Ways to prevent breast and prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 10-01-2013

A.  Why this post and why today:

I.  October, this month, is breast cancer awareness month.

2.  I just got new information to go with what I already know works to prevent breast and prostate cancer.

3.  I have a massive family history of prostate cancer—both grandfathers, my Dad, and one of my brothers.  Worse, I did some things when younger I wish now I’d known not to do! that increased my chances of getting it.  I ate some bad foods, did not eat some protective foods, and was exposed to WAY too much second hand tobacco smoke.

B.  Ways to prevent breast and prostate cancer.

1.  If you get no kind of cancer you won’t get either one.  There are proven ways to do that.

2.  Almost every way that prevents either breast or prostate cancer prevents both.  So if a method  prevents one and can be done by the other sex, it’s worth doing by both sexes. And, there are methods that do not involve drugs or radiation that have been tested to work to do this.

3.  Men get breast cancer too!   It is dramatically less common; but it DOES happen.

4.  The newer information:

a)  The email I got from my new medical group that in part prompted this post had this:

(My comments are in parentheses.)

“Healthy eating and regular exercise contribute to your general health and reduce your risk of all types of cancer, as well as heart disease and other serious medical conditions,” observes David Shiba, M.D. opens new window, medical oncologist at Sutter Gould Medical Foundation and medical director for Memorial Medical Center’s Cancer Services. “It’s especially important to maintain a healthy weight, because obesity and breast cancer are clearly linked, especially after menopause.”….

(Both in these posts and in our soon to come service FatLossSupportThatWorks.com we write and will write on the effective ways that do exist to improve your health and lose excess fat that DO work and are sustainable.)

Avoid hormone therapy. “Long-term hormone therapy with certain estrogen-progestin combinations for the treatment of menopause symptoms was found to increase the risk of breast cancer for women in a trial study,” Dr. Shiba explains. Ask your doctor about managing the symptoms of menopause with exercise, dietary changes or other non-hormonal therapies, or if you must use hormone therapy, do it on a temporary basis at the lowest dose possible.

Make an informed decision before using birth control pills. The use of birth control pills may be linked to about 4.7 out of 10,000 cases of premenopausal breast cancer a year.

(Using bio-identical hormones also is thought to be protective while using the synthetic ones has been shown to cause cancers.

In addition, even the synthetic ones seem to cause cancer and heart disease by boosting inflammation a lot. 

So if you do the things that sharply reduce chronic inflammation you will be much less likely to be harmed. 

Here’s how:  use no corn or soy or canola or safflower that are all very high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils; use extra virgin olive oil instead; and consume as little animal fats from animals and fish fed grains instead of their natural diet.  Then for you the hormone use will be far safer.

If and only if you limit these sources of omega 6 eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils and taking them as supplements will lower your inflammation even more.  That’s because if you eat 10 times too much omega 6 it overwhelms an increase in omega 3 oils.

Tobacco and its smoke are quite carcinogenic and on our list to avoid.  Avoiding them is even more critical for women on hormone replacement or birth control pills because they apparently do more harm together than either does separately.)

Use pesticides with caution. “Although research isn’t conclusive, pesticide exposure may be linked to breast cancer,” Dr. Shiba says. Researchers have found that women with higher levels of pesticides in their breast tissues have a greater risk of breast cancer.

(Never use pesticides or herbicides in your home or yard if you can possibly avoid it.  People who use them often are at dramatically higher risk.  If they must be used, have as little used as possible and have them applied by someone who knows how to use them as safely as possible instead of doing it yourself.  And,  if you have the money, for things like termites and bedbugs, consider having your house tented and have the short term dangerous but super quickly dispersing chemicals used instead.)

These things are less new but many people do not yet know them.

b)  New research finds that drinking coffee helps prevent prostate cancer and the aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer. 

(And, it also very likely helps prevent breast cancer too.  Plus note that this is only true for nonsmokers.  It isn’t a strong enough effect to overcome smoking with drinking coffee at the same time.)

Regular coffee is something that worsens reflux and many people overdose on it.  (Once you drink two or three cups a day, drinking more tends to keep you partly awake at night and you sleep less well. And, drinking too much regular coffee can cause anxiety or an uncomfortable feeling of being wired.)

But there are three ways around these limitations! 

Although caffeine has some real value, it’s the COFFEE that creates this effect. 

So you can drink low acid Kona coffee from Hawaii or decaf or take green coffee bean supplements and get this effect.

(Green coffee bean supplements seem ineffective for fat loss but will work for this use and may cut excess blood sugar a bit.  They do have coffee and its antioxidants.)

5.  Also recently I got a medical news article listing 6 things that were tested to cut the likelihood of getting prostate cancer and the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

Here are those 6 things with my comments and 8 more things that work they did NOT list but which also work:

My upgrades of the 6 listed as testing in cutting aggressive prostate cancer rates

AND my list of 8 more things they did NOT include that each individually tested to help do the job!

A study was announce that tested a set of six healthy habits, including eating more tomatoes and less processed red meat, helped men reduce their risk of dying from prostate cancer

“….almost 46,000 men for 25 years and found that those who adopted five or six of the habits had a 39 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer than those who adopted one or none of the habits, according to the results presented at the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam Saturday. In another study involving more than 21,000 men, the risk reduction was 47 percent.

Each of the six habits, which also included not smoking, exercising, eating fatty fish and having a body-mass index of less than 30, has been linked with lowering prostate cancer risk, but their joint effect hasn’t been studied before, said Stacey Kenfield, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who presented the results.”

1.  Eat fresh tomatoes and tomato sauce or pasta sauce.  (Tomato juice and tomato sauce or pasta sauce has been cooked and concentrated with makes the carotene, lycopene, and other carotenoids in tomatoes more bioavailable.  So does eating them with extra virgin olive oil which also makes them more bioavailable.  AND, lycopene supplement of 30 mg a day have been shown to be protective also.  With my family history, I do all of the above!)

2.  Eat hardly any or very little processed meat.  (Once in two weeks or once a month or less is best. Such meats have three huge harmful counts against them.  Most of them are from animals fed grains with their excessive omega 6 oil content that is pro-inflammatory; they use high amounts of preservatives that are harmful to your health; and they usually are too highly salted which harms circulation.)

3.  Get regular exercise. (All or most days of every week -- at least 5 days of vigorous or intense even if brief is best for heart and fat loss and blood sugar.  Surprisingly it also reduces inflammation and slows aging!)

4.  Have a BMI of less than 30…. (or have a Height to waist ratio of 2 to one or more. 

Both in these posts and in our soon to come service FatLossSupportThatWorks.com we write and will write on the effective ways that do exist to improve your health and lose excess fat that DO work and are sustainable.) 

5.  Totally avoid tobacco use and tobacco smoke…(!! Tobacco is radioactive and every use that touches your mucous membranes from chewing it to smoking it to second hand smoke causes the cancer causing polonium in the tobacco to go EVERYWHERE in your body, breasts and ovaries and prostate alike. 

Worse, the smoke from people who light their smokes with lighters has LOTS of short lived but very carcinogenic agents from the high temperatures in the lighter flame.  You do NOT want to be that smoker or anywhere nearby!)

6.  Eat fatty fish (Eating wild caught low mercury fish and taking omega 3 & DHA supplements AND removing virtually all hydrogenated and omega 6 oil sources.  We note above that this one is just barely effective if you don’t limit omega 6 oils too.  But if you do both it makes a big difference!)

6^th section here:  8 more ways NOT listed in their list of 6 that also work!:

1.  Take 4,000 to 5,000 (or up to 10,000 a day if blood tests below 50 until it tests over that)  of vitamin D3

2.  Eat curried foods that contain turmeric in the curry and add or include black pepper once a week or more.

3.  Take curcumin or turmeric at least once a day with black pepper or a supplement with both at least once a day.

(The coffee and the exercise and those 3 practices ALSO strongly prevent Alzheimer’s disease.)

4.  Eat raw organic broccoli &/or cauliflower florets at least 5 times a week.  (In men, a study found this cut the incidence of the aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer IN HALF!

5.  Avoid any x-rays you can.

6.  Eat other cruciferous vegetables a few times a week that are raw with extra virgin olive oil or raw tree nuts or that are lightly  cooked at low temperatures or steamed

7.  Eat green onions, onions, and/or fresh minced garlic once a week or more.  Besides virtually all the other cruciferous vegetables including cabbage and kale and  Brussels sprouts and water cress, these have anti-cancer effects.

8.  Eat organic fruits such as blueberries and organic vegetables and other spices and drink coffee, decaf or tea or green tea AND take the antioxidant supplements real A, lots of C, real E and foods containing it such as avocados and raw tree nuts, and take selenium &/or eat Brazil nuts AND take R or alpha lipoic acid and NAC.

(Some of the DNA damage that causes many cancers is from oxidants that you are not protected from without this step.  And those foods and supplements protect your health in many other ways!  Plus the organic vegetables and low glycemic fruits like organic blueberries help remove excess fat and keep it off.)