Key lifestyle habits to reduce risk of breast and other cancers
When it comes to good health, internal medicine physician Kumara Sidhartha, MD, MPH believes in being proactive rather than reactive. In addition to advising his patients, he has been giving healthy living talks on Cape Cod on how to minimize disease risks for several years.
Cape Cod Health News reached out to him for Breast Cancer Awareness Month to ask how women can reduce their risk of breast cancer and he offered tips that also reduce the chances of other cancers.
Plant-Based Eating
If people just did one lifestyle change to reduce their cancer risk, eating a wholesome unprocessed plant-based diet for as many meals as possible would be Dr. Sidhartha’s top pick.
“It sounds really simple and that’s the beauty of it,” he said. “It’s simple and it’s so profoundly powerful.”
Adding more plants to your diet adds more of the components that can help to protect against disease, he said. Colorful vegetables and fruits contain antioxidants that offer protection from diseases like breast cancer. In addition, vegetables and fruits contain phytochemicals, which are naturally occurring chemicals that also protect us from cancer and disease.
Leafy greens like kale, arugula and spinach are one of the best ways to get those important phytochemicals, Dr. Sidhartha said, but all colorful vegetables and fruits are important because the same pigments that add color also protect us.
Dr. Sidhartha also advises people to make sure there is enough fiber in their diet. Since plants are naturally fiber-rich foods, they score big in this category too. Plants that grow above the ground have more fiber than root vegetables and even something as simple as leaving the skin on an apple can up your fiber intake.
“Fiber has a key role in making sure the gut bacteria stay healthy, so the intestines are maintained and nourished,” he said. “Having good gut bacteria is fundamentally important for many of the functions of the body, including immune functions. Overall, it improves health, but it also helps to reduce cravings and maintain a good body weight.”
A lot of people believe that focusing on a wholesome unprocessed plant-based diet is impossible for their own lives, but Dr. Sidhartha explained it doesn’t have to seem like a seismic change in lifestyle. For people who are new to a plant-based diet, Dr. Sidhartha recommends making sure the lunch and dinner plates are dominated by at least two to three different colored vegetables. Ensuring at least half the breakfast plate is filled with colorful fruit is a helpful strategy. Another good starting place is to replace animal protein with plant protein for at least three dinners a week.
“Simply reimagine the plate so that a majority of it is dedicated to the things that are adding more value and more protection with regard to cancer risk,” he said. “There are many different unexplored plant options out there. If you think about it, they are not necessarily too far away from the current status quo meal menu of a person. You just make a little bit of modification and a little bit of imagination to get there.”
For example, one plant-based dinner could be a pasta dish made with three different colored vegetables, tomato sauce, cannellini beans, fresh herbs and whole wheat pasta, he said. Other ideas are veggie burgers made with beans or Buddha bowls with whole grains like quinoa or brown rice, plant proteins like chick peas or black beans and colorful vegetables like spinach, tomatoes and yellow bell peppers. Lentil soup is another meal idea for either lunch or dinner.
It’s important to make the distinction that not all plant-based food products are healthy, especially those that are overly processed, Dr. Sidhartha said. People should choose unprocessed plant foods because the additives in processed foods have a negative effect on gut bacteria.
Body Weight and Alcohol Consumption
Maintaining a good body weight is an additional bonus protection against cancer because obesity is linked to a higher risk of 13 different kinds of cancer, including breast cancer, according to the CDC.
In addition to eating more plant-based foods and watching their weight, Dr. Sidhartha recommends that people scale back on the portions and frequency of the amount of alcohol they consume. Alcohol has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer. The reasons are two-fold. First, alcohol increases the amount of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) in the body. An overproduction of IGF1 promotes tumor growth. Second, alcohol adds a lot of unnecessary calories.
“Calories that we drink are a huge contributor to the struggles folks have with losing weight,” Dr. Sidhartha said. “They are very sneaky in how many calories they add.”
Physical Activity
The other primary prevention lifestyle tip Dr. Sidhartha recommends is physical activity, which also helps keep weight down.
