Breast reconstruction surgery is a common procedure that many women choose after a mastectomy. Usually all goes well, but sometimes poor blood supply and other surgical problems can lead to a return trip to the operating room. Now, Radiology Business reports that a new wireless “bio-patch” attached for two days after reconstruction can help doctors monitor a patient’s recovery by giving them continuous feedback on oxygen saturation levels in the transferred tissue, and thus head off problems as soon as they occur.
While this is exciting news for women who have gone through both the horror of learning they have breast cancer and the devastating loss of a breast, some even better news came out earlier this summer regarding a possible way to avoid breast cancer in the first place, by simply optimizing your vitamin D levels.
Several studies show that higher vitamin D levels are protective against breast cancer specifically, which is a serious concern for most women. For example, one study showed that women with vitamin D levels above 60 ng/mL had an 83 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those below 20 ng/mL.
More recently, a pooled analysis of two randomized trials and a prospective cohort study again confirmed the link between vitamin D and breast cancer risk. What’s maddening is that, despite all the research on this, the American Medical Association continues to state that 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) is sufficient — even though a compelling body of research suggests 40 ng/mL is at the low end of sufficiency.
The truth is ongoing research has firmly established that a vitamin D level of 20 ng/mL is at the low end of the scale and that the ideal range is more likely to be between 60 and 80 ng/mL. Not only that, brand new research shows that 80 percent of cancer incidences could be prevented by simply raising vitamin D minimum levels from 20 ng/mL to 60 ng/mL.