TODAY, I WOULD like to introduce you to my colleague at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox Massachusetts, Dr. Elizabeth Boham. She is a physician who practices Functional Medicine and is a Registered Dietitian. Among other things, Dr. Boham works every day with women who come to see her to help them decrease their risk of breast cancer. She wrote the following blog to give you some simple steps you can take to substantially decrease your chances of getting breast cancer.
–Dr Mark Hyman
Breast cancer is a serious concern, especially if you already suffered from the disease and are now afraid of a recurrence. If you are worried, it’s understandable. The incidence of breast cancer is skyrocketing …
Last year over 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 60,000 cases of non-invasive breast cancer were diagnosed. A woman’s risk of getting breast cancer has jumped from 1 in 20 in the 1960s to 1 in 8 today. Tragically, more than 40,000 women died from breast cancer alone last year.
Why has there been such a huge escalation in the rates of this frightening disease? What’s the cause of this epidemic and what can we do about it?
This point is especially important for postmenopausal women. Percentage of body fat is the number one risk factor for breast cancer in this population.
Getting to the bottom of these questions is of personal interest to me. When I was 30 years old, I was diagnosed with an aggressive type of invasive breast cancer. At the time I thought I was healthy …
Before I went to med school my background was in nutrition and exercise physiology. I was an athlete, an avid exerciser, and was careful with my diet. I was young, had no family history of breast cancer, nor any signs of chronic illness.
So when I was told I should have a mass in my breast removed, the last thing I thought it would be was cancer. I couldn’t understand how an otherwise healthy woman, like me, could get cancer. What did I do wrong? What could I do to reduce my risk of recurrence?
Looking for answers to these questions sent me on a journey through my medical training and eventually to an education in Functional Medicine. What I discovered on that journey is that there are ways you can prevent breast cancer and reduce your risk of recurrence. In today’s blog I will share what I have learned. I will explain some of the underlying root causes of breast cancer and provide 9 tips to help you reduce your risk.
What Functional Medicine Teaches Us about Breast Cancer
In traditional medical training you don’t learn about the impact that things like diet, toxins, and digestion have on your overall health. Certainly the connections between how your gut functions, your toxic exposure, and your risk of breast cancer is not something most doctors are taught.
To find real answers to my questions about breast cancer I knew I would have to dig deeper. When I finally found functional medicine, the answers it offered were like a revelation to me.
Functional Medicine teaches us that imbalances in the 7 key systems in the body can lead to a host of diseases, including breast cancer. By analyzing which of these systems are out of balance and learning how to optimize them, you can decrease your risk of getting breast cancer or suffering a recurrence.
When it comes to breast cancer specifically, there are many pieces to the puzzle, but one of the keys is balancing your estrogen levels. High levels of estrogen consistently correlate with breast cancer in most scientific studies. The first step to creating and maintaining estrogen balance is to overcome insulin resistance.
Insulin is the hormone released from your pancreas after a meal. It sends signals to your cells telling them to absorb sugar from your blood — which is a critically important job. However, this finely orchestrated system is sent spiraling out of control by our modern diet.
Sugar is the main culprit. When you eat too much of it, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, highly-refined and processed carbohydrates, or the multitude of other forms it comes in, your body sends out more insulin than it can properly use and you develop insulin resistance.
What most people DON’T realize is that as your insulin levels increase your estrogen levels increase as well. That means your risk of breast cancer goes up every time you eat too much sugar!
However, the havoc that insulin wreaks doesn’t stop there.
Insulin resistance also increases the amount of body fat you have. As your body fat increases, so does an enzyme in your fat called aromatase. Aromatase turns hormones made in other organs in your bodies (such as your adrenal glands) into estrogen. That means your estrogen levels are raised even more, making your risk of breast cancer that much greater.
This point is especially important for postmenopausal women. Percentage of body fat is the number one risk factor for breast cancer in this population.
Excess insulin causes other problems that contribute to you risk as well: it may stimulate the growth of tumors in your body and increase systemic inflammation which is a leading factor in cancer of any kind.
There are medications available that can help counteract these conditions. You can take aromatase inhibitors which are designed to prevent the aromatase in your body fat from converting your hormones into estrogen or you can take medications to balance your insulin and blood sugar.
However, you can achieve the same effect naturally by choosing real, whole, organic foods, exercising daily, and maintaining a healthy body weight.
As important as it is, insulin imbalance isn’t the only culprit that can lead to breast cancer. Environmental toxins have a major impact as well. The most damaging environmental toxin when it comes to breast cancer is estrogen and substances that mimic it.
From birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy to eating meat and drinking milk from cows given growth hormones, we are all exposed to excess estrogen.
The problem is compounded by the fact that other environmental toxins like some pesticides and compounds found in plastics mimic estrogen and stimulate the estrogen receptor in an unhealthy way.
Obviously, estrogen isn’t a “toxin” in the sense that DDT is. But too much of it can be nearly as deadly and we are exposed to extraordinary amounts nearly every day. At the end of this blog I will explain how you can eliminate this toxic burden.
Another critical part of your body you need to focus on if you want to limit your risk of breast cancer is your digestive system.
What is the connection between your gut health the health of your breasts?
Your flora — or the good bacteria that live in your gut.
These little symbiotic helpers not only strengthen your immune system and help you digest the foods you eat, they also help detoxify the estrogen made in your body after it’s been used. If your flora aren’t in balance, the estrogen your body needs to eliminate gets reabsorbed. This increases your estrogen level and exposes your body to unhealthy estrogen breakdown products.
It’s interesting to note that many studies link increased use of antibiotics to an increased risk of breast cancer. This may be because excess antibiotic use kills off the good bacteria in your gut.
Now you know some of the main contributing factors to breast cancer. Next let’s review what you can do to balance your estrogen levels, heal from insulin resistance, limit your toxic exposure, and support the flora in your gut.
10 Tips to Reduce Your Risk of Breast Cancer
Following these steps will help you limit your risk of breast cancer:
1. Choose whole foods.
- This helps increase your insulin sensitivity and prevents insulin resistance. Follow the recommendations in Dr. Hyman’s book
- for more tips on which foods to choose.
2. Get 3-5 hours of exercise per week.
- This also helps increase your insulin sensitivity and allows you to more easily control your percentage of body fat.
3. Increase your fiber intake.
- Your goal is 35 gm per day. High-fiber foods include vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and whole grains such as brown rice and ground flax seed.
4. Have protein at every meal or snack of the day.
- Good protein sources include; fish, lean poultry, beans, nuts, eggs, and soy. Make sure you include a few vegetarian options in your daily protein intake.
5. Maintain a healthy weight.
- This is the best studied, most agreed upon step a woman can take to decrease her risk of breast cancer.
6. Get a good night’s sleep.
- Sleeping well helps with weight control, insulin sensitivity, and supports your immune system. All of this is important for preventing cancer.
7. Choose organic and hormone-free meat, milk, and produce.
- This reduces your exposure to unwanted pesticides and hormones.
8. Avoid excess toxic exposure.
- Choose organic products for your lawn and garden, avoid dry cleaning, don’t use plastic bottles, and limit your intake of medications (like Tylenol) that get processed in your liver.
9. Take probiotics.
- Take 10 to 20 billion organisms on an empty stomach twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.
10. Limit your alcohol intake to no more than 1 drink per day and 5 per week—less is better.
- Remember 1 drink is 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of hard alcohol, or 12 ounces of beer.
These are just a few simple things you can do every day to reduce your risk of getting breast cancer. There are many others techniques you can use and I may explore some of them in future blogs. But by taking just these few steps you not only enhance the health of your breasts, but you start down the path of UltraWellness — a path that promises nothing less than a lifetime of vital health, optimal weight, and mental acuity.
Now I’d like to hear from you …
Have you struggled with breast cancer and if so, what has worked and what hasn’t?
Do you have any additional recommendations that might benefit others who are struggling with breast cancer?
Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
To your good health,
Elizabeth Boham MD, RD
Dear Dr Boham
It was great reading your article showing us that we can take charge of our health by following your simple steps. We have trained our bodies to crave for the taste of the wrong foods hence obesity, diabetes and all other kinds of health issues.
It takes a strong mind to change our eating habits and I have decided to do it by remembering how I feel when I eat all the wrong foods together, especially the feeling of lethargy, the aches in my legs the pain of gout and basically general malaise. I feel unhealthy, I have less energy and I just want to sit around.
I mentioned to my husband just the other day, in order to help me eat more healthily, when I choose my food I must think of what I can eat to make my body healthy and not choose the food that I crave for the taste…. its not about craving for the taste of unhealthy foods but craving to bring our bodies to a healthy state.
If we look at our bodies on a cellular level and realise the stress we are putting our bodies into on this level we will never eat the wrong foods ever again. That exactly what I did !!!!
Thank you for giving us the simple answers to a healthy lifestyle especially as we get older.
regards
Paulene
I agree with your article with the exception of eating soy. Most soy is genetically modified and is processed with may chemicals. The only soy i understand to be beneficial is fermented soy like miso.
Thank you for this concise and well-thought-out article. I am a recent survivor of HER2-positive breast cancer. My life today is quite different than it was at the time of my diagnosis–I exercise regularly, eat a mostly whole-foods diet (hey, we can’t be perfect all the time), eat less meat so I can afford organic chicken and grass-fed beef, try to juice once a day, and most of all, watch my sugar intake. I’m down about 25 pounds from when I was diagnosed as well. Here’s my question. Almost all of the articles I see about breast cancer talk about excess estrogen, but my cancer was not estrogen positive. Does this still apply to my type of breast cancer?
I rarely see any information that directly addresses HER2-positive breast cancer. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you, Alison, for your message and your interest in Dr. Hyman’s work. Your question and constellation of symptoms represents a complex medical condition. Questions regarding conditions like these cannot be answered in a responsible manner via the Internet.
If you would like information on becoming a patient at The UltraWellness Center please see “How to Become a Patient” at http://www.ultrawellnesscenter.com. That site is designed to give prospective patients a comprehensive source of information about The UltraWellness Center. You may also feel free to call The UltraWellness Center at (413) 637 9991.
Regardless of becoming a patient at The UltraWellness Center, it sounds like you need to consult with a doctor. Please seek medical attention for the issues that you outlined in your message.
Wishing You the Best of Health!
Dear Elizabeth: i have some cases of Breast Cancer close to me
And want to try to help them to succeed, and prevent the healty
Ones as well.
Your article is eye oppening and I want to share somethings that
I have research, one. Is called. “Poors man Cancer cure”
Since C. Is hungry for SUGAR, and Eats good cells sugar and
starve them, you can usr SUGAR as DECOY to atract them and,get
Rid of IT.
You buy Aluminum Free Baking Soda and put 2 measures of it in
a Glass container and mix One measure of Black Strap Molasses.
It will produce a reaction of boling and you save it in a refrigerator. And
take a tee spoonn 3 Times per Dayand it may help you whit no side effects.
Why SUGAR?…………. Simple!!!!!, sugar atract CANCER cells like honey
to flies!!! And Zap, Gets the C. In a short time.
I’m shure you know this but If somebody can benefit from it GOOD,
Another cure is Sparragus Fresh better but can also do it blend them and
Take a spoon full in drinking water.
There is an Institute of Rain Forest where you can cure with herbs from
the Amazon……….. The founder succeed a ,,,, go HOME to die , we cant
do no more for you, Doctors tell her , with Lukemia and 45 Years she is
still alive.
I saw a recent case of treminal case that when she started to take the
Cure. Gravilia. It was to late to. Obercome the damage of CHEMO,,,,,,
But the Doctors where astonished to see the numbers count from
197,000 one starting week, To 89,000 the second week ,,, ado
Third week down to 88,000 , unfortunatly she started too late and
Died, doctors asked her whatever she was doing Keep doing because
they could not beleive what was happening.
May God Bless you ,
And keep the good work,
Guillermo Pliego
Hi Dr. Boham,
I would like to know your thoughts on a couple of books that my partner and I are reading regarding cancer prevention. The first is The China Study that advocates a whole plant based diet (vegan), the other is Suzanne Somers new book on cancer that talks a lot about bio-identicals, hormone balancing, and interviews doctors that are treating cancer without using Chemotherapy or Radiation therapies. What are your thoughts on soy as well. I keep hearing conflicting opinions about consuming soy. My feeling is that the food that we eat must be organic as much as possible and not processed. So much of the food that is sold out there today is not really food, even though it looks like meat or a vegetable, does not mean that it acts like it, if it is GMO, or filled with pesticides and hormones. Eat foods in moderation, and every so often, if you feel that need to indulge, do it, since food represents more that just fuel at times. But on an every day basis, eat whole plant based foods as often as possible.
Thanks for your insight and your thoughts.
Holly Ladd
Just curious where breastfeeding comes in on the issue. I’ve heard that it helps prevent breast cancer. Is this true?
Thanks
Ginger
Also, if one is to consume soy product shouldn’t they be NON-GMO?
Thank you. I changed my diet on Feb.4th this year. The specter of diabetes loomed because my most consistent food group in a day was dessert. I had just crossed the BMI line from high-healthy to fat.
For 3 months I have been excellent and lost 20 pounds and only eaten sugar at my monthly book club meeting or a celebration (and not necessarily even then.) I added 100 sit-ups/day to my life but did little else different in terms of exercise (I walk briskly a minimum of 1.5 hours per week – usually more – and take a hip-hop dance class for 45 minutes each week. I garden and walk the dog, walk to the store, etc. I estimate a minimum of 3 hours of exercise with at least a slightly elevated heart rate.)
Now, into the 4th month with my clothes fitting better and my weight in the healthy range but still higher than optimal I am finding it difficult to stay focussed. I can feel my brain bargaining for a little “treat” or maybe a binge on fat and salt.
That I can focus on breast health (I am post-menopausal) as a motivator now that the panic over the excessive BMI has been addressed should help to remotivate me for the last 10 pounds. (The Bollywood dance class should help and the heavy digging in the garden at this time of year is definitely a plus!)
Hi! I was diagnosed with breast cancer 8 months ago and got very interested in your comments because I too was already eating healthy and exercising before the diagnosis. I’ve been trying to figure out what was wrong in the picture and the only thing that comes up is my digestive health since I have a spastic colon and am always bloated no matter what I eat!! I’m sure there is a connection, it;s just hard to know what to do!!
I am a 21 year survivor of breast cancer. I had surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. I figure that took about a year out of my life and made a lot of changes in my perspective. I believe that hormone replacement therapy was the cause of my breast cancer. I am so thankful to have survived with no metastises. I look forward to the day that thermography replaces mammograms. I am concerned about the amount of total radiation I am having. Congratulations on your combination of MD and RD!
I am surprised you are recommending soy and tofu which are high in oestrogen also msg
love and light colette
I currently have breast cancer. Most of the 10 tips I already do and have done so for several years. However the one thing I have struggled with is my weight, Even working with a trainer several times a week for a year has not helped me lose weight.
I have been complaining for at least 5years or more that something is not right with my body. Especially with the amount of physical work I do. Although I agree with your tips there has to be more. I am healthy per say. I feel fine I just have this mass that needs to be removed. A surprise to all.
I agree with all of the above suggestions but am wondering about number eight and the plastic bottle thing, Everything is in plastic these days, and water from the tap is very toxic, whats a girl to do ? I have heard that home filters do not have very good filters on them, certainly not good enough to filter city water…….
any sugesstions ?
Hi. Thank you for writing a great summary on how to minimize your risk – very well done. My sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer and has started chemotherapy. Any thoughts on probiotics during treatment?
Also: What are your thoughts on obtaining a “baseline” MRI if you are at a higher risk for breast cancer?
Thank again,
Kathy Kiss
Thank you, Kathy, for your message and your interest in Dr. Hyman’s work. Your question and constellation of symptoms represents a complex medical condition. Questions regarding conditions like these cannot be answered in a responsible manner via the Internet.
If you would like information on becoming a patient at The UltraWellness Center please see “How to Become a Patient” at http://www.ultrawellnesscenter.com. That site is designed to give prospective patients a comprehensive source of information about The UltraWellness Center. You may also feel free to call The UltraWellness Center at (413) 637 9991.
Regardless of becoming a patient at The UltraWellness Center, it sounds like you need to consult with a doctor. Please seek medical attention for the issues that you outlined in your message.
Wishing You the Best of Health!
I see a BHRT to keep my body balanced, as well as employing diet and exercise strategies. Through my BHRT, I learned my thyroid, progesterone, and Natural Killer cells were low. I also learned that my body doesn’t metabolize estrogen properly either. All of these are factors that encourage breast cancer. Western medicine never investigated these areas and even told me my thyroid was fine.
Dr. Boham,
I was diagnosed with Her2 Nu breast cancer a year ago, and will finish my treatments at Sloan-Kettering at the end of January. I am 68, and when I was 49, I had a complete hysterectomy. It was my decision not to take estrogen replacement.
After reading your informative blog, I am confused about estrogen and its relationship to breat cancer in my particular circumstance since I do not have estrogen receptors. Since I was diagnosed later on in life, when I have questions about reoccurence, it appears that the answer is that I shoudn’t worry because I was postmenapausal when diagnosed. If you could enlighten me about the questions I have I would be most grateful. Also, when I was first diagnosed, I received many scans. It was determined that I had a cyst on my pancreas. I then had an endoscopic ultasound. The cyst’s location made it impossible for diagnosis.
It was also discovered that I had a cyst on each bile duct. Do you have any recommendations for me. I have been told that we all have cysts in our body and that further scans might reveal more and I shouldn’t worry.
Thank you caring and sharing your blog. I do hope I hear from you.
Claire Sellitti