by: S. L. Baker
Breast cancer is a serious concern for women. According to the National Cancer Institute, the disease took about 50,000 lives last year in the U.S. alone. But the mainstream media, as well as mainstream medicine, often treat breast cancer as something that strikes out of the blue — giving women no choice but to hope they are not one of the “unlucky” ones to get breast cancer. At the same time this subjects women to mammography so a malignancy can be spotted early, despite the fact the actual radiation exposure associated with mammograms is known to raise the risk of breast cancer in some women
But here’s good news. Scientists studying natural compounds in plants are finding many may offer some level of protection against breast cancer. That means women can start taking control of their breast cancer risk by paying attention to what they eat and drink. In detailed research just published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Breast Cancer Research, scientists from Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute present compelling evidence that something in coffee slashes the risk of breast cancer.
The new study concludes that drinking coffee specifically reduces the risk of what researchers call anti-estrogen-resistant estrogen-receptor (ER) negative breast cancer, dubbed ER-negative breast cancer for short.
The Sweden research team compared lifestyle factors and coffee consumption between women with breast cancer and women the same age that did not have any breast malignancies. It turns out that coffee drinkers had a far lower incidence of breast cancer overall than women who rarely drank coffee.
Delving further into the impact of coffee, the scientists looked at several lifestyle factors that affect breast cancer rates, including age at menopause, exercise, weight, education, and a family history of breast cancer. Once they had adjusted their data to account for all of these factors, they found that the protective effect of coffee on breast cancer zeroed on one type of the disease — the ER-negative breast cancer.
Although the evidence appears strong that coffee has beneficial effects in protecting women from ER-negative breast cancer, it’s not clear just what the mechanism and compounds involved are. The researchers noted in a statement to the media that the protection from coffee may be due to way the coffee is prepared, or perhaps the type of coffee bean used.
Bottom line: as NaturalNews has reported previously, the new coffee study is the latest in a growing body of scientific data showing that natural substances are formidable weapons to both prevent various types of breast cancer and even halt cancerous growth once cells are malignant.
For example, in a study published in the journal Crop Science, Colorado State University scientists studied the anti-cancer activity of six kinds of dry legumes and found consumption of every kind of bean reduced the incidence of cancer and tumors in animal models . In addition, Elaine Hardman, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Marshall University School of Medicine, gives this advice to women based on her cancer research: eat more walnuts. Her research strongly suggests those nuts can substantially reduce the risk of breast cancer.
