Samaya Jones: Breast cancer month a time to think diet

October is National Breast Cancer Month. I like to say breast health, a statement that accentuates prevention rather than disease treatment - same way I feel about the health care system.

We’re focusing on the wrong things, thinking that an omnipotent medical system can fix a lifetime of poor habits, spending untold amounts of money on prescription drugs, surgeries and procedures that may or may not work.

There are things we can do to increase our overall health, especially the immune system, which attacks irregular cell growth (cancer) in the body. Sometimes the disease has gone too far to be remedied by ourselves, or even by the medical community. but here are some ideas about prevention.

One oncology professor at Georgetown University says that a third of the nearly 200,000 new breast cancer cases every year in the U.S. could be prevented by dietary changes.

Being overweight increases the risk because fat tissue makes estrogen, which fuels many breast tumors.

As all you women know, self breast exams are the best way to catch unusual changes. Mammograms are highly recommended, but may not be as accurate or predictive as we used to think.

There are other procedures (which do not involve exposure to X-rays) such as ultrasound and thermography. The latter is a comparative procedure (a baseline is established and then periodic updates are compared to the first one to identify changes). It measures heat.

Cancer cells divide quickly and are more active than normal cells. This activity exudes heat to the skin surface, where it is read by the thermography cameras. The pictures look like weather maps, with green and red areas mapped across the chest.

In terms of food and supplements, one of the best things one can do is to take a multiple antioxidant. Antioxidants protect us from free radicals, molecules that destroy healthy cells and which are being found to be causal factors in every known disease.

The best formula I have found includes Vitamins B, C, and E, Selenium, CoQ10, Lipoic acid and Gingko biloba. See why I use a multi?

It is made by Super Nutrition and is closest to the recommendations of the U.C. Berkeley prof who did some of the first research (and wrote a book) about antioxidants.

There has been a lot of buzz about Vitamin D lately, and one of the reasons is that it seems to keep cancer cells from multiplying. It makes a protein that blocks malignant cell growth.

The recommendation is at least 1,000 IU per day.

The food recommendations are the usual: reduce fat and caffeine, eat more fiber from whole foods —grains, produce, nuts (walnuts in particular, but watch it because they are high in fat), legumes, and omega-3-rich cold-water fish, like salmon.

Yes, we have to worry about mercury, but most experts feel that the benefits outweigh the risks. Recent findings are that fiber helps reduce lower estrogen levels in the blood, and increase excretion of estrogen.

Whether soy foods are good or not seems to be at issue in the health community. While they are estrogenic, in cultures where they are consumed in large quantities (the Far East), breast cancer incidence is less than in the West.

Maybe it has to do with our genetic heritage. For instance, cultures in parts of the world where cow’s milk is not indigenous tend to have lactose intolerance, while those in places like Europe do not exhibit that weakness (lack of the enzyme lactase) as much.

Finally, and sadly for wine fans like myself, consumption of alcohol increases risk significantly.

Apparently, just one drink a day raises that risk by 5 percent, and it goes up with consumption. Researchers are not sure why, but it may be that alcohol interferes with estrogen metabolism.

Also, alcohol causes Vitamin B to be lost, and that vitamin, as stated above, plays a key role in guarding against DNA damage that can lead to cancer. One suggestion if you drink is to supplement with 400 mcg of folic acid, and eat more foods that contain it, such as nuts, legumes, whole grains, spinach, brussels sprouts, bananas and oranges. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Samaya Jones is a Holistic Nutritional Consultant and Natural Foods Personal Chef, who cooks for you and your guests in your home. She writes for health websites, newspapers, and teaches wine education classes. She can be reached at ncsamayaj@gmail.com.