Breast Cancer Prevention

Cleaners Linked to Breast Cancer

Before I tell you about this interesting study, I must warn you that it has been criticized for being potentially misleading or even downright inaccurate. Now, of course, the people who are making these claims come from cleaning groups, but it’s always good to hear every side of the story. And quite frankly, I can see how such a study might be flawed since it is asking women, both those whom have had breast cancer and those who have not, to recall years back what types of cleaners they used around the house.

These types of studies are almost always somewhat flawed and open to criticism precisely because they do rely on people’s memories and maybe even their subconscious biases.  Let’s face it, we all tend to remember things differently. Nonetheless, it’s good to hear out this study and make the decision for yourself as to whether you might want to change your cleaning products or at least mind the time that you are actually in contact with them.

A link was apparently seen between women who used certain types of common household cleaners and those that developed breast cancer.  The link was only seen in certain types of cleaners, and one of them was mold cleaner, which I’m assuming is the kind you use to clean your shower and get that soap scum off, which I’m pretty sure nearly every women has in her cleaning arsenal.

This definitely made me think twice about getting in an enclosed tub or shower to clean my stuff myself when I thought about it.  Another one that was identified as a possible factor in increasing breast cancer odds was air fresheners. I hate air fresheners, and honestly, I gotta say with this one, I’ve always felt like spraying those heavily perfumed sprays could not be good for my health. Heck, they SMELL like chemicals!

The key here is that you stay away from heavy chemical smells. The biggest offenders that were identified as being possible hormonal disrupters, which add to the likelihood of breast cancer, were the ones that were most heavily filled with chemicals, and chemicals often give off a very distinct and strong smell.

Another Benefit of Fish Oil : Lower Breast Cancer Risk

Well, it looks like the uber champ of supplements, which also happens to enjoy huge commercial popularity and multiple studies being done on it’s potential health benefits, fish oil, has achieved yet another possible merit when it comes to preventive health.  That new merit is a link to reduced risk of breast cancer in women ages 50 to 76 who took a fish oil supplement every day.

The study was done in comparison to several other popular herbal supplements that are sometimes equated with “female” health, and it was found that fish oil was the only common denominator when it came to breast cancer prevention.  One of them was black cohosh, which was honestly the only one I saw on the list that I recognized as having potential female health benefits, which has been used in menopause remedies and things like that for women.

The others I either did not recognize, or never knew they were used in conjunction with breast health or female health.

The study was admittedly somewhat flawed though, and the researchers who commissioned this study would like a more random one to be done so that more conclusive findings can be reported, but it still shows that there may be a correlation between fish oil and reduced breast cancer occurence.

And hey, if you ask me, who cares, there have already been multiple studies proving the benefits of taking omega 3 fat supplements.  I take them every day, but I never took them for the breast cancer prevention aspect, more as an overall preventive health supplement. I also feel that my brain functions better when I’m getting a lot of fish oil in my diet, maybe that’s just in my head, but hey, that’s how I feel!

And we do know that fish is healthy for you, so preferably most health professionals recommend getting your omega 3′s through diet like fish, walnuts, almonds, avocados and other food sources as they are the best and most complete nature has to offer. But of course we don’t all have the time or inclination to make sure we’re getting tons of these foods in our diet on a daily basis, so it doesn’t hurt to add a supplementation of omega 3′s, whether plant or animal based, to your diet.

Warning Signs of Breast Cancer

Besides the efforts made to achieve the early detection and effective treatment of the breast cancer, about 20 % of patients with breast cancer die from the disease. The breast cancer is the second most often cause of death at women.

We are all witnessing a very large number of sick women, but what is more worrisome is the younger population. Awareness among women about breast cancer fails to widespread sufficiently. But it is our fault because we always wait for “the last train” to go to control- a stage from which you may not come back. These shifts of the age are alarming signs that leads to bigger interest for this subject.

Statistics show that from 8 or 9 women one will surely develop this condition. Any breast disease at women is a double-health problem and besides that can lead to mental and spiritual liability. But not only that……Great efforts are made to achieve early detection however, the number of patients increases.  In particular, this excessive desire to prevent this situation increases the self- awareness and culture to all women, to act preventively.

These are sufficient reasons to induce interest and detailed understanding of the topic in every woman.   There are amazing and countless of different treatments, methods to treat breast cancer across the world. For example, the Chinese medicine, which is closely documented and based on thousands of years of research and clinical experience. Countless lives in different parts of the world have been rescued and cured by these treatments against cancer.

The only thing for women today is the consideration of the problem with conventional methods based on the harmful treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation or surgery.

Symptoms

To detect any change in the breast is primarily necessary to know what is normal for your breasts in terms of appearance and consistency. In this case, we have the existence of abnormality and change in appearance, structure, consistency etc.

In the early stages breast cancer usually has no symptoms or very minor characters. However, the grow of the tumor can be noticed very easy. Women must take care of their breasts and check them when bathing, dressing. Other symptoms are also, the nipple pain, bloody nipple discharge.  It is in a human nature that people will never check its health condition until something bad happens.

Guidelines for Breast Cancer Self Examinations

Women’s bodies, like men’s, are complicated. We have so many things that can go wrong with our reproductive organs, but we also have other body parts and concerns to look after as well. For men, it’s the prostate that is a major concern, especially as he ages.

For women though, her breasts and her breast health become more and more of a focal point for screening and confirming that the tissue is healthy, well on into her eighties and nineties, since the older we get, the more likely breast cancer sneaks up on us.

Very often we can face the problem with our breasts such as breast cancer which is not the one to get rid of very easy. For that purpose scientists have instructions how the women can easily recognize that huge problem and make it part of our everyday.

Namely, they have prepared a guideline on how to treat the problems with our breasts and how, as soon as possible, take preventive measures. That guideline for the early detection of breast cancer improves the chance to be diagnosed at an early stage and gives the possibility to be treated successfully.

The breast cancer usually affects women at the age of 40 to 50 but is does not have to mean that it can not appear earlier. So, it is very important for one woman to have continuous screening mammogram every year; that way the disease can be detected on time.

I assure you that tests for breast cancer prevention done earlier can save many thousands of lives each year and you can not even imagine how many  lives can be saved if more women and their health care providers took advantage of this tests.

What all women should know is that they can check their breasts on their own.  One way is to touch your breast when showering and getting dressed when you can feel if something went wrong. That self examination is one way for us to know if the look of our breasts is normal and a good way to discover and feel any changes. But we can never know if we do it in the right way so it is better to visit a doctor specialist in that area.

However, by doing this exam regularly, you get to know how your breasts normally look and feel and you can more readily detect any signs or symptoms if a change occurs, such as swelling, skin irritation, nipple pain or retraction, redness of the nipple or breast skin.  We must remember that most of the time, however, these breast changes are not cancer.

Breast Cancer Prevention Pills : Not All Good

There are apparently now two drugs that are used as preventive measures for women who are at exceptionally high risk of getting breast cancer to take. They basically are prescribed if, through screening, you have shown a big predisposition toward getting breast cancer by expressing some of the genes that have been linked to a high likelihood of developing the disease.

Women who are not identified as being at a high risk are not supposed to take these drugs. Why? Because for all the good they may do in preventing breast cancer from happening, they also, like every other drug on the face of the planet, come with side effects. The older I get, the more I notice that there are tradeoffs for almost everything.

Even supplements and vitamins. If you have too much of a vitamin yada yada it can do xyz to your body and stuff like that, I think you catch my drift. But overall, I supposed that the true benefit needs to be weighed and the annoying of even health threatening side effects really have to be put in perspective I suppose, in a sort of order of importance to the individual.

The two drugs that may be used as a preventive breast cancer drug before breast cancer even occurs are the current breast cancer “wonder drug” Tomoxifen, and the other one is Evista. Evista is actually used a lot to help treat and prevent osteoporosis in women, and now it has also been identified as a good preventive medicine for breast cancer as well.

It has also been identified as safer than Tamoxifen, making it the potentially superior choice – unless of course new research proves this wrong, and it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Tamoxifen, while cutting the chances of developing breast cancer almost in half, also is correlated to a higher risk of uterine cancer, which is also obviously a very serious and life threatening disease and therefore makes this a serious consideration.

Tamoxifen’s primary effect is that it helps to lower the estrogen levels in the body, or at least dull their effect as it applies to breast cancer as I understand it. If you want to know more about the drug, I suggest you look it up on WebMD or some other similar trusted site and see how it works.

Pregnancy and Breast Cancer Survivors

We all know that breast cancer is often fueled by changes in estrogen levels.  We actually have a few different types of estrogen levels, and it hasn’t exactly been determined what is a “safe” level of this female hormone.  However, excessive or highly fluctuating levels of estrogen have been linked to increases in breast cancer incidence.  For this reason, it is thought that many women going through change of life get breast cancer, since they are experiencing unusual and volatile fluctuations in their estrogen and testosterone levels.

We do know that there are a lot of lifestyle factors that can help us as women to avoid the pitfalls of increasing out risk of breast cancer. It has often been questioned if younger women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and have survived it, are safe to get pregnant.  Pregnancy, as you well know, carries with it a huge risk of hormone fluctuation, and certainly carries it’s share of risks for the estrogen hormones to be going up and down and out of control.

Shoot, women can have fluctuating hormones several times of month depending on their cycles, but pregnancy and periods are two of the “events” that can cause the hormones to really skyrocket and cause problems. It’s not just moodiness, it’s a whole host of other chemical reactions within the body that occur when the hormones are out of balance, in both men and women, who both have female and male hormones circulating in their body.

The new studies that address the pregnancy and breast cancer death myth (that you are at higher risk of dying from breast cancer if you survived it and subsequently had children), have found that there is no link between pregnancy and dying from breast cancer.

In fact, even in women who have not had breast cancer, some studies have shown a correlation between pregnancy and breast cancer protection. Of course, this is in a whole different demographic, but still…..

The lesson?  Women who have survived  breast cancer probably should not let this stop them from getting pregnant.  Even though it’s not a 100% conclusion, scientists say it looks like there is no direct correlation.

Body Fat and Breast Cancer : A Real Threat?

Some controversial news, or shall I say opinions, recently surfaced this week on recommendations by healthcare panels to prevent breast cancer – even up to one third of the cases of breast cancer here in the US, or perhaps the world. Their recommendation was that women eat less and exercise more.  Because obesity is associated to a higher risk for breast cancer, and exercise has been associated with a lowered risk (perhaps because it helps prevent obesity), they are making these recommendations as a prevention measure.

They have treaded these types of issues lightly in the past, and who can blame them (the medical establishment).  It is easy to come off like they are blaming patients for getting breast cancer because of their lifestyle or because they are overweight.  However, what the point is, is that there is a real correlation between increased estrogen levels and higher body fat. Why?

Because estrogen is actually stored mostly in the fat of the body. The more body fat you have, the more estrogens you have running rampant in your body, and this means the higher your breast cancer risk is typically going to be, since breast cancer is typically associated with estrogen.

There are also strong links to genetic factors as well though, so you could theoretically do everything by the book and still get breast cancer if it’s just a strong genetic predisposition.  However, even with this predisposition, there are still things you can change in your life which help to lower the risk.  One is to exercise more. This helps convert more of your body fat into muscle tissue, which means you are housing less estrogen by allowing it to stay in less fat.

Also, eating less reduces the amount of fat you have on your body, or at least decreases the size of you fat cells, which also gives estrogen less refuge in your body and therefore should theoretically lower your risk of cancer. The researchers who made the recommendations we speak of today actually theorized that we could reduce the world’s cases of breast cancer by up to 30% if all women adhered to this type of lifestyle which minimizes the fat on the body.

That’s pretty impressive.  I know for me, it’s a matter of an overall lifestyle to try to do these things anyways, so it’s something that I will always practice in my life.

Breast Cancer Slogan Has Some Angered

Recently in Poland, a slogan that was devised for campaigning in favor of breast cancer awareness was slammed as being sexist.  Why?  Well you tell me why. It went something like this “I check the breasts of all my workers” or something to that effect.  Women are up in arms because it implies inappropriate sexual touching by bosses,and it sort of defeats the purpose it was set out for by scratching your head and making you go “hmm” by reading it, not really making you more aware or wanting to go get your breasts examined.

The location for the potentially sexist ad was in Poland, and feminist groups are slamming it as sexist and implying. I happen to agree. What do you think?  Are they being too sensitive, or is this totally inappropriate? Count me in the inappropriate camp!

Regular Aspirin Intake May Improve Breast Cancer Survival Odds

Apparently, aspirin, that cheap little pill that has fallen our of favor as a pain reliever of choice, but now has many other favorably viewed health benefits for your heart purportedly, may actually help you survive and avoid another recurrence of breast cancer if you are a breast cancer survivor. The study that was carried out was the first of it’s kind directly aimed at looking at how aspirin intake on a regular basis may help or hinder breast cancer patients. I’m not sure why this study started, or what the basis is for aspirin being a potential breast cancer deterrent though.

The study has spanned over thirty years, and involved nurses who had a wide span of health issues, so the study was multi pronged. What happened is that, sort of accidentally, they noticed a correlation between women who took aspirin for heart health and also as a preventive measure against stroke, since aspirin helps to thin the blood and prevent these problems which are caused by thickened blood, but also happened to have had breast cancer, had a higher survival rate, and less of a recurrence rate for their breast cancer, if they took aspirin several days a week.

However, if you are not a person who likes to take aspirin, or perhaps, like many other people, it upsets your stomach, there were similar effects observed with the same family of pain relievers called NSAIDS, non steroidal anti inflammatories, but there was not enough data on these to actually make any conclusions as to whether they had the same extent of benefit as aspirin for breast cancer patients. Also, you have to consider that this study was carried out over several years, most of which aspirin was still the popular choice for preventive measures against heart attacks and strokes.

Who knows, it may be prudent to take aspirin if you are prone to heart diseasea and stroke in your family and you have also been a breast cancer survivor, however, they are careful to point out that you should not take it regularly without talking to your doc first, since it can cause stomach bleeding, and also you usually should not take it in combo with chemotherapy or cancer treatment because it may have adverse side effects.

Breast Cancer Scans Not Worth It?

MRI's Not Needed?

MRI’s are very expensive, and even if you have insurance, you can find yourself paying out the wazoo if you have to have one for a specific health problem or suspected issue.

That is why some scoffed when MRI’s began to be used as scans for breast cancer, or returning breast cancer, but because of their more thorough nature, or at least their perceived more thorough and less intrusive nature, many were applauding them for the new way to thoroughly scan for breast cancer, and foregoing or eschewing the idea of getting a traditional mammogram which can be painful and intrusive, especially if you happen to have breast implants.

I even thought it was a great thing, and I still do think that the MRI has some great benefits over other types of breast cancer detection because it is by it’s very nature a more thorough and comprehensive way to look for abnormalities in the human body.

However, apparently there are studies now that are showing that MRI’s are really not doing any better than any other form of breast cancer detection, and are not causing women to get another surgery.

They are really used when determining whether women need further operations for already existing breast cancer, and since the incidence of women needing further surgeries found was so low, they have deemed that since it is such an expensive and lengthy process, it may not be necessary. I’m not quite sure that the expense should be a factor when you are talking about the difference between life and death though – thoughts?