Pink Elephants & Breast Cancer

Have you ever seen so many NFL football players choosing to wear pink? ”A Crucial Catch”, in partnership with the American Cancer Society, is focused on the importance of annual breast screenings, especially for women who are 40 and older. Although, I agree it is important to be sure that women take advantage of breast cancer screening, there is a huge pink elephant in every stadium that we choose to ignore, as we settle into our seats to watch football, and munch on our hotdogs and cheeseburgers.

Most breast cancer is preventable by dietary and lifestyle changes.

Did you know that breast cancer (and prostate cancer) incidence and death rates are more than ten times higher in the United States than in Asia? However, when Asians migrate to the United States, their rates of breast cancer (and prostate cancer) increase to levels of the United States population!

It is also noteworthy that within Asia, regions that are more rural have much lower rates of breast cancer than urban areas (where folks eat like we do in the U.S.). This is true becausepeople in rural Asia eat many more vegetables, fruits and whole grains (sources of fiber, antioxidants and many other nutrients), much less high fat animal based foods (e.g. burgers, steaks,  fried chicken, cheese pizza) and less processed foods… and they are far more physically active than urban Asians and Americans.

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As I often say, “Diseases that most often kill Americans (including breast cancer) usually have much  less to do with genes/family history and more to do with the fact that families tend to eat the same high fat, processed animal based foods and sit on the same couch!”.

So if you really want to dramatically reduce your risk of ever getting breast cancer, eat and live like those people with some of the lowest rates in the world!  After all, detecting breast cancer early is a good thing, but wouldn’t you rather prevent it from happening in the first place???

For more information on preventing breast cancer, please listen to my recent Funerals and Fried Chicken Radio Show on Dietary Prevention of Cancer  and check out the books listed on the Resource Page of the Heal2BFree website, particularly The China Study and The Spectrum.

Let’s begin to eradicate this dreadful (usually preventable) disease from our society, by addressing its true cause…our diet and lifestyle… in essence acknowledging, and finally confronting  the pink elephant responsible for far too much suffering and early death.

In order for you to learn more about preventing breast cancer through healthy lifestyle changes, here is my radio show recording on the subject, which also includes a guest, Dr. Daemon Jones, who is a naturopathic physician.

 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/learnforlife/2012/10/21/funerals-and-fried-chicken-tm

By Dr. Ed James, BDO Healthy Lifestyle Expert

Dr. Ed James draws inspiration from his personal experiences with healthy lifestyle changes, having overcome prediabetes and obesity several years ago. In 2011, he founded Heal2BFree to focus on helping individuals and organizations to develop and implement action plans that help close the health disparities gap between blacks and whites.

Dr. James has given many presentations, including the 2011 National Medical Association Colloquium and regularly contributes preventive health-related articles to some of the nation’s top health publications. He is also the primary author and co-editor of Getting into Medical School – A Planning Guide for Minority Students.

He received his BS in Biology from Bucknell University and earned his MD and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania as a participant in the Penn Med Scholars combined degree program.

For more healthy lifestyle tips and news, visit Dr. Ed at Heal 2B Free. To visit Dr. Ed’s blog on BDO, click here.