Cruciferous Vegetables Increase Breast Cancer Survival

maize

Eating Cruciferous Vegetables May Improve Breast Cancer Survival

"After adjusting for demographics, clinical characteristics and lifestyle factors, the researchers found cruciferous vegetable intake during the first 36 months after breast cancer diagnosis was associated with a reduced risk for total mortality, breast cancer-specific mortality and disease recurrence.

Survival rates were influenced by vegetable consumption in a dose-response pattern. As women ate more of these vegetables, their risk of death or cancer recurrence decreased.

Women who were in the highest quartiles of intake of vegetables per day had a 62 percent reduced risk of total mortality, 62 percent reduced risk of breast cancer mortality, and 35 percent reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence, compared to women with the lowest quartile of intake."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120403153531.htm

Momine

Cool, thanks for posting. Coleslaw, here we come!

maize

Momine,

There's supposedly a lower rate of breast cancer among Asian women than there is among the most of the rest.  Jane Plant decided that one of the things that is different in the western diet is that we consume milk and milk products, while Asian women usually don't . 

While they are living in Asia they have a lower breast cancer rate, but if they come to live in the US, the breast cancer rate soars in their daughters' generation.  Hawaiian daughters of Asian mothers apparently have a much higher breast cancer rate than their mother's generation.  Asian women also tend to have children earlier than women have been doing in the US.  There are certain areas of the USA that have significantly higher breast cancer rates compared to other areas of the US.  Why? Pollution?  Living near nuclear power plants?

It's also true that Asian women tend to eat a lot more cruciferous vegetables than American women do (and evidently consume a lot less sugary foods). Maybe we would be doing ourselves a big favor if we ate a lot more broccoli, cabbage, etc.  An Asian-American doctor acted really disgusted when I told her that I ate cheeses as a substitute for meat for protein and also appeared to think my liking for sweets was a bad thing and kind of absurd.  Maybe she never craves sweets?

Doctor Weiss (of this site) mentioned these diet issues in her book.

Some studies indicate that while Asian women who have always eaten soy foods can consume them safely, American and European women who weren't introduced to soy foods early may get too much estrogen from eating soy foods.  Soy is apparently a plant estrogen. There's a debate about whether women who were not raised in Asia who have bc or are at higher risk of bc should eat soy foods--but soy is added to so many foods before they are sold.  The other day I was looking at food labels in the supermarket and noted that lots of different foods have soy added to them. 

Another concern is that cattle growers "beef up" the cattle by giving them hormones and that gets into the food.   Growing up near cattle ranches, I learned that they do jack up the beef cattle with hormones and antibiotics and that has to have an impact on people who have breast cancer.  There are also pesticides in the fruits and vegetables.  I don't know how pesticides could be removed if they are in the nucleus of the foods.

The types of stress that people live under may be different, too, in Asia and in the US.  I think American women tend to have fairly stress-filled lives, and though other women from other countries no doubt do too, I think maybe the type of stresses we experience may be different, and stress can lower our immunity.

Momine

Maize, yes, I have seen the study on dairy and Asian women. There are, however, studies, done in the West, that found no association between dairy and BC or if one was found it was that women who ate dairy had LESS BC, not more. That is why I find it rather confusing and not at all clear-cut.



In the last twenty years an anti-milk movement has steadily grown, in part in the context of promoting extended breast feeding. But the arguments against milk always struck me as a bit confused and not usually based in anything credible. I get that hormones added to milk and meat can be bad and that increased hormone levels in milk due to overmilking can be bad. But those things have to do with how the dairy is produced, not with dairy food itself. It also stands to reason that loads of cheese is too high fat to be a good idea with BC. But I have yet to understand how organic, low-fat dairy in moderation would be a problem.

As for cabbages, they are definitely a good thing, from what I can see. Many traditional diets include cabbages on a daily basis. In Denmark, where I am from, cabbage was the main green vegetable in the old days. Kale was a stable in the winter as well as spiced red cabbage. In the summer there was savoy cabbage. It is also cheap and easy to prepare.



Thanks for posting.

cp418

http://www.naturalnews.com/035081_pasteurized_milk_cancer_dairy.html

Harvard study: Pasteurized milk from industrial dairies linked to cancer

 

sam52

Jane Plant specifically mentioned the fact that cow's milk (and sheep,and goats) was designed to nuture young cows, sheep, goats......and get them to GROW; it naturally contains IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) which has been shown to cause tumor growth in vitro.

sherry67

About the milk issue I drink organic fat free milk it taste the same as regular skim milk..try ro eat a lot of organic products..lots of broccoli,green veggies, whole grain brown rice,whole grain pasta and was told to limit meat,poultry and seafood to three times a week, I also try to eat a lot of blueberries,blackberries, strawberries three times a day with organic yougart,,wasn't big on meat anyway..good luck to all

maize

It's confusing...either milk is harmful or it is beneficial???   There was an uproar about recombinant Bovine somatotropin in some of the milk.  There's also a theory that Vitamin D and sunshine may actually prevent cancers and that cancer rates are lower where there is more direct sunlight (if there aren't other factors negating the benefits of sunshine, like industrial pollution). There's definitely some evidence that eating cruciferous vegetables like cabbage is a good thing. It seems that all the doctors I've asked recommend limiting red meat in the diet.