Gut and Liver Health

Gut and Liver Health (for breast cancer survivors)

Several theories of cancer development emphasize the concept of “total load,”
or the cumulative amount of toxins that your body is challenged to neutralize on a
day-to-day basis. When this load gets too heavy to carry, the liver, our primary
detoxification organ, can no longer keep up with the job of clearing out waste
products. As the wastes continue to build, they recirculate, and they damage, first,
our cells as a whole and then the DNA inside our cells. By supporting a healthy liver
and digestive tract, we help to move toxins through and out of the body, minimizing
toxic overload and excessive DNA damage. A healthy liver is also critical in
detoxifying human estrogens and foreign estrogen compounds, called
xenoestrogens, which can initiate and accelerate breast cancer growth (Aschengrau,
Rogers, and Ozonoff 2003). We call this good cellular housekeeping.

Cruciferous vegetables, beets, curcumin (from the spice turmeric), and
carotenoids, found in carrots, tomatoes, oranges, and many other fruits and
vegetables, are particularly good at supporting the liver in breaking down toxic
additives, pesticides, hormones, and other chemicals that can threaten our health.
The liver is an organ with awesome executive responsibility; treat it well, and it
will return the favor. More on this in chapter 9.

Handling Hormones

All women manufacture a variety of estrogens throughout their lifetimes.
Before menopause, the ovaries produce these estrogens, and after menopause, the
adrenal glands and adipose (fat) tissue make them, albeit in smaller amounts.
Women who are overweight have more adipose tissue, so they produce more
estrogen. What’s more, these estrogens do not distribute themselves evenly around
the body. In menopausal and postmenopausal women, excessive levels of estradiol,
the most dominant estrogen, commonly accumulate in breast tissue, creating an
additional risk of developing estrogen-dependent tumors.

The real crux of the matter, however, is not how much estrogen we have, but
how we metabolize the estrogens that we produce. An imbalance of estrogens in the
body can actually set the stage for cancer development and proliferation,
particularly in postmenopausal women. Depending on your diet, your liver ’s
detoxification abilities, and the quantity and quality of healthy flora in your gut, you
can safely metabolize and excrete excess estrogen in the form of the healthful
estrogen metabolite known as 2-hydroxyestrone, or you can recycle a more toxic,
rogue estrogen metabolite known as 16-alpha-hydroxyestrone (Eliassen et al. 2008).
We’ll look into these distinctions in chapter 10, where we’ll draw on the wisdom of
Dr. Jonathan Wright, a leading expert on female hormones.

CAT Scans and Other Sources of Radiation

Two research studies were recently published that disclosed that CAT scans deliver a
great deal more radiation than previously believed (Redberg 2009). One NCI study,
in fact, which came to the attention of the public in a 2009 USA Today article
(Szabo), found that patients experiencing such scans may be exposed to up to four
times more radiation than previously estimated; in fact, one study concluded that
one CAT scan could expose a patient to as much radiation as 74 mammograms or
442 chest X-rays (Smith-Bindman et al. 2009).

It’s also worth noting that, although controversial at this time, some experts
believe that yearly mammography screening may give insufficient benefit to certain
groups of women to justify the additional radiation exposure. These concerns
spurred the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to recommend sweeping
changes in its breast cancer screening guidelines in 2009, in a controversial move
that advocated for less-frequent mammograms.

We believe that appropriate screening can be a lifesaving procedure. Which
form of diagnostic screening you use is a critically important and highly personal
decision that you and your doctor must weigh carefully against all known risks of
such procedures. While we don’t actively support one form of screening over
another (in fact, they are often most powerful in combination), we do support the
importance of educating yourself about the risks and benefits of each procedure you
choose to undertake, and of discussing the risk-benefit ratio with your health care
practitioner.

Nurturing Your Terrain

As we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the internal terrain that you foster
within your body is one of the most critical factors that will influence the course of
either benign or cancerous breast disease. And now, we’ll turn our attention to the
specifics of managing that terrain.

Last Word

Of course cancer doesn’t grow in a vacuum. You can either encourage it or
discourage it by what you put in your mouth, in your lungs, and on your body
every day. That’s the first thing I learned.
—Stefanie R., breast cancer survivor