Saturday, October 23, 2010

Easy Things You Can Do Now to Help Prevent Breast Cancer


Rather than focusing on breast cancer, Wise Women choose to concentrate on keeping our breasts healthy through wise lifestyle and dietary choices.Embarking on even one of these suggestions will definitely lower your risk of breast cancer. A study of 20,624 Norwegian women found those who exercised or worked out regularly cut their breast cancer risk by 72%.

1.Eat more unrefined seed foods

All seeds provide phytoestrogens. Women who eat the most phytoestrogenic foods are four times less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than those who eat the least. Nuts including peanuts, walnuts, almonds, and pecans are unrefined seed foods. And edible seeds such as sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin are unrefined seed foods. Fruits and vegetables that are eaten with their seeds – such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, kiwi fruit, summer squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers – count as unrefined seed foods.

2. Eat less vegetable oil; increase animal fat, especially from dairy products

“Diets high in corn oil leave animals especially vulnerable to chemically induced cancers” say researchers. (Science News, 6/24/89; 10/2/99) If you are dubious about eating more animal fat and dairy products to reduce breast cancer risk, consider this landmark study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine (1/12/1998). To determine if food affected breast cancer risk. For every 5 grams (about a teaspoonful) of vegetable oil consumed per day, breast cancer risk increased by 70%. In contrast, for each 10 grams of fat from meat and dairy products in the daily diet, breast cancer risk was decreased by 55%.Results recently released found that those who “drank the most milk had only half the breast cancer risk of those who drank the least.”According to a report in International Journal of Cancer (2001), women who drank milk as children and continued drinking it as adults had half the rate of breast cancer of non-milk drinkers. Galactose, the primary sugar in milk, slows ovarian production of estradiol, a cancer-promoting hormone. Additionally, milk is rich in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a fat known to suppress breast tumors in animals.For breast health I use yogurt, cheese, milk, butter, and olive oil daily, and eat meat occasionally.Women whose diets are high in olive oil, and who eat meat and dairy products regularly, have the lowest rates of breast cancer in the world. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1/18/1995

3. Eat less tofu and soy beverage, eat more miso and tamari

The active ingredient in soy – isoflavone – when given to breast cancer cells in petri dishes causes them to grow rapidly. Miso and tamari – fermented soy foods – are the exceptions. Both are strongly cancer preventative, no matter when you start eating them. Animal studies have found both miso and tamari highly effective in preventing cancer, even in mice genetically programmed to get breast cancer. And the more you eat, the more you lower your risk of cancer.For breast health, I use miso and/or tamari every day. I drink no soy milk, and eat no other soy products of any kind.

4. Eat foods rich in antioxidants,avoid supplements of vitamins C and E

A diet that contains plenty of foods rich in antioxidants definitely lowers breast cancer risk. Doctors in Stockholm observed that, among breast cancer patients, treatment failures were higher for women taking vitamin E supplements – and the failure rate increased with dose. Studying this effect, researchers found that the anti-cancer benefits of fish oils “disappeared when [we] gave… antioxidant vitamins”. The authors conclude that vitamin E supplements “preferentially protect a cancer and even aid its spread.” (Cancer Research, 9/15/1999) One new “chemotherapy” links a lethal form of zinc to an ascorbic acid molecule; when the cancer eats the ascorbic acid, the zinc is set free to kill the cancer cell.For breast health I eat 5-7 servings of dark green and bright red/orange foods daily.Exposure to light at night increases the risk of breast cancer. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute (8/17/2001) reports that chronic suppression of melatonin – an anti-cancer hormone made only in the dark – increases breast cancer risk by at least 36%.

5. Drink red clover blossom infusion

Red clover is a potent anti-cancer herb. For breast health, I drink red clover infusion regularly.

6. Eat seaweed as a vegetable

If the long-lived and cancer-free Japanese have a secret, it is seaweed, not soy.

Source by ezinearticles.com

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