LifeCare Chiropractic

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preventing breast cancer

Still Think Breast Cancer is Genetic? 3 Tips to Slash Risk

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If you follow organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Koman Foundation, you would think that developing breast cancer is left completely to chance.

However, this flies completely and absolutely in the face of a large body of evidence that supports that lifestyle plays a huge role in the development of cancer.  I have reviewed many of these in the past.  Some studies look at general recommendations and some look at very specific recommendations.

The links to breast cancer can be protective, like exercise or a plant-based diet, or they can increase the risk of developing cancer, such as smoking or BPA in plastic water bottles.  The risks or protection can also be unmodifiable or modifiable, such as sun exposure (most likely due to vitamin D) or soy exposure as a teen or the fact that you used to smoke.  You can’t go back and modify this risk, although you can accept that choices you have made in the past have contributed to your risk.  This knowledge can then be used to help the next generation to avoid the risks or partake in the beneficial activities.

Many times the studies looking at general changes show a substantial reduction in the risk for developing breast cancer.  This can be 30, 40 or even 70% or more.  I always contend that these benefits are seen with just the general recommendations.  When you add in the other studies that look at the smaller contributors and get much more specific about an overall lifestyle that lowers your risk of breast cancer, the near elimination of breast cancer can be envisioned.

And yet, this story is not what is promoted by the organizations tasked with educating you about breast cancer and the organizations that take your millions and millions of dollars in the name of breast cancer.  All this money is wasted on the myth of a “cure” and early detection.  Maybe it’s a conflict of interest by large commercial donors?  Maybe it’s the fear of not giving out information until it is absolutely, positively set in stone (as a reminder—it took some 40-50 years before the full message on the dangers of cigarette smoking to be mainstream—so don’t hold your breath).

I have always maintained that we still need research.  But we need it to determine why those who make all these changes still develop breast cancer.  Because it happens.  But the numbers are so small, THESE women never see a benefit from the research that these organizations spend mass amounts of money on.

It’s a hard call, but what do we do with the other, dominant percentage of breast cancer cases that were a result of egregious lifestyle choices?  The smokers and meat and potatoes type that haven’t exercised since grammar school?  At what point do we say that the money spent for screening and treatment of these sufferers should go towards research for the small portion of breast cancer patients to answer the really hard “why” questions?

These are rhetorical questions that we may never have an answer for.  And maybe it’s putting the cart before the horse.  Maybe we’ve done such an incredibly pathetic job of educating the public that breast cancer can be prevented that it’s not a fair position.  In this case (and I think this is most likely where the problem lies), the national organizations should NO LONGER GET YOUR MONEY.  Unless, of course, they are organizations like the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), who put out this particular study.

The AICR, along with the World Cancer Research Fund, had previously put out information about lifestyle behaviors that have a very strong ability to lower your risk of all cancers.  Body fatness, physical activity, foods that promote weight gain, plant foods, red and processed meats and limit alcohol intake (2 for men and 1 for women a day). In this study, researchers looked at what happened to the risk of breast cancer when 6 of these recommendations were followed (body fatness, physical activity, foods that promote weight gain, plant foods, red and processed meats, and alcohol).  Here’s what they found:

  1. Risk was cut by a respectable 60% in women who met at least five recommendations.
  2. When they looked more closely at the data, three recommendations (body fatness, plants foods, moderate alcohol intake) were responsible for almost all of the protection.
  3. Adherence to just these 3 recommendations cut risk 62% overall.

Three recommendations.

A measly three lifestyle factors to adhere to cut risk substantially.  We can no longer sit behind the glass bubble of “it’s just genetic” when the research on just the most simple changes, is so compelling.

THESE are the types of groups you should be giving your money to.  Period.

How to Prevent Breast Cancer: Does Mammography Help?

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All women want to learn how to prevent breast cancer. For far too many, this equates to mammography, since this helps with early detection. Is this good enough?

 Before we go any further, I need to make one thing very, very, very clear.  Mammography is NOT prevention.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been given this answer while volunteering at the Komen 3-day when I ask walkers what they are doing to prevent breast cancer.  If women participating in a massive event like the 3-day do not understand the term prevention, we can assume the rest of the country has some learning to do as well.

All screening procedures do that: they screen for cancer or precancerous lesions.  It is an attempt to find things before they get to the later, more difficult to treat stages.  This sounds like a great idea.  Or, at least it would, were it not for 2 very major problems.

First, as a society, we have a tendency to forgo true prevention in lieu of early detection.  The walkers at the 3-day I have come across are evidence of this.  An event this large, with this much exposure, and no one seems to understand that you really can prevent breast cancer.  This is, of course, despite hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands and thousands) of research studies suggesting otherwise.  On the flip side, every 3-day walker knows that it takes mammography to find that tumor early.

Second, what if there are significant harms in early detection?  We all bask in the false knowledge that there is no such thing as bad screening and early detection of everything.  This is certainly not the first time I’ve talked about the problems associated with overdiagnosis of breast cancers due to mammography (one previous blog post can be read here).

This particular study takes another hard look at what mammography is costing our society.  Here are  a few of the findings:

  1. The introduction of screening mammography in the US doubled the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer that are detected each year.
  2. However, the rate at which women present with late-stage cancer has decreased by only 8%.
  3. Overall, out of 100,000 women, mammography led to 122 women being diagnosed with early stage breast cancer.  Only 8 of these will progress to advanced cancer (Tweet this).

With some number crunching, the authors estimated that, in the past 30 years, 1.3 MILLION women were diagnosed with breast cancer that would not have progressed.  In 2008 only, this number was 70,000 women (31% of all breast cancers diagnosed).

And we all know what happens to any women who is diagnosed with breast cancer: additional testing, biopsies and potential subsequent treatment with surgery, radiation, chemo or some combination thereof.

1.3 million.

Of course, one side of the argument would be that we just don’t know which of these 8/100,000 women are going to progress to advanced cancers.  This is certainly valid.  But how much more money would we be able to throw at research to answer this question if we weren’t wasting billions more on treatments that aren’t needed?