To Your Health
June, 2018 (Vol. 12, Issue 06) |
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Surviving Breast Cancer: Think Low Fat
By Editorial Staff
Breast cancer is the ever-lurking disease women (and the ones they love) fear. A woman has a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer and more than 40,000 women in the U.S. die of the disease annually (2018 figures). Fortunately, even if diagnosed with the disease, a woman may be able to increase her survival odds by consuming a low-fat diet, according to new research published in
JAMA Oncology.
As part of the Women's Health Initiative, researchers selected nearly 20,000 women to adhere to a low-fat diet that limited fat intake to 20 percent of total daily calories, and compared outcomes to more than 29,000 women in the health initiative who did not change their diets. After nearly nine years of tracking, more than 1,700 women had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but a decade after their diagnosis, women following the low-fat diet were 22 percent more likely to be alive compared to women maintaining their regular diet.
Although not all participants in the low-fat intervention achieved the 20 percent mark in terms of fat intake (approximately 24 percent of total calories came from fat after one year, compared to 35 percent of total calories in the group of women who did not change their diet), the difference between the two groups in terms of fat intake appeared to account for the difference in survival rates.
A healthy diet doesn't just improve breast cancer survival rates; it also improves your odds of avoiding numerous types of cancer and other major diseases entirely. Talk to your doctor for more information.
