What Your Metabolism Says About How Aggressive Breast Cancer Is Likely To Be For You

We’ll get straight to it:

More than 120 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC)* is the most aggressive breast cancer form.

These may seem like unrelated statements, until we consider that patients with obesity-driven** diabetes have much worse TNBC outcomes.

*The “triple-negative” refers to:

• the cancer cells don’t have estrogen receptors
• the cancer cells don’t have progesterone receptors
• the cancer cells don’t make the protein HER2, or at least not in clinically relevant amounts.

**with regard to “obesity-driven”, that is what it is called, and the presence of excess fat does play an important role as we will see, but the fundamental culprit is insulin resistance, as we will also see.

The connection

Superficially, the connection between obesity-driven diabetes and worse TNBC outcomes could be put down to “a person who is already unhealthy will generally fare worse in most health things than an otherwise healthy person”. And, in and of itself, that’s a fair point. Comorbidities certainly do tend to flock together and make each other worse.

On the flipside, this does also mean that the more points of good health we have in our favor, the greater our chances of faring better if something (such as a cancer) does strike us regardless. So, there’s a fair motivation to always keep on top of all aspects of health, so far as reasonably possible.

However, there’s more to it than that.

Dr. Naomi Ko et al., a team of researchers at Boston University, found that diabetes alters breast cancer biology, making TNBC more aggressive and increasing the risk of brain metastasis (i.e., the cancer spreading to the brain).

Specifically, exosomes from fat cells carry microRNAs that worsen TNBC behavior, enhancing the cancer’s:

• cell growth
• movement
• survival under stress
• brain colonization

This also means that certain microRNA patterns predict breast cancer progression and/or survival.

You can find the paper itself here:

Insulin Resistance Increases TNBC Aggressiveness and Brain Metastasis via Adipocyte-derived Exosomes

Why this matters

The researchers argue that their findings suggest the need for special monitoring and treatment for TNBC patients with metabolic disorders like diabetes, and that treating underlying conditions (such as diabetes) alongside cancer is likely to improve outcomes.

On an individual level rather than systemic (assuming you, dear reader, to be a private individual who is not, for example, in charge of health policy for a region, or something like that), what this means is:

We must avoid carrying too much excess fat yes, and/but we must also particularly focus on avoiding/reversing insulin resistance, which can be a silent killer even without excess adiposity, because the noticeable signs and symptoms (including blood sugar irregularities) occur only well into insulin resistance, when the poor overworked pancreas can no longer crank out enough insulin to keep things ticking over.

With that in mind, do check out in particular the two following articles:

How To Lose Weight (Healthily!) ← if applicable. If on the other hand you’re already in the “healthy” body fat percentage range of 20–25% for women or 15–20% for men, then losing what fat you have will not be beneficial, and may even be harmful, depending on other factors.

How To Avoid & Reverse Insulin Resistance ← this one’s super-important!

And of course:

How To Triple Your Breast Cancer Survival Chances

And if you want to get really well-informed, then we highly recommend checking out:

The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons

Take care!