Are you already taking this breast cancer pill?

If you haven’t already heard that fortifying your gut with beneficial bacteria can help you overcome stomach disorders like IBS, avoid colon cancer, boost your bones — and even promote younger-looking skin — you’d have to be living under a rock.

Yes, the health-boosting benefits of probiotics are known far and wide. But what you may not realize is just how far those benefits reach…

Some of the most recent — and most promising — news about probiotics reveals this simple supplement has the power to reduce your risk of developing breast cancer. So if you do just one thing to avoid breast cancer — take a probiotic.

That’s because your breasts, like your gut, are colonized by bacteria. And researchers have found that the breast tissue of women with breast cancer contains elevated levels of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis — two types of harmful bacteria that have been found to cause DNA damage that can lead to, you guessed it… cancer development.

The very same research found that Lactobacillus and Streptococcus — two kinds of health-promoting bacteria known to have anticarcinogenic properties — were much more plentiful in healthy, cancer-free breasts than in cancerous ones.

Why did scientists decide to look to the breast for bacteria known to exist in the gut? They were motivated by the fact that women who breastfeed get breast cancer much less than women who do not…

According to lead researcher, Gregor Reid, PhD., Professor of Surgery, and Microbiology & Immunology at Western University and Director, Canadian Centre for Human Microbiome and Probiotic Research at Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario, Canada, “Since human milk contains beneficial bacteria, we wondered if they might be playing a role in lowering the risk of cancer. Or, could other bacterial types influence cancer formation in the mammary gland in women who had never lactated? To even explore the question, we needed first to show that bacteria are indeed present in breast tissue.”

But what if you didn’t or don’t plan to be a breastfeeding mom? No worries — you can still benefit from this powerful bacterial cancer prevention…

Lactation is not the only way to improve the bacterial flora of your breasts. “Colleagues in Spain have shown that probiotic lactobacilli [probiotics] ingested by women can reach the mammary gland,” said Reid.

It may be a while before your doctor gets wind of this very promising research. And even when he does, who knows if he’ll recommend that you take probiotics.

But if you’re not already boosting your gut, bone and even your brain health (not to mention your skin and energy levels) with a daily probiotic supplement, or probiotic foods like yogurt and sauerkraut — you most definitely should get started right away. The probiotic’s track record is a winning one and it shows no signs of falling behind.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/asfm-bbm062216.php