Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'm talking about the foods that reduce the risk of breast cancer and the ones that increase its risk. According to the World Health Organization, 1.6 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer globally, while approximately 6,000 of them are in Greece. It has been estimated that the risk of a woman developing breast cancer in her life exceeds 10%. In Europe, the diagnoses reach 250,000 per year, while 140,000 die from this disease every year. Therefore, we're talking about a significant and quite common disease. You can make many changes in your life to reduce the risk of breast cancer. Even after diagnosis and treatment, you can make many changes in your lifestyle to reduce the risk of recurrence and to increase the chances of cure. Of the lifestyle changes you can make, the changes in your diet are the most important. Let's see these changes in detail. First of all, the most important thing that you should really pay attention to is the loss or maintenance of weight. When a woman is overweight, let alone when she's obese, she runs an extremely higher risk of breast cancer or its recurrence. Reduce alcohol significantly or even quit it. Alcohol consumption significantly increases the risk of breast cancer or its recurrence even from the first drink. Studies have concluded that only one alcoholic drink a day, even one beer, increases the risk of breast cancer by 9-10%, while two or more drinks a day increase the risk by 41%. Two drinks correspond to 30 g of ethanol, which are contained in 250 ml of wine. Avoid meat. According to a wide epidemiological study on 90,000 women in the USA, the increased consumption of meat, namely 500-600 g per week, is associated with a 40% higher risk of hormone-dependent risk cancer compared to women consuming 200-250 g per week. Moreover, in a respective study in the UK on 35,000 women, it was concluded that the consumption of 400 g of meat per week compared to the avoidance of meat increases the risk of breast cancer by 40%. The findings were even worse when the researchers evaluated the consumption of processed meat, because it was concluded that 20 g per day, namely one slice of ham or smoked turkey, increase the risk of breast cancer per 65% Such data have made the WHO warn that the consumption of processed meat increases the risk of cancer similarly to smoking. Increase fibers. In a wide study on post-menopause women, it was concluded that the women consuming the most fibers ran the lowest risk of developing breast cancer. The foods with the most fibers are unprocessed grains, legumes, fruit and vegetables. Avoid sugar. With regard to sugar, the studies are much poorer and the uncertainty is too high. Some epidemiological studies show that the consumption of sugar increases the risk, while others don't come to the same conclusion. On the other hand, sugar doesn't have many benefits, therefore I don't discourage someone from quitting it for any reason. What I recommend is using sugar or other sweeteners only when they accompany a really healthy dish, for example a little sugar or honey in a sauce with oil, lemon and mustard that will accompany our green salad, or something similar. On the whole, the ideal diet to reduce the risk of breast cancer is the Mediterranean diet, as it was followed in Greece 60-70 years ago. Let me point out that modern diet is very far from what we call Mediterranean diet. All the things that made the Mediterranean diet healthy, such as vegetables cooked in oil, legumes, vegetables and greens, have reduced significantly, while foods that are not considered very healthy have increased, such as meat, sugar, pastries from processed grains. Therefore, for our diet to approach the Mediterranean diet, in order to reduce the risk of breast cancer and other chronic diseases, you should increase legumes, vegetables cooked in oil, vegetables, salads and fruit and reduce meat, sugar and pastries from processed grains. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!