If you have any history of breast cancer in your family you want to do all you can to avoid developing it.

In that respect diet, nutrition and hormone balance can play a significant role in your chances of reducing the risk it poses.

What will help:

1. We need to have fats in order to metabolise vitamins and essential nerve functions, but make sure you are using good, healthy fats.

If dieting, it is often based around low-fat but this can mean you won’t get the essential fats you need.

You need the monounsaturates found in organic extra virgin olive oil, and freshly ground flaxseed and oily fish such as salmon and sardines as these may help reduce your risk of developing breast cancer.

2. Soy foods contain many cancer-protective substances, including isoflavones, but in all things there is a balance, so in moderation they can be helpful, but not in excess as they can bind to the oestrogen receptors in the breast.

3. Five a day is really not enough, so increase your intake of fruit and vegetables either raw, steamed or even in smoothies if that is the only way you can take them.

The best cancer-fighting ones are the cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, bok choy and cauliflower as they are high in protective phytonutrients.

4. Check your hormone balance as excess oestrogen (oestrogen dominance) is linked to many hormonal cancers including breast and uterine.

Progesterone has been shown to protect against breast cancer and it is especially important for women with any family history of the disease to know what oestrogen dominance symptoms are and if they are vulnerable.

5. Watching your weight is not always easy but if combined with low exercise you will increase your risk not just of cancer but heart disease as well.

More information:

Dealing with oestrogen dominance is certainly one factor that you can bring under control by balancing it with bio identical progesterone.

Progesterone opposes excess oestrogen and bioidentical hormones do have a role to play as this article by Dr Tony Coope demonstrates.