DIM and PR+ breast cancer?

hopefour, I am extremely vigilant about making sure that no supplement I take has any estrogenic effect, but the progesterone connection never hit me until I was researching DIM and read about it raising progesterone levels!  Now I realize that I have to go back and check everything for a possible effect on progesterone.  Interesting that we are so well-schooled about staying away from soy and other things that can affect estrogen but nobody bothers warning us (those of us who are PR+) about the potential affect of things on our progesterone levels!  Talk about having to be your own doctor!!!

Grrr!

Marnie - thank you SO much for doing this!  I feel helpless at this point because I feel like I am spending all my time researching ingredients!  In the past, no matter what I considered taking, I would do the following Google searches with the ingredient list, with "X" being the specific ingredient:  X and estrogen; X and breast cancer; X and estrogen-positive breast cancer.  The minute I hit something that had any negative implication, I would automatically disgard the product.  (As an aside, one of my saddest moments was when I discovered that raspberry ketones had a potential estrogenic effect.  I had been taking them for about three weeks and my clothes were starting to hang on me, no word of lie.  And I really need to lose weight.  When I saw that about the estrogen - for some reason I hadn't thought to Google raspberrry ketones - I stopped taking it and my clothes have gone back to their "natural" tight stage.     )

If I hadn't read some very negative things about the owner of Young Again supplements, the place where I had been buying my DIM, I never would have started researching again and would not have run across the information about raising progesterone levels.  When I read that, a light went off that probably should have gone off a long time ago, but didn't.  I've been so busy making sure that I don't go near anything estrogen related that it had never occurred to me to consider the progesterone angle.  Better late than never though I guess.

Thanks again.  I look forward to hearing anything you find out.  I know for sure curcumin is good for us!  So there's one thing we can feel good about and safe with!

Maybe I forgot to hit the "submit" button?

Anyway, cp418, thank you for the links.  I am now on information overload and don't know what the heck to think!

madpeacock,  to your comment about raspberries!  And I agree about the confusion.  Instead of more clarity, it seems we just end up with more questions. 

Marnie, thank you so much for your article.  After reading it, I know for sure that my staying away from DIM is the right thing to do.    I really appreciate all you're doing to help others in this fight.  I was treated at Dana Farber and actually just released as a patient this past October (yay!!!).  I started there in early 2004 and had every treatment imaginable (well, it seemed that way, anyway!) because my cancer was considered aggressive, even though it was early stage.  I had written my onc to ask her a question about taking raspberry ketones and she referred me to the doctor there who is in charge of integrative therapies.  His name is Dr. David Rosenthal and he teaches at Harvard.  This was his response to me when I asked him about his role there, raspberry ketones, and whether I should make an appointment to see him:

Yes, that is my role at the Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies - to consult on nutritional and botanical and herbal supplements as well as healthy behaviors such as physical activity and stress and symptom management. Consults can be arranged thru the receptionists and at Yawkey 6.

IN THE MEANTIME: 

Re: raspberry ketones - it is similar in structure to other stimulants but also (in animal models) acts as an androgen receptor antagonist; thus perhaps some remote estrogenic effect...although the evidence is not clear regarding raspberry ketones, my recommendation for now would be why take the risk.

Curcumin is safe and can be very helpful.

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He also told me to take in all of my supplements if I made an appointment to see him.  As soon as I finish this post, I am going to call and make an appointment for after the holidays. (Perish the thought that I can't eat my way through to the New Year!) 

If anyone has any questions they want me to ask him, please let me know betwee now and then.  I will go prepared with a list.  I'm praying that he has good and trustworthy information on progesterone!

hopefour, will absolutely ask him!  And thank you for taking an interest in this.  When it comes to bc, I don't believe in leaving anything to chance.  If you think of anything else you want me to ask him, just let me know!

Carola, I wish it were that simple!  When I was much younger I was great at being my own doctor.  I'd read about things and automatically jump into them.  Well years ago I read in Prevention Magazine about a doctor who decided to fashion something for his own mother either in order to prevent her from "getting" breast cancer, or it could have been to prevent it from coming back, don't remember which.  So he came up with these delicious soy bars.  I immediately ordered a ton of them and ate them once or twice a day.  Don't think I haven't questioned whether those soy bars had a deleterious effect!  Looking back it's easy for me to see that I was the poster child for estrogen dominance, but in those days nobody called it that or knew enough about it to focus on the overabundance of estrogen.  They treated the symptoms but nobody seemed to care about the underlying cause.  Actually that's still not so unusual I guess. 

Being estrogen positive (and estrogen dominant) means, to me anyway, that I do not want any kind of excess of estrogen in my body.  Being progesterone positive signals the same thing to me, so when I read that DIM stimulates progesterone, or whatever it does to progesterone, a red flag immediately went up.   

The fact that soy is considered a preventative for breast cancer for some, yet toxic for others, tells me that the only simplicity comes in knowing that if you are estrogen positive, soy, and anything else with an estrogenic effect, is your enemy.  If you are not estrogen positive, it isn't.  I live by that rule now.  The next step for me is to figure out the progesterone angle.  Next week I have an appointment with the doctor in charge of integrative and complimentary therapies at Dana Farber.  (That's where I had my treatment.)  I hope to come out of that meeting with a much greater understanding of these things than I currently have!

Carola, what I mean by treating the symptoms is that I apparently had a multitude of symptoms that were caused by estrogen dominance.  I had uterine fibroids, wicked PMS, fluid retention, etc.  You can go down the list and I had almost every one.  Now if someone had put it together and called it estrogen dominance, there would have been certain things I could have done to help the situation. 

When I talk about being my own doctor, I mean that I would read things and then decide how to medicate myself, if you will.  I'd take the newest supplement, I'd take megadoses of things despite any kinds of warnings from the FDA, I was pretty much into everything natural and not much medical.  These days I am paying more attention to what I hear from the medical experts.  I'm certainly not blindly handing my life over.  I still do a ton of research and ask a ton of questions and if I have any discomfort whatsoever in what I'm hearing, I research more.  But there is no question that my treatment center is responsible for my good health.  I was Stage 2b, Grade 3, had lymph node involvement, multiple tumors, and was HER+.  My BC was aggressive, and so was my treatment.

I will give you the entire rundown on my meeting next week!  I am bringing bottles of every supplement in my house (believe me, there are many!) and I want the doctor to tell me what gets a thumbs up and what gets a thumbs down.  Hopefully I'll have some interesting stuff to report.

Have a great weekend!  Bon soir!