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Red Wine For Breast Cancer Help

Who doesn’t love a glass of red wine occasionally. Well folks, there is good news for all red wine drinkers. According to a recent study from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, drinking red wine in moderation may reduce one of the risk factors for breast cancer, providing a natural weapon to combat a major cause of death among U.S. women.

The study, published online in the Journal of Women’s Health, challenges the widely-held belief that all types of alcohol consumption heighten the risk of developing breast cancer. Doctors long have determined that alcohol increases the body’s estrogen levels, fostering the growth of cancer cells.

But the Cedars-Sinai study found that chemicals in the skins and seeds of red grapes slightly lowered estrogen levels while elevating

I have been checking vitamin D levels on my patients the last year or so, due to an abundance of data showing the benefits of vitamin D. I have been amazed how many women are low, even though we live in “Sunny San Diego”. Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine” vitamin. The body makes vitamin D from cholesterol through a process triggered by the action of the sun’s ultraviolet B rays on the skin. Factors such as skin color, age, amount and time of sun exposure, and geographic location affect how much vitamin D the body makes.

An estimated 1 billion people worldwide, across all ethnicities and age groups, have a vitamin D deficiency. This is mostly attributable to people getting less sun exposure because of climate, lifestyle, and concerns about skin cancer. Current studies suggest that we may need more vitamin D than presently recommended to prevent chronic disease.

Women who smoke at any age are more likely to develop breast cancer after the menopause, a new study shows.

Women who are current smokers had a 16% increased risk of developing the disease, while ex-smokers had a 9% increased risk.

The research, which involved 80,000 women in America, also found that passive smoking can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer.

Another recent study found that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer at some point in their lives. The good news is that breast cancer treatments are always developing and now 2 thirds of women who are diagnosed with the disease still live a full life.

Yinka Ebo, senior health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: ‘We already know that tobacco can cause over a dozen different cancers, and this study adds to the growing evidence that smoking can raise

There’s good news for coffee drinkers. Want to reduce your risk of breast cancer? New research suggests drinking coffee might help you do that.

Researchers from Sweden compared certain lifestyle factors and coffee consumption among women with breast cancer and those without breast cancer. They found coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of breast cancer compared to those who rarely drank coffee.However, other lifestyle factors such as age at menopause, exercise, weight, education and a family history also affected breast cancer rates. Once the researchers adjusted for these other factors, they found the protective effect of coffee was only measurable for antiestrogen-resistant estrogen-receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer.

“There is often conflicting information about the beneficial effects of coffee. When we compared our results to that of a German study, we discovered that their data showed the same trend, but the relationship

Why would anyone take tamoxifen if the side effects are so dreadful?

In some breast cancers, oestrogen can cause tumour cells to grow: tamoxifen blocks the activity of oestrogen in the breast tissue and stops growth of the cancer. It is standard treatment after  breast cancer surgery. When a woman is diagnosed with the disease, she is tested to see if her tumour is ‘oestrogen positive’. If it is, she can take tamoxifen. It is a tablet taken every day for five years after the operation, which has been shown to significantly increase chances of survival in the ten years after surgery.

So what are the downsides?

Minor side effects include nausea, diarrhoea and headaches. The more serious side effects come from tamoxifen blocking oestrogen in the body. In pre-menopausal women menopause-like symptoms – hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings and depression – come on suddenly and dramatically

Can we determine how soon we’ll be dealing with all those pesky menopausal symptoms like night sweats and hot flashes? The findings, recently published in Human Molecular Genetics, could have considerable impact on women in the UK and other western countries, where many start having children at a later age. Early menopause affects one in 20 UK women.

The study from scientists at the University of Exeter Peninsula Medical School and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), funded by The Wellcome Trust, tested four genes associated with the menopause. They compared 2,000 women from the Breakthrough Generations Study who had experienced early menopause with a matched group of the same number. The four genes each affected risk of early menopause. In combination, they had a larger impact, which goes towards explaining why some women experience early menopause.

The Breakthrough

1. Educate yourself and others

Breast cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in women after nonmelanoma skin cancer, striking one in eight in the U.S. Most have no risk factors besides being female and getting older:

Ninety-five percent of new cases from 1998 to 2002 were in women over 40. For reasons that are still unclear, Caucasian women are most likely to develop the cancer, but African-American women are more likely to die from it. Contrary to popular belief, having large breasts, wearing underwire bras, or using antiperspirant, hair coloring, or hair-relaxing products don’t seem to affect your risk; doctors are striving to better determine what genetic and lifestyle factors do.

2. Learn your family’s medical history.

Some 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer cases are inherited, often through abnormalities in the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2, which are strongly linked to ovarian cancer as well. If you have a

Osteoporosis fractures are four times more common than strokes. Women in their 50s have an equal chance of experiencing complications of osteoporosis as they do  from breast cancer according to orthopedic surgeon and traumatologist Sanjay Rastogi at a recent osteoporosis awareness lecture.

Early menopause (before 45 years of age) is the single greatest risk factor for osteoporosis.  Other reasons include… poor calcium intake and deficiency of Vitamin D, smoking and alcohol consumption .

Explaining the disease, he said: Osteoporosis is a condition in which bone become more porous than average and are prone to fracture. The loss of both calcium and bone matrix leads to decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and increased bone fragility. The disease speeds up in women within 10 years after  menopause. This is primarily because the ovaries stop producing the female sex hormone estrogen,

Women who follow a traditional Mediterranean diet may have a lower risk of developing breast cancer after menopause than women with different eating habits, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among 14,800 Greek women followed for a decade, those who kept most closely to the region’s traditional diet were less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than those whose eating habits were least Mediterranean-like.

The link was seen only among women who were past menopause, and not younger women. Among postmenopausal women, those with the highest Mediterranean diet “scores” were 22 percent less likely to develop breast cancer during the study than those with the lowest scores.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that the diet itself offers protection against breast cancer. If such a

Image via Wikipedia

Many women enduring hot flashes experience the heat, sweat and reddened upper body as an uncomfortable inconvenience. However, hot flashes can greatly diminish a woman’s quality of life, disrupting sleep at night or causing embarrassment as she goes about her daily business.

Hot flashes, occur commonly in women with a history of breast cancer. The problem arises naturally in these women because of menopause; because of various treatments, such as the drugs tamoxifen and aromatase; and because of chemotherapy.

A variety of non-hormonal treatments (mostly non-hormonal drugs) can offer women who have had breast cancer some relief from hot flashes. Side effects are frequent, however, and must weigh into any decisions to use the interventions.

Researchers in Chile analyzed 16 studies including 1,461 women