Breast cancer what causes it?
This disease is on the rise, why?
There are many factors and I will endeavour to make it as simple as possible but sadly there are many factors that play a part in breast cancer.
Food
We have changed our diets dramatically in
the last 100 years, moving away from natual saturated
fats, like butter and lard, to plastic bottled vegetable oils, many
of which have hexane traces from the processing and are
deodorized. It may seem unreal but sadly vegetable oils are
not the cure all that the advertising suggests. Canola and
soy oils are almost all genetically modified which, whilst the jury
is still out on, I make a point of avoiding. I just think
butter is an all together more natural product.
Eating real food nourishes the body, fresh fruit, vegetables, soaked rice, wholegrains prepared to aid absorbtion, and local grass fed meat in moderation. I feel that it is the word moderation that we have lost touch with; if a little is good then more must be better is not necessarily true and thus we have to look at what we eat and why.
Food is to be enjoyed, and real food is not cheap, food that is cheap is often artificially cheap due to many reasons and I feel sometimes it is our health that pays the price.
Skin care and synthetic chemicals
The
average woman uses 12 personal care products [1] and exposes
herself to 126 different synthetic chemicals, some of which
have been tested for safety and some have not, and the total have
not been tested for their synergistic effect...that is what happens
when they all meet together in our body, day in day out.
These are minute amounts, granted, but many individual use these
personal care products each and everyday and no one has really
tested for this 'cocktail effect'.
We are the guinea pigs. We can go buy a shampoo, nail polish, handcream which has a total of over one hundred ingredients and no one is testing what happens... except on ourselves and I believe our health is the result, obesity and sadly rising breast cancer rates. Please consider reading personal care labels carefully to avoid synthetic chemicals. There are excellent brands out there, I recommend Miessence and now actually sell it individuals all over the world, I like Miessence as it uses certified organic ingredients.
Environmental toxins
Environmental toxins can be the petrol we put in our car, the spray we clean our house with, or if we live in an area where there are heavy industry factories.
In cleaning products, especially, the synthetic chemicals do not have to be even listed on a bottle of spray cleaner and thus we can gayly clean away and breathe in the fumes. The sweet fragrance of 'summer meadows' or 'lavender fields' is unlikely to be certified organic essential oils with therapeutic properties. Thus we can and often do, when we clean our homes breathe in, each week, a cocktail of petroleum based synthetic chemicals, not only is this believed (by the theory of Dr Paula Baillie-Hamilton's Chemical Calories) to be making us fat but also making us unwell also. The rise in asthma, ezcema and breast cancer, many feel is due to environmental factos.
Please choose simple bicarb and vinegar to clean,
it is much healthier than an expensive shop bought, often toxin,
synthetic chemical based product. Regain control of your home
environment and use safe products. Alternatively if you want an
effective, convenient probiotic cleaner then I use BioPure.
I am not alone in my belief that our environment that we are creating is not beneficial for health. The Breast Cancer UK video below shows their thoughts on chemicals in our environment and the connection to our health. Also using plastic storage containers to store food is not something I do, and I highly recommend not using a microwave for reheating food in plastic.
Sleep
We have electric lights, well most of us with internet access do, as we need electricity to run our computers. Many of us regularly stay up late watching TV or staring at a computer screen. Sadly this is not helping our breast health or health in general. Sleep is vital. As the days get shorter and we need a torch when we walk after 5pm or get up early to walk the dog, so we are designed by our good Creator to sleep more. Yet do we?
Most of us just turn on a light and stay up late but perhaps it is worth getting a DVD recorder and watching your favourite TV show earlier in the evening, or a rainy day and getting to bed early for the rest of the week. In the book "Lights Out" [2] it highlights the startling correlation between breast cancer and lack of sleep! I feel early bed is not a luxury but a must do and ideally head to bed before 10pm.
I hope these simple ideas will give you a few ideas to think about and consider changing in your life?
References:
[1] Environmental Working Group, "Teen Girls' Body Burden" read the full article here
[2] "Lights Out" Sleep, Sugar and Survival by T.S. Wiley and Bent Formby
©Actual Organics 2009