Sunday, August 13, 2017

The causes of breast cancer from the perspective of Persian medicine

Journal of Cellular Immunotherapy

March 2017, Pages 12-13
open access

The causes of breast cancer from the perspective of Persian medicine

Author links open the author workspace.SoudehTeymouri
Author links open the author workspace. Mojdeh Khodabakhsh


Open Access funded by Shanghai Hengrun Biomedical Technology Research Institute
Under a Creative Commons license


Extended Abstract
The history of every nation is the part of the nation's identity. It should be protected as a precious heritage. Iran with several thousand years of civilization heritage is the host of experts in various fields of science, especially in the field of medicine and pharmacology. Study of cancer began not more than a century ago. It is very surprising that a prominent Iranian doctor described the diagnosis and treatment of cancer about twelve centuries ago in his books. Unfortunately it has been neglected in recent decades. Some prominent Iranian doctors’ theories about the cause of cancer, which were presented during the eighth century, were demonstrated in recent study.
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide and the most usual cancer in women. In 2012, about 1.67 million new cases and 522,000 deaths due to breast cancer have been recorded in the world. Its incidence in the Eastern Mediterranean region is about 27 individuals per hundred thousand ones. In Iran, breast cancer is the fifth cause of death among women. In his study, we examined the causes of breast cancer from the viewpoint of Persian medicine in Iran.
This study is based on five persian medicine books: Canon of medicine (Avicenna), Al-Havi (Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi), Hedayah Al-Moteallemin (Abubakr Akhaveyni), Kamel al-sanae al-tebiyeh (Ali ibn Abbas ahvazi), zakhire Kharazmshahi (Mohammad Hossein Aghili Khorasani). Websites such as SID and Google scholar were searched with the keywords of cancer, breast cancer, and persian medicine.
Iranian doctors believe that eating some foods makes the people susceptible to cancer (the role of foods). Ali al-Ahwazi said that some neoplastic diseases transmitted through semen to the next generation (the role of genetic). He also mentioned that pessimism, anxiety, constant fear and depression are some other causes of malignant diseases (the role of stress). In literatures of Ahvazi and Razi, it is clearly mentioned that there is a relationship between breast cancer and quantity and quality of uterine bleeding. The more regular and normal uterine bleeding, the less risk of breast cancer. Breast cancer is also associated with liver and spleen. In differentiating malignant masses from the benign ones, we have to touch the exact location. If it is a malignant mass, we feel the sense of heat, but in benign ones, we feel the sense of cold compared to the other parts of the body. Surgery has been considered one of the main ways to treat cancer by Iranian doctors as early as the fourth century AH.
Many factors increase the risk of breast cancer such as stress, abortion, lack of breastfeeding, family history, hormone therapy, menarche in young age, lack of labor, alcohol and cigarettes uses. Some of these factors have been mentioned in Persian medicine.
Keywords: Solid mass, Breast cancer, Persian medicine
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