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Writer's pictureJeannie Collins Beaudin

Breast cancer in men… plus new theories on how cancer begins


I’ll bet you didn’t know men can get breast cancer too. The risk is lower, about 1 in 1000 (compared to 1 in 8 women), but the outcome is often worse. In the US last year, there were 2,600 reported cases of breast cancer in men and about 500 did not survive. Surgeons and oncologists report an increase in the number of men being diagnosed with this disease.


Outcomes are worse in men

There is little awareness of male breast cancer as there is no regular screening program and not much education about this cancer. In fact, many men do not realize they can get breast cancer. Men have little breast tissue to contain the cancer, making it easier to see and more likely for the tumour to reach the nipple or the skin, making it visible at an earlier stage. However, less breast tissue also means that a cancer can spread beyond the breast more quickly in men.


Symptoms of male breast cancer are similar to women’s:

-a hard lump or thickening of tissue that may not be visible on the surface but feels different from surrounding tissue

-discharge of clear fluid or blood from the nipple.

-reddening of the skin or a rash

-dimpling of the skin

-a nipple that pulls inward (becomes inverted)

-increase in size of one breast


A tumour can be hard or soft and may or may not be attached to the skin or muscle. It is usually painless, but not always. Sometimes breast cancer can spread to lymph nodes under the arm or near the collarbone and be detected there before the original tumour in the breast is found.


Less support for men

When men are diagnosed with breast cancer, their support system is not as robust as the systems that have been developed for women with the same disease. Men can be embarrassed to share that they have what can be perceived as a “woman’s” disease.


It is as important for men to know and watch for symptoms as it is for women. Awareness can help them monitor both themselves and their intimate partners. Of course, these changes are not always caused by cancer—many tumours are “benign” or non-cancerous. However, as treatments are more successful when a cancer is caught early, any changes should be checked out by a healthcare professional as soon as possible.


Why write about breast cancer?

It’s not breast cancer month or even men’s health month (“Movember”) but World Cancer Day was this week, on February 4th. However, any time is a good time to talk about prevention and early detection of cancer. Like most of you, I know too many women affected by this disease and I was surprised at first to realize that men are affected too, although many fewer, fortunately. One reference I came across years ago suggested that breast and prostate cancer may have similar causes in the environment, diet, and our life styles.


I’ve always believed it’s better to find the cause of a disease rather than just treat the symptoms and, if you read my writing regularly, you know I like to read about new ideas and question the status quo when therapies are not as effective as they should be. Unfortunately, the cause of breast cancer is not well understood, and treatments overall are not as successful as we’d like them to be, although there are success stories.


New research…

For many years, cancer has been believed to be a genetic disease—you have a damaged gene, either inherited or randomly damaged in the process of cell division, and control of cell growth is lost, leading to uncontrolled cell growth and eventually a cancerous tumour if your immune system doesn’t correct it. But this week, I watched a lecture by a researcher suggesting a different mechanism for how cancer begins. Dr. Thomas Seyfried, a professor and researcher at Boston College, lectures and writes about a potential metabolic cause for cancer that results in the downstream genetic damage and uncontrolled cell growth of cells that become cancerous. He believes the problem begins with our metabolism, not our genes.


Here is how he describes it: every cell has tiny “energy factories” called mitochondria. Cells need energy to grow and divide, and mitochondria provide this energy. When the mitochondria become damaged, a cell can have too little energy, leading to diseases associated with reduced cell growth and fatigue or simply the death of that one cell. However, if the mitochondria become damaged in a way that causes them to begin overproducing energy, this researcher suggests, the cell can begin uncontrolled growth leading to cancer.


He and his colleagues have conducted lab studies that support his theory. For example, transplanting genetic material from the nucleus of a cancer cell into a normal one does not cause it to become cancerous, even though the cancer gene has been transplanted. But transplanting cell fluid that contains the mitochondria into a normal cell does cause the receiving cell to become a cancer cell. Interesting.


Although these are early studies, they caught my attention as this presents a new way of thinking about cancer and treating it. And there appears to be growing data from researchers around the world who are testing his theory in animals and even in humans when other therapies have failed.


Dr. Seyfried explains how glucose and an amino acid called glutamine are preferred “foods” for cancer cells, resulting in fermentation to produce energy for the cell instead of oxidation (the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation, for those who studied microbiology), as occurs in normal cells. It has been noted that all cancer cells are different in this way—known as the Warburg Effect, documented by Otto Warburg in the 1950s. Using fermentation to create energy is a property of all cancer cells, something they all have in common and that is different from our normal cells.


However, Seyfried explains, normal human cells can also run on another form of fuel—ketones, produced by burning fat. He suggests that more research should be done to find out whether a ketogenic diet (aka the Keto diet) might prevent cancer cells from reproducing. Preliminary studies suggest shrinking of tumours, regardless of type, when the ratio of glucose to ketones is close to or less than 1 (meaning we have about equal amounts of glucose and ketones, or more ketones than glucose) and when the amino acid, glutamine (which also supports production of energy by fermentation), is also suppressed. Could it be possible that we could control or even block cancer by changing our diet to favour production of ketones and reduce glucose? Worth researching, I’d say.


While anyone with cancer must work with their doctor and follow recommended advice, nailing down the cause and investigating non-toxic forms of potential treatment needs to be an important goal of cancer research. There have been breakthroughs with standard therapies of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, but the “War on Cancer” has definitely not been won yet. We need to welcome and investigate new ideas like the metabolic theory of cancer that appear to offer potential non-toxic improvements in therapy.


Interested in learning more about this? I have added links to Dr. Seyfried’s video and one of his papers in the references below…



References:

Can Breast Cancer in Men Be Found Early?—American Cancer Society

Symptoms of breast cancer—Canadian Cancer Society

Video: Dr. Thomas Seyfried: Cancer as a mitochondrial metabolic disease—YouTube

Paper: Cancer as a Mitochondrial Metabolic Disease, Thomas N. Seyfried—US National Library of Medicine




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