Healthy Eating for Women

What would you think if you looked out your window and saw a traveling “lung cancer detection” trailer? In no time at all, a healthcare worker could screen you for early signs of lung cancer, quite possibly saving your life. Not a terrible idea, you might conclude, but not exactly hitting the mark. After all, we already know that smoking is the single most important risk factor for developing lung cancer. And we know that arming the public with this information has saved countless lives. Wouldn’t our resources be better spent bolstering programs that keep people from smoking, and prevent the disease in the first place? Of course they would. And in the case of lung cancer, we are doing just that.
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The key to living a long, healthy life, and protecting yourself and your family, lies in understanding a few risk factors. A risk factor is anything that increases a person’s chance of getting a disease. It’s clear to most people that a high cholesterol level is a risk factor for heart disease and that prolonged exposure to direct sunlight is a risk factor for skin cancer. Simply having a risk factor for a cancer— or any other disease—doesn’t mean that you will necessarily develop it. Likewise, disease can occur even when no known risk factors can be identified.

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Breast cancer is the second most common cancer found in North American women, excluding nonmelanoma skin cancers. Prominent cancer organizations address risk factors in term of those that are “set” or unchangeable, such as sex and gender, and those that we can alter, such as diet and smoking. But before you become discouraged by what seems like a long list of fixed risk factors, take note that there is often a fine line between set and alterable risk factors.

For instance, your age is beyond your control, but your health and fitness level as you enter your fifties, sixties, or seventies is profoundly affected by lifelong dietary and other habits.

“Set”Risk Factors
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Diet.

The foods you eat throughout life have an important effect on lifetime cancer risk, both because of their ability to adjust your hormone balance and because of their effect on body weight, which is strongly associated with risk for breast cancer, especially after menopause. Cutting fatty foods—meat, dairy, eggs, fried and oily foods—is priority number one when you endeavor to lower your risk for beast cancer. As fat in your diet falls, so will the amount of estrogen in your bloodstream. In turn, this dip in estrogen will stop the overstimulation of cells in your reproductive organs. Furthermore, getting rid of cholesterol reduces yet another fuel for cancercell growth. Avoiding both animal and vegetable fats strengthens immunity to stop the spread of cancer.
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Cancers of the uterus and ovary are similar to breast cancer in that sex hormones, and the foods that elevate them, play a role in their development, and both are rarer among those who follow a low-fat, plant-based diet. Women who avoid overweight also are at lower risk. Estrogen supplements used in hormone replacement therapy can increase uterine cancer unless progesterone is added to the regime.
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