Eating Less May Slow Down Breast Cancer

According to a recent study, eating less and exercising more could help lower a woman's chances of developing breast cancer. An important link between cancer and nutrition was highlighted by the scientists, which may explain why women in poorer countries have lower rates of breast cancer.The study that appeared in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment reveals that the amount of food a woman eats can affect her hormonal concentrations and this has been 'strongly linked' to an increased risk of breast cancer.Researchers found that the more a woman eats, or if she leads a sedentary lifestyle, the higher are the concentrations of progesterone. Increased progesterone was also a result of higher calorie intake, mainly because low energy intakes can impair the function of the ovaries. Women from less affluent nations lead lifestyles which involve more daily movement and mostly do not indulge in binge eating in comparison to women who lead an urban lifestyle. They not only have lower progesterone levels, but lesser risk of developing breast cancer.
The study concluded that the triple negative subtype of breast cancer - one of the most aggressive forms - is less likely to spread, or metastasise, to new sites in the body when mice were fed a restricted diet. Also, when mouse models of triple negative cancer were fed 30 percent less than what they ate when given free access to food, the cancer cells decreased their production of micro RNAs 17 and 20 (miR 17/20).Generally, the cancer patients are treated with hormonal therapy to block tumor growth, and steroids to counteract the side effects of chemotherapy, which can cause a patient to have altered metabolism and further lead to weight gain. As per the study, if calorie restriction in humans is as effective as in animal models, then it can change the expression patterns of a large set of genes, hitting multiple targets at once without toxicity.