In today's Trib

1. Mammograms may not reveal tumors in women under 50 because the tumors and dense breast tissue show up as the same color. Read Trib story here. Here is the study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

2. A federal appeals court in St. Louis reinstated a lawsuit that accuses Costco, Safeway, Target, WalMart, WildOats and Aurora of claiming their milk was organic when it was not. For those of us who had estrogen-positive tumors, this matters, because bovine growth hormone can possibly feed new tumors. However, there's no test to determine if milk contains BGH. So you can put your trust in a label that declares there's no BGH. Or you can opt for organic milk, which means the cows have been grazing naturally and haven't had antibiotics (unless they were sick) or hormones. More here.

3. Hospice patients have a better quality of life than those who die at the hospital. That ain't news. What's somewhat interesting is that caregivers of patients who die in an ICU are at heightened risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. More here, where there's a link to the Dana-Farber study.

Update: the Search for Organic Whey Powder

Bovine growth hormones: Does she or doesn't she?


I wrote quite a while back about my search for protein powder without soy or rBGH--recombinant bovine growth hormone. I finally found Jay Robb Unflavored Whey Protein Isolate from non-hormone-ated cows and sent off for it. Then I got Whole Foods to order it for me. I recommend it. If anyone knows of a better whey, let me know. It would be "purer" if Jay Robb could assure us that the cows were fed grains and grasses that were not treated with pesticides. There's protein powder from hemp, but I can't stomach the color, green. I just found on line organic brown rice protein powder. I haven't tried it.

A note about soy: It's a great bean, but since it acts like a weak estrogen, we Cancer Bitches with estrogen-sensitive tumors try to avoid it. Therefore, it's annoying to go to a coffee place and ask if they have organic milk, and they say, Yes, we have organic soy. That's why I usually bring my own organic milk in those little boxes. For a while Starbucks had organic (whole) milk, but because of low demand, stopped offering it. In my general environs, you can find organic milk at Dollop and Julius Meinl.