Birth Control Pills Now Linked to Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Recent research out of Seattle shows a disturbingly strong link between young women (40 years and younger) who used oral contraceptives and their tendency to develop triple negative breast cancer, a rapidly growing estrogen-negative type of the disease.
Among women (40 years and younger) the relative risk for triple-negative breast cancer associated with oral contraceptive use (of more than one year ) was 4.2. (95%confidence interval, 1.9-9.3)
This study, Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Women Under the Age of 45 Years, involving over 1,000 women, led by Jessica M. Dolle, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and published in the academic journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention in April of last year, did not find a similar link between other kinds of breast cancer and the use of oral contraceptives in this same group of breast cancer patients.
( one page abstract/summary of study)
http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/18/4/1157.abstract
( full study: ten page PDF)
http://www.jillstanek.com/Abortion%20Breast%20Cancer%20Epid%20Bio%20Prev%202009.pdf
Most types of breast cancer seem to be caused by a cocktail of various ingredients that appear to be unique to each person, that mixed together can create a perfect toxic storm.
Triple Negative breast cancer strikes younger women more often than older women, and strikes black women at double the rate of white women. Younger black women are currently the most at- risk population for developing this type of breast cancer.
Sadly 90+% of the dollars earmarked for triple negative breast cancer research, by Susan G Komen for the Cure, by the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation, by government and other private grant makers are only focused on developing expensive drugs that can “find a cure” for this disease.
Last week a recent market research report predicted that by 2018 a new breast cancer drug, BSI-201 will enjoy $1.7 billion in worldwide sales, with special potential for the triple negative market.
www.drugstorenews.com/story.aspx?id=131607&menuid=345
For women fighting this disease, this is wonderful news as such drugs can be critical. But we also need to figure out how to stop triple negative breast cancer before it starts... even if there is no $1.7 billion drug at the end of the rainbow.
Audre Lorde, poet, lesbian, feminist leader, African American and author of The Cancer Journals, who died in 1992 after a fourteen-year struggle with breast cancer, was one of the first to notice society’s interest in profit making, rather than in trying to stop breast cancer before it starts.
…what would happen if an army of one-breasted women descended upon Congress and demanded that the use of carcinogenic, fat-stored hormones in beef-feed be outlawed?
Each year, about 30,000 women in the U.S. are now being diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and this number continues to grow. Most of these women are younger than 40 and more than 15% of these young women are black.
We need to ask foundations and government agencies to fund Jessica Dolle and other cancer prevention researchers as they try to understand more about what chemicals, foods and drugs are causing all of this triple negative.
Meanwhile, do not expect your birth control pack to mention Dolle’s recent research linking birth control drugs to triple negative breast cancer; in fact do not expect the American Cancer Society or even most major breast cancer foundations to breathe a word of Dolle’s 2009 study.
Birth control pills and breast cancer drugs are both multi-billion dollar a year markets. The pharmaceutical companies that sell these drugs also give many millions of dollars each year to the American Cancer Society, Komen and other. Few organizations, I suppose, want to bite the hands that feed them.
From a practical, personal point of view, younger women who want to continue using birth control pills should counterbalance their risk of developing triple negative by getting a Vitamin D3 blood test.. and taking 2,000 IUs or more of Vitamin D3 supplements every day until your blood test shows you have a level of 60-80 ng/ml of vitamin D3. New research shows that this level of vitamin D3 should protect a huge majority of all women against developing all types of breast cancer.
For more ideas on how to help lower your risk of developing any type of breast cancer, at any age, see Know Breast Cancer’s 7 Easy Ways at www.knowbreastcancer.net
Disagreeing with Teresa Heinz Kerry over mammograms for all
Dec 23, 2009
The number of women in the United States newly diagnosed with invasive breast cancer is rising by 1% each year. It is with sadness therefore, that I learned today that Teresa Heinz Kerry is now a part of that statistic.
Mrs. Heinz has been a long-standing advocate for research that better understands environmental and lifestyle causes of breast cancer. Teresa Heinz, as an action-oriented philanthropist and policy maker, is clearly a dear friend to all breast cancer prevention proponents.
But mammograms do not prevent breast cancer; so I reluctantly must disagree with Mrs. Heinz when she limits her remarks to say that all women, no matter what their risk levels, should have an annual mammogram at age 40 and older.
This one and only one- size- fits- all recommendation seems inappropriate, given recent research and experience on how high vitamin D levels can stop breast cancer from happening, as well as other known breast cancer risk factors, not to mention the well documented limits and sometimes dangers of annual screening mammograms.
To truly protect ourselves from developing breast cancer, all women, young and old, need to follow a real prevention lifestyle.. not just go running to get a mammogram!
For example:
- If you are past 40 have you found alternatives to contraceptive drugs or hormone replacement drugs ?
- Have you had a vitamin D3 blood test yet? Are you taking enough vitamin D3 supplements every day to keep your blood serum levels at 60 ng/ml?
- Are you filtering the water that you drink and shower with every day?
- Are you able to limit your alcohol intake to three glasses of wine or beer a week?
Research shows that no one habit or drug is going to cause breast cancer; instead breast cancer seems to happen when a mixture of such individualized risk factors comes together into a personalized toxic cocktail.
Each of us needs to understand this range of factors as we work to keep our own breast cancer risk level low.
Focusing only on getting an annual mammogram, instead of also encouraging women to seriously follow a real prevention lifestyle, will never lower the number of women who develop breast cancer.
To understand how you can put together your own real prevention lifestyle, see Know Breast Cancer’s 7 Easy Ways at www.knowbreastcancer.net
Wishing you peace and good health in your home, your community and across our world this holiday season,
Susan
Best Kept Secret: Cows’ Milk increases risk for breast cancer
May 25, 2009
\In my May 29th Honest Health column on the need to ban rBGH and other growth hormones from our food supply www.gloucestertimes.com I describe known links between drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH and eating meat and poultry containing added growth hormones with the increased risk of developing breast, prostate and other hormonal cancers.
What I don’t say is that cows milk by itself, is considered to be a major risk factor in breast and ovarian cancer. It appears that when individuals do not have the correct enzymes to metabolize many of the hormones naturally found in any type of cow’s milk., a glass of milk can flood the body with excess estrogen. This raises the risk of developing or accelerating the growth of existing breast cancer.
Jane Plant, a British geologist, describes saving her own life twenty years ago after facing metastatic breast cancer. An estrogen positive tumor, growing in her neck, disappeared in six weeks once Plant , currently a professor at the University of Nottingham, began a dairy-free lifestyle. She has continued to follow a dairy free lifestyle since that time and has remained cancer free to this day.
Plant’s book, The No-Dairy Breast Cancer Prevention Program, http://www.amazon.com/No-Dairy-Breast-Cancer-Prevention-Program/dp/0312291671
also published under the title, Your Life in Your Own Hands: Understanding. Preventing and Overcoming Breast Cancer, http://www.amazon.com/Your-Life-Hands-Understanding-Preventing/dp/0312275617 are both available from Amazon and other booksellers.
One possible reason most people have not read much about the connections between dairy products and an increased risk of breast cancer may be because the U.S. Dairy Lobby is formidable. The industry is able to maintain federal milk subsidies in spite of the fact that this policy artificially raises milk prices for U.S. consumers, tot the benefit of milk producers.
The Industry’s popular Got Milk? Campaign reflects a motherhood and apple pie feeling by including former federal cabinet members (Donna Shlala) , movie starts (Jennifer Aniston) and sport heroes. (Muhammad Ali). No wonder it is difficult to believe the research that shows how milk can increase breast cancer rates and accelerate breast cancer growth in a huge group of women.
See Andrew Weil’s comments on the strong links between dairy and hormonal cancers. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA400175
For additional studies linking cows’ milk to breast cancer risk factors in humans, see:
http://milk.elehost.com/ www.notmilk.com www.milksucks.com; and www.sustainabletable.org
Arimidex & Atrazine: Money money money
February 9, 2009
Each month, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment or CHE, sponsors a conference call for members. As the director of Know Breast Cancer, I am able to stay up- to -date on new research that continues to link our high U.S. breast cancer rates to many things in our environment. Now it appears we really need to wonder what National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is all about when October rolls around again.
Dr Tyrone Hayes was the guest speaker on last month’s conference call. He had a few things to say about the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca, the original manufacturer of Tamoxifen; the same company that now brings us Arimidex. This is not a pretty story.
Astra Zeneca, the corporate founder, and editor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month has no moral conscience.. just money on their minds.
Astra Zeneca co-owns Syngenta, the company that manufactures Atrazine. This popular pesticide acts as a chemical estrogen or aromatase enhancer, and pollutes rain water, rivers and produce across the United States. Many laboratory studies have shown that Atrazine, now banned in Europe, increases the risk of prostate, breast and ovarian cancers in lab animals and in humans.
Astra Zeneca also manufactures Arimidex, one of the aromatase inhibitor drugs, used to protect individuals against a recurrence of estrogen positive breast cancer. Arimidex works by blocking aromatase or future estrogen levels in the body.
This means that women who eat produce and grains and drink water tainted by Astra Zeneca’s Atrazine pesticide, increase their risk of developing breast cancer. But now women can also purchase Astra Zeneca’s Arimidex, to help them survive, once they actually develop estrogen positive breast cancer.
How do these corporate fathers and mothers of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month sleep at night come October, when it is time to bring out the pink ribbons?
Dr Tyrone Hayes, an award-winning tenured professor of biology at the University of California at Berkeley discovered Atrazine’s adverse hormonal effects on laboratory animals while working for Astra Zeneca as a research consultant. Hayes has now named Astra Zeneca a one-stop shopping experience. See his website www.atrazinelovers.com
Coming Next:
No More Big Squeeze: New Research Tells Women to Avoid Mammograms
Water Filters: One of Many Ways to Reduce Your Current Breast Cancer Risk Level
February 1, 2009
Do you know that much of our tap water and well water is polluted with animal and human estrogen and other hormones… thanks to millions of women using contraceptive drugs, estrogen replacement drugs and fertility pills?
Thanks to folks eating animal growth hormones in most beef, chicken and milk these days.
Thanks to Atrazine, the #2 most popular pesticide that pollutes our rivers and rainwater.
A recent study by Silent Spring Institute (www.silentspring.org) shows that septic systems are not able to filter out all of those estrogens from our sewage.
The Silent Spring study helps us understand why many of us now must drink a hormone soup from our tap each day, pushing up our breast cancer risk level with each sip. (Pun not intended!)
All of these natural and artificial hormones end up in our tap water and then in our bodies. This extra estrogen in our bodies, sometimes helps to create breast cancer. What goes round, comes round.
Meanwhile we also need to take chlorine , OUT of our drinking water and OUT of our shower! The combo of hot chlorinated water hitting a vinyl shower curtain and then us breathing in this steaming mixture of chemical hormones while enclosed in a wet cocoon in not a healthy picture!
Chlorine may be important when it comes to killing off nasty bugs in our municipal water supply; but we do not need to drink or breathe it too, thank you very much!
Today a water filter for the kitchen sink and one for the shower need to be basic home equipment, right along side indoor plumbing and a fridge.
There are many water filters on the market today. So it is important to get educated when you are ready to buy a filter for your home water supply, or for your kitchen sink or for your shower and bath tub taps.
In searching the internet for such a basic education on water filters, I happily discovered Tim Hickey out in Nevada City California. A Boston transplant, Tim takes his water filters seriously . His website www.friendsofwater.com can also be called water filters 101. So take your time when it is time to get ready to buy a decent home water filter system or just a filter for your kitchen tap or shower head.
Tim will also consult with you for free and ship you whatever economical filter meets your needs. Anti-chlorine & anti-hormone? or just anti-fluoride or a customized combo?
Tim recently also agreed to become one of Know Breast Cancer’s first Prevention Products Companies. This means that you can go to www.knowbreastcancer.net/products.html and find a link to Tim’s website, along with a few other of our pionnering prevention products companies.
In the coming days and weeks, you will see us adding many more prevention product company links to our website. We are now out on the net everyday, looking for companies that offer multiple types of products that can help keep a person’s estrogen levels low low low… thus reducing the risk of developing breast cancer.
From water filters, to organic citrus, to paraben-free eye cream and lead free lipsticks, to glass refrigerator storage containers, to no-wire underwire bras and wild yam supplements to keep your hormones balanced, our prevention products pages will make it fun and pretty easy for you to start living a better -safe -than -sorry lifesyle today!
Our Prevention Products Pages can help you easily find wonderful prevention products companies, help these companies enjoy increased sales of their good stuff, and help Know Breast Cancer increase our contributions from happy site visitors and happy companies. This should be a win- win situation.
Back to water filters…. and understanding all of the environmental causes/connections to breast cancer:
1st download a free copy of the Breast Cancer Fund’s 2008 State of the Evidence Report, “The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment” at www.breastcancefund.org to understand what is polluting our drinking water.
Or just contact Tim and figure out what type of water filter you need, and enjoy decades of healthy water from www.friendsofwater.com
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