Good Choices: How Healthy Living Will Reduce Your Risk of Developing Breast Cancer

If you eat smart, watch those pounds, reduce stress and think positively, you’ll be healthier and feel better. But can these same lifestyle choices help you avoid sickness and disease? Doctors and researchers say yes — especially when it comes to breast cancer. Here’s what you need to know:

Overweight
Being overweight can increase your risk of getting breast cancer. The connection between obesity and breast cancer is one more reason for women to work with their doctors to lose weight. Researchers suspect that the stresses on an obese body can throw a woman’s healthy hormonal balances out of sync, leading to an increased risk of breast cancer. The bottom line: Adopt a healthy lifestyle. Eat right and exercise, and you can help reduce the risk of breast cancer.

A Healthy Diet
Even though cancer research involving the diet is a work in progress, there are things you can do to lower your risk. Although there’s no magic bullet food or supplement that’s proven to prevent cancer, there are some guidelines that you may want to follow. For instance, most experts suggest you eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, choose low fat foods and limit red meat, especially fatty cuts. Another tip: Include a variety of foods while keeping an eye on calories, instead of focusing on just one food or food group.

Alcohol
Women who consume more than one serving of beer, wine or liquor a day have been found to have higher incidences of breast cancer. Too much alcohol is a clear risk factor in this disease. Many researchers believe that excess alcohol interacts with the natural hormone balance in a woman’s body, which in turn can increase the cancer risk. Here’s what the American Cancer Society suggests: Limit yourself to one drink a day or less. One drink is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer (the serving size of the average can or bottle), five ounces of wine, or one and one-half ounces — about what you would put into a mixed drink — of 80-proof spirits.

Smoking
While you’re cutting back on alcohol, it’s even more important to cut out cigarettes. Just as with any number of other serious health conditions, there’s an undeniable link between tobacco usage and an increased risk of breast cancer. There are new treatments to help you quit smoking; check with your doctor.

Exercise
An active lifestyle can reduce the risk of breast cancer by up to 25 percent. Exercise boosts your immune system, which protects you from a long list of physical problems — cancer among them. Exercise also may help lower the risk of breast cancer by increasing lean muscle mass — which in turn reduces the proportion of body fat, where estrogen is stored.

Reduce Your Risk With an Active Lifestyle

So what can you do to get Active?
As with any lifestyle change, it’s best to start small. Even if your idea of exercise
is walking across the room to get the remote control, you can make minor changes that will gradually add up to big results. For example: Grab a friend and take a brisk walk around the block every day. After a couple of weeks, walk twice as far — and so on. (Of course, you’ll want to discuss any potential exercise routine with your doctor before you start.)

Choose Health
There was a time in America when people didn’t know what made them sick or why some people were in better health. But, over the past 30 to 40 years, there’s been a new understanding and gathering of scientific information that suggests the way we live largely determines the quality of our living. The jury is always out; as there are always new discoveries and beliefs coming out every day. Yet, one belief loudly rings true — the choices you make today about your diet, weight and exercise can have powerful and everlasting benefits for your lifelong health. Wise choices today are good investments that promise to pay healthy dividends in the future.

Celebrate Women, which is part of the Women’s Health Program at the University of Connecticut Health Center, is a free membership program aimed at improving the health of women of all ages. Any woman can join, at no cost or annual fee, and tap into a wealth of vital health information from UConn Health Center experts. In all, the goal of Celebrate Women is to improve the health of women across their lifespan by providing comprehensive, high quality and accessible health care and related services, with a strong commitment to education and research. As a member, you will receive many benefits including:

• A quarterly newsletter listing upcoming events; a list of ongoing programs and support groups for women; articles from Health Center experts who specialize in women’s health; and a list of new benefits
• A monthly e-mail newsletter
• Discounted or free admission to all Celebrate Women events, health screenings and informative health seminars
• Early “members only” invitation to the Celebrate Women Annual Conference
• Opportunities to network and gather with women who share an interest in good health and a passion for life
• Discounts and special offers from local merchants
• The latest information on research in women’s health being conducted at UConn Health Center

For more information about this remarkable program and to learn how to become a member of Celebrate Women, go to www.celebrate.uchc.edu, call 860-679-8899 or phone toll free at 866-4-FEMALE.

Article was reviewed for accuracy by experts with the Women’s Cancer Prevention Program at the University of Connecticut Health Center.

Your Cancer-Fighting Meal Plan
Healthy eating does more than make you feel good, it offers a slew of benefits —cancer protection being one. A cancer-fighting diet isn’t any different than a diet for protection against other diseases. That’s a great thing! It makes meal planning for overall health protection that much easier to accomplish.

Experts Suggest: Eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Aim for:

A Varied, Balanced Eating Plan
For the body to function optimally, it needs water, carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, minerals and non-nutrient items like fiber, phytochemicals (health-promoting plant compounds) and antioxidants. To obtain all of these, eating a variety of foods is a must. So instead of eating the same food day after day, mix it up — this way you won’t be missing out!

High Fiber Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy. Choose whole grains and fiber-rich vegetables and fruits as your primary source of carbohydrates. Their fiber, vitamins, minerals, fats, antioxidants and phytochemicals provide an added bonus for health.

Healthy Fats
The type of fats that our food consists of is extremely important for health. Focus on fats from canola and olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds and fish. These types of fats are considered unsaturated and appear to have much more of a benefit for good health than fats like butter, lard, processed meats and trans fats.

Lean Protein
Since the majority of not-so-healthy fats come from protein-rich foods like meat and cheese, focus primarily on lean sources of protein. This would comprise of lean cuts of beef and pork, white turkey and chicken meat without the skin, fish that is not deep fried, low fat milk and dairy products, soy, legumes (beans), nuts and seeds.

Colors of the Rainbow
The colors in vegetables and fruits are determined by the phytochemicals and antioxidants they contain. Each color provides different phytochemicals and antioxidants. When you’re shopping for produce, choose a vegetable and fruit that falls within each color of the rainbow.