Cancers of all kinds are very concerning. Many of us know someone who has had some kind of cancer or is dealing with it at this time.

Latest statistics show about one in eight American women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of their lifetime.

Approximately 40,920 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2018 from breast cancer. Fortunately, death rates have been decreasing since 1989. Women under 50 have experienced larger decreases. These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening, and increased awareness.

The good news is that breast cancer research is well funded. Many studies have identified dozens of dietary factors and foods that can reduce your risk as well as support and accelerate recovery for those fighting the disease. All foods that take down inflammation can be very beneficial. Such as carrots, red onions, broccoli, flaxseeds, arugula, green tea to name a few.

Curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, has anti-inflammatory properties, may inhibit the growth and spread of breast cancer cells and may promote cancer cell death. It also increases the activity of natural killer cells and prevents breast tumors from escaping detection by the immune system. Curcumin also appears to be effective against both estrogen-positive and estrogen-negative breast cancer cells, and it may act on breast cancer cells that are resistant to chemotherapy.

Studies from the University of Illinois College of Engineering report that scientists have discovered that curcumin to be an effective agent for killing cancer cells. The study indicates that curcumin’s effectiveness has been extremely limited because it isn’t naturally soluble in water. However, a team has created a sophisticated metallocyclic compound using platinum that has not only enabled curcmin’s solubility, but whose synergy have proven 100 times more effective in treating various cancer types such as melanoma and breast cancer cells than using curcumin and platinum agents separately.

“We knew platinum is a commonly used in cancer therapeutic agents in the clinic” Pan said in explaining the road to discovery. “We wanted to exploit that property as well in addition to curcumin. Our results demonstrate that curcumin works completely in snyc with platinum and expert and exert synergistic effect to show remarkable anticancer properties.” Dipanjan Pan, is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He leads the Laboratory of Materials in Medicine.

NOTE: Please don’t use this combination on your own. It must be medically supervised.

“In cancer therapy, one of the measures that constrains a number of the drugs is their poor solubility,” Pan said. “Viability only becomes prominent when the drug becomes soluble in water. No matter how the drug is given, intravenously or orally, it needs to eventually be absorbed by the organs in the body.”

Cancers develop because of mutations in various genes. We are all made up of an estimated 37.2 trillion cells, each containing an entire copy of our DNA, which consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes. Each codon corresponds to a molecular building block called an amino acid and, when genes are read in order, the codons in a gene provide the recipe to build a protein. Proteins are crucial for everything that a cell does, from making energy to deciding when to divide to communicating with its neighbors. But in cancer cells vital genes contain mistakes, changing their proteins and altering the way that they behave.

It takes a lot of genetic mistakes to turn a healthy cell into a cancer cell, and they tend to build up over time. A few people inherit genetic errors from their parents, but most occur as we get older. Cancer usually falls into two groups, acquired or inherited. acquired mutations are a result of DNA changes due to things we experience during our life, for example, environmental factors are becoming a prominent factor in the development of cancers. Sunlight, alcohol, radiation, smoking, high heat cooking, lack of physical activity and pollution are just a few examples of how genes can become mutated.

A single protein building block commonly found in food may hold a key to preventing the spread of an often-deadly type of breast cancer, according to a new multi-center study published in the medical journal Nature.

Investigators found that by limiting an amino acid called asparagine in laboratory mice with triple-negative breast cancer, they could dramatically reduce the ability of the cancer to travel to distant sites in the body. Among other techniques, the team used dietary restrictions to limit asparagine.

Foods rich in asparagine include dairy, whey, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, seafood, asparagus, potatoes , legumes, nuts, seed, soy and whole grains. Foods low in asparagine include most fruits and vegetables.

“Simon Knott, PhD, associate director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics at Cedars-Sinai conducted research at more than a dozen institutions.  Dr. Knott said, “Our study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggest diet can influence the course of the disease.” If further research confirms the findings in human cells, limited the amount of asparagine cancer patients consume could be a potential strategy to augment existing therapies and to prevent the spread of breast cancer, Knott added.

When cancer spreads rapidly and to many different parts of our bodies it is termed metastasis.  Metastasis is the cause of approximately 90 percent of deaths among cancer patients.

The researchers mentioned above, discovered that the appearance of asparagine synthetase — the enzyme cells used to make asparagine — in a primary tumor was strongly associated with later cancer spread.

In another study breast cancer patients with more muscle have a better chance of survival. It included more than 320 younger women with stages 2 or 3 breast cancer, those with more muscle had higher survival rates, regarding of their age or cancer. The researchers found that cancer-related inflammation may cause loss of muscle and an increase in fat.

Overall lifestyle changes could prevent 50% of common cancers. More than 50% of cancer could be prevented if people simply implemented what is already know about cancer prevention, according to researchers at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) World Cancer Congress 2012.