Overweight women, breast cancer, and drinking...bad combo

Speaking of breasts...

A recent study came out just recently adding another comorbidity to those who have a weight problem. If you drink alcohol 3-4 glasses of wine/or cans of beer per week, you have been previously diagnosed with breast cancer, you are at a higher (1.3 times higher) risk of getting a recurrence of your breast cancer.

They said in the article that estrogen sensitive cancer didn't have a role in the study, which I believe to be true. However, you need to know that having extra adipostiy (fat), increases the estrogen in your body due to the fat cells secreting estradiol. So, if you don't believe in hormone therapy due to having BC run in your family, then I suggest you lose the weight as to not predispose yourself to the disease.

The study showed that the more the women drank, the more predisposed of getting a recurrence. So, happy holliday's. Go now and encourage those post menopausal loved ones to live the word of wisdom and start a new years resolution.

Speaking of weight loss. There is another way besides the bariatric surgery where 1 in 10 people die as a cause from this operation. Look into the beta HCG diet. As with any diet and addiction (meaning eating), there is a need for will-power. But, it is a great way to lose weight to become eligible for the much safer "gastric lap band" procedure.

The answer is...

A CHICKEN!

Just kidding. It was a big ball of fat called a LIPOMA which encompassed the omohyoid muscle, which ran through the middle of it.

It weighed 494 grams or a little over one pound. Since it acted like a tissue expander, extra skin you see on the specimen had to be remove for a nice cosmetic result. That is one photo I wish I had taken.

Case of the week...the extra breast

Photo taken with permission

Okay not really an extra breast... but who can guess what this is? I think I will start compiling slides for a future presentation using this blogger format. We'll give it a test run.

This is a male, who had this soft fluctuant mass on the front of his neck for about the past 12 years. It has been slowly growing all of these years. The red dots are blood droplets where I injected the local anesthetic agent. Any takers? The answer soon to follow...

Religion...the people's way

E Tu Brute? So God falls out of religion... or at least the Evangelical Lutheran church. After all, isn't moral and ethical codes so unfashionable? I mean, why don't we go with the flow? Why not just let women hold the priesthood. Whoa! Just dodged a bolt of lightening. IT SHOULD BE THE SAME CHURCH PEOPLE! God and his commandments don't change. The prophets of old such as Moses were MEN. Sodom and Gomorra BURNED TO THE GROUND FROM THIS TYPE OF WELCOMED BEHAVIOR!

CHICAGO - The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is suggesting that the Bible isn't the last word on homosexuality.

In a town hall meeting Sunday, Bishop Mark Hanson said, "the understanding we have of homosexuality today does not seem to be reflected at all in the context of the biblical writers." Therefore, he said, Lutherans should consider more modern views on sexual orientation.

At its churchwide convention in August, the ELCA lifted its ban on partnered gay and lesbian clergy, prompting some traditional congregations to withhold funds and begin forming a separate denomination.

But Hanson insisted the ELCA can accommodate both views. In his words, "God is still speaking to us." He also suggests that more homosexual-friendly policies may help the denomination grow.

Hucky softy

Is Huckleberry the next "Jesus"? I mean, haven't we had enough of our current presidential savior? All we need is instead of a guy that can't make decisions, one that makes them wrong. (Okay, okay, I just gave Obama WAY TOO MUCH CREDIT!)

In regard to his answer as to his decision in 2000...It's one thing to say, "ya know, he seemed like he had a change of heart but turned out to be a scoundrel out and I'll be a bit more judicious next time." It's another thing to say, "if I were to do it all over again, I would do it again".

Why does a governor have so much power? So a governor is all of a sudden more omniscient, and has more experience than a judge? Do governors/presidents realize how hard it is to get someone booked in the slammer anyway? Just ask someone in law enforcement. It's hard scraping baked slime off the streets.

Huckabee's past may taint his future

by Jim Brown

A leading conservative pundit says fairly or not, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's political future has been badly damaged by fallout from an executive decision he made in 2000.

Conservative bloggers and pundits have been taking Mike Huckabee to task after a man whose sentence he commuted while Arkansas governor killed four police officers in Washington state over the weekend.

In a post on the conservative website Redstate.com yesterday, Huckabee expressed regret that he commuted the sentence of Maurice Clemmons and made him eligible for parole. However, Huckabee said the decision was based on evidence before him in 2000, and "if presented the same facts today, I would have acted in the same manner."

Huckabee also says that some of his fellow conservatives "don't seem to want to take responsibility for the facts surrounding the case," and are using "misinformed words" when accusing him of being weak on crime.


Erick Erickson, the editor of Redstate.com, believes perception is hurting Huckabee worse than the facts of the Clemmons case.

"I think the facts as known are not that bad, in that he gave clemency to the guy [Clemmons] when he was a teenager and was put in jail for over a hundred years for a simple burglary," Erickson notes. "The problem is that...this is now the second person [Huckabee] granted clemency to who went on to kill someone, and he's granted over a thousand pardons and clemencies, including 12 murderers. That taken together paints the picture of basically [Democratic presidential candidate] Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- someone who's soft on crime."

Even though Huckabee says all of the clemencies he granted were based on the facts of each individual case, Erickson points out that some Arkansas prosecutors and others who know the governor well say he had a propensity to grant clemency or give pardons to people who "found God in jail" and wanted to show mercy to them. According to Erickson, such an approach "would not fly