The Cancer Is Not My Fault aka My Rant
I lurk but have never posted before but I have to get something off my back.
I'm tired of health nut diet guru paleo anti GMO vegetarian vegan raw food gluten free cross fit new age whatevers blaming me for getting cancer.
I'd like to be clear that I acknowledge that diet and lifestyle are often an influencing factor in the development of cancer, and also that I'm not talking about all adherents or practitioners of the above diets or philosophies. I'm just talking about the people who insist without knowing anything about me that I must have done something to bring this on myself.
I have some news for them.
- I was a vegetarian for most of my life and ate less animal protein than most people when I wasn't.
- I haven't eaten red meat since I was 10.
- I eat very few processed foods and most of my meals are from scratch and have minimal non essential ingredients.
- I eat tons of broccoli and when I first found the cancer I had been eating a total anti cancer diet with tons of green vegetables, rosemary, tumeric, most of my protein came from nuts, I ate blueberries, and put 100% organic cocao powder in my tea.
- I don't drink soda regularly and haven't for 20 years.
- I drink less milk than most people.
- I used to go to the gym religiously for years and when I stopped doing that I still walked 2-7 miles per day and did exercises at home and have done so for 20 years.
- I'm a healthy weight and I have low blood pressure.
- I don't smoke or drink and never have.
I developed breast cancer in my 30s probably for the the same reason that my grandmother, 63 years ago, also develop breast cancer in her 30s. Our cancer is probably genetic. She had an entirely different life style. She ate a ton of red meat and TV dinners, didn't exercise, and had three kids (I have none). After developing breast cancer a second time in the opposite breast in her 40s, and having a second mastectomy, she completely changed the way she ate and adopted a healthful diet with whole grains, lots of vegetables, fish, and a little fruit and that is why my diet has been as healthful as it is. But it still didn't stop me from getting breast cancer. Sure some, maybe a lot of cancers are from poor diets and lifestyle and environmental factors that a person might have control over, but not all of them, and I think people who position themselves as health and diet gurus need to understand that.
Another issue I have with many of these health and diet gurus is, many of them give advice about diet and cancer without distinguishing between that which affects cancer risk and that which affect cancer progression. I find this concerning because what might be good to eat or avoid to lower cancer risk might not be good to eat or avoid once someone actually gets cancer, depending on the type of the cancer. I think this contributes to a lot of confusion and causes seemingly conflicting advice about diet and cancer. Because most of them make no distinction, if you were to actually go over some of these diet advice websites with a fine toothed comb, you would find that it leaves you literally with nothing to eat.
Anyway I just wanted to say that.
End rant.
Comments
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Hi there is lot of discussion these days about cancer prone personalities .They say that people who bottle up their emotions ,and who are very sensitive have more chances of getting cancer The carcinogenic personality may harbor long-suppressed resentments, anger or hostility. These may originate in childhood and the patient may be unaware they exist. Patients who fit the profile internalize emotions and find it hard to express them.
Now can somebody please explain if this is true . I am so confused I can change my diet but it is so difficult to change your personality .But yes after my diagnosis I have become more assertive and do not give a damn to anybody .
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Some people? Maybe. Me? No. I have no problem telling people what's on my mind.
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I simply cannot see how emotions and/or personality contribute to one getting cancer. WC3 I'm sorry that's what your hearing from people.I cannot understand how any rational person could possibly blame/fault a person for getting breast cancer.
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I’m a staunch paleo. Its never even occurred to me to consider those that aren’t paleo to have caused their cancer because they choose another way. We have breasts, some of them get cancer, it’s a crap shoot. I also don’t think I’m a ‘nut’ for choosing my lifestyle. It’s been a great change for my healthpersonally. Will it prevent reoccurrence? Hope so, but again, a crap shoot.
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wc3 you laid out a pretty extensive list. But how about vitamin D levels? Have you ever got them tested? Were they in normal range? It seems to me that all people I know with breast cancer had below normal vitamin D level.
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My vitamin D levels average between 20 something and 30 something ng/dl, which is normal by the range of the lab my health care provider uses.
I doubt my grandmother had low vitamin D levels because of the climate here and she spent a lot of time at the beach and on boats and there was no such thing as sunscreen.
Also as an aside, my family is Ashkenazi and I don't know about my grandmother but I have dense breasts, which are two risk factors for premenopausal breast cancer.
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Oh my God, me too. When I asked my BC team why I got this, all of them said we don't know what causes it. Others like to blame the victim, I was so mad when I heard some one say they saw a poster at their doctor's office saying "Cancer hates healthy bodies". What a load of BS, cancer has hit so many otherwise healthy people with healthy lifestyles.
If I ever see a sign like that I am ripping it off the wall and tear it into pieces and stomping all over it.
The stress of idiot people around me may have contributed, don't know.
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My mother in law was born in San Francisco, CA and lived her entire life there. She grew up with a very poor diet because she only eats what she likes and refuses to eat what she doesn't like. She loves junk food (buys potato chips and cookies by the case) and deep-fried foods. She hates veggies so she doesn't eat them. She never exercised. She is overweight, but not morbidly obese. She never drank alcohol, and was a light smoker many years ago.
This woman is now in her late 80s and is in good health. She has high cholestrol, low Vit D, and low thyroid, so she takes medication/supplements for that. That's all that's wrong with her!
I'm very glad she is 'healthy' and fortunate. When people talk about poor diet/environment causing cancer, I think there is much, much more to it, like genetics. Or like Egads said, a crap shoot.
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Dhanno, nope. There is no scientific evidence to support that idea. Doesn't mean that you can't become more assertive--but that's a different issue, and not being assertive doesn't cause cancer, either.
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I do believe extreme stress could potentially affect your bodies defensives.
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Our bodies and our cancers are all different. Cancer can be caused by genetics (BRCA) or it can be environmental (Chernobyl/smoking) or it can linked to food and exercise (some cancers are linked to insulin) and it can be stress related (people with PTSD and trauma have higher rates of cancer and other illnesses). No one is to blame for their cancer and we can all benefit from eating healthy, exercising, meditation and support groups. Still, while we can improve our odds with lifestyle changes at the end of the day our cancers are not within our control.
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BellasMom:
My other grandmother (on my mother's side) is 90, smoked for most of her life, drank like a frat boy, ate red meat and potatoes most days of the week, is sedentary, has only been hospitalized for child birth, an appendectomy and alcohol poisoning, and is the only woman in her family who HASN'T gotten breast cancer...both her mother and sister had had it twice.
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It is frustrating to say the least.
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One thing I learned is cancer does not discriminate. It can essentially hit anyone at anytime. Yes, there are risk factors, but even that means nothing when you hit the cancer lottery.
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Good rant, WC3.
I think that in general, the people who blame the victim are scared. They need to believe that you did something wrong or didn’t do something right, because then they can assure themselves that it can’t happen to them, because they are living and eating correctly. They don’t want to face their own vulnerability. They want the illusion of control.
And if anyone is now going to post some other reason why it’s even partially WC3’s fault that she got cancer, they will have to deal with me!
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Everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to go back to work a week after my Lumpectomy. I was feeling good and thought hey, if I can do my own cleaning at home ok, why not get back to work and get paid for it? Lol (I’m a housekeeper) A week later, somehow I had gotten an infection where my lymph nodes were taken out. Got antibiotics and all better now, but everybody was blaming me for getting sick..”you’ve overdone it, you went back to work too soon”. I made sure to ask my doctor if it was my fault because I of course was blaming myself just like everybody else, but my doctor said “NO, it is not your fault! Sometimes things just happen like this”.
I’ll have to admit one of my first thoughts on finding out I had BC was, “how is my mom gonna blame this one on me” lol. She hasn’t yet, but I did get the “it’s never too late to pray to be healed” speech when I first told her I had BC.
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Shetland, I think you are right, Fear and the need for controlling your destiny. I sure wish it were that simple if I do x,y, and z I won't get it. Of course, there is also a genetic element but most people don't have that either.
I still have coworker friends that wonder how I could have gotten BC. I was the one exercising, maintaining my weight, eating right. Also many of them did the PINK events every year and were shocked at my treatment. But you caught it early, why chemo, why mastectomy very freightening for them and me too. No family history or known breast cancer genes.
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WC3--totally agree with your post. I feel the rant. I get annoyed with the preventative "suggestions" people give me. Until they actually figure out what causes cancer, no need to offer suggestions about something you know nothing about, especially if you are going on something random you read on the internet.
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While I agree that we shouldn't be blaming ourselves for our cancers (or anyone else for theirs; people can be really mean to lung cancer patients), the large population studies do indicate certain factors increase risk.
And some of those factors are modifiable lifestyle decisions.Same with preventing recurrence. There are identified interventions which in population studies significantly reduce risk of recurrence.
Of course someone could do all these things and still get cancer or still have a recurrence because anyone can find themselves on the wrong side of the statistics graph. -
I admit I've been feeling a lot of guilt since I got my diagnosis. We're life of the mind people in our family, lots of degrees and time spent reading, not a lot of time spent exercising. I never really paid attention to diet and so have been moderately overweight my whole adult life.
Also, three years ago I let a doctor put me on chemo for six months for a condition I have called sarcoidosis. It's an immune system disease and they really don't know how to treat it so they basically shut off my immune system for six months hoping it would restart and correct itself. While it did put the disease in remission, I feel so stupid now that I let them do that to me. Besides the fact that I almost died with a weird case of typhus because I had no immunities, part of me keeps thinking turning off my immune system was what let the breast cancer cells activate.
Finally, now that I am in the middle of this nightmare, I feel a lot of guilt and shame for how clueless I have been for people going through this all around me. Yeah, I've seen the pink ribbons and the marches, but I never thought to reach out to see how I could help or if there was someone around me who I could've helped.
Lots of loving friends have been sending me books and links to youtubes about treating this disease naturally. It's freaking me out because I feel like I need to get an MD to figure out what to do. How do we know who to trust in this? "Heal breast Cancer Naturally" says I should swear off fats. "Keto for Cancer" says I should make fats the center of my diet. I am overwhelmed and confused and don't know what to do.
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Yeah well I the only risk factors I have are dense breasts, Ashkenazi, and a strong family history.
But these diet gurus assume I'm an overweight couch potato who gorged themselves on cheesey bacon fries.
Hey, maybe I did eat too much dairy. But grandma was lactose intolerant so she certainly didn't.
And there is almost no constructive advice for otherwise fit people with breast cancer.
Cut out dairy? Ok. Not unreasonable as I am ER and HER2 positive. I'll have chicken and fish instead.
Wait. Chicken forms carcinogens when cooked and chicken and fish raise IGF-1 levels and I should go vegan?
Sure but everyone needs a little protein and where where would I get it? Soy? But wait, soy has been shown to switch on genes that promote growth in the tumors of women with breast cancer.
Ok, no soy. I will get my protein from beans and legumes like peanuts and lentils and whole grains.
But wait. Peanuts contain peanut agglutinin which makes cancer cells sticky and can promote metastasis and beans and legumes and whole grains often harbor organisms that produce estrogen like compounds that can negate hormone blockers.
Ok tree nuts. Nope. They contain palmitic acid that can promote metastasis.
Ok I will see how long I can live on fruits and vegetables. Nope. Fruits contain fructose which cancer cells "slurp up".
Ok just vegetables then. Nope. Why? Humans can't live on vegetables alone.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Glucose or sugar feeds all cells, healthy cells and cancer cells. Cells require glucose to do their thing. Our bodies require glucose to survive. (If you don’t believe me let me ask this question: what happens to people with type 1 diabetes if they don’t take insulin? They die. Insulin is the “key” that lets glucose into our cells. Prior to insulin being discovered, type 1 diabetes was treated by an all meat diet. Life spans were short.) Our bodies turn all foods into glucose except proteins. Eliminating glucose means only proteins which we know is not sustainable if you hope to live. Cell breakdown will occur if deprived of glucose for too long. Cell breakdown can lead to cell death and replication errors in the cell DNA (cancer is basically cell replication error). Eliminating glucose does not definitively decrease your risk of BC, recurrence, or mets. We can’t survive on just protein. That leaves water. And if all we take in is water we will quickly deplete our bodies of vitamins & minerals the body requires to survive. What to do, then?!? Everything causes cancer or deprives our body of essential nutrients. My answer:Say, ‘screw it!’ And enjoy the foods you like. Why restrict things you like when anyway you turn you’re doing damage? If it’s going to happen anyway, might as well enjoy what you eat. Just my $0.02
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WC3, a fantastic post, you've summed up the food dilemma perfectly.
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Soy is not contraindicated. "Soy products have not been found to increase breast cancer recurrence 41 and may actually reduce it.44,45" http://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/189/7/E268.full.pd... (from Box 2 summary of findings)
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fwiw, I had no real risk factors either. I'm fit, otherwise healthy, low bmi, exercise, non smoker, non drinker, not in any occupation near chemicals, and I breastfed my kids for many *years*. People get cancer sometimes without any obvious cause - it might have been something that happened in my childhood or even in utero. Cells make mistakes, immune systems make mistakes, bad shit happens.
But I'm not discounting evidence about preventing recurrence. The link I posted above is about lifestyle modifications to reduce recurrence - btw, exercise is the biggest one with 40% reduction in risk of recurrence. Other studies show the biggest benefit is from heavy exercise (runners did better than walkers). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ij...Those interested in lifestyle & diet changes to prevent recurrence, we have a newish thread on that https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/79/topics...
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soy is still up in the air for many in the healthcare world as we have studies that show it helps and studies that show it hurts.
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moth:
Maybe soy does reduce the risk of recurrence. But there was a study that predates that one by about three years that found that in women who had not undergone treatment yet, that the soy activated genes associated with tumor growth. They were not able to determine if this actually caused the tumors to grow faster or the cancer to spread for obvious reasons. All of the women thankfully started treatment promptly.
Maybe soy is bad for women and men with some types of breast cancer to consume but also has a preventive effect in those who have not developed breast cancer or whose breast cancer has been effectively cured.
It would just be nice to have more conclusive information. I dream of a day when the principal investigators of these disjointed and often conflicting studies come together in the same lab and put the pieces of the puzzle together in to something with clinical application so we can have a little more guidance on these issues. That's all.
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just a point of clarification: the CMAJ study I posted was not a study but rather a lit review & itself focused on "relevant systematic reviews and meta-analyses published within the past 10 years". So it's not one study, but rather a summary of current evidence based on numerous studies.
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moth:
Noted. I hope it's true. Iike edamame and Boca burgers.
Unfortunately I'm one of those people who can't jog. But I can definitely get my heart rate up for the equivalent of a few miles.
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I just had a glass of wine and a beef taco for dinner.
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