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4A – Daily News – Monday, July 19, 2010 Vitality & health (MCT) — Our Stone Age ances- tors lived in an uncomfortable world, spending their 30-year life spans hunting and gathering with- out air conditioning or heat. But some say the cave men ate better than we do. That's the premise behind the Paleo diet, a health and weight-loss trend that encourages people to eat modern-day versions of Paleolithic food. Several weeks ago, one group of health-conscious Californians took on the Paleo diet and planned to spend nine weeks eating like cave men. That means consuming only animals, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and mushrooms, said Rick Larson, co-owner of CrossFit West Sacramento, the gym running the challenge. "A lot of people at our gym were getting good workout results, but I knew they weren't supporting it with their diets," Larson said. Because other gyms in the CrossFit family have had success with the Paleo diet, Larson decided to test it at his gym. Fifteen people took the bait. Like any diet, the hardest thing about the Paleo diet is what you can't eat. Out is anything that humans began eating after the agriculture and animal husbandry revolutions, meaning no dairy, beans, grains or starches and absolutely nothing processed. "If you can't eat it raw, then you shouldn't consume it," Larson said. (Although, since our Paleolithic ancestors did have fire, cooking food is permissible.) The idea of the Paleo diet has been around since the 1980s, but it was popularized in the 2002 book "The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat" by Loren Cordain, a professor at Col- orado State University. Twenty years ago, Cordain read about the diet in a scientific journal and decided to try it. "For the first time in my life, I started to feel quite healthy, I didn't get any respiratory problems, my arthritis problems went away, and I felt like I gained more muscle mass," he said. He's been eating like a Nean- derthal ever since. "We are genetically made up with a Stone Age disposition, but we are living in a world of Space Agers," Cordain said. The Paleo diet even clears up acne, he said. Larson, the West Sacramento, Calif., gym owner, put his own twist on the Paleo diet. He com- bined it with the Zone diet, which centers on setting calorie intake parameters but doesn't forbid any kind of food. In Larson's Paleo/Zone diet, the Paleo diet determines what kind of food to eat and the Zone diet guides the quanti- Back to the cave: Diet urges prehistoric eating fitness Nutrition Quiz: Aguaje, the new superfruit (MCT) — Did you hear that? It's another "super- fruit" falling from the tree, soon to tumble into U.S. markets. This time, it's aguaje, fresh from the Peruvian rain forest. Take our quiz. 1. The fruit, which comes from a type of palm tree, features a scaly maroon skin and bright-yellow pulp, and is said to taste like what? a) Mango b) Carrot c) Chicken 2. How much more vitamin A does one aguaje con- tain than one carrot? a) Five times more b) 10 times c) 41 times 3. According to a National Geographic story, what is the total daily consumption of aguaje in the Peruvian city of Iquitos? a) 1,542 pounds b) 2 tons c) 20 tons 4. According to National Public Radio, locals in Iquitos claim that aguaje does what to local women? a) Makes them more beautiful b) Makes them live longer c) Makes them stronger than their husbands 5. NPR also says Iquitos residents add sugar to agua- je for ice pops, making them taste like what? a) "Frozen lime margarita with a dash of sea salt" b) "Pumpkin pie and caramel with a lemony tang" c) "Carrot cake, but without the cinnamon" 6. How do you pronounce "aguaje" a) Aug-wah-hey b) Ai-guac-eh c) A-wash-ee Sources: news.nationalgeographic.com; www.npr.org; www.intimaca.com MCT photo Rick Larson of CrossFit in West Sacramento, prepares a paleo meal, which includes grilled chicken with a salt-free herb dry rub, grilled fennel brushed with olive oil and grilled halibut. ty. Following the diet is tough; Lar- son holds weekly social support sessions with participants. On a recent Tuesday, Larson told the group they are allowed to have two vices: tea and coffee. "But not sweetened, and with no dairy," he said. He points to himself. He's been doing the Paleo/Zone diet for 11 weeks, and his body fat percentage is 2.7, he said. "Come on! That's how much fat is in my finger," said Santinia Pasquini, 33. Pasquini said she has tried everything from Weight Watchers to diet pills, and in the week she's been doing the Paleo/ Zone diet, she has lost 8 pounds. It's not even as hard as she thought. "I thought I was never going to be able to give up Diet Pepsi, but THE PALEO DIET What's in: Meat, poultry, fish; Fruits and Vegetables; Nuts and Seeds; Mushrooms and Roots What's out: Grains; Dairy; Beans and legumes; Refined sugar; Anything processed Cancer drug olaparib shows early promise (MCT) A novel therapy designed to exploit the renegade power of malignant cells showed remarkable effectiveness against advanced ovarian and breast cancer in two small interna- tional studies. One breast cancer patient who was terminally ill, the most remarkable case of all, continues to enjoy a com- plete remission of her disease two years after participating in one of the studies at the University of Pennsylva- nia. "It's just so amazing," said Patricia Buckles, 61, of Memphis. "It's given me two years of my life that tradition- al chemotherapy could not. I'll stay on it, Lord willing, as long as my cancer stays asleep." The experimental drug, a capsule called olaparib, works by making can- cer cells even more genetically unsta- ble than they already are. The cancer cells become too defective to survive, like a wobbly chair with only three legs that loses another leg. Olaparib is being developed by AstraZeneca P.L.C., which has its U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, Del. The company-funded studies were pub- lished online last week in the Lancet. But at least five other pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop their own "PARP inhibitors" because the new class promises to work against several kinds of cancer, and to have more tolerable side effects than con- ventional chemotherapies. The new studies, led by Andrew Tutt of King's College London School of Medicine, involved researchers from 18 medical centers around the world, including Penn for breast-can- cer patients. Patients, who received either a high or low dose of olaparib, had better response rates on the high dose — another sign that the drug is effective. All the patients had run out of stan- dard treatment options, and their can- cers had metastasized to other organs. Of 27 breast-cancer patients who got a high dose of olaparib, 11 (41 per- cent) had tumor shrinkage, and 12 (44 percent) had no tumor growth for at least 23 weeks of the first 24 weeks of study. Of the 27 women on the lower dose, six had tumor shrinkage and 12 had stable disease. Study coauthor Susan Domchek, director of Penn's Cancer Risk Evalu- ation Program, called it "an enormous response rate" considering that the women had received at least three prior chemotherapies. The ovarian cancer study has 33 high-dose patients, of whom 11 (33 percent) had tumor shrinkage and 12 (36 percent) had stable disease. Among 24 low-dose patients, 3 had tumor shrinkage, 7 had stable disease. Although PARP inhibitors are still years away from being marketed _ larger and longer studies are needed _ the early research has generated excitement because "creating drugs that selectively kill cancer cells with- out harming normal cells is notorious- ly difficult," said an editorial published a year ago in the New England Journal of Medicine. PARP (poly adenosine-disphos- phate-ribose polymerase) is an enzyme that repairs breaks in either of the two strands of DNA. These breaks can occur as DNA copies itself to cre- ate a new cell. Inhibiting PARP does not appear to harm healthy cells. But in the cancer cells of women who have inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which also normally repair breaks in the strands of DNA, inhibiting the PARP repair sets up lethal instability, a condition scientists have dubbed "synthetic lethality." All the women in the new studies had inherited the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, which are linked to 5 per- cent to 10 percent of all breast and ovarian cancers. Women with BRCA defects are at high lifetime risk of breast or ovarian cancer, or both, and the diseases tend to strike early and relentlessly. Buck- les, for example, had her first mastec- tomy when she was 33. surprisingly, the cravings aren't there," she said. Out is anything that humans began eating after the agriculture and animal husbandry revolutions, meaning no dairy, beans, grains or starches and absolutely nothing processed. Answers: 1: b; 2: a; 3: c; 4: a; 5: b; 6: a