Healthy diet helps reduce cancer risk, expert claims

Debbie A Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Early cancer detection and adopting a healthy lifestyle can help reduce the risk of breast cancer and secondary cancers in women, according to a health expert.

Zubairi Djoerban, internist and hematologist at Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that eating vegetables and fruit five times a day or taking a daily 30-minute brisk walk could reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Speaking on the sidelines of a seminar titled Breast Cancer: How to Prevent and to Cure, he said that eating fatty foods, smoking and drinking alcohol made women susceptible to breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among Indonesian women after cervical cancer. He said that if breast cancer was found, it was not uncommon for a secondary cancer to be found in the brain, bones, lungs or liver.

Zubairi said that one in 10 local women were prone to breast cancer, and a woman from a family that had no history of cancer still had a 10 percent risk of having breast cancer.

"A woman is 80 percent likely to get breast cancer if three women in her immediate family have had breast and/or ovarian cancer," he said.

Elderly women, women who were 30 or over at their first pregnancy, had never breast-fed, never married or who were very young when they had their first period or who experienced a late menopause are also at high risk of breast cancer.

Zubairi, however, said that although breast cancer was often found in elderly women, Indonesian women aged between 20 and 40 years also had been found to have early signs of breast cancer.

Another speaker at the seminar, Soehartati Gondhowiardjo, radiologist and oncologist at the Jakarta Breast Cancer Clinic, said women could examine their own breasts.

"We can detect a cancer if the diameter is already one centimeter, but I recommend young women have an ultrasound or mammogram to be more thorough," she said.

Soehartati said that most patients consulted their doctors only after the cancer had developed into a third-stage cancer, making the recovery process more difficult and painful.

"They often come with some secondary signs like reddish breasts, bloody nipples, ulcers or retraction of the breast skin and nipples," she said.

Citing a study conducted in the U.S., Soehartati said that early detection could help reduce breast cancer deaths by up to 30 percent.

Zubairi said that women diagnosed with breast cancer may choose to undergo surgery or take hormonal and medicinal treatment. "But they should consider at what stage their cancer is and its size," he said.

He added that an internist, an oncologist, a pathologist and family members were needed to help patients before, during and after treatment because chemotherapy was rough on patients, causing hair loss, nausea and vomiting.

"Some of the side effects can be reduced by medicine but patients badly need the moral support to boost their optimism," he said.

Zubairi said breast cancer patients who had recovered should have regular checkups because recurrences often occurred.