31/05/2022
Yesterday I passed a cafe that was festively decorated with foil balloons and pink ribbons promoting "awareness" for breast cancer.
The pastel cupcakes, pop music and glitter told a cute but bu****it story about a disease that can ravish a woman's body. It made breast cancer seem soft and fluffy with its pink PR army handing out sugar laden treats dairy filled beverages.
Essentially this looked more to me more like a what to eat to increase your risk of breast cancer awareness event.
We know that only 5-10% of cancer is purely genetically induced, and we also know that even with genetically induced cancers the progression & initiation is dependant and influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors.
We also know many of the things that increase/decrease your cancer risk yet the focus on "screening" (AND AWARENESS!!??) is parroted near and far and takes attention away from true prevention.
Has your doctor told you that more than 7 drinks a week increases your risk of breast cancer significantly? Over 3 drinks per week and with every additional glass of wine or you drink, your risk goes up by another 10%?
BUT i'm sure he told you to get your mammogram, which does NOTHING to lessen your risk of developing cancer and in fact may very so slightly in certain people increase their lifetime risk.
Did you know high blood sugar, diabetes and being overweight also increase your risk? Has your doctor mentioned, when suggesting you "eat whatever you want" that research points to higher blood sugar at diagnosis being correlated with worse outcomes (more aggressive tumours etc)?��
Then dairy? Really……While population based studies are not 100% clear, the fact remains we know drinking milk increases IGF-1 and oestrogen (it is mammalian breast milk by the way), and is associated with younger menarche/age of puberty, delayed menopause and higher birth weight which are all considered as known breast cancer risk factors.
On the topic of foods that influence oestrogen and because I cant post about cancer without cruciferous veggies getting a mention:
��Twenty-eight servings of vegetables per week decreased prostate cancer risk by 35%, but just 3 servings of cruciferous vegetables per week decreased prostate cancer risk by 46%.
��One or more servings of cabbage per week reduced risk of pancreatic cancer by 38%.
�One serving per day of cruciferous vegetables reduced the risk of breast cancer by over 50%.
Out of all of the cancer deaths, 25-30% are due to to***co, as many as 35% are linked to diet, about 15–20% are due to infections, and the remaining percentage are due to other factors like STRESS, (HUGE ONE) physical inactivity AND environmental pollutants.�
Even in the case of BRCA. BRCA1 mutations increase your risk of certain cancers because it codes for a wonky version of a cancer repair gene. When you get a BRCA report back and “have the mutation” it means YOUR cancer repair gene doesn’t work as well, so focus on prevention of DNA damage (not smoking, good diet, less alcohol etc) is even MORE important for those with genetic mutations…�
Now let's just think of how ludicrous this is. Instead of spending money and focusing on prevention campaigns..... research money raised by pink charities is gobbled up be drugs development dollars, administrative fees and promoting early screening.
Focus on prevention hurts no one. Focusing the vast majority of research money and attention on screening & cancer drugs, while ignoring the 70-90% of cases that could be prevented through lifestyle modifications seems criminal. ��
The argument proposed by many doctors and public health officials that “people won’t change” and “its too hard to get patients to make better choices” is total BS.
If people actually realised how much of their risk of cancer is under their control don’t we owe it to the them to allow them to make those changes? Without education, it’s not really a choice at all, is it?
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��Here is are some great places to start for people wanting to lower their risk of cancer: ��
https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors/alcohol��
https://www.drfuhrman.com/get-started/eat-to-live-blog/39/cruciferous-vegetables-offer-great-cancer-protection
�https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2018/03/23/new-calculations-confirm-lifestyle-changes-could-prevent-4-in-10-cancer-cases/��
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/diets/cancer-prevention-diet.htm/��
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0985056215001156��
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4335664/
