Welcome to Part 3 of our National Breast Cancer Awareness Month Series. Throughout this week, we’ve been sharing the latest in technology, recovery and prevention. We’ve explored ways for a woman to navigate her breast cancer journey by sharing her joys and tears, along with tracking her progress. Now we’ll focus on something so fundamental in our lives, that it’s actually called a basic need – food. Besides sustaining life, food can actually help heal us.
Food is good medicine
A diet rich in nutritious foods is vital to a woman’s body for breast cancer recovery. A healthy combination of carbohydrates, fats and proteins aid the healing process. The Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine offers a healthy diet plan for women with breast cancer. Thorough, yet easy to understand, here are some select recommendations:
- Choose fruits and vegetables from all colors of the spectrum – especially berries, tomatoes, orange and yellow fruits, and dark leafy greens. Eating cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and kale is highly recommended.
- To get necessary protein into the diet, beans and nuts are great choices, as is a variety of fish. Salmon, sardines, herring and butter fish are excellent sources of protein, while also providing a healthy does of omega-3 fatty acids. Extra-virgin olive oil, avocados and nuts are other smart ways to add essential proteins and fats.
- Women should also include 40 grams of fiber per day, supplement their diet with a multi-vitamin and drink plenty of green tea.
Proper nutrition might be even more powerful than just aiding in breast cancer recovery. In Part 4 of our series, we’ll discover how eating the right foods might help keep breast cancer from coming back – and could actually help prevent it in the first place.
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