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In the past year, 35% of workers reported an increase in depression, anxiety and stress-related physical ailments and employers lost $44 billion due to lost productivity from stress-related disorders.

Latest Research

The Link Between Antibiotics and Breast Cancer

(May 2004)

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a research article on February 18th that reports an association between antibiotic therapy and the incidence of breast cancer. In a study of 2,266 women over the age of nineteen who had breast cancer, there was a significant correlation between the occurrence of breast cancer with how frequently these women were administered antibiotics. The researchers behind the study stressed that it is not clear whether antibiotic use might give rise to breast cancer or simply reflect broad health problems, such as persistent inflammation, that might encourage the growth of malignant breast cancer. The link between breast cancer and antibiotic therapy might be less mysterious once we examine the long-term effects of antibiotics on the intestinal tract and how the liver manages estrogen.

The chronic use of antibiotics will kill many of the beneficial bacteria in the small intestine, which normally has over five hundred varieties of bacteria that perform hundreds of functions necessary for a healthy metabolism and immune response. Through enzyme secretions, these bacteria transform metabolic, microbial, and hormonal wastes before they are excreted in a bowel movement. The chronic use of antibiotics contribute to two syndromes. The first is commonly known as 'leaky gut', which refers to a breakdown in the wall of the small intestines and results in microscopic pinholes that allow undigested proteins, bacteria, and estrogen to leak out. The second syndrome, floral dysbiosis, refers to the inability of the intestinal bacteria to perform proper metabolic functions due to an imbalance in the population of beneficial bacteria.

Estrogen is produced by the ovaries, but before it can become usable, it must be transported to the liver where it becomes bound to other enzymes. Approximately one-fifth of the estrogen is deactivated by an enzyme in the liver before being excreted through the bile duct of the gall bladder into the small intestines to be eliminated in a bowel movement. Once the estrogen is in the small intestines, two things can go wrong. Floral dysbiosis can cause an overabundance of an enzyme that will reactivate the estrogen into a usable hormone; couple this with leaky gut syndrome, and the reactivated estrogen is now out of the confines of the intestinal wall and can travel to estrogen receptor sites of the breast tissue, thereby increasing the risk of cancer.

This explanation between breast cancer and antibiotic therapy is already in my book on page 29, so I find it interesting that a lot of time and money is being spent on researching this, especially when the researchers are still unclear of the connection. What is of greater importance is the need of Glutamine and probiotic supplementation to repair the intestinal wall and replace the normal intestinal flora after taking antibiotics, which would prevent the occurrence of estrogen being reactivated and leaking out to breast tissue.

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