Breast Cancer Prevention: Body, Mind, and Soul

Mind-body medicine provides alternatives to complement medical treatment and prevention options for cancer-free living. Nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, as well as diet, and meditation all play a part. During this, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, women should take the time to familiarize themselves with lifestyle risk factors to keep their bodies in tip-top shape and reduce the risk of cancer.

Hormones
Women should limit their exposure to hormones, as in birth control pills and hormone replacements.  The Women’s Health Initiative has reported that this can increase a woman’s risk for breast cancer. For postmenopausal women, only very small doses of hormone replacements are now routinely prescribed. Check with your doctor if you haven’t changed your dosage in the last few years.

Veggies
Many have now heard the call for increasing fruits and vegetables, especially those with dark coloring, such as blueberries and broccoli. The original recommendation of five a day has now been increased to ten. A vegetarian or even a raw food diet may benefit some, but care needs to be taken so that adequate protein levels are maintained. Veggies rule!

Alcohol
Alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast cancer. Two drinks a day increases risk by one-third and more than that by nearly 50 percent. There are some health benefits from wine, and for those who want to forgo the alcohol, supplements made from the active nutrients in grapes are available.

Weight Loss
Obesity nearly doubles the risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Even those who are in normal range but gain weight after menopause increase their risk.

Exercise
Exercise is great for clearing your mind, strengthening your muscles, and adding endorphins—natural opiates—to your blood stream. And now a study at UCLA has shown that five hours a week of strenuous exercise can lower the risk of breast cancer by 20 percent, while a recent NIH study of 65,000 women also went a long way in proving exercise's risk reduction for breast cancer.  Previous studies suggested that 30 minutes a day was sufficient. That amount is still better than nothing, and will surely improve your heart, circulation and your mood, but for optimal cancer prevention, more strenuous exercise of longer duration is required.

Vitamins

• Calcium is nature’s tranquilizer. Aside from being calming to your nervous system, calcium builds strong bones and can reduce cancer risk as well.
• Exciting new research on vitamin D shows that it can cut breast cancer risk by up to 50 percent. For breast cancer survivors, vitamin D deficiency almost doubles the chance of breast cancer returning! Since we make this vitamin when exposed to the sun, daily exposure is necessary to maintain healthy levels and you must be in the right season, latitude, and time of day, while protecting yourself from the damaging part of the rays with sunscreens. So you can see why supplementation is advised.  The general recommended dosage is 4,000 units a day but research is incomplete. Vitamin D levels are easy to assess via a blood test. Blood levels of 50ng/mL are suggested so check your blood and ask your physician for advice.
• Folic acid is another nutrient which helps reduce breast cancer risk. It is difficult to absorb through foods, so supplements can be taken sublingually (under the tongue).

Spice Up Your Life
Many spices are also healing herbs. Some of the most beneficial in the anti-cancer arsenal are ginger, garlic, tumeric, and mint. Ginger slows the growth of certain tumors, as does tumeric. Tumeric, a common ingredient in curry, may even increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Sleep
Restful sleep allows the body to heal. Make sure your sleeping space is quiet and dark, so your body can get the healing sleep that it needs. If you have insomnia or finding that you get less than an optimum amount of hours snoozing, check my column on Insomnia.

Mind/Body Connection
Meditation and relaxation are also important part of a daily health regime. Stretching, yoga, and pilates are good for the circulation, muscles, and the mind. Even a quiet walk or a soothing bath can still the senses. When your brain is not overloaded and overworked, it can focus on healing more effectively. Meditation can be used focus on specific healing visualizations, which may be beneficial as well. Meditation doesn’t have to be formal or of a specific disciple to show results.  A friend of mine visualized pac-man-like creatures zooming around her blood, gobbling up the bad cancer cells. I have no research to back this up, but it worked for her and she is now cancer-free.