As FoodConsumer.org recently announced, we should consider some natural remedies for breast cancer. October is, after all, “Breast Cancer Awareness” month.
While I’m not sure if their list is actually of remedies, it would appear to be a great list of preventative measures that should help reduce the risk of breast cancer.
Some excerpts from their list include:
Eating Broccoli and other Brasica family vegetables…
Eating legumes such as soy, navy, kidney, pinto, mung and others…
Flax and Flax Sprouts are the richest of all plant sources of lignans and Omega-3 fatty acids…
Exercise seems to decrease the chance of breast cancer by some 50%.
In addition to the article, you may want to check out other food related news at the Food Consumer website.
If you want to learn about flax without having to read a great deal, I’d recommend the following video produced by Nutition by Natalie. In the video, she offers twelve reasons to eat flax. I’ve highlighted 5 of her reasons below and hope that you check out her video for the rest.
Helps lowers your cholesterol.
Helps reduce risk of certain cancers.
It’s a great source of soluble and insoluble fiber (4 grams of fiber per 2 tablespoons of flax)
Great ratio of omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids (2500 milligrams of Omega-3 fatty acids to 650 milligrams of Omega-6).
Flax has fewer calories than other foods high in omega-3s (only 70 calories in 2 tablespoons flax)
It’s a great video, but I’d disagree with her recommendation to buy ground flax seed. Buying whole seeds and grinding them yourself, means you are getting fresher flax.
You can reduce your risk of cancer by reevaluating what you eat. That, according to an article in the Montreal Gazette, is the central theme in the best-selling book Foods that Fight Cancer.
Written by biochemist Richard Beliveau with fellow scientist Denis Gingras, the book makes the case that more fruits and vegetables in your diet, especially those with antioxidants, can help reduce the occurrence of cancer.
“People think cancer is all due to heredity, stress and pollution. Those are factors, but not as significant as smoking, diet and obesity, along with a lack of exercise,” he says. “Not smoking, eating well and maintaining a reasonable body weight is 65 per cent of the battle. If you don’t drink much, you don’t have a risky sex life and you exercise, you bring that to 85 per cent.”
The article also offers the following summary from the book:
Reduce Trans fatty acids of prepared foods. Why? They double the risk of breast cancer.
Salt, sugar, red meat, processed and estrogen supplements are believed to increase the risk as well.
The healthy foods include: anthocyanins in wild blueberries, isoflavones in soybeans, curcuminoids in turmeric, lignans in flax, polyphenols in rich dark chocolate, and sulforaphane in cabbage. (The only difficult one for me on the list is cabbage.)
Up the amount of Vitamin D to 1,000 mg a day. It ”increases protection against cancer by 50 per cent.”
A study summarized on Medical News Today, indicates that more and more individuals are making flax a part of their diet:
Over two-thirds of consumers report they are aware of Omega-3 fatty acids, and over a third routinely consume products with Omega-3. The net result is an average annual increase in the Omega-3 product market of over 30 percent since 2000.
