Maintaining a Healthy Weight

Maintaining a Healthy Weight - How Foods Fight Cancer

Body fat is like an estrogen factory. Fat cells convert hormones into estrogens.

Many studies have shown that slimmer people are less likely to
develop cancer. Trimming excess weight may also improve survival
after cancer has been diagnosed. Among women with breast cancer,
at least seventeen different research studies have shown that those who
are thinner tend to live longer and have less risk of recurrence.1

Researchers have not had to look hard to find reasons to explain this
finding. It has long been known that body fat is like a factory producing
estrogens (female sex hormones). Hormones produced in the adrenal glands
(small organs above each kidney) travel through the bloodstream into
body fat. There, fat cells convert these hormones into estrogens.1 In turn,
estrogens fuel breast cancer growth.

That’s not all. Both women and men who have more body fat tend to
have less of a protein compound called sex hormone-binding globulin
(SHBG) in their blood. SHBG’s job is to bind estrogen and testosterone,
keeping these hormones inactive and unable to promote cancer. If overweight
people have less SHBG, it means that more of their hormones are
not reined in. They travel freely in the bloodstream, increasing the risk that
cancer will start or, if it has already started, will spread to other parts of
the body.

Excess weight may also reduce immune defenses. Researchers have
shown that overweight people are more likely to show other signs of flagging
immunity, such as recurrent infections. Poor immune defenses could
mean they are less able to combat cancer cells that may arise.2