The prevention of breast cancer, like in all cancers starts with a healthy diet. There are not super foods that you could eat and get healthy, it is the combination of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with whole grain bread or pasta. However, there are functional foods that will prevent cancer if consumed on a regular basis like everyday. Two of these functional foods are mushrooms and green tea.

Cancer research

In the International Journal of Cancer, a team of cancer researchers from the University of Western Australia in Perth showed that their consumption can lower the risk of breast cancer about 80-90% compared to the women who do not consumed either. Interestingly, these two foods are a common part of the traditional Chinese diet where breast cancer is 5 times less frequent than Western countries. See more details about this research published by Reuters.

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Rule #3 As For Supplement, Take vitamin D and forget the rest

There is an easy way to acquire vitamin D: just expose yourself to sun for 10 minutes/day and your body will produce naturally the right amount of vitamin D you need. To have the maximum effect expose your whole body unprotected (you can keep your bathing suit though). Unfortunately with all the ads on skin cancer, the general population are starting to miss off that essential vitamin.

Supplements are for deficiency

The doctor prescribed your vitamin or essential elements for your deficiency should be the major case to take supplement. The only essential element missing in Western diet is vitamin D. If you follow the American Dietary Guidelines, you should be fine in 99.99% of the cases. A 1000 UI a day should be plenty.
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Soy comes in many shapes and many formats. From soymilk to tofu, passing as meat substitute to frozen treats, the promotion of a healthy diet help man to protect him against prostate cancer.

The neutral tasting functional food for real men

What is great with soy is that it will take the taste of whatever you mix or cook it with. The possibilities are endless. It can be in sauces, dips, smoothies, soups, stuffings, you name it. It can always be used as a side dish or mixed in your burger. more…

Rule #2

The next recommendation from the World Cancer Research Fund is to avoid soft drink.

The Facts

A small can of Coke, Pepsi or pop can has the equivalent of 9 tsp of sugar. We have about 6L of blood in our body. In all that blood we need only about a teaspoon of sugar in healthy people. So make the maths, you get in 5 minutes, 9 times the amount your blood stream can take. And the worst part is your more thirsty after that than before you drank the soft drink because it actually steals the water from you. Furthermore, all this sugar sends a message to your brain and brain tells you to turn it into fat. So diet soft drinks even if they do not have actual sugar send the same message and your body will turn sugar into fat with other food sources never the less.

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I will comment on each of the 9 recommendations given by World Cancer Fund foundation which up came with this conclusion by the world experts on the manner.

Rule #1: 30 minutes of exercise everyday

It’s doesn’t look much, but research start to pick up on the subject. A cancer research made at University of Kentucky published in the Prostate journal done on an animal model which is prone to develop prostate cancer after some time, showed that 3 miles run every day for human, decrease the apparition of the disease. Furthermore, Cancer institutes like the Dana-Fraber are also interested in the beneficial effect of physical exercises. more…

From the data of 20 studies, men who ate a diet rich in tomato had a 20 % reduced risk of prostate cancer. Somehow, the process of heating and cooking this fruit, yes by definition tomato is a fruit and not vegetable, increase the effectiveness of its phytochemicals. Raw tomatoes are only half effective than the cooked ones.

How it works?

Cancer research has shown that tomatoes reduced inflammation which is one of the 4 basic processes that prostate cancer use to take control of you. Sure tomatoes alone can’t be a cure, but by addition of other functional foods you increase your chance by the mouthful.

Can a supplement of lycopene work?

Nope. A phase II study on advanced prostate cancer concluded no benefit. The results were published in the Journal of Urology by a team from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. I am not surprised from the results since lycopene is just one of the phytochemicals of the tomato. A lot of supplements fail to provide the same benefit of the functional food from which it has been extracted. Anyway, supplements are good only if you miss a nutrient. And the only nutrient we miss is vitamin D, but that’s another story.

Bottom line

Eat tomato, cook them and use a little extra virgin olive oil. You can go hardcore and take 2 spoonfuls of tomato paste everyday like a medicine but I prefer to make a salsa with them.

Reference

Lycopene for advanced hormone refractory prostate cancer: a prospective, open phase II pilot study.Schwenke C, Ubrig B, Thürmann P, Eggersmann C, Roth S. J Urol. 2009 Mar;181(3):1098-103.

A recent article was published on the top cancer fighting foods which give additional munitions in the war against cancer. By using functional foods everyday in an appreciated amount, you increase your chance to avoid cancer. Not only the method seems effective but also cheaper and a lot less painful then chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. Sure, functional foods do not replace modern medicine but a healthy diet now can save you from an unpleasant diagnosis later at an oncologist near you .
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Some doctors are starting to get back to the basics of medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, wrote two thousand and five hundred years ago to “Let your food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food”.  Surely, it’s not about throwing away the last century of medical advance, but using a balance with the pills the modern medicine brought and the chicken soup of granny. Again it’s not a debate on ethics, but the use of common sense with all the scientific knowledge available today.

After all, food is the one medicine that we seemingly willing to swallow at least three times a day. Why not make it count, and add up the tasty dishes made with inexpensive ingredients from the local market to help upgrade our general conditions.
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