the part of our protective mechanism.

Cough while you are well and your throat will get sore. The act of coughing does more harm than good.

LAT: The old adage “work through the pain” -- yes or no?

Meller: Stretching is vastly overrated. We’ve made a cult out of stretching. And it's not just yoga.

Ligaments only get damaged from being stretched too far. When you feel pain, it is a muscle that got stretched too far and tore. The idea that stretching it again is going to heal it is nonsense.

Every coach and trainer has said at one point: “Run through the pain and walk through the pain.”

What the body really wants is to rest. The body knows how to heal itself. If you stretch, you are simply repeating the injury. It goes against modern conventional wisdom, but if you really look at it, it makes sense. Pain is a message from your body. It is your brain saying: Don’t do that.

Your body is a sophisticated system for telling you what not to do and how to heal.

-- Lori Kozlowski

Photo courtesy of Perigee

Update: An earlier version of this interview said that melanoma was caused by sun exposure. To clarify, melanoma is not caused by sun exposure. Dr. Meller explains: "It is directly related to genetics and not to the amount of sun exposure we get. This is clearly shown by the fact that melanomas occur as commonly in young people as in older ones and because it often appears on parts of our bodies that are never exposed to the sun."

‘Smallpox -- The Death of a Disease,’ a Q&A with Dr. D.A. Henderson

Smallpox was once a terrifying disease. It caused pain, panic, suffering and death to millions. Even when it did not kill, it could cause permanent pockmarks all over the face and in the mouth and, in many cases, blindness.

No surprise, then, that smallpox was feared all over the world. Some cultures created smallpox deities, then prayed for protection from the demigod of their own making.

In 1947, smallpox hit New York. A visitor from Mexico, who had become ill, died five days later. During his stay in a hotel, 3,000 people had booked rooms there; public health officials wanted to vaccinate all of them. Eventually, the city decided to vaccinate the entire urban population. Six million were vaccinated in four weeks.

Dr. D.A. Henderson led the World Health Organization’s campaign to success in eradicating smallpox. The last case occurred in October 1977. Smallpox is the only disease in history to have been deliberately, methodically eliminated.

Henderson's new book, "Smallpox -- The Death of a Disease: The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer," takes us down the long road to eradication. From the time the idea was hatched that a living virus could be destroyed in the wild to the final patient, we go on the doctor’s journey all over the world as he battled bureaucracies, created public health reporting systems and figured out how to stop a killer.

Henderson talked about his journey and the book in an interview:

When you became chief of the smallpox eradication unit for the World Health Organization, you were only 38 years old, with 10 years of public health experience. How did you feel when you got the job? Was the weight of the world literally on your shoulders?

Well, I must say, it was a bit overwhelming, particularly taking over the duties at WHO. Most of the others were 15 years older at least. The [National Communicable Disease Center, when Henderson had worked] had very little experience operating a program like this, and in the branch we were in, we had none. We just sort of went from solving problem after problem after problem. If they had come all at once, then we’d have been done in. They kept appearing one after the other, and we just kept going.

Now women can obsess over baby weight even before pregnancy*

Don't wait until pregnancy to start worrying about related weight gain -- and eventual weight loss. Start ahead of time and avoid the rush.

So say new (sort of) guidelines from an Institute of Medicine task force: Updated guidelines for pregnancy and weight gain are largely unchanged. The panel's members recommend that women get to a normal weight before becoming pregnant and that they try very, very hard not to gain too much while pregnant.

Apparently, women haven't been doing this. Hence those heavy babies and diet-resistant, post-baby pounds.
 
As if on cue comes "What to Expect Before You're Expecting." The new book, a prequel to "What to Expect When You're Expecting" offers advice on healthy eating, with specific recommendations on what to eat and not eat to enhance the chances of a noisy household. And then the authors keep going.

Reaching a normal weight is just the beginning of what pre-pregnant women need to worry about. There's how to stop using contraceptives (not as straightforward as it might seem), antidepressant use, the relevance of orgasm, sleep quality...

Some of the advice seems based on anecdotes and extremely preliminary research. Cough syrup as fertility enhancer? A suggestion to limit green tea consumption? Um, maybe... And, I suppose, if you're trying to get pregnant and inclined to obsess, why limit yourself?

Even men can get in on the pre-pregnancy anxiety. For them there's information on what exactly to "feed your boys," infertility causes, dietary supplements, soy, stress, underwear and more.

* And... just getting around to the mail... Now I find "Get Ready to Get Pregnant: Your Complete Prepregnancy Guide to Making a Smart and Healthy Baby."

This offering, from Dr. Michael Lu of the UCLA Preconception Care Clinic, also puts considerable emphasis on "nutritional preparedness," with detailed instructions on what he calls brain foods and toxic foods. Obviously, if you're a good mom-to-be, you have to choose the former.

The reading isn't quite as easy as its aforementioned counterpart, which afterall does include the possible merits of various sexual positions, but it's well foot-noted. That counts for a lot.

-- Tami Dennis  

Photo: Women need to think about all this earlier -- for themselves and their eventual little person. 

Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Chewing gum, spiders and jellyfish stings -- all with a dose of skepticism

Thirst is not a signal that you’re already dehydrated. Dog mouths are not cleaner than human mouths. And spinach doesn’t get extra credit as a strength-enhancer. Ha.

So say Drs. Aaron E. Carroll and Rachel C. Vreeman in “Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health,” released this week.

The physicians, both at the Indiana University School of Medicine, combed through medical research to assess the evidence, not the anecdotes, behind various notions and misconceptions.

Some of their conclusions won’t be a surprise: Flying while pregnant is safe. The best way to cure a hangover is not to drink too much. Yeah, yeah…

And they spend considerable time clearing up misconceptions I didn’t know people had: The belief that an average person swallows eight spiders a year, for example. Or that one’s eyeballs will pop out if the eyes aren’t closed during a sneeze. (How could I have missed these? I’m on all sorts of e-mail lists.)

And of course, they weigh in with actual studies on some of the more controversial health-related topics: co-sleeping with infants, fluoridated water, vaccines and autism, the possibility that Halloween candy could have been poisoned…

But much of their research is useful in either a “so-now-I-know” or “ha-I-suspected-it”  kind of way. Among them:

* Double-dipping with chips really can transfer bacteria into the dip, especially if the dip is runny (as with salsa – and no, the acid level won’t save you).

* Mayonnaise-containing food such as potato salad is far less likely than unwashed fruits and vegetables – or undercooked meat – to make you sick at a summer picnic. 
 
* The five-second rule won’t protect dropped food from germs, but then germs aren’t the only issue.

As for swallowed chewing gum, unless you’ve downed a pocketful of change as a chaser, it will simply be eliminated along with more traditional waste.

Some things, they admit, they just can’t answer. There just aren’t data. Letting someone urinate on a jellyfish sting, for example…

They conclude: “Our motto in this situation would be: ‘When in doubt, don’t let someone pee on you.’ ”

Skeptical and practical. 

 -- Tami Dennis

Photo: Does this seem clean to you?

Credit: Viktor Drachev / AFP / Getty Images

'A Brain Wider Than the Sky' author talks about life with migraines

Migraine headaches affect more than 1 in 10  Americans. Yet they are poorly understood.

In his new memoir, "A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary," Andrew Levy writes about his pain and attempts to give it a description. He also searches for meaning in the migraine, asking: Why is this happening? What is causing it?

The author also explores the cultural meaning of the migraine headache. Part meditation on pain, part day-to-day recording of his family life, the book covers both the metaphysical and the momentary. 

Here is what Levy had to say about his latest book:

LAT: Describe what the moment was like when you decided to keep track of your headaches in diary form. You write: “There is a kind of martial arts that requires its practitioners to mimic the attacks of the enemy in order to defeat the enemy. Maybe there is a kind of writing like that too.”

Levy: That's a great question. I think that your first instinct is to run or turn away from the pain. But then for me, there was that bit about Jefferson who had a report about weights and measurements due to Congress. And he pushes through the pain, and perseveres.

[Levy also mentions in the book that Thomas Jefferson's migraines had the same pattern as his.]

Jefferson was a huge inspiration. I figured: Let's apply myself intellectually here. In a lot of ways, it was the most fun I've had writing.

LAT: In the introduction you describe a self-medicating routine of steam, tea, ice pack. Or in a different order ice, tea, then steam. How did you find this combination worked for you? Had you tried everything else at that point?

Levy: I think a long time ago I took a hot shower and I found that it worked. The ice pack is kind of intuitive because your head can feel hot. It was only when I was doing the book that I discovered that there are actually ancient cures.

LAT: You describe special healing from your little son. You write: “He is like Ahab, I think, and my head is the whale.” Can you talk about that a bit?

Levy: It's kind of like all he wants is to play. All he really wants is a father who is ready to play. If he saw me with pillows around my head, he began to learn to see these as contra-indicators for fun. He'd very often jump on my head or my shoulders to try to get the headache out. I'd think: Okay, we still have joy here. When he was very little he completely wrapped himself around my head and it actually helped, and I have never forgotten that.

LAT: You’re an English professor at Butler University. That seems to involve a lot of reading, a lot of light. How did the migraines affect your work?

Levy: This goes way back. There have been times when I was in the classroom and I have gotten an aura. And you just keep teaching. There are a lot of people out there faking it. Sitting through meetings. I just kind of muddled through.

LAT: Migraines are 50% more prevalent than depression. Twice as prevalent as osteoarthritis. Three times as prevalent as diabetes. And 15 times more prevalent than rheumatoid arthritis. When you learned these numbers was that surprising to you? What do you think average Americans are doing to cope?

Levy: It is incredibly surprising to me. In the chapter "Migraine Parties," I found that there's someone everywhere you go, who has migraines too. It was like: Holy cow! There's an epidemic right under the surface. It seems like a colossal mistake that more attention isn't given to this.  

Many people, who should know better, are just thinking: Oh, I just have a headache. And they are sitting there with a cup of coffee.

LAT: You write: “What separates a migraine from other chronic illnesses, I believe, is that a migraine constitutes a metaphysical crisis.” What is the metaphysical crisis you describe?

Levy: Yeah, I think the problem in part is that it's a headache. Culturally, headaches are not regarded as a real disease. It is not like other diseases where you got to the doctor and get a test. The only person who can tell you you are having a migraine is yourself.

On the other hand, it feels like there's no source. You didn't do anything to make this happen. It could be a sliver of light in the morning. A bit of strobe lighting from ESPN. A chocolate bar. It's an invader that comes and then goes.

LAT: What were/are your migraine triggers?

Levy: Weather is still No. 1. Barometric pressure changes. If a storm is coming, clouds are gathering over -- that's my best migraine day. A storm outside, a storm inside.

LAT: At one point, you say: “There’s no vocabulary for monotonous pain.” Was it difficult to write your pain down at times?

Levy: Yeah, I hate to say it, but that's why I wrote that. Writing about it is a lot like biofeedback or acupuncture. Making the migraine your friend is cathartic and helpful.

LAT: You read Buddha, the Bible, and Emily Dickinson. While dissecting these texts were you searching for answers? Or trying to get your mind off the migraines? Or, in a way, did reading these texts and this poetry serve as a form of praying? Healing?

Levy: I should have gone to the doctor. That was the long way round. But I don't regret it. For me, that's how I sought comfort. Buddha is all about treating pain. I was able to read the texts with new eyes.

LAT: What’s a “migraine party”?

Levy: You go to a party and there's 10 to 12 people there. And you start to talk about migraines and soon enough three or four people are talking about their migraines too. They are parties that were not meant to be migraine parties to begin with, but someone starts talking about it, and once you do, the door is wide open.

LAT: Where do your migraines stand now? And how are you currently coping?

Levy: I'm doing pretty good. They come in little bouts right now -- change of season in spring, change of season in fall. Once I recognize a migraine coming earlier in the day, it helps. I also take Sumatriptan. It may be the only drug invented to specifically treat migraines. 

--Lori Kozlowski

Photos courtesy of Simon & Schuster

What is there to worry about in the 21st century?

Think about it. What is there to be afraid of in the 21st century? Everything? [Scaredy cat]. Nothing? [Fatalist]. There must be some happy medium, right?

Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams take on the media, scare tactics and worldwide causes for panacea in their new book "Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What’s Worth Worrying About (And What’s Not) in the 21st Century" (Skyhorse Publishing).

They take a hard look at the numbers, and basically measure what is worth our emotional fear and what just isn’t. Bird flu? Swine flu? Nuclear warfare? American obesity? Who is the biggest, baddest wolf of them all in a modern world filled with constant stories of terror, disease, natural disaster and general social mayhem?

In short, they say, bird flu, flying and terrorism might not be worth so much of your time. However, driving an automobile and global climate changes are probably worthy of your attention. The book also comes equipped with "A Skeptic's Toolkit" to help readers approach news with a greater sense of balance. The authors lay out buzz words to question and how to decipher surveys.

Briscoe, statistics editor for the Financial Times in the U.K., and Aldersey-Williams, science book author and writer, make a skeptical team. Together they break through the panic, laying out the hot topics and then putting them to task.

We chatted with the two writers in their U.K.-based offices about the book and what we’re all so afraid of:

LAT: You open your book with: “We live in a complex world and we don’t want to die.” Based on this premise alone, is that why media outlets are able to create panic throughout the public?
Briscoe: Yes. It’s just complex. It’s more complex than that. We also love these stories. You don’t have to wait very long before a book or a movie comes out. Towering inferno, killer bees, the perfect storm. The line between entertainment and serious news has been blurred. I think media outlets have veered toward entertainment to keep their figures.

We have to take personal responsibility. There has been something called the death of common sense. If every viewer made a little more demand as to whether this really is a threat. If we did that, we would spend a lot less time worrying about things that aren’t worth worrying about.

LAT: What is it about our collective psyche that makes us worry about topics like nuclear warfare and SARS? In general are we all a bunch of scaredy cats? Or just gullible?
Briscoe: There are certainly a lot of gullible people around. Nowadays you have to make many more decisions for yourself than there were a few generations ago. And if you are very gullible, you won’t be doing yourself any favors in the struggle to live a longer, happier life.

LAT: “Journalism is industrialized gossip” is also a quote from the introduction. Is this true? Do you think there are accurate stories out there?
Briscoe: I would like to think you and I work at organizations that are at the responsible end of this. My entire day job at the Financial Times is to make sure we are accurate.

But now there are lots of free newspapers. And we have 24-hour media, which requires people who are not experts to comment on events that they know very little about.

There’s also the Internet. Your organization and mine work much more with the Internet now. That doesn’t mean you have to lose your standards. But not every organization is as responsible as yours or the FT’s.

LAT: Why do we love to be scared?
Briscoe: I think it's pure entertainment. I mentioned "The Perfect Storm." It’s a fantastic film. But, for me, that is very obviously entertainment.  But there are people and organizations that will take that and try to use it to cause fear.

Aldersey-Williams: It’s titillation really. It’s a thrill. It’s something to talk about. It’s how we learn to deal with things. We deal with things in our head in case we need to deal with them in fact.

LAT: What should we actually be afraid of? Driving a car?
Briscoe: You’re absolutely right. I wish newspapers could have a little dial showing the number of people dying from car accidents versus people dying from swine flu. The problem with traffic accidents is that people think they are in control. If it was only drivers of cars dying, I wouldn’t worry so much. I would guess, though, that in the U.K. three-fourths of the people dying are passengers.

Aldersey-Williams: We should worry less. Worry can have no practical effect on actual fear. It is silly to worry about the ones you can’t do anything about.

LAT: Anything else beside car accidents that people should fear?
Briscoe: Debt and the housing market were highly rated. I have no doubt though that the panic has made things worse.

LAT: How can people read the news without panicking?
Briscoe: I think it’s quite difficult. We give people a few tips at the end of the book. It’s very difficult. I think with swine flu, I think World Health authorities were far too fast to move this to a level 5 crisis.

Aldersey-Williams: Well, carefully. Skeptically. Selectively. The advice is not to always believe everything you read. There are tricks and ticks to look for. When people are presenting half the statistics. They give you a figure, but nothing to oppose it.

LAT: Let’s go topic by topic. So let’s talk about swine flu. This topic isn’t in the book, but is the latest worldwide panic. How afraid of it should we be?
Aldersey-Williams:Well, I think they should be more worried about it than bird flu. Unfortunately, it has come after bird flu and SARS, so there is sort of a cry-wolf feeling. Unlike bird flu, though, this is a human-to-human transmittable virus.

On one hand this gives us license to dismiss it as a regular flu. On the other hand, because it came across in this scary pandemic sort of way, it has possibly made us pay more attention to the regular flu as a real problem.

LAT: Obesity in America?
Aldersey-Williams: It’s a difficult one, like a lot of the scares we talked about — one scare runs into another. Some worries are often interconnected. I don’t know enough about how exactly America covers obesity, but it's gaining attention here. The remedies, as we know, are simple. Eat less, exercise more.

LAT: The “marriage squeeze.” The idea that there are not enough available partners out there?
Aldersey-Williams: I don’t know that’s still being written about. It sort of worked itself out. People are getting married later.

A few years ago it was certainly exaggerated like crazy in the papers and in sitcoms and soap operas on the telly.

LAT: Bird flu?
Aldersey-Williams: I suppose scientists would say bird flu is still out there. It still has potential to become a human transmittable virus.

LAT: The credit crunch and the housing crisis?
Aldersey-Williams: If you’ve lost your job, it’s obviously affected you badly. Some people have done reasonably well out of it though. Mortgage rates have dropped.

With all these things there is a sense of proportionality about it. When something happens you realize you can deal with it, and get through it, and go on. There are winners and losers.

LAT: Worldwide terror? We certainly haven’t let go of that issue since 2001.
Aldersey-Williams: Certainly in this country and in the U.S., as well. It suits governments because they can keep people acquiescent. They’ll issue a statement: “There’s a high state of alert. Stay vigilant.”
That’s actually useless information you can do nothing with. They don’t tell you what to stay vigilant for. So what it does is puts people in a state of flap.

-- Lori Kozlowski

Photo credit: Skyhorse Publishing

Book compiles advice from cancer survivors

Today's Los Angeles Times Health section is devoted to the topic of battling cancer. You won't have to look too far to read some inspirational stories of men and women fighting the disease. Getting through cancer, it seems, is a task best handled by a group: the patient, the healthcare team, the family and friends and the thousands of other people who have been there, done that.

A new book from the American Cancer Society, "What Helped Get Me Through," taps into the deep wisdom of cancer survivors. Editor Julie K. Silver, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a cancer survivor, conducted surveys of hundreds of cancer survivors to compile a down-to-earth guide for people who are newly diagnosed. With chapters such as "What helped my children cope" and "What I wish I had known at diagnosis," the book is full of practical, straight-forward and honest advice. Here's a sample:

-- How I nurtured myself: "I got a dog. The dog made me smile even when I was feeling really bad." Kristen, diagnosed with colon cancer at age 49

-- How friends made a difference: "I sent the word out with my Christmas card to virtually everyone I had known over the years. I heard back in some form or another from almost all of them. That was very uplifting." Linda, diagnosed with breast cancer at age 55

-- Balancing work and family: "I was my own worst enemy, and I found myself living on the computer, looking for the worst news possible. I cured that by going to work ... it really helped the depression and getting back into a normal life." Kathie, diagnosed with kidney cancer at age 53

-- What I wish I had known at diagnosis: "I wish I had known that chemo treatments were cumulative in the body and that recovery from each successive treatment would be more difficult." David, diagnosed with breast cancer at age 63

-- How cancer changed my life: "I go to the doctor sooner, rather than self-diagnose." Mark, diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia at age 59

Silver has included advice for friends and family, as well, and summarizes much of the advice with lists such as "5 things you should tell your partner who has cancer" and "5 things to tell your children about your cancer." It's a terrific book. You can purchase it ($17.95) through the American Cancer Society website or wherever books are sold.

-- Shari Roan

Photo: American Cancer Society

* Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the book as "What Helped Me Get Through." The correct title is "What Helped Get Me Through."

Mike Wallace peeks into the future

A cure for breast cancer? Vaccinations that protect against mental illness? A lifespan of 140 years?

In a new book entitled “The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today,” 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace asks 60 of the world’s biggest thinkers in areas of health and technology to take a stab at what life will hold for us and our progeny, 50 years from now.  Among their conclusions:

 

--We will have our own DNA sequence available in an electronic medical record, accessible from anywhere in the world. (From geneticist Francis S. Collins, MD, of the Human Genome Project)

--We will have discovered how to prevent breast cancer and heart disease (from Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and Louis Ignarro, co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize and professor of pharmacology at the UCLA School of Medicine).

--Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder will be discovered to be caused by a combination of infectious agents and predisposing genes (from schizophrenia researcher and psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey).

--Our grandchildren had better start saving early, because they can expect to live about 140 years. But that long lifespan may come at a price. There could be a national genetics authority charged with regulating who is allowed to reproduce based on genotypes (from Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania).

The book hits stores April 15.

--Janet Cromley