Breast Cancer Health

What Is Metastatic Breast Cancer?

The most frightening words imaginable for any woman are those when she is told that she has breast cancer. The morbid thoughts run through her head and the fear is overwhelming. Now she must endure medical treatments and examinations for several months as begins her battle against this disease.

Cancer is defined by four different stages and metastatic breast cancer is defined as stage 4 and it means that the cancer has spread beyond the breast and underarm lymph nodes to other part of the body. Another way to explain this is that the cancer cells have migrated and are now growing outside of the original tumor.

Women who have stage IV breast cancer usually receive chemotherapy and or hormonal therapy to destroy cancer cells and control the disease. They may have surgery or radiation therapy to control the cancer in the breast. Radiation may also be useful to control tumors in other parts of the body. The symptoms of metastatic breast cancer varies depend on where the cancer is and how large it is.

The most common places for breast cancer to spread are within the breast or to the nearby chest wall or to the liver, lungs, or bones. Common symptoms include a lump in your breast or on your chest wall, bone pain, or shortness of breath. It is also possible that you will not have any symptoms and that the only way to keep yourself healthy is to be proactive and to take an active role in your health care. It may be necessary to have continuous laboratory tests and x-rays to determine whether or not the cancer has spread.

Work with your doctors to plan your medical treatments and to be a partner in your health care. Your doctors will consider where the cancer is located and what type of cancer treatments you had in the past. Your wishes and quality of life are also important factors.

Treatment choices may include surgery, medicines like chemotherapy or hormone therapy, and radiation. Sometimes a mix of these treatments is used and there can be side effects. Your doctor can tell you what problems to expect and can help you find ways to manage and live with them during the treatment phase.

There may come a time with metastatic breast cancer when you make a decision that quality of life is more important than quantity. If the medical treatments are not working and the effects of them are more devastating than the actual disease, you may have a choice to make.

Some people make the decision after talking to their family, friends and doctors to shift the focus of their treatments from attempting to cure the disease to staying comfortable and enjoying life. The care at this point is entirely focused on providing symptom relief as well as support for you and your family so that everyone can make the most of the time remaining.

The final choice for your care after you have been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer if yours! And, you should make informed decision after talking to your doctors and family members. Medical advances in this area are moving forward every day and you never know when the cure will be found.

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For more information on breast cancer visit http://www.breastcanceranalysis.com - a website that specializes in breast cancer related information and resources including information on
metastatic breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Symptoms Fatigue

Over nutrition may also correlate with some of the other risk factors; females with lower food intake stay thinner and often begin menstruating later than more heavily nourished girls. Breast Cancer Symptoms FatiguePeople who eat more also tend to be those who can afford to - those with an overall higher standard of living, who appear to be at greater risk of breast cancer.

If fat intake does indeed increase the risk of developing breast cancer, what makes it happen? There have been many theories regarding this. Some researchers think it changes the metabolism of estrogen. According to a study, people with a high fat diet tend to have more estrogen in their blood and a lower urine excretion of this hormone. Vegetarians who eat dairy foods excrete more estrogen, leaving less in the blood than people on macrobiotic diets. Macrobiotic diet involves the consumption of organically grown whole grain cereals, legumes, vegetables and fruits, in meals according to the principle of balance between yin and yang properties, in contrast to scientific dietary guidelines. Fat cells in the body can synthesize estrogen, so it is also possible that if you are obese you have an oversupply of estrogen in your body, which could heighten your vulnerability to cancer. However, studies aimed at confirming this hypothesis have been inconsistent.

It is also possible that cancer cells grow faster in an environment with a lot of over nourished cells and the fatter you are the more such cells there are for the cancer cells to grow with. There is also some evidence that among women with breast cancer those on low fat diets have a better prognosis than those on high fat diets.

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It may be that fiber, rather than fat, is the more essential element. Oftentimes diets very high in fiber are very low in fat. It may be that with a low fat diet, it's the fiber or the carbohydrates or the vegetables, which have replaced fat are the ones responsible for reducing cancer susceptibility. Several studies show that soy protein may be protective. Perhaps the problem is not that the Japanese are starting to eat fat, but that they stopped eating tofu! There is also growing evidence that certain vegetables, antioxidants in particular, which contain vitamins A, C and E, may be protective against breast cancer.

Vitamin A from vegetables (beta carotene) has shown in various studies to decrease the incidence of several cancer types, including lung cancer. A recent study using fenretinide, a form of vitamin A, in women who had had breast cancer showed no decrease in secondary cancers (metastasis), although there was a hint that there may be different, more beneficial effects in premenopausal women than their postmenopausal counterparts. Vegetables with vitamin A include broccoli, kale, carrots and lettuce. Folic acid and vitamin C appear to be good against all types of cancer.

You may do well to encourage your kids to spend a little less time eating fast foods and to eat a bit more low fat, nutritional food high in vitamins. However, it is not wise to expect miracles. Even if dietary change does have an effect, it is likely to be a small one.

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