It seems that everywhere I turn I'm reminded of opportunities to support a sustainable environment. "Going green" is all the rage now and I have found myself purchasing common household items or using services that capitalize on our planet's natural resources and reduce potential harm to the environment. I see my small effort as an investment in our children's future. After all if we don't take care of our Earth where else are we going to live? I guess the same principle applies to our bodies.

One of ways we can sustain good health is to practice good nutritional habits. And, in the spirit of "going green" I would like to encourage you to choose foods that are seasonal and regional to where you live. Buying local means you are reducing the transportation cost (and environmental impact of that transportation), and the electricity typically needed to manufacture and/or package the product. Organic food is grown or produced without the use of pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics or growth hormones in an effort to both help people eat more healthfully and minimize the negative impact of conventional agriculture and food production on the environment. However, organic food is typically more costly - often much more costly - than non-organic food, so it's important to prioritize your grocery list and choose those food items that offer your family maximum health protection. For example, I insist on purchasing non-genetically modified soy milk and hormone-free dairy products whenever possible. I also look for nonperishable organic items on sale such as cans of soup, vegetables, and grain products that I can store for longer periods of time.

Certainly, optimal health comes from a combination of putting the right things into our body and limiting the wrong things that come from our man-made environment. Plasticizers, herbicides, PCBs, and other industrial toxins clutter our water and food supply. When we consume these foods we internalize these toxins, bathing our cells in disease-promoting substances. If you believe that our cells are a microcosm of everything we feel, think and eat, then you understand the importance of surrounding our cells with health-promoting nutrients. In keeping with the green theme, I thought I'd share information about some of the most powerful, cancer fighting green foods that every cell in our bodies need and every woman concerned about breast cancer should be consuming:

Cabbage

Cabbage contains glucosinolates and myrosinase enzymes which have powerful anti-cancer actions in the body. According to results of a 2005 study at the University of New Mexico, women who consumed four or more servings per week of raw or lightly cooked cabbage--such as coleslaw or steamed sauerkraut--were 72% less likely to develop breast cancer as adults. The study included hundreds of Polish women and Polish born to women in the United States who were part of a case-control breast cancer study. The researchers found that raw cabbage offered more protection than cooked cabbage. It turns out that heating the cabbage denatures the enzyme and reduces the absorption of glucosinolates in the body.

Broccoli

Scientists have identified a naturally occurring compound called indole-3-carbinol, found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, which may be very effective in the fight against breast cancer. British researchers revealed that indole-3-carbinols can destroy cancer cells when used in combination with certain chemotherapies. Indoles can also change the potent form of estrogen into a non-toxic form-something every woman with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer should know about. Even a ½ cup of broccoli per day decreased breast cancer risk by 14%.

Green Tea

Published in the Journal of Cancer Biology and Therapy, December 2007, a study found that catechins, the plant chemicals found in green tea, could inhibit the invading capacity of breast cancer cells, and cause cellular death-something called apoptosis. Population studies also suggest that the risk of breast cancer is found to be less in Asian countries that consume green tea. The therapeutic dose of green tea is three to four cups of tea per day; enjoy hot or cold.

Spinach

High intakes of foods rich in vitamin A or carotenes are cancer fighters. In a case-control study conducted in the United States, subjects who had completed food questionnaires indicating a higher consumption of spinach had a reduced risk of breast cancer. Vitamin A from supplements did not offer the same protective effect as food, which solidifies my stance that foods rich in plant chemicals, not preformed vitamins, have the ability to unlock the key to health and disease prevention.

Kale

According to a study published in Cancer Letters, 2002, consumption of kale may reduce the risk of breast cancer by decreasing the formation of nitrosamines. These cancer-causing agents are formed when nitrates (from bacon, ham, sausage, lunch meats, etc.)are ingested and mixed with hydrochloric acid in the stomach which is known to inhibit nitrosamine formation, although kale also contains fiber, folic acid, carotenoids and other plant chemicals known to have anti-cancer activity.

While the focus of this article is on green foods and provides tips on how to protect the environment (both outside the body and within), the message of whole foods nutrition would not be complete without mentioning that it is the entire rainbow of plant chemicals that offers maximum cancer protection-not just one color family. So, while green is good, eating a varied diet, rich in colors and freshness, is best.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kim_Dalzell

If you think that eating broccoli is enough to help you fight breast cancer, you'd better think again.

Lead researcher, Dr. Paul Talalay, of Johns Hopkins University, was the first to isolate a broccoli-related compound called sulforaphane glucosinolate in 1992. His study showed that this broccoli compound had potent activity against breast cancer cells. Later research confirmed his findings, and provided the key mechanism of action behind broccoli: it boosts key enzymes in the body that fight against tumor development.

With all of this research proving broccoli's benefit for breast cancer, why am I suggesting that eating this cruciferous vegetable is not necessarily going to help you?

The answer presents itself when you understand the value of a team. Now, you may already have a healing team-a medical doctor, yoga instructor, nutritionist, spiritual guide and so on-but does your health approach include teaming up what you eat? As it turns out, broccoli alone isn't very effective in fighting cancer! A nutritionist I recently ran into said, "There is no such thing as a super food, only a super diet." I agree.

Based on the philosophy that a varied diet provides the best chances for optimal health, I suggest to all my patients that eating a variety of colorful plants every day will provide them with the most powerful cancer fighting tools. As it turns out, smaller amounts of plant chemicals and nutrients found in a mixed bag of foods work together to provide huge changes at the cellular level. Simply put, you get more nutrition bang for your buck when you combine nutrients that will work together to create something larger than themselves. This is known in professional health circles as nutritional synergy.

Researchers at the University College of Medical Sciences in India have shown to what extent certain combinations of food can act together to protect the body from cancer-causing agents. In a recent study, mice were exposed to carcinogens that provoked breast cancer in 100% of them. The mice were then divided into groups with each group being administered increasing levels of plant compounds. Among the mice that received only one of these food compounds, 50% developed a tumor. Among those who consumed two of these food compounds, only a third developed cancer. If three components were combined, the proportion of tumor-ridden mice went down to one in five and to only one in ten among those that consumed all four substances.
The take home message is simple: If you regularly down orange juice for breakfast and eat lots of broccoli without varying your diet to include all the colorful plants, you are not providing your body with maximum cancer-fighting potential!

Let's take a look at another study. Earlier research revealed that isolate soy isoflavones have tumor-promoting effects in late-stage breast cancer, but in recent lab studies, flaxseed has been shown to weaken this effect. After another lab study analyzing the breakdown products from the lignans in flaxseed in combination with the whole food form of soy, flaxseed researcher Dr. Lillian Thompson, from the University of Toronto, concluded that for postmenopausal women with low estrogen levels, the combination of soy and flaxseed may be more beneficial than soy alone in controlling breast cancer growth. In this case, the two are better than one!

Finally, let's get back to the broccoli issue. Pairing broccoli with tomatoes has been found to fight prostate cancer. Combining these two powerhouse foods, Dr. Erdman and associates, found that prostate tumors grew much less in rats that were fed tomato and broccoli powders than in rats who ate diets containing either just one of those powders or cancer-fighting substances that had been isolated from tomatoes or broccoli. Yes, I know you don't have a prostate....but there is a valuable lesson to be derived from this study: Isolated nutrients aren't nearly as powerful as the whole food! This is why I caution against choosing dietary supplements that contain isolated nutrients like vitamin C or E or extracted plant chemicals, like lycopene or beta carotene and favor whole foods dietary supplements instead. Inside whole foods supplements are the full array of vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals that work hand-in-hand to create powerful healing benefits.For more information on the whole food supplements I recommend, please order my free breast cancer wellness report on dietary supplements to fight breast cancer. And remember, fruits and veggies probably get lonely too. So why not team them up?!


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In 2006, results from the world's largest low fat diet project were published (see reference at end). This was a US government-funded study of 48,835 postmenopausal women in a multicenter prospective, randomized clinical trial known as the "Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial." The study was conducted from 1993 to 2005 at 40 centers around the country. The volunteers were randomly assigned to either a low-fat diet group (19,541 women) or a regular diet group (29,294 women). After about eight years of follow-up, this large and costly study did not find any significant differences in breast cancer incidence between postmenopausal women who were asked to eat a low-fat diet and those who continued to eat their regular diet. On the other hand, the results did suggest that changing to a low-fat diet may reduce the risk of breast cancer for women who had diets very high in fat to begin with.

According to most experts, the following may be reasons why this study showed no significant benefit:

1) Not many women met the 20% fat intake goal. This "low-fat diet" regimen may not have truly been low in fat. Since most women did not meet the fat-reduction goal, this study may have proven only that the approach to the intervention did not work. It did not prove that a truly low-fat diet doesn't help protect you from breast cancer. Getting only 20% of your calories from fat is very difficult to do. This means that, if you eat 2,000 calories per day, only 400 calories could come from fat. So it's not surprising that less than a third of the women met this goal after the first year, and only 14% continued to meet the goal after six years. Because so few women met the requirements of the study, it means that we don't really know how a diet low in fat affects breast cancer risk.

2) Diets were self-reported and infrequent, which may make them unreliable. This study relied on the women's written reports of what they ate, which may not be an accurate reflection of true intake. These reports were done occasionally. No daily food log or journal was done and checked. Most of us aren't proud to admit in an interview or questionnaire that we've broken the rules and haven't stuck to the "prescribed diet." So there may be a tendency to under-report the amount of fat actually eaten.

3) Other changes besides the low-fat diet. The study did not separate out the effects of reducing the amount of fat eaten vs. the effects of increasing fruit and vegetable servings. Women in the low-fat diet group ate almost two more servings per day of fruits and vegetables than women in the regular diet group and about one more serving of grains.

4) Length of follow-up time. While 48,835 women is a lot of people, eight years isn't a lot of follow-up time. Eating a low-fat diet for 15 or 20 years may offer more significant benefits and show a closer relationship between dietary fat and breast cancer risk.

5) Baseline body mass index. In this study, 74% of the women were classified as overweight by body mass index at the beginning of the study. So we don't really know if a low-fat diet would offer benefits to women who are at a normal weight to begin with.

6) All the women were postmenopausal. It may be that dietary fat plays a more important role in the diets of younger, premenopausal women. It makes sense that your diet in the first 50 years of your life might affect your cancer risk in the second half of your life. This study doesn't address that question.

7) The type of fat wasn't specified. There are three basic types of fats: saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated. In this study, women were asked only to reduce fat. They weren't asked to consider the various types of fat or told that reducing saturated fats may offer more health benefits than reducing unsaturated fats.

Saturated fats are only found in foods that come from animals and are the types of fats that raise your blood cholesterol level. Trans fats (also called trans-saturated fats) are man-made fats. (Vegetable oils are modified to form margarine and vegetable shortening, both of which are trans fats.) Trans fats also are added to prepackaged foods. Saturated fats raise your blood's "bad" cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL) level and lower your "good" cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein or HDL) level.

Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats are found in plant foods like vegetables, nuts, and grains, as well as oils made from these nuts and grains (canola, corn, soybean). Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are poly-unsaturated. Besides vegetables, nuts, and grains, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are also found in coldwater fish such as tuna, salmon, and mackerel. Some studies have shown that eating foods that have mono- or poly-unsaturated fats can help reduce your levels of "bad cholesterol." Mono- and polyunsaturated fats may also keep your triglyceride levels low. Triglycerides are a form of fat in your bloodstream.

8) None of the women in either group were asked to change their health-related behaviors, such as exercise, drinking or smoking. These known risk factors for breast cancer were left uncontrolled and may obscure any benefit from eating less fat.

9) This study is about a low fat diet; it is not about going from an overweight/obese state to a normal weight. Eating less fat while staying persistently fat may not help anyone! Since this study cost nearly half a billion dollars, it is unlikely that another lifestyle intervention clinical trial at this large scale would be done again anytime soon, particularly in the current US economy.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mai_Brooks_M.D.