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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.

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

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