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
Thinking of Sara Palin and Breast Health Centers…or..”Why our hospitals don’t talk about real or natural breast cancer prevention
January 5, 2010
Manchester by the Sea, MA
Our local Breast ” Health” Centers, located in medical centers, community hospitals and free-standing clinics around the U.S., currently do next to nothing about educating women on how to keep our breasts naturally healthy.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but as Sara says, “It’s still a pig.”
Breast “Health” Centers are currently breast cancer diagnostic centers; places where women are given screening x-rays and possibly more diagnostic x-rays in the form of mammograms or MRIs with toxic dyes, along with needle aspirations, and lumpectomies.
But real breast health is something different. Now that we know so much more about how breast cancer begins or grows; now that we know so much more about how to actually limit the number of women who ever develop breast cancer; it’s time for medical centers to also set up real Breast Health Centers or real Breast Cancer Prevention Centers.
Real or natural breast cancer prevention is no longer rocket science; getting the word out to women seems to be a more difficult task.
Here is a sampling of what real Breast Health Centers could offer women today:
- A blood test to determine your vitamin D3 levels with info sessions on how much vitamin D3 and calcium supplements you should be taking every day to gradually reach the new recommended level of 60-80 ng/ml of vitamin D3 in your blood serum levels.
For more info on how 60-89 ng/ml of vitamin D3 can amazingly block the first stage of breast cancer development, go to Easy Way #1 at www.knowbreastcancer.net
- Individualized birth control counseling for women over 40, to help you switch off of birth control pills, patches, rings and estrogen-based IUDs. Women in their 40’s, who still use these drugs, significantly raise their risk of developing aggressive estrogen negative breast cancers.
To see some of the research showing that contraceptive drugs are considered unsafe for women over 40 years of age, go to Easy Way #3 at www.knowbreastcancer.net
- Cooking classes for women who want to include dairy-free recipes and other breast cancer-protecting foods, such as Japanese miso and fermented black beans in their families’ daily meals. The Japanese and Chinese, with their dairy-free diets and numerous fermented soy dishes, have one third the breast cancer rates of North American and Northern European women!
For more info on how organic fermented soy foods can be more effective and safer than taking Tamoxifen or Arimidex, see Easy Way #6 at www.knowbreastcancer.net
- Education groups for women who want to put less alcohol, less nicotine and less sugar into their bodies each day. This is obviously not an easy task, but offering such support under the label of breast cancer prevention, will take some of the stigma out of treating these dangerous lifestyles. Using one or more of these toxins every day can triple a woman’s risk level if trying to avoid a second breast cancer diagnosis. Carrying twenty extra pounds of fat can double any older woman’s risk of developing invasive breast cancer. Also heavy drinking and/or any level of smoking appear to cancel out any protection offered from Vitamin D3 supplementation.
For the latest research on alcohol, smoking, excess body fat and increased breast cancer risk levels, go to Easy Way #7 at www.knowbreastcancer.net
This is all pretty sobering, exciting and hopeful info, but sadly don’t expect our local medical centers to open up any real Breast Health Centers any day soon.
Why not??!
A real or natural Breast Health Center is a low-tech, low-profit service, geared to decreasing the number of community women who will ever develop breast cancer. For these two reasons alone, medical centers do not believe it is in their financial self interest to create such centers.
Remember… most non-profit and for-profit medical centers and clinics operate as for-profit corporations. Executives are often paid a six or seven figure income when they are able to snuff out competing medical centers, recruit more cancer patients, and continue to offer highly profitable medical services to these individuals until they die.
Until we have a health care system that is detached from any profit motives (such as your local fire department is) where people’s health (your burning home) comes before corporate profits, medical centers will never be interested in sponsoring real breast health centers.
note: If you appreciate reading the opinions and research- based information shared in these blog postings and at www.knowbreastcancer.net we need to ask each of you to help support our work with a tax-deductible contribution.
Please at least send us $7 (for our 7 Easy Ways) and ask 7 of your friends to do the same. We, of course, would also appreciate your sending larger contributions as well. Just go to www.knowbreastcancer.net and click on the “contribute” link.
Together, one woman at a time, we can stop this unnecessary epidemic.
Thanks so much,
Susan
Please give Know Breast Cancer a tax deductible contribution today.
$7 for our 7 Easy Ways
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
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