Being overweight does more than put you at risk for a heart attack.
It increases your chances of facing breast cancer. Women who gain 55 lbs or more in adulthood are at 50 percent greater risk for developing it.1 And if you are packing on pounds during menopause, bad news… You are in the most danger.
But it actually makes perfect sense. Leaner women tend to have more of a protective hormone against breast cancer. It’s called adiponectin.
It regulates blood sugar and fat storage. Low levels of it increase your risk for breast cancer, type-2 diabetes, and chronic inflammation.2
If you don’t have enough adiponectin in your post-menopausal years, your risk increases by nearly 20 percent.3 And while getting lean is the preferred way of upping this hormone, there is a way to sort of “cheat.”
A compound in common foods can help boost your adiponectin production by almost 10 percent in 10 weeks.
Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant. It gives fruits like tomato their red color. It’s also why tomatoes fight heart disease and prevent prostate cancer. But it also helps you avoid breast cancer by raising your levels of adiponectin.
A study by the Endocrine Society followed the diets of postmenopausal women for 10 weeks. They ate a tomato-rich diet that gave them at least 25 mg of lycopene a day.
After eating the tomato-based diet, the women raised their adiponectin levels by 10 percent. The non-obese women in the study saw increases as high as 13 percent.
The most impressive part is that these women made no other changes to their diet or lifestyle. It was the lycopene alone that gave them this boost.
So what does it take to get 25 mg of lycopene a day? Not much. One cup of fresh tomato juice provides 23 mg of it.4
Of course tomatoes aren’t the only source of lycopene. If you can find them, buffalo berries have more lycopene per serving than a tomato. But you can also get it from watermelon, grapefruit, guava, and even asparagus.5 Just make sure they’re fresh and organic.
Getting enough lycopene in your diet comes with many benefits to your health. Most importantly, it may be what prevents you from ever having a battle with breast cancer by keeping your adiponectin levels high.
1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16835425
2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15655035
3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15001594
4 http://www.naturalnews.com/043311_tomatoes_breast_cancer_lycopene.html
5 http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/high-lycopene-foods.php
http://institutefornaturalhealing.com/2014/01/this-antioxidant-helps-keep-you-clear-of-breast-cancer/2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15655035
3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15001594
4 http://www.naturalnews.com/043311_tomatoes_breast_cancer_lycopene.html
5 http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/high-lycopene-foods.php
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