sunflower seeds?

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Anyone ever hear that sunflower seeds are a bad phytoestrogen for ER+ BC patients?

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  • Rosemary44
    Rosemary44 Member Posts: 2,660
    edited October 2007

    We're going to be eating phytoestrogen foods no matter what we do.

    I think there is something like 300 foods that could be considered a phytoestrogen to some degree.

    Here's the short list of them and what amounts they have:

    http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/phytoestrogen.php

  • sdstarfish
    sdstarfish Member Posts: 544
    edited October 2007

    Thanks, Rosemary. This is a nice chart to have.

  • prayrv
    prayrv Member Posts: 941
    edited October 2007

    Rosemary,

    The phytoestrogen foods are the ones we are to avoid if we have er/pr+ cancers?  I'm soooooooooooo confused.

    Blessings.

    Trish

  • Rosemary44
    Rosemary44 Member Posts: 2,660
    edited October 2007

    Trish,

    The heavy duty, high amount phytos, such as soy I wouldn't eat.  Flax is still in the unknown as being helpful long term but it did reduce the size of a tumor in humans.  They just don't do human studies on us who already had a cancer with these foods. 

    Your going to be eating phytos the entire day without knowing it, just try to steer away from the heavy duty phytos if you can.  I'm not giving up seseme seeds and it's high on the list but I don't take tamoxifen either.  Tamoxifen users need to stay away from seseme seeds.

    By the way, they did a study, very informal one based on what people ate, and those who ate from the high in phyto list seemed not to get as much lung cancer as those who didn't.   So there's good and bad.  Sad to say we don't really know how it will effect us ER+'s.

  • prayrv
    prayrv Member Posts: 941
    edited October 2007

    OH CRAP - have a huge bag of David salted sunflower seeds left to eat!  Oh well.  I just started Tamoxifen on tuesday - what to do, what to do (LOL).  Thanks for the info!

    Take Care.

    Trish

  • Rosemary44
    Rosemary44 Member Posts: 2,660
    edited October 2007

    Trish,

    Well, since they're salted seeds, I'd throw them out.  But if they were unsalted, I wouldn't think twice about them, I just wouldn't eat too much of them daily.  They're addictive little buggers.  I love them on a salad.

  • sdstarfish
    sdstarfish Member Posts: 544
    edited October 2007

    There is one recent flax seed study on 25 women with breast cancer. The experimental group ate a muffin with flax seed (50 grams in each) every day for 30 days, and the control group ate muffins without. Afterwards, all the women had their tumors removed. They found that all the women who ate the flax seed muffins had significantly inhibited tumor growth. The preliminary belief is that lingin phyto's (of which flax is one) are great estrogen blockers. So I'm guessing this will get the ball rolling for future research.

  • Rosemary44
    Rosemary44 Member Posts: 2,660
    edited October 2007

    That study was a good start.  Short term use and flax worked.  Since then, there's nothing that I can find about flax and long term use after a ER+ dx in humans.   They're still studying mice and flax, and flax in petri dishes, but not us.

  • sdstarfish
    sdstarfish Member Posts: 544
    edited October 2007

    Yes...if only they put as much money into natural research as they do for synthetic drug research....*sigh*

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