Losing weight will improve your looks, but it also your health… Did you know that just by cutting 5% of your weight you me be reducing the risk of breast cancer in 22%? I think this is enough for stop says that you need to lose weight and actually begin doing something about it!
A new study out of the Hutchinson Cancer Researcher Center has revealed even a small amount of weight loss effectively reduces the amount of circulating estrogens in the body– which are hormones that have been found to increase the risk of breast cancer in women. Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the study is the first clinical trial to examine the link between weight loss and the reduction of sex hormones in overweight and obese postmenopausal women, a major group at risk for breast cancer.
source: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7410834n&tag=mg;health
McTiernan and her colleagues collected data from 439 overweight-to-obese women aged 50 to 75 in the Seattle, Wash., area. Each woman was randomly assigned to one of four categories – exercise only, diet only, exercise plus diet and no intervention.
Throughout the course of the study, the researchers measured blood levels of different types of sex hormones, including two forms of testosterone, three forms of estrogen, a steroid needed to produce sex hormones, and SHBG – a protein that binds to sex hormones rendering them less effective.
By the study’s conclusion, women in both the diet-only and diet-and-exercise group lost about 10 percent of their original weight, on average. But even smaller amounts of weight loss were shown to drastically reduce sex hormones linked with breast cancer.
“We did find that the more weight someone lost, the more her estrogens and testosterone went down,” McTiernan said. “However, just losing 5 percent of starting weight – such as losing 10 pounds if she started at 200 – had a significant effect. That’s really promising news, I believe, because it’s telling us that women don’t have to be a ‘Biggest Loser’ to get an important health benefit.”
