Breast cancer awareness month

What Is Breast Cancer?


While it’s celebrated during the month of October, breast cancer awareness is really a year-round issue. Until there's a cure, a vital part of the breast cancer discussion should include the anatomy of the breast, as well as how cancer can happen in the first place.

Breast 101

The normal breast consists of milk-producing glands that are connected to the surface of the skin at the nipple by narrow ducts. The glands and ducts are supported by connective tissue made up of fat and fibrous material. Blood vessels, nerves, and channels to the lymph nodes make up most of the rest of the breast tissue. All the breast anatomy mentioned above sits under the skin, but on top of the chest muscles.

How Does Breast Cancer Happen?

As in all forms of cancer, the abnormal tissue that makes up breast cancer is the patient's own cells that have multiplied too rapidly. Those cells may also travel to locations in the body where they are not normally needed, which means the cancer is malignant.

• Breast cancer develops in the breast tissue, primarily in the milk ducts (ductal carcinoma) or glands (lobular carcinoma). The cancer is still called and treated as breast cancer even if it is first discovered after traveling to other areas of the body such as the lungs, liver, or bones. In those cases, the cancer is referred to as metastatic or advanced breast cancer.

• Breast cancer usually begins with the formation of a small, confined tumor (lump), or as calcium deposits (microcalcifications) and then spreads through channels to the lymph nodes or through the blood stream to other organs.

• The tumor may also grow and invade tissue around the breast, such as the skin or chest wall. Different types of breast cancer grow and spread at different rates - some take years to spread beyond the breast while other move quickly.

• Some lumps are benign (not cancerous), however these can be premalignant. The only safe way to distinguish between a benign lump and cancer is to have the tissue examined by a doctor.

• Men can get breast cancer, too, but they account for less than one-half of one percent of all cases.

What Causes Breast Cancer?

Although the exact causes of breast cancer are still unclear, doctors do understand the main risk factors. Among the most significant factors are advancing age and a family history of breast cancer. Risk increases slightly for a woman who has had a benign breast lump and increases significantly for a woman who has previously had breast cancer or a history of endometrial, ovarian, or colon cancer.

Other risk factors include:

• Family - A woman whose mother, sister, or daughter has had breast cancer is two to three times more likely to develop the disease, particularly if more than one first-degree relative has been affected. This is especially true if the cancer developed in the woman while she was premenopausal, or if the cancer developed in both breasts.

• Age/Race - Generally, women over 50 are more likely to get breast cancer than younger women, and black women are more likely than Caucasians to get breast cancer before menopause.

• Estrogen -A link between breast cancer and hormones is gradually becoming clearer. Researchers think that the greater a woman's exposure to the hormone estrogen, the more susceptible she is to breast cancer. Estrogen tells cells to divide; the more the cells divide, the more likely they are to be abnormal in some way, possibly becoming cancerous. Current information about the effect of birth control pills and breast cancer risk is mixed. Some studies have found that the hormones in birth control pills probably do not increase breast cancer risk. However other studies suggest that the risk of breast cancer is increased in women who have taken birth control pills recently, regardless of how long she has taken them.

• Diet- The link between diet and breast cancer is debated. Obesity is a noteworthy risk factor, predominately in postmenopausal women, because obesity alters a woman's estrogen levels. Drinking alcohol regularly - more than 2 to 3 drinks a day - may also promote the disease. Many studies have shown that women whose diets are high in fat, either from red meat or high-fat dairy products, are more likely to get the disease. Researchers suspect that if a woman lowers her daily calories from fat - to less than 20%-30% - her diet may help protect her from developing breast cancer.

Can You Survive Breast Cancer?

Among women, breast cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths behind lung cancer. Black women tend to have the highest breast cancer death rates.

Two-thirds of women with breast cancer are over 50, and most of the rest are between 39 and 49.

Fortunately, breast cancer is very treatable if detected early. Localized tumors can usually be treated successfully before the cancer spreads; and in nine in 10 cases, the woman will live at least another five years. Experts usually consider a five-year survival to be a cure although recurrences after five years are common.

Once the cancer begins to spread, getting rid of it completely is more difficult, although treatment can often control the disease for years. Improved screening procedures and treatment options mean that at least seven out of 10 women with breast cancer will survive more than five years after initial diagnosis, and half will survive more than 10 years.

Top Breast Cancer Screening Tips:

• All women: Conduct consistent, monthly self-exams seven to ten days after the start of the menstrual cycle. For post-menopausal women, select one day of the month and consistently conduct a self-exam on that day.

• Women with no family history of breast cancer: Have a baseline mammogram screening at 35, then regular mammogram screenings every year after 40.

• Women with a family history of breast cancer: Baseline mammogram 10 years before youngest member diagnosed with breast cancer.

• black women under the age of 40 with a palpable breast mass: Insist on getting evaluated with a mammogram or ultrasound. Seek out a breast specialist if necessary.


Photo credit: www.dazzlejunction.com

Maximize your fertility

Male Infertility is a condition that is not really discussed in most african countries mainly because its an embarrasing topic. Due to this, there is little awareness of this condition and so a lot of people do not know how to prevent it. A lot of young men do not know what the volume of a normal ejaculation should be neither do they know how to get their sperm to be top performers. Here are important facts you need to know about healthy sperm and also..a little bit of sperm biology.


Normal sperm characters
Normal ejaculate volume is between 2 and 6 ml.

Sperm quantity
More than 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen.

Of the millions of sperm in the ejaculated semen, only about 200 actually reach the egg in a woman's fallopian tube.

But, just one is needed to fertilize the egg.

Sperm quality
Sperm shape and structure (morphology) are equally important
More than one-third of your sperm are of normal shape and structure
More than 30% normal forms is a strict criteria
A normal sperm has an oval head and a long tail that propel it forward
Sperm with large, small, tapered or crooked heads or kinky, curled or double tails are less likely to fertilize an egg

Motility
To reach the egg, sperm have to move on their own — wriggling and swimming the last few inches to reach and penetrate the egg

Most likely to be fertile if at least half of your sperm are moving

Normal humans typically have total sperm motility of greater than 50% or 25% progressively motile sperm

How to improve the sperm quality
Take a multivitamin- A daily multivitamin with selenium, zinc and folic acid
Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables- are rich in antioxidants
Reduce stress- stress might interfere with certain hormones needed to produce sperm
Get regular exercise- But don't overdo it. Men who exercise to exhaustion show a temporary change in hormone levels and a drop in sperm quality.
Watch your weight- too much or too little body fat may disrupt production of reproductive hormones
Quit using tobacco and limit alcohol
Avoid anabolic steroids
Avoid lubricants during sex- personal lubricants, lotions and even saliva can interfere with sperm motility. However, vegetable-oil-based lubricants are okay


Separating facts from fictions
Sitting on a bicycle saddle for more than 30 minutes at a time — especially if you also wear tight bicycle shorts — may raise your scrotal temperature and affect sperm production.

Prolonged cycling can cause genital numbness — a sign of damage to delicate nerves and arteries.

An illness that causes a fever can affect sperm production and sperm quality. But it won't affect fertility for two to three months, since it takes sperm 75 days to mature.

Sperm counts are higher in the winter and lower in the summer. This may be because cooler temperatures are associated with increased sperm production.

Photo credit: www.walyou.com

Potential Reasons not to love your Love Handles

The what?

Love handles. A slang term for the mostly cuddly fat surrounding the waist area is actually just a generous amount of subcutaneous fat (SF) that resides under the top layer of skin. The other types of abdominal fat are visceral fat (VF), found deeper within the body surrounding vital organs in the peritoneal cavity and intra muscular fat (IF) found within skeletal muscle in the upper torso.

Over the years studies have shown that fat (adipose tissue) doesn’t just passively accumulate but much like endocrine glands release hormones and other substances. This is particularly true for fat stored in the belly area and these hormones could be contributing factors to a myriad of metabolic and other types of diseases, such as type II diabetes.

So the bad news is that whilst the jelly belly may not always be so lovable, subcutaneous fat, the kind that constitutes love handles isn’t linked that strongly to adverse effects as visceral fat. Therefore, depending on some variables, an expanding waist line might not always spell trouble.

The why?

In black women aged between 20-29 the tendency to start piling on the pounds around the waist and belly is more pronounced than in Hispanic or White women of the same age group and their elders. Typically amongst women, the mid section only starts to thicken as a side effect of aging, or more specifically menopause, when fat storage starts to favour the upper body, particularly the stomach area over the hips and thighs. This is likely caused by depletion in the amount of oestrogen produced during menopause which leads to disproportionately higher levels of androgen (male hormones) and the production of stress hormones (cortisol) which causes the accumulation of abdominal fat. Cortisol is also the hormone that causes Cushing’s disease, one of the symptoms is central obesity (weight gain in the middle of the body i.e. abdomen, chest and face only), and can be triggered by stress.

So there are three factors thus far that predisposes the accumulation of fat around the mid section, age, race and lifestyle. The fourth, as with most health issues is genetics, namely the ones that you inherit from your parents. Depending on your particular body shape, the natural distribution of fat varies. A quick recap of the six main female body shapes:




Pear ( triangle)- This type tends to hold weight in the hips, abdomen and thighs with a small bust and narrow shoulders

Apple (inverted triangle)-This type holds weight centrally in the abdomen and has broad shoulders and narrow hips

Rectangle -This type has minimal differentiation in the bust, waist and hips and distributes fat equally in these areas

Hourglass - This type has a small waist and relatively larger hips and bust. Weight is held mainly in the hips and bust.

Diamond and Rounded shape: These types generally have fat distributed in the midsection especially the waist, abdomen and back.


From these descriptions it’s easy to see that the body shapes most likely to hold weight in the stomach area is the apple and to a lesser extent, pear shaped types, although as advanced age approaches, all types of shapes are equally dealt with the “middle age spread”.
All this means that as a black woman, you are more likely to begin gaining weight in your mid section from age 20, and your particular body type, especially if you’re apple shaped, as well as lifestyle choices which are stressful, may lead you to accumulate dangerous amounts of visceral fat.
Why is visceral fat so bad for my health and what is the worst that can happen? When there is a large amount of VF in the abdomen, certain hormones like cytokines, tumour necrosis factor (TNF), interleukin 6 are released. The proximity of VF to the portal vein allows for other harmful fatty acids to be released into the bloodstream and carried from the intestine to the liver leading to high levels of bad cholesterol. All these combined constitute metabolic syndrome which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, aside from the aforementioned type II diabetes.

The How?

So you might be predisposed to gaining unwanted visceral fat in the stomach area, the next thing to determine is how do I know if my love handles should be a source of concern and how do I rectify the situation?
There may be cause for concern if more than 1of the following is true:
Is your BMI (Body Mass Index) higher than 25?
(BMI = weight (kg)/ (height in metres) 2). This is the least accurate indicator for abdominal fat measurement.

Measure your hips and waist, and divide the former into the latter, is the ratio higher than 0.8?
(Studies show that a ratio of 0.85 and above is a strong indicator of colorectal cancer with a risk factor of 52%)

When you measured your waist, was it larger than 35 inches?
(A large waist circumference, regardless of overall weight is linked to atherosclerosis (fatty build up in the arteries) and high blood pressure)

The good news is that visceral fat is even easier to budge than subcutaneous fat, so while your waist circumference may shrink; your love handles just might remain!
With adequate exercise and diet it should only take a couple of months to drop the inches around your waist. Don’t worry if your overall weight doesn’t change that much, remember, in the interest of your health, girth, rather than weight is a better indicator of good health. Remember that spot exercising, such as sit-ups and abdominal crunches only tones the muscles and doesn’t budge the fat. For rapid results try low intensity cardio work outs like brisk walking, skipping and aerobics 30 minutes a day and gradually build up to about 1 hour every other day. While exercising, better results are seen if you include rest periods of about a minute for every fifteen minutes of intense work out.
The end

So, you should have learned that as a black woman the risk of accumulating potentially harmful abdominal fat is higher than in other ethnicities. You should also know what visceral fat is and how it puts you at risk for heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and how to spot the danger signs. However, there is no need to panic because with diet and exercise you can lose the one or two inches from your waist that will put you back in the safe zone.
To keep being fabulous and healthy, remember to relax (or risk those pesky cortisol hormones), eat well, exercise and love your curves, its mostly just cuddly subcutaneous fat which will not harm you anyway!


By Tahira Abdulazeez