breast cancer pictures

If you read this question, then answer (please).

I’ve been so caught up with school, that today I realized that it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My Myspace Layout has a background for breast cancer, plus a few pictures from Photobucket to show my support.

What are you doing?

I hate to ask for stars, but please star if you’ve

A) Know/knew someone who suffers/suffered from this disease (or if you suffer/suffered from this disease)

B) You support it

C) Any other reason you can think of

For every star I receive, I will donate $0.50 to research. I know it’s not a lot, but I’m kind of broke at the moment.

Thanks

We’re all alone in the world - sitting on the edge of the globe, swinging our legs and warbling “All by my-sell-ell-elf”. But hey, at least no one’s jumping in with the “Don’t wanna be…”

We’re happy as we are. In fact, we’re the 15th happiest country in the world, according to the latest World Values Survey. That said, the news isn’t all rosy in the health stakes. We all know the stats: our skin cancer rates are high - OK, the highest. Rates of breast and colon cancer are right up there too. But even this bad news has an upside: our cancer survival rates are also some of the highest in the world.

Yep, we might be living in self-imposed exile, but we’re doing alright. There are heaps of reasons why being Kiwi is good for our wellbeing.

Here, how to work it to your advantage..

Seafood: Eat It

One of the best things about living on an island - or even better, straddling two of them is that we’re surrounded by nature’s nutritional over-achievers: fish.

“We’re blessed to have nice oily fish in New Zealand, and salmon is the trophy. It’s amazing brain food,” says Marco Kouch, co-owner of Crown Oven Smoked Salmon. Experts have been banging on about omega-3’s brain boosting, heart-healthy benefits for ages now, but did you know that New Zealand salmon boasts even more of the good stuff? “A variety in New Zealand, Chinook, found in the clear waters of the South Island, packs nine per cent 0mega-3 oils per 100g - compared with most overseas salmon which only contains up to seven per cent,” says Kouch. Maybe that’s the reason Kiwis are so happy - researchers at Finland’s University of Kuopio have found that eating fish also makes you 31 per cent less likely to suffer from depression.

But what’s fush without chups? Unthinkable, clearly: a 2006 study found 97 per cent of Kiwis eat spuds and 54 per cent of us eat them more than four times a week.

“Potatoes are part of our heritage and culture, and they grow readily here,” says Tauranga-based food and education consultant, Glenda Gourley.

Score health points today

Reel in that omega-3 goodness by eating fatty fish at least twice a week. Don’t like fish? Try omega-3 supplements - but make sure they haven’t been sitting on shelves for ages. The older the oil, the more likely it is to be oxidised (and therefore no use to you). Choose a product with a manufacture or “packed on” date that’s less than a year old.

No need to shun the spud either: NZ’s 2003 Crop and Food Research shows a standard-size potato contains nearly half your daily requirement of vitamin C.

“Look out for potatoes that have yellow, orange or purple pigments as they have higher antioxidant levels than regular white ones,” says nutritionist Angela Berrill. “The Maori potato has the highest antioxidant levels because of the deep purple colour,” (from the anthocyanins, since you ask). Berrill also has some advice for preparing the tater: don’t. “Leave the skin on for maximum fibre and antioxidant content.” Steaming or microwaving potatoes will retain most of their goodness, but if you really want chips, here’s our tip: cutting them thicker will reduce the fat content. And the best oil to use? Grapeseed - it has the lowest saturated fat levels of any oil.

We’ve got balls

Anyone who’s kicked tumbleweed down Queen Street the day after one of those All Blacks matches will tell you we’ve got a bit of a thing for rugby. But Diana O’Neill, Sport and Recreation’s (SPARC) senior advisor on health, reckons we like some other sports too. Who knew?

“We don’t do too badly as a nation with getting physical,” she says, pointing to a Ministry of Health survey, which reveals that half of Kiwi adults do 30 minutes of activity every day, five times a week or more. “It’s quite a good result internationally,” she says - with typical Kiwi understatement (for example, one in five Australians fail to walk for even 10 continuous minutes in a week).

For most of us (1,157,600 women), that activity is walking. But there’s another group who love nothing more than to leap off tall buildings, bridges, cliffs… Yep, AJ wasn’t at the end of his expandable string when he invented the bungy - he knew how alive you feel when you think you might die.

This feeling of “aliveness” is better known as adrenaline. And its link to wellbeing is more than anecdotal. Researchers at Texas A&M University in the US found that extreme sports burn through your stores of adrenaline-producing cortisol and epinephrine more than any other activity. Regularly doing extreme sports means your body gets used to these stress hormones and can shrug off situations that would normally make blood pressure soar. So, you can laugh in the face of your overflowing inbox. And Nyahaha! you can chuckle in the face of a stroke too - a 2003 study in the medical journal, Stroke, found that people with the highest stress levels had twice the risk of a fatal stroke compared with those who said they were stress-free.