Health foundations and doctors yesterday alerted the public to the benefits that an increase in intake of acidophilus, a probiotic or "friendly" bacterium, can have in the prevention of intestinal cancer.
The Taiwan Association for Lactic Acid Bacteria said at a press conference held yesterday to kick-start a health awareness campaign that intestinal cancer has become a major cause of death in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Chairman of the association Tsai Ying-chieh (
`bad' bacteria
In a study conducted on 185 healthy Taiwanese adults by Tsai last year, he found a high amount of Closridium perfringens, a "bad" intestine bacterium, in the fecal samples of 90 percent of the examinees.
Compared to the results of Japanese research published in the science journal Bioscience Microflora this year, the quantity of bad bacteria in the average Taiwanese person's intestines outnumbers that of a Japanese person's 100-fold, Tsai said.
He added that these harmful bacteria may turn people's daily intake of cholesterol, fat, protein and nitrate into substances which can contribute to various cancers such as breast cancer, liver cancer and cancer of the womb.
Tsai suggested that people increase their intake of acidophilus as a means of preventing intestinal cancer.
Acidophilus is available at most health food and nutrition stores and comes in two forms, capsules and powder.
stay regular
Cheng Yung-shan (鄭勇山), chief of the Gastroenterology Department at Wang Fang Hospital, told the press conference that regular bowel movements are also particularly important in preventing the disease.
Meanwhile, a statement released by the Department of Health suggested that there was a 16.2 percent increase in deaths caused by intestinal cancer.
The tally last year prompted the health department to include the illness in its future cancer prevention goals.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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