In the last couple of blog posts we have focused on how important lifestyle changes like following a good diet and maintaining a normal weight can be in reducing your risk of breast cancer recurrence. 

It probably shouldn’t surprise you that doing a little exercise will also decrease your risk of recurrence.  But what may indeed surprise you is how little activity it takes and how big the impact is.

So here is the good news.  First of all, the activity that you choose doesn’t have to involve a gym.  Any sort of purposeful activity like gardening, house cleaning, or washing the car counts as activity.  You need to do something to be active every day.  And when you know that you don’t have to go out and run 5 miles or spend an hour on the elliptical machine in order to make a difference, then being active can seem manageable. 

Research shows that if a breast cancer survivor walks just 30 minutes a day for 6 days...

In previous posts, we have talked about how important insulin resistance is in your risk for breast cancer recurrence.  Insulin resistance is also associated with a condition known as chronic inflammation.  This is different from acute inflammation.  You are all probably familiar with what happens with acute inflammation since that is a normal body response. Let’s say you cut your hand.  Your immune system sends out its army to create an inflammatory response which results in cells that stop the bleeding, fight any potential infection, and start healing the damage.  Once the damage is healed, the inflammatory response dies down.  That’s acute inflammation and it keeps us healthy. 

Chronic inflammation is another story.  It happens when there is a low grade irritation that smolders along in your body.  The cells that were so useful at fighting infection and healing damage from a cut can actually start to cause damage in...