Anyone who has taken a yoga class understands the peace of mind that follows as you roll up your mat and float out of class. And despite the mental anguish felt by women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, yoga’s ability to lift the spirits is not at all lost on the women who are grappling with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
Yoga popularity and breast cancer awareness have grown exponentially in the past years. And for good reason. More and more medical professionals are looking at mind-body techniques like yoga to improve quality of life factors, reduce illness-related stress and possibly affect treatment outcomes in individuals suffering from a chronic or acute health condition.
If you could do something to prevent cancer, would you do it? You might say “yes,” but unfortunately you might not actually do it. How’s this for an alarming fact?
At least one-third of annual cancer deaths in the United States are related to dietary factors. Increased fruit and vegetable consumption can reduce cancer risk, but less than one-third of U.S. adults eat the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Eating healthy, including fruits and vegetables loaded with phytochemicals (powerful antioxidants), and following a low fat diet helps people manage weight and prevent disease! Think about it, every day you have choices of what to eat. You have the power to keep yourself healthy from the inside out.
Update: Thanks to the 86 bloggers who joined the Blogs Against Breast Cancer this year, we were able to raise $430 for the National Breast Cancer Foundation!
It’s time for DietsInReview.com’s second annual Blogs Against Breast Cancer donation drive. During the month of October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, if you publish this “My Blog Cares” button on your blog or Web site, we’ll donate $5 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in honor of your site.
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For many of the more than 2 million American women who are breast cancer survivors, life after their diagnosis can be the archetype of picture-perfect health. From eating copious amounts of fresh vegetables and fruit to faithfully adhering to doctor appointments, many breast cancer survivors lead incredibly healthy lives in an attempt to stave off a recurrence of their disease and keep their health in tip-top shape.
But one healthy behavior that breast cancer survivors have been discouraged to partake in is weight lifting, for it is believed that using weights and exercise machines induces swelling and pain around the breast tissue, particularly for those women who have a higher risk for lymphedema, or swollen and painful fluid-filled nodes that occur on the arms or on the hands. Women prone to lymphedema are often discouraged from lifting children, playing tennis or golf, or carrying a heavy bag. But according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine, these warnings from doctors may start to quiet down.
For the almost 200,000 American women who are newly diagnosed with breast cancer every year, yoga may offer respite and rejuvenation during their arduous journey with this most common form of cancer (excluding skin cancer).
A recent study from Duke University Medical Center suggested that when women with breast cancer engaged in yoga postures, meditation and breathing exercises for two months, they experienced less pain and fatigue and were significantly more relaxed.
Although this study was small, just 13 women who have advanced breast cancer, it does provide the first, tentative evidence for yoga’s potential benefits in this vulnerable population of women with limited life expectancy, says lead author of the study, Dr. James W. Carson.
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