Study shows vegans have less cancer?

I have been veggie for 25 years!! But evidence for plant based diet is there post diagnosis

Interesting study. I am soooo conflicted about this!! I am 30 years old. I went vegetarian ate age 12 and vegan at age 22. Within a year of going vegan my health went drastically downhill (chronic fatigue & lots of pain, increased allergies, all sorts of weirdness) but I stuck to the vegan diet for 7 years straight. Last year I started eating meat & dairy again to try to revive my health. Six months later is when I first discovered my breast tumor. Sometimes I wonder if the tumor never would have formed if I had stayed on that vegan diet. Other times I think, it probably took way more than 6 months for my 2cm grade 2 tumor to form, so it was probably already there when I started eating meat again. I also have to believe that spending more than half my life veg and still eating a primarily plant-based diet has to have some protective factors. But then again, my 3.5 years of breastfeeding and my healthy lifestyle and all the other things I've done still didn't stop me from getting BC so maybe I was destined to get it no matter what. Bottom line is I feel better eating meat & dairy for now so I'm going to stick to it while it works. 

OH! And about vegan/weight... in my last couple years of being vegan I started gaining a lot of weight. I was still eating healthy so I'm not sure what happened, but it seems to be that I could no longer digest grains & legumes very well. When I started eating meat, I stopped eating most grains & beans and lost 25lbs within a few months. Now whenever I eat more than a small amount of those foods I bloat up very quickly & have digestive issues. Weird.

I was vegetarian for about 6 years prior to diagnosis. Given that the surgeon estimated that my tumor had been growing for 7 years, I think it is likely that there's some correlation ... or not. I ate a lot of soy meat substitutes with the extremely concentrated soy. Also my diet was naturally high in carbs, and I did not avoid grains and the like. I do think that diet is probably individualized, and for me, carbs are a disaster. I knew it in my head, but I liked the vegetarian diet better never having liked meat much and my teenage son wanted me to do it with him. I have always had extreme episodes of low blood sugar, which can be a precursor for high blood sugar and metabolic syndrome later in life. I did officially have metabolic syndrome, but my primary symptom was high blood pressure which was all they treated. After my treatment, I went on Metformin in lieu of the study since my internist said it was time to treat the metabolic syndrome. Now I'm also taking a small dose of a statin. I am eating more of a high protein, low carb diet. I am feeling better, maintaining the weight loss I had during treatment, and lowering my blood pressure medication. Again, I think it is personal and there are some people with body types that handle carbs better than others. I do not eat bread or wheat at all, having learned after treatment that I am strongly genetically predisposed to celiac disease. It's not easy, but it has to be done.