Vitamins, supplements, foods to avoid/eat-What Do You Do?

Anonymous

Grandma3x, since my brother's diagnosis with breast cancer I have cut out pretty much all dairy from my diet. Every once in a while I "cheat" with a dessert or slice of pizza, but I feel bad about it! You could read about Dr. Jane Plant, who has lived over 15 years with metastatic breast cancer . She attributes it to cutting out dairy products. Since reading her book I was hooked on the dairy-free diet, and it's been easier than I thought to transition!

Myraknits

I am totally confused as to what I should and shouldn't be eating. I've been a vegetarian (no meat or fish) for 40 years and have always tried to maintain an 80% whole food diet. I have myself fairly convinced that my BC must be due to eating too much refined sugar in the evenings. I'm sure it's my sweet tooth that's the culprit even though I've read that sugar doesn't cause or encourage cancer growth. Now I'm trying to figure out what to eat. My diet consists of whole grains (manna bread, brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal...) fruits and veggies, beans, seeds nuts, nut butters, dried fruit and occasionally some dairy. I'd love to find a book or a site that gives specific info on the optimum diet to eat. I'm still in shock since I was convinced my diet and healthy lifestyle (regular exercise, no smoking or drinking, good sleep, little stress) would prevent me from any kind of cancer... Guess not! Now I'm wondering if any specific foods make any difference at all!

SpecialK

myra - there is a lot of conflicting info about food, but your diet sounds pretty healthy to me!  I am not sure what you could really change to optimize, and I do wonder how much of what we "do" really matters with breast cancer. For many of us I think making changes makes us feel some measure of control, but I don't know how that is quantified as far as recurrence risk is concerned beyond the exercise/healthy weight/no excessive alcohol recommendations that have some consensus among health professionals. Here is a good book that a lot of people have found useful, it is Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670020346/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3489382638&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_721wpu5uql_e

Myraknits

thanks! It's hard not to feel guilty since diet and exercise have always been a main focus in my life. I can't help but feel like I did something wrong...I must have missed something... It was all that chocolate. My Dr. tries to reassure me and says it just happens. She has 2 vegan triathletes as patients so go figure. I just want to do the best I can going forward so I appreciate the info!

marijen

Just saw your post SpecialK, thanks. I have seasonal allergies and I take the pills as needed so I'll give it a try with one everyday. I also worry that more medication will increase water retention so I'm into as needed in general. It makes sense.

Labelle, I just figured out that dairy foods are saturated fat which increases fatty liver which causes the liver to make more estrogen, so I'll be cutting down on dairy as much as I can. Recently lost my taste for cheese anyways. But love milk and don't eat too many eggs. I'm going to lose the cream cheese and butter and fatty beef for good.

labelle

Marijen, I follow a Paleo diet so my dairy is very limited, but I do believe dairy w/o hormones and from grass fed cows is the better option if you are going to eat it at all, ditto for hormone free and grassfed beef. It is not the fat I worry about but the hormones, antibiotics and feed that are given to animals whose flesh and milk we consume.

Also wanted to second Special K's book recommendation. It is a great book, but as I've written on here before, get the paper version. The colorful charts/grafts don't show up well/are poorly formatted on the kindle version.

solfeo

Hi Myra - there is a site that attempts to aggregate all of the known information and studies regarding food and some supplements and breast cancer. I don't think all of her conclusions are correct, so it's always good to do more research, but I find it a good place to start:

Food for Breast Cancer