Finally Solving Breast Cancer? Exciting New Nutrition Breast Cancer Prevention Discoveries

Breast cancer is increasing rapidly in the developing world for reasons that have remained a mystery for decades. Over the past 30 years, there has been an alarming 25% increase in the age-adjusted incident rate.

New findings are showing not just how to protect against this cancer, but also how to "shut down" these cancer cells on a daily basis.

#1 Discovery of What Shuts Down Cancer Cells

His study found that women who were exposed to high levels of very intense light produced less melatonin.

Women who work night shifts are more likely to get breast-cancers because their bodies produce far less of this vital hormone that inhibits the disease.

Melatonin, he said, "puts breast-cancer cells to sleep at night." The brain produces melatonin during normal daily rhythms.

"This is the first definite evidence directly linking an important part of the brain’s biological clock mechanism with cancer growth in humans," Blask said.

This would explain why night-shift workers have a 60 percent higher risk than other workers. The finding may also explain why nurses who often work the night shift have high rates of breast and colon cancer.

The study was published in Cancer Research, a renowned cancer journal.

Why Are Night Owls and Shift Workers at Risk?

1) That means going to bed earlier if you're a night owl, making sure the bedroom is dark, and keeping the light dim in the bathroom if you make nightly trips there.

Although workers may not have a choice as to whether they will work a night shift, Blask said, there are things people can do to protect themselves.

Workers need to be sure to get the right amount of sleep in a completely dark room when they are home, and to try to get sleep on a regular schedule, Blask said.

"I think they need to take notice of this," Blask said. "Lights at night are not going to go away."

2) Using a melatonin supplement is also an option. The hormone melatonin is normally produced by the brain at night, and puts breast cancer cells to sleep. It also slows the growth of such cells by 70%.

David E. Blask, MD, PhD, found that cancers-of-the-breast get revved up by a kind of dietary fat called linoleic acid. Melatonin interacts with linoleic acid, so he gave melatonin to mice implanted with human breast cancers.

"This breast cancer rev-up mechanism gets revved down by melatonin," Blask said at a news conference. "Nighttime melatonin is a relevant anticancer signal to human breast cancers. Ninety percent of human cancers-of-the-breast have specific receptors for this signal."

The hormone seeps from a pea-sized gland in the brain when the lights go out at night. It's the reason you get sleepy when it's dark. Blask and colleagues found that melatonin puts these cancer cells to sleep, too.

When Blask's team exposed lab mice with human cancers-of-the-breast to constant light, tumor growth skyrocketed.

"With constant light, tumors grow seven times faster and soak up incredible amounts of linoleic acid," he says. "During the day, the cancer cells are awake and linoleic acid stimulates their growth. But at night cancer cells go to sleep. When we turn on lights at night for a long time, we suppress melatonin and revert back to the daytime condition."

Blask says that "When you take melatonin prior to normal onset of sleep, it will jump-start the sleep cycle," he notes. "Many cancer patients suffer from sleep problems. Taking melatonin may also improve the quality of life in cancer patients by helping them sleep."

Melatonin can be an important part of a prevention and treatment strategy.

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# 2 Discovery: Northern Exposure - Low Vitamin D

Research has shown that women with adequate levels of vitamin D in their blood have a reduced risk of getting the disease.“Women who get lots of vitamin D, especially in early life, appear to be at lower risk of developing cancer-of-the-breast, according to a study a Mt Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

“There is quite a bit of evidence that vitamin D helps regulate cell division and cell death and can prevent unhealthy cell growth leading to cancer” according to leading researcher, Julia Knight.

Dr. Knight’s team found significant risk reduction among those who either worked in an outdoor job, had taken part in outdoor activities when young, or regularly consumed cold liver oil or milk.

Vitamin D Prevents and Slows Cancer Progression

Researchers from Imperial College, London, have carried out a small but significant study showing that vitamin D levels in the blood of women with early cancers-of-the-breast are higher than in those with advanced disease.

There has already been evidence that vitamin D - and sunlight - have a beneficial effect with regard to this type of cancer. Countries that are further north and enjoy fewer hours of sunshine have a higher incidence of these cancers and women living in them are at greater risk of dying from the disease than those in the sunnier southern climes.

Vitamin D is also found in eggs and fatty fish. It has also been shown that the vitamin can stop cancer cells dividing in laboratory experiments, which they must do for tumors to grow.

It is known that vitamin D can boost the activity of certain genes and dampen down others. One gene that is boosted is p21, which has an important role in controlling the cell cycle.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Pathology is the first to compare vitamin D levels in the blood of women with early and late stage cancer, and may help inspire new treatments for cancers-of-the-breast, the researchers say, possibly by raising vitamin D levels.

"This report, while being an observational study, clearly shows that circulating vitamin D levels are lower in advanced cancers of-the-breast as compared to early breast-cancers," said the lead researcher, Carlo Palmieri, from the department of cancer medicine at Imperial college.

This lends support to the idea that lack of vitamin D has a role in the progression of these cancers and is significant for its treatment and cure.

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# 3 Discovery: Exposure to Toxins

A team of researchers studied the occupations of all the women who developed cancers of-the-breast over 2 years in the entire city of Windsor, Ontario.

These women were about 3 times more likely to have worked on farms than women who did not have the disease. What’s more, those who farmed and then later worked in the automotive industry were 4 times more likely to have the disease, according to a paper published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

The researchers speculated that exposure to pesticides would be the main factor, because many of these chemicals used on food are able to mimic or block the normal functioning of estrogen and other hormones.

Chief researcher Jim Brophy, said that the No. 1 most likely cause of the elevated risk is the chemical exposure that exists on farms. Many of the women who developed the cancer in their 30’s, worked on their parents’ farm when pesticides were heavily used.

There was no extra risk of cancer-of-the-breast for women who never worked on farms and then went into the auto industry, suggesting that agriculture somehow primes women to get the disease.

The researchers found little difference between the women who got this cancer and the control group with respect to hormone replacement therapy, breast-feeding history, smoking oral contraceptive use, having a mother with the cancer and previous pregnancies.

Doctors tend not to ask about a woman’s occupation when trying to explain her illness, but this research is pointing very clearly at exposure to chemicals, especially when young, when breast tissue is developing.

Best Protection From Toxins

NUTRACEUTICAS that have anti-tumor properties have helped many people recover even after their doctor announced that there was nothing more that could be done for them medically.

Cancer Risk Reduced By High Cysteine Levels

"High plasma total cysteine level may predict a reduced risk of breast cancer," said lead author Shumin Zhang, MD,ScD, from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard MedicalSchool and Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston,Massachusetts.

These findings suggest that boosting of plasma cysteine levels could prevent this cancer.

Unfortunately, taking cysteine as a pill was not considered an option, because as such it is neurotoxic. A nutraceutical that is a natural source of cysteine is the best source.

Adding a good source of cysteine to your cancer treatment will improve your long-term well being and survival.

Researchers Find High Cysteine Levels Linked to Lower Rates of Breast Cancer

For Recommendations of Anti-Cancer Nutraceuticals :

Broccoli Compound Halts Breast Cancer Growth

In the September 2004 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, Keith Singletary and Steven Jackson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported that sulforaphane (SUL), a compound found in broccoli and other vegetables from the cruciferous family, has the ability to block cell growth in late stage human breast cancer cells.

They believe that sulforaphane could be used not only to help prevent breast-cancer, but to aid in the treatment of the disease.

Sulforaphane is released when the cell walls of plants containing the compound are broken by chewing. Johns Hopkins University researchers reported in 1992 that sulforaphane induces enzyme systems that help the body defend itself against cancer-causing substances, which is effective during cancer's early stages.

The current research sheds light on how the compound works in late stage cancer.

Singletary and Jackson administered sulforaphane to cultured human breast cancer cells, and discovered that within twenty-four hours the compound had significantly blocked cell division compared to controls and disrupted the cells' microtubules, which are necessary for the separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division.

Dr Singletary, who is a professor in the department of food science and human nutrition, explained,

"This is the first report to show how the naturally occurring plant chemical sulforaphane can block late stages of the cancer process by disrupting components of the cell called microtubules. We were surprised and pleased to find that sulforaphane could block the growth of breast cells that were already cancerous."

"The findings may be helpful in the development of new breast cancer prevention and treatment strategies," he added, for nutrition breast cancer prevention and treatment. "For example, it may be possible that ingesting SUL in combination with certain natural compounds or drugs could enhance their anticancer effectiveness and reduce side effects."

Using nutrition for prevention and treatment is now realistic.

A Broccoli A Day…

Studies clearly show that eating more cruciferous vegetables, especially broccoli (sprouted, raw or stir-fried) and cabbage (raw as in coleslaw or fermented as in sauerkraut), should reduce a person’s chance of developing cancers of the breast — as well as those of the cervix, colon, lung, prostate, tongue and bone marrow.

In 1982, it was shown that a diet high in cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, mustard greens, kale, lettuce, celery and tomatoes inhibits cancer. Cabbage and brussels sprouts activate the liver’s phase I enzymes while broccoli activates the liver’s phase II enzymes, which may be the most crucial for breaking down hormones through the beneficial C-2 pathway.

Savoy cabbage has twice as many active ingredients as white cabbage, but long-term cooking, especially boiling, reduces their benefits 34 to 44%. Chopping and fermenting the cabbage maintains its active ingredients. Freezing or freeze-drying maintains the medicinal properties and stir-frying is the least damaging form of cooking.

Broccoli Sprouts Much More Potent

Can This Be A Natural Cure?

Tamoxifen is not a cure; rather, it boosts long-term survival after diagnosis by about 25 per cent. Tamoxifen was clearly a big advance in treating effectively a certain subset of breast tumors - that is, those that are hormone-receptor positive, and there, it was shown pretty quickly that Tamoxifen improved outcomes in women with very late-stage disease - incurable disease.

Herceptin, approved in 1998, has opened the door to a new form of treatment for breast cancer - biological therapy. Herceptin is an antibody that binds to a growth protein that is overproduced on some breast tumor cells. Up to 30 per cent of women with metastatic-breast-cancer make too much of this protein, HER-2/neu. Although Herceptin hasn't achieved Tamoxifen's results, it appears to be of some benefit when combined with chemotherapy.

Adding a nutrition strategy is still your best bet for long-term recovery!

You can best protect yourself by adding a nutraceutical source of cysteine, eating lots of broccoli and melatonin-rich foods.

Study finds a SEA VEGETABLE that REDUCES a Hormone Related To Breast Cancer Risk

Recommendations for Best Protective Supplements:

“Chemo Brain” Caused by Chemotherapy How Good Is Breast-Cancer Screening? 20 Proven Steps For Reducing Your Risk: The Breast-Cancer Prevention Plan by Edward J Conley Foods That Fight Cancer: Strang Prevention Center Cookbook Foods That Fight Cancer Vegetarian Meals For People On-The-Go: 101 Quick & Easy Recipes

Natural Medical Discoveries for a Cure to the Breast Cancer Epidemic

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