Nutrition and Breast Cancer: Why eating healthy can help reduce the risk

By Setareh Vahdat

The rate of cancer is increasing every day, and breast cancer can be prevented by yearly checkups. The sharp rise in cancer can be linked to the modern way of life. It seems we are always short on time and with no time to prepare a decent meal. Our body functions on proper nutrition and very often, we take our health for granted. If you take note of the figures below from the American Cancer Institute, you might want to pay closer attention to your health, especially since this month is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The westernized eating patterns and eating habits are a major contributor to this disease.  High consumptions of saturated fat, cholesterol, refined carbohydrate, sugar, salt, and highly processed foods play a major role. Other major factors include the use of fast foods, canned and
bottled foods, along with genetically modified foods.

Nutritionist Setareh Vahdat

So we need to give our body nutritious food to have healthy cells, and to be able to live a life with joy away from illnesses. The body is naturally able to handle a certain amount of toxins either from food or the environment. It’s essential to be in touch with what is happening inside or outside of your body and not to ignore any of these signs.

It is crucial to get rid of any build-up through urination, bowel movement, sweating, and activity. If we ignore the facts or try to control the symptoms by medications and don’t make any changes in our eating habits, the disease will keep growing.

This build up of cancer can occur in different forms such as urinary disorders, cysts, stones, and excessive discharges. As excess toxins from food and the environment keeps on gathering inside, it will be slowly stored inside a sac that we know today, as tumors. As these sacs maximize their capacity, they will find a new area to build up another sac (spreading).

One aspect of these sacs is that they keep these toxins contained, avoiding the toxins to enter the blood in a faster way, causing death sooner. So that’s the reason it is so important to treat illness at its early stages and allow the body to regain its balance.

If we pay attention to the body’s natural being we would have less challenges regarding health and can live a more joyful life.

Keeping all this in mind, we can see there is a link between our ways of eating and all kinds of cancer.

But some foods can make your body healthier, improve your immune system, and keep your risk for breast cancer at a minimum. Even though there’s no food or diet to cure cancer, some food may help control treatment side effects or help your body get well after treatment. Some food choices may help cancer treatment work well or may help keep you healthy. Others can be dangerous, interfering with treatment and recovery. If you need help all you have to do is
ask for it says Cancer Survivor Tom Wilson at a recent Relay for Life Cancer event in Hollywood.,


The FDA is now recommending consuming at least five servings of high fiber foods such as fruits and vegetables to minimize the risk of getting the cancer.
Research reveals that women who control their intake of sweets and sugar, dairy products, saturated fatty foods like pizza, hamburgers and more were able to improve their condition. Cutting back on bleached white flour products such as white bread, crackers, cakes, and cookies also helps.

Limiting your fat intake to a small amount of fat and eating healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids is smart, too. Avoid trans fats, red meats, and charred or smoked foods.

Cancer Survivor Barbara Harris Curry says, whatever you do don't give up:


Making sure that a daily diet full of high nutrients foods such as beans, brown rice, and mixture of different vegetables may help the body to gain its balance back. Nuts, and antioxidant fruits are also excellent.

We don’t hear much about a vegetable that I consider it to be the “jewel” of the vegetable family, and that it is “kale”. When you look at its nutritional value one cup of kale has such high nutrients and it helps in making the condition better. Eating sweet vegetables will curve the cravings for sweets and sugar. Cabbage and carrots are just some high power super foods.

This might surprise you, but if you want a fruit that packs a punch in flavor and nutrients buys some strawberries.  They have about 1,000 nutrients. This can never be put into a bottle, it exists only in nature. A recent research was done on onions and mushrooms, too, showing that the enzymes in these valuable vegetables were anti-cancer.

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) is the cancer charity that fosters research on diet and cancer prevention and educates the public about the results. It will be conducting its annual research conference on November 3-4 2011 in Washington, DC. on food, nutrition, physical activity and cancer. I’m looking forward to all the new food related research that will be discussed.

Sources of nutrition and breast cancer include Harvard School of Public Health http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/alcohol-full-story/index.html#alcohol-and-breast-cancer

The Cancer Project, diet and cancer research:  Meat consumption and Cancer Risk http://www.cancerproject.org/diet_cancer/facts/meat.php

National Cancer Institute, Coenzyme Q10 and cell growth
United States Department of Agriculture, Diet and Disease:

There are other high nutrient foods readily available in the super markets that most of us can’t even imagine how powerful they may be. The grocery store is your pharmacy.