Let’s get the guys out of the way first:
- It does happen to guys, too; and it is more likely to be fatal in men.
- The same factors behind breast cancer affect men’s prostates.
- If it happens to a woman close to you, it happens to you, too.
The following points are generally missed when discussing cancer in general and breast cancer in particular:
- Cancer is 85% environmental. This means we need to stop blaming our genes and our parents.
- Xenoestrogens, or chemicals in the environment that act as Estrogens overstimulate breasts, uterus, ovaries and prostates. There are 800+ xenoestrogens around us: plastics, pesticides, dioxin, heavy metals, etc. Eschew chemicals and eat as organic as possible.
- Optimize your body’s ability to get rid of such chemicals: eat your veggies, cut down on meat, particularly red meats. Exercise. All this will help your microbiome and liver do a better job and thus reduce your risk of cancer by 2/3.
- Lose unwanted pounds and refined sugars. Warburg won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1931 for his work associating refined sugars with cancer.
- Quit smoking, alcohol and deal with stress in healthier ways.
References:
“Apoptosis by dietary factors,” J. Carcinogenesis 2007;28:233
- “In spite of substantial progress in the development of anticancer therapies, the incidence of cancer is still increasing worldwide. Recently, chemoprevention by the use of naturally occurring dietary substances is considered as a practical approach to reduce the ever-increasing incidence of cancer.”
- “By making modifications in the diet, more than 2/3 of human cancers could be prevented…. Dietary chemo-preventive compounds offer great potential in the fight against cancer by inhibiting the carcinogenesis process through the regulation of cell defensive and cell death machineries.”
- “Apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, plays a fundamental role in the maintenance of tissues and organ systems by providing a controlled cell deletion to balanced cell proliferation. The last decade has witnessed an exponential increase in the number of studies investigating how different components of the diet interact at the molecular and cellular level to determine the fate of a cell. It is now apparent that many dietary chemo-preventive agents with promise for human consumption can also preferentially inhibit the growth of tumor cells by targeting one or more signaling intermediates leading to induction of apoptosis.”
- “The two major pathways that initiate apoptosis are extrinsic (death receptor-mediated,) and intrinsic (mitochondrial mediated.) Mitogenic and stress responsive pathways are involved in the regulation of apoptotic signaling. Noteworthy is the crosstalk between some of these pathways.”
“Combating Environmental Causes of Cancer,” NEJM 2011;364:7991
