Breast Cancer Essay Research Paper Diet and

Breast Cancer Essay, Research Paper

Diet and Breast Cancer Breast cancer is an unforgivable disease. It attacks a highly visible and sensitive organ. An organ that is closely associated with femininity and nurturing. When this disease strikes a breast, the risk is very great that it will strike again, either in the same breast, or at other sites such as bones or lungs. Once the disease has recurred, the only available treatments are drugs and radiation. An estimated 207,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year (Lohr 42). By the year 2000, it is expected that there will be 1.5 million new cases of breast cancer in America, and the National Cancer Institute now estimates that 1 out of 8 women will develop breast cancer over her lifetime (Casten 68). These finding have only added to women’s anxieties concerning breast cancer. Unfortunately, most of the known risk factors for breast cancer are things women can do little or nothing about: being female, advancing age, strong family history of breast cancer, and problem reproductive history. Fortunately, however, current research is showing that outside environment and lifestyles can be key in determining cancer, too. According to many experts, diet holds the secret to preventing this disease that women fear most. In the United States, breast cancer rates are 4 to 7 times higher than in Asia (93). But when Asian women move to the US, their breast cancer risk doubles in 10 years, and reaches our national rates in several generations, says nutritional epidemiologist Regina Ziegler, Ph.D., MPH, of the National Cancer Institute (176). Why. “Their diets and other lifestyle factors,” Dr. Ziegler says, “They start eating more calories, fat and meat, and stop eating many fruits, vegetables, and grains that they did in Asia.” (177). According to Dr. Ziegler, genetics and family history may explain only a small fraction of breast cancer. The majority of cases are due to something in our daily environment-like diet. In this paper I would like to focus on how a high fat diet is suspected to contribute greatly to this disfiguring disease. I will name 2 of the major contributing factors in predicating breast cancer, and will then suggest a few ways to reduce one’s chances of getting breast cancer. Finally, I will briefly cover some recent research done in this area. For breast cancer, the two major determents for American women appear to be obesity and diet. Some experts rate the risk for an obese woman at around twice that of a normal woman, especially after menopause. Obesity is generally defined as being 20 percent or more above desirable body weight (Byrne 28). Since estrogen is produced in fat cells, obese women have higher circulating levels of estrogen. The most presumable culprit in the breast cancer mystery would seem to be diet. The possibility that a high-calorie diet, with a particularly high consumption of fat, is connected to breast cancer and has been supported by the kinds of studies that I will be discussing. It has been supported by lab experiments with animals and epidemiological studies that compare large populations of people. A special communication from the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1989 said, “Data from animal experiments and human correlation studies strongly support the dietary fat-breast cancer hypothesis. Animals fed a higher-fat, higher-calorie diet have a substantially higher incidence of mammary tumors than animals fed a lower-fat and calorie-restricted diet” (Chan 65). The link between a high fat diet and breast cancer is still controversial, but many international population studies have found a strong association between high fat consumption and incidence of breast cancer. 3 out of 5 studies comparing breast cancer risk and fat intake have found a modest relationship between the two (68). A study done in 1995 suggested that a high fat diet might affect growth of an existing breast cancer tumor also (Uzzle 29). Countless studies, including the one conducted at Tufts University School of Medicine and the New England Medical Center in Boston, support this conclusion. American’s have far higher rates of breast cancer than women do in most other nations in the world. Based on available evidence, the differences appear to be caused by the two factors that I have mentioned. By changing diet, women can significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer. Many experts believe that you can reduce your risk of this disease by as much as 50 percent by following a healthy diet plan (Ryker 69). Here are some key points to remember. The first thing that you need to do is cut your calorie intake. Study after study confirms that the more overweight the woman, the higher her risk is. According to a brand new study of Asian-American women from Dr. Ziegler, women who gained 11 pounds within the previous 10 years had twice the risk of developing breast cancer compared with the women who had now weight change (76). In the same new study, losing weight in the previous decade was associated with a 30 percent decrease in the risk of developing breast cancer (77).

The second thing that you need to do is eat more fruits and vegetables. A goal of 5 fruits and vegetables a day is a good start. Many studies show that women who eat lots of fruits and vegetables are less likely to get breast cancer. In one recent study, women in New York State who ate more than 5 servings of vegetables a day had half of the risk