More news on diet and breast cancer risk. A pair of studies on veggies and on coffee have brought attention to some new superfoods that might actually help lower breast cancer risk.
Both research projects examined freely made lifestyle choices when it comes to drinking coffee and eating certain vegetables and the impact these choices might have on future risk.
The study on vegetables was conducted by a team who made use of lab rats to see whether a specific compound (apigenin) impacted the formation of tumors when introduced into a rat's body compared to rats who were not given the substance.
Apigenin is naturally part of foods like parsley, apples, celery, oranges and some nuts, as well as other foods, and appears not just to slow the growth of tumors but it also reduced the amount of tumors in the body. Keeping some minimum levels of apigenin in the blood seems to be beneficial in terms of breast cancer risk reduction.
So next time you see a garnish of celery or parsley, it might be a good idea to have a taste.
The study on coffee took place in Sweden and was conducted by a team using a study group of women with an age range between 50 to 74 years old and they were studied in two groups, one with cancer of the breast, and the other without.
Participants were matched for age, and the team saw that those who regularly drank 5 or more cups of coffee a day had a lower risk of estrogen receptor negative breast cancers. Other studies have brought similar results.
Here are some other interesting numbers that come from the two studies...
- 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with cancer of the breast.
- 30 is the BMI number where women are considered to be obese, which is a recognized risk factor that's identified by the study on coffee and many other studies as increasing your risk of developing this form of cancer.
- 45% of premenopausal women who have breast cancer have the estrogen receptor negative form of the disease; this was the form of disease examined in the study on coffee.
- 51 is the average age a U.S. woman will go through menopause. Those working on the coffee study suggest that the age a woman starts menopause as another key factor in breast cancer risk.
- 200,000+ women in the U.S. are given a diagnosis of breast cancer
- 6 to 10 million women are prescribed hormone replacement therapy annually in the U.S. The study on veggies was looking at how to cut the chances of this form of cancer associated with these medications.
Talk with your doctor about how to lower breast cancer risk, and be aware that preventing disease is always easier than treating it once it happens. The good thing to take from these two studies is that there are things you can do, actions you can take, to defend yourself against breast cancer. It's up to you.
By Kirsten Whittaker
