LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Breast Cancer

Phytoestrogen Consumption and Breast Cancer Risk – (09-10-01)

by

Phytoestrogen Consumption and Breast Cancer Risk

Scanning quickly would give you the idea that soy intake has no effect on breast cancer risk in non-asian women. Reading further, however, you will find that this study evaluated their “usual” intake of tofu at one serving per week, which is less than the 3+ servings shown to be protective in other studies.

Am. J. Epidemiol. — Abstracts: Horn-Ross et al. 154 (5): 434

Read entire article here

Have Breast Implants? 3 Things to Know About Your Breast Cancer Risk

by

I’m going to need to tread lightly on this one because  I can understand, from an evolutionary standpoint, the near irresistible pull of the eyes towards the natural as well as the aftermarket products.

But underneath it all, regardless of how they look, we still need to be concerned about protecting the breast against the scourge that is breast cancer.

As a way of background, breast augmentation in the US is the most popular cosmetic procedure performed, numbering 307 000 surgeries in 2011, an increase of approximately 800% compared with the early 1990s.  I’m pretty sure almost all of these are done here in Scottsdale, AZ, which explains the expensive European sports cars in the medical buildings here.

Early on, there were many concerns over the initiating of an autoimmune reaction to silicone implants, but research over the years has not found great evidence to support this notion.  What has been clear, though, is that the density of the implants get in the way of interpreting mammography studies (as well as jump roping, but that is beyond the scope of this article).

According to this particular study, this creates a problem.  A 26% problem to be exact.  Researchers looked across multiple studies to get a clearer picture of whether implants led to a greater risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer at a later stage.  As mentioned, they found a 26% higher risk that women with implants versus women who did not have implants would be diagnosed at a stage that has metastasized.

Worse, the researchers looked at another group of studies on the actual survival rates in women with implants who developed breast cancer.  Overall, there was a 38% lower risk of 5-year survival in these studies.

Now, lest you are already picking up the phone to call your plastic surgeon to schedule their removal, there are a very important things I need to point out:

  1. The authors noted some concerns with the studies themselves that were looked at, and so it may be too early to draw firm conclusions.
  2. Overall, your individual risk of surviving breast cancer does not change much, about 88% survival down to 84%.
  3. Regardless of how it plays out, breast cancer is highly, highly preventable.  This means that, as a proud implant owner, there is less leeway for unhealthy behaviors leading to an increased risk of breast cancer.

The long list of thing you can do to lower your risk of breast cancer is beyond the scope of this post, but you can read more about these by looking through previous articles by clicking here.

So, if you already have implants and have no desire to have them removed, it’s time to evaluate your lifestyle and make the necessary changes.  It’s not an option.

Low Bone Density Associated W/ Decreased Risk of Breast Cancer – (05-14-01)

by

Low Bone Density Associated W/ Decreased Risk of Breast Cancer

I must admit that this title was a little bit disturbing to me. Of course, knowing that estrogen does have an effect on slowing the rate of bone loss while at the same time being considered a carcinogen, does clear things up for myself. These may not even be a direct link so try not to jump the gun just yet and focus hard on lowering your bone density to reduce your risk of breast cancer. It may be that women who do not exercise have higher bone densities and become obese. Obesity and lack of exercise will further contribute to osteoporosis and breast cancer….so the reverse must logically also fit in somewhere.

J Clin Epidemiol 2001;54:417-422 Women in the lowest quartile for bone mineral density (BMD) appear to have the lowest risk of breast cancer, based on an analysis of data from the Fracture Intervention Trial (FIT). According to lead investigator Dr. Diane S. M. Buist, this is the largest such study to date in terms of number of people evaluated and age distribution. The investigators note in their paper that BMD represents “a composite measure of exposure to many different factors throughout ones lifetime,” and that an exploration of these factors may point to an explanation for the association between BMD and breast cancer. “We are not making any clinical recommendation for BMD being used as a screening mechanism for breast cancer,” Dr. Buist stressed. “What we do know is that BMD has some intriguing relationships with breast cancer.”

Night Shift Work, Light at Night, and Risk of Breast Cancer – (11-05-01)

by

Night Shift Work, Light at Night, and Risk of Breast Cancer

This article is included as an FYI. There are many people in today’s society that believe that breast cancer has no controllable risk factors. Things like cruciferous vegetable intake, exercise, refined carb intake, whole grain intake and smoking are definite risk factors for breast cancer that are modifiable.

J Natl Cancer Inst — Abstracts: Davis et al. 93 (20): 1557

Read entire article here

Breast Cancer News: Prevent Breast Cancer with This Vitamin

by

Normally, I wouldn’t bore you all with yet another “low vitamin D levels increase the risk of X disease” blog post.  However, I just had to share this one because of the strength of the association.

In general, vitamin D seems to have its greatest protection against what are called “long latency” disease.  This means that the condition, like cancer, actually develops over many years, if not decades.  So supplementation of vitamin D is not going to result in anything near an immediate benefit.  Certainly there are exceptions, like improvement of respiratory conditions such as a lowered risk of infection or improvements in the symptoms of asthma.

Cancer is consider a long-latency disease and low vitamin D levels have been linked to many types of cancers.  Some show a very strong protection and some very little.  This particular study looked at the risk of breast cancer in a population of Middle Eastern women (Saudi Arabians) who traditionally have darker skin and thus would be more susceptible to vitamin D deficiency.

Here’s what they found:

  1. Mean age was 47.8 years of age.
  2. Average body mass index was 30.0 (below 25 is ideal).
  3. Those women with breast cancer cases had lower vitamin D levels (9.4 ng/mL) than controls (15.4 ng).
  4. Those with the lowest levels of vitamin D (<10 ng/mL) had a 610% higher risk of developing breast cancer.
  5. Those in the next lowest group (≥10 to <20 ng/mL) had a 400% higher risk.

These are NOT paltry numbers.  Instead, they are serious game changers.  As usual, researchers looked at normal levels of vitamin D, not OPTIMAL levels.  Optimal levels are considered 60-100.  Makes you wonder just how much greater the risk was between women with optimal levels of vitamin D and those with the lowest levels.  The risk spread likely would have been even more dramatic.

While the nature of medical literature never speaks in absolutes, with the addition of this study to previous studies on the higher rates of many types of cancers with low vitamin D levels, I would strongly suggest that, if you donate to any “cancer cure” organizations, if information like this is not readily disseminated through the organization, that you should absolutely give your money elsewhere because that organization is NOT driven by a desire to help but rather by some other hidden agenda.

Tamoxifen may mean that later tumors are more aggressive – (07-19-01)

by

Tamoxifen may mean that later tumors are more aggressive

Let me understand here. We give tamoxifen to patients who have had breast cancer to prevent future recurrences. But, it turns out that, if that same patient on tamoxifen gets cancer in the other breast, that form of cancer will be much more aggressive. Too many times in medicine we try to manipulate hormones in the human body when we do not even truly know the whole picture. The outcomes for this can be dangerous with side effects worse than what we were trying to prevent in the first place.

J Natl Cancer Inst — Abstracts: Li et al. 93 (13): 1008

Read entire article here

Dietary (n-3)/(n-6) Fatty Acid Ratio – (05-20-03)

by

Dietary (n-3)/(n-6) Fatty Acid Ratio: Possible Relationship to Premenopausal Breast Cancer Risk

Many researchers believe that the healthiest ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids is one to one, one to two (twice as many omega-6) at the most. Traditional standard American diet (read: SAD) is closer to 1 to 20 (twenty times omega-6) which leads to a pro-inflammatory profile of cytokines. This will lead to increased inflammation, and since inflammation has been tied to just about every chronic disease known to man, the results of this study are not a surprise.

nutrition.org — Abstracts: Goodstine et al. 133 (5): 1409

Read entire article here

Elevated IGF-1 May Indicate Increased Risk of Early Breast Cancer – (01-08-01)

by

Elevated IGF-1 May Indicate Increased Risk of Early Breast Cancer

Elevated IGF-1 has also been linked to prostate cancer. These findings continue to worry me with the use of human growth hormone (HGH) as an anti-aging “miracle.” Want to live longer? Cut your caloric intake by 30%, which has consistently and reproducible extended life spans in other mammals.

Int J Cancer 2000;88:828-832 Elevated serum levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) may identify women who are likely to develop breast cancer before age 50. In postmenopausal women, the authors found that the various blood tests were not predictive of breast cancer risk. However, in premenopausal women, increased levels of IGF-1 were associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. The odds ratio for breast cancer was 1.60 in the highest quartile of IGF-1 level compared with the lowest. After adjusting for IGFBP-3 levels, the risk of breast cancer was slightly reduced, the researchers note. “The results on IGF-1 represent a substantial achievement, given the nearly complete lack of biological markers at our disposal to conduct observational and intervention studies in pre-menopausal women, who represent more than one-fourth of all breast-cancer cases,” the researchers conclude.