Tea Up If you don't have tea time in your house, you might want to add it to your schedule. A study done in Sweden found that drinking black or green tea each day significantly reduced women's risk. Researchers looked at information from more than 61,000 women who participated in the Swedish Mammography Cohort study. The women were between the ages of 40 and 76 when they enrolled in the study and were followed until 2004. When compared to women who rarely drank tea, higher tea consumption appeared to reduce ovarian cancer risk. The more a person drank, the lower the risk became. Women who drank one cup a day lowered their risk by 24 percent. Those drinking two or more cups a day cut their risk in half. And the researchers said that each additional cup of tea per day was associated with an 18 percent lower risk of developing epithelial ovarian cancer.
Let the sun shine
Q: I know spending too much time in the sun is not good for you, but my son plans to be a lifeguard this summer. Is there anything he can do to fight the damaging effects of long hours in the sun and constant daily exposure? JVW: The safest way to protect the skin is to limit sun exposure, which, as you point out, can be especially hard to do if your job requires you to spend more time outdoors. The best option for people in this situation is to protect their skin from the inside out by supplementing with folic acid. Folic acid deficiency is a major contributor to skin cancer risk. Folic acid (along with vitamin B12 and zinc) is absolutely key to DNA reproduction and repair. I recommend supplementing with 1,000 mcg of folic acid daily. Those who spend a good amount of time in the sun or have a family history of skin cancer should use even more. It's also good to add sources of folic acid to the diet, such as spinach and other dark green vegetables, brewers yeast, lima beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, wheat germ, and liver from organically raised animals. In addition, extra doses of vitamins C and E will further relieve stress to the skin. What is...epithelial ovarian cancer? Ovarian tumors are often named according to the kind of cells where the tumor originated. There are three main types of ovarian tumors: germ cell tumors, stromal tumors, and epithelial tumors. Germ cell tumors begin in the cells that produce the eggs; stromal tumors start from connective tissue cells that hold the ovary together and produce the female hormones; and epithelial tumors start from the cells that cover the outside surface of the ovaries. Most epithelial ovarian tumors are benign and do not spread. However, when an epithelial ovarian tumor is classified as cancerous, the designation for the disease is epithelial ovarian cancer. About 85 to 90 percent of ovarian cancers are epithelial ovarian cancers.
Sources:
"Tea Consumption and Ovarian Cancer Risk in a Population-Based Cohort," Archives of Internal Medicine 2005; 165: 2683-86
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