While we can’t always prevent cancer, we can do things to help reduce the risk of developing it. Of course, we always hear: eat healthy foods, exercise, don’t smoke. But the message doesn’t seem to be getting through because people still eat junk or high fat foods, still don’t exercise and still smoke.
The Mayo Clinic published 10 tips to reduce cancer risk in their most recent issue of Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource.
Here are the tips and below there’s more explanation:

Stop smoking
Limit alcohol intake – some alcohol is okay, too much is not
Follow recommended intake of fruits and vegetable (daily!)
Decrease the …read more

Make no mistake, Tamoxifen has been shown to do some amazing things when it comes to the treatment of breast cancer. Women who take the drug for five years “are less likely to die of breast cancer” and even more astonishing, less likely to have it return. However, as with many drugs, Tamoxifen has some side effects and dangers also.

Side effects such as strokes, blood clots and even sometimes, cataracts, has already been documented. A new study says that patients who took Tamoxifen “more than quadrupled their chances of coming down with a rare and deadlier type …read more

There’s great news for moms with a family history of breast cancer. In a new study, women with a family history of breast cancer who breastfed their children were 59% less likely to develop breast cancer.
Lead author of the long-term study of more than 100,000 women from 14 states is Alison Stuebe, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The new breastfeeding research is published in the August 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

In the study, breastfeeding women with a mother or sister with breast cancer were less …read more

Breast cancer patients who switched to Aromasin after 2-3 years of tamoxifen regimen were 17% more likely to survive and 25% less likely to have cancer recurrence, compared to patients who continued on tamoxifen for a full five years.
Aromasin, a third-generation aromatase inhibitor, is the only anti- hormonal therapy in a single trial shown to indicate improved overall survival over tamoxifen alone.
Such were the findings of an Intergroup Exemestane Study (IES) recently published in The Lancet.
According to Dr. Stephen Jones, M.D., US Oncology medical director and co-chair of its breast cancer research committee and the U.S. lead author of the …read more

Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator that inhibits the stimulatory effect that estrogen has on the development of specific types of breast cancer.
An estimated over 40,000 recurrences of breast cancer are prevented each year worldwide, thanks to this wonder drug.
It should be taken note that the optimal duration of tamoxifen therapy is five years (optimal means getting the best results) and less than five years of use is linked to higher rates of recurrence and higher mortality rates.
However, according to new study published in the March 1, 2007 issue of Cancer, a quarter of women treated for breast cancer …read more

Wake Forest University School of Medicine researchers found out that radiation therapy after lumpectomy (breast-conserving surgery) and five years of treatment with the drug tamoxifen can dramatically reduce the risk of both cancer recurrence and new tumors in older women with early breast cancer.
According to lead author Ann M. Geiger, M.P.H., Ph.D., an associate professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest and formerly of Kaiser Permanente Southern California:
“While these treatments are standard care for younger patients, it is has been shown that older women are less likely to receive them. Our results provide strong evidence of the importance of …read more

According to an opinion paper published by an international panel of leading breast cancer specialists, aromatase inhibitors (AIs) like ARIMIDEX® (anastrozole) far more surpasses the effectivity of tamoxifen in treating postmenopausal women with early, hormone-sensitive breast cancer.
This finding, a consensus of The International Aromatase Inhibitor Expert Panel who agreed that AIs should be prescribed as the preferred therapy in such patient setting, is published in Current Medical Research and Opinion.
The panel’s findings reaffirm current guidelines regarding the use of aromatase inhibitors, such as ARIMIDEX®, approved for adjuvant treatment (treatment following surgery with or without radiation) of postmenopausal women with hormone …read more