Striving4Zen

Women who exercise beat breast cancer far more often than those that don't. Sort of common sense, but the numbers from a new study (via Reuters) are surprising:

Among 1,231 women with breast cancer who were followed for a minimum of 8.3 years, those who obtained about 4 hours or more of weekly moderate-intensity recreational activity over their lifetime had a 44 percent lower risk of death from breast cancer

The underlining is ours, to emphasize that what matters, it seems, are workout habits long-established. As Dr. Christine Friendenreich told Reuters: "Being physically active before a breast cancer diagnosis can improve survival after breast cancer...." And here's something else, for those with loose definitions of workout: "Occupational activity and physical household work such as gardening, housework, and do-it-yourself home repair did not confer benefits similar to those from lifetime exercise and sports activities."

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Labels: breast cancer, exercise, study

As if dealing with cancer isn't difficult enough, now there's some unsettling news about moisturizers. Recently, researchers from Breastlink, a breast cancer treatment center in Southern California, presented the results of a study in which they tested 16 easily accessible moisturizers for estrogen.

While none of the samples listed estrogen as an ingredient, six actually contained some type of the hormone — which is terrible news for women with a type of breast cancer that is driven by estrogen.

What's up with the absence of such an important detail? Since the skin absorbs topical products quite readily, applying a nourishing alternative specifically formulated for people with cancer seems like the safest bet to me — not to mention anyone worried about the repeated exposure they may have unknowingly received from any unlabeled creams.

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Labels: breast cancer, cancer, estrogen, moisturizer, skin care, study, toxic

Certain breast-cancer survivors who load up on fruits and vegetables, eating far more than current US guidelines, can slash their risk the tumors will come back by nearly a third, according to a study released yesterday.

The finding held only for women who did not have hot flashes after their cancer therapy, the researchers said - a finding that suggests fruits and vegetables act on estrogen.

Their analysis suggests an explanation for why some studies have shown that eating more fruits and vegetables lowers the risk that breast cancer will come back, while others do not. It may depend on the individual patient, they report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"Women with early-stage breast cancer who have hot flashes have better survival and lower recurrence rates than women who don't," said Ellen Gold of the University of California, Davis, who helped lead the study.

As estrogen drives the most common type of breast cancer, this suggests that eating extra servings of fruits and vegetables - above the five a day recommended by the federal government - may lower harmful estrogen levels in cancer survivors, the researchers said.

"It appears that a dietary pattern high in fruits, vegetables and fiber . . . may only be important among women with circulating estrogen levels above a certain threshold," said John Pierce of the University of California, San Diego.

The researchers took a second look at data from 3,000 breast-cancer patients in a study aimed at seeing if a diet low in fat and high in fruits and vegetables would keep their cancer from coming back.

Such a diet has been shown to lower overall risk of ever getting breast cancer in the first place.

The women were on average 53, and half were told to double their fruit and vegetable intake to 10 servings a day, eat more fiber and lower fat intake.

About 30% of the original 3,000 breast-cancer survivors said they did not have hot flashes.

The researchers looked at the data on these women and found that only 16% of those who doubled up on fruits and vegetables saw their tumors come back after seven years, compared to 23% of those merely given advice on food guidelines.

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Labels: breast cancer, cancer, fruits and veggies, healthy diet, study

Researchers have recently found that the higher a person's body mass index, the more likely she is to develop breast cancer. Obese women are also more likely to live shorter lives and suffer a recurrence of their cancer, and may also get a more deadly form of breast cancer (inflammatory breast cancer).

On the flip side, a separate study has found that vigorous exercise (running, fast jogging, aerobics, bicycling on hills, etc.) can reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 30% in normal-weight women.

So the moral of the story is to exercise and try and keep your body weight down as much as possible. The ways in which exercise helps your health far exceeds the annoyance of putting on your gym shoes and pounding through an hour at the gym. It's important that we keep reminding ourselves of this from time to time.

Thanks FitSugar!

Labels: breast cancer, exercise, healthy living, Obesity, prevention