Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

Breast Cancer. The very words strike fear into women everywhere. And for good reason — according to the National Cancer Institute’s factsheet, the 2008 estimates indicated that 182,460 women were diagnosed with and 40,480 women died of breast cancer.¹ That translates into 1 out of 8 women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their life time.

With such alarming statistics, it’s even more tragic that most women just wait until a self exam or mammogram shows an unusual lump in the breast. By then the cancer has taken hold and it becomes a life or death battle for survival.

That’s why I did a double take when I read Jim La Valle’s article, Breast Cancer — Real Prevention that appeared in the November 4 issue of Total Health Breakthroughs. Jim’s advice can save countless lives if it is read and understood by women everywhere.

As Jim explains in his article, most breast cancer is determined by how estrogen is metabolized in the body and whether it is balanced by adequate levels of progesterone. Knowing this and taking the appropriate steps means that you may never be involved in this fight for your life, because with the proper testing and nutrition the cancer will never have the opportunity to develop in the first place.

If you have read any breast cancer prevention articles over the last month, you probably saw several articles on making sure your diet includes plenty of omega-3 fats as well as high antioxidant-containing foods like berries, colorful vegetables, beans/legumes, and green tea — all to help your body keep damage from free radicals to a minimum. This is all good advice, but it does not adequately address the other side of the equation — avoiding foods that promote inflammation in the body.

October was Breast Cancer Prevention month, and as always, fund raising and education initiatives were everywhere. There are many advances in our understanding of how breast cancer develops, yet out of all the articles I saw in the mainstream media, none of them explained the most important factors influencing breast health.

Most breast cancer is the type that is called hormone sensitive. That means it is cancer that forms in response to estrogen. It is usually implied that it is solely a matter of having too much estrogen (and/or other compounds that have estrogen-like structure) in the body. However if you dig deeper, you learn that it is not so much the estrogen itself, but how it is being metabolized in the body and whether it is balanced by adequate progesterone that are the primary problems.^1-2

Estrogen/Progesterone Balance

The balance between estrogen and progesterone is very important for breast health and is almost never mentioned in popular literature on hormone sensitive breast cancer. There is a big misunderstanding among some people in the medical community that progesterone increases breast cancer risk. This was due to studies that found that synthetic progestins formerly used in women on hormone replacement therapy did increase breast cancer risk. However, further study has clarified that natural progesterones do not.³

You can fill a room with studies showing the health benefits of moderate amounts of alcohol. But it’s important to remember that the studies showing benefits were done on men. There’s actually a small but nasty correlation between alcohol use and breast cancer in women. However, there’s also a simple way to lower the risk.

Many women who need chemotherapy, surgery or radiation for breast cancer take a drug called tamoxifen. The hope is that this drug will reduce recurrence of the breast cancer. New research shows that nutritional supplements can help the drug do its job better