Questioning the legitimacy of cancer specific foods
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The biggest thing with diet is obesity..that's a cancer risk. Eating good food, the least processed the better helps but there is NO cancer specific food that prevents it. It's a way to get money for books and promote TV popularity. Dr. Oz is a cardiologist and was a good one but he nows explores areas beyond his expertise and getting into woo-woo pseudoscience. I never watch him. Pubmed.com has lots of science journals to explore. Alcohol is another risk but that's all it is...a risk...eating 4 pounds of broccoli a day won't prevent cancer...a good diet has a cumulative effect, over years, to become a "lower risk" for cancer....just like diabetes...you don't become diabetic eating cake/sweets a few days a week but it sure adds up if one has been doing it for 20 years!
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Bluepearl, have you read either Life Over Cancer or Anti Cancer: A New Way of Life? Both were written by doctors who are very experienced in oncology. Both make a very compelling case for diet as an anti-cancer strategy, rather than just something that will produce overall good health.
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A documentary that is also a compelling case of diet as a general anti-disease stragegy is "Forks Over Knives".
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Unfortunately, most of the dietary suggestions and warning for specific conditions/diseases are based on correlation. Correlation is not causation. (e.g. "As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply. Therefore, ice cream consumption causes drowning.")
A nearly vegan, statistic obsessed woman took an interesting look at the actual data that "Forks Over Knives" was mostly based upon (and many other topics if you see her side bar) and you may or may not find it amusing. But this helps remind me that whenever the media is hyping some evil food or miracle food, they are not scientists and if we actually looked at the scientific papers, we would most often find something much less compelling than the headline the media machine would try to suck our attention in with.
Here's a quote: "“Forks Over Knives” highlights something I strongly believe in—the power of diet and lifestyle to trump illness....I also believe this type of diet achieves some of its success by accident, and that the perks of eliminating processed junk are inaccurately attributed to eliminating all animal foods. So the goal of this critique is to shed light on the areas where the “plant-based science” is a little, um, wilted."
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique/
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We've made the shift to an alkaline diet which contains mostly whole fruits, veggies, lean protein, nuts and seeds. We eliminated white flour, sugar, white rice and pasta. The benefit has been an immediate loss of weight around the middle..a storage area for estrogen in women and men, and a huge increase in energy. An added bonus is we've cleaned up our guts and now we are functioning optimally. If we succeed in preventing a recurrence of my bc or my BF's MS symptoms are eliminated, then that will be an added bonus. Scientific or not, I would prefer to do as much holistic tx as possible and stay away from the chemo and radiation. It's my personal choice.
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Kaara, Just in case you're replying to me, I'm on board for the dietary changes of more veggies, few to no processed foods, no sugar. The author of the quote I posted is also on board, it's just that attributing improved health (or a cure) to only one food or one change when many changes were made, e.g. when one has done exactly what you've done - eliminated several refined foods and increased fruit and veggie consumption relative to the Standard American Diet - is specious reasoning. I'm a fan of Patrick Quillan ("Beating Cancer With Nutrition") and have been for years, way before BC, and have delved into a few other such books since my DX. I too have lost 30 lbs eating a very high veggie, paleo type diet. But that change only happened a couple of years ago for me and I do wonder how much my prior SAD contributed to my current DX.
Bubbe, one of the more interesting things I've run into recently is that while " Asian women eat soy and have low bc rates", that's another "correlation is not causation" inference. Asian women also eat more seaweed which has an effect on estrogen and phytoestrogen metabolism. My understanding is that it is now thought that the two together are more important for the low rates of BC rather than the soy alone. Have you run across this?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21711174
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Allur, thanks for posting that. I had been wondering if seaweed had any effect on anything.
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When I did the kinesiology testing for sself, the fucoidan capsules were a huge focus. The fucoidan is a cell from the seaweed, long story short.
When I went to Chinese medicine person, I was given two herb supplements and was told to eat a certain way plus eat a lot of seaweed. Not told why though, but thought it was for the cancer, not know it was more for the estrogen too.
When I had the 'old time healer' her words not mine, do an analysis, I was told to eat a lot of seaweed and that the Eden's Organic black beans cooked in seaweed at 1/2 cup 2 x a day was the best she has found to date to soak up all that estrogen in me, which is a lot. I eat it with alot of raw onion and wish I had known this a year ago.
My comment on the media and their reporting --- it is called junk science reporting, no more, no less and it wreaks havoc on our emotions and minds.
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im just starting on this journey - reading a lot about diet. I dont know much - but it does make sense to me that if you continue eating the way you did BEFORE your dx, without changing anything or much at all.....you cant expect to make a difference in your chance for recurrence.
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Shayne I think it depends what you ate before BC
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I like THE CANCER FIGHTING KITCHEN by Rebecca Katz. I think it also sets the right tone, that the right diet can help fight cancer but doesn't promise to prevent it. FWIW, I ate a mostly vegetarian and low-diary diet and still got BC. I know many people (i.e. my cousins) who eat lots of meat and diary and carbs and didn't get BC.
I'm curious about some of the claims of very extreme diets. One book I read talked about the macrobiotic (?) diet and they were anti-spinach, which seemed hard to believe. (FWIW, elsewhere I read that there may be a correlation between diets high in Vit A and low-grade tumors. If this theory is to be believed, it suggests that eating lots of Vit A, like in spinach, means if you get cancer you'd be more likely to have a low-grade tumor. I read this in a brochure from our cancer support center but have't taken the time to verify the data).
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I am vegan now, but was/am a huge fan of "The Cancer Fighting Kitchen" and it's predecesor "One Bite At a Time".
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Sadly, our world is filled with so many environmental toxins that diet and lifestyle changes alone are not going to keep us from getting disease; however, it might have something to do with the severity of that disease when we do get it. Following good lifestyle and diet choices keeps the immune system in optimal shape so that it can fight off any cancers that are trying to attack our bodies.
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Dr. Oz is not just a "TV personality"! He IS a highly respected Dr. Furthermore, he brings experts in the field on the show for these topics, as he did with this one.
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Hi everybody: I just found this thread because I am fairly new to the club.....was diagnosed in January, finished rads 2 weeks ago and will be on Letrozole for the next 5 years now. Just as a sideline, I want to say how saddened I am about all the negative energy that has been expelled on this thread. You are all wonderful, brave and courageous women and we should be expelling nothing but lots of positive energy to help each other sieve through the masses of info re diet and cancer. I, myself, am a former registered dietitian and, of course, I immediately gravitated towards anything related to FOOD. All my former education and all my advice I have given to patients and friends over the years has been "eat a balanced diet" and everything in "moderation".
However, I am in this club now, and, although I still believe in these basic principles, I do do my research and what I want to say is if you think there is some validity in what you have been reading, and it doesn't do you any harm, well add it or subtract it from your diet. For example, I now probably go overboard re cruciferous vegetables, will this harm me or decrease my chances of recurrence, who knows, but that's ok for me and I do sleep better THINKING I'm doing something that may help. I also have become a vegetarian, not that I think this will help with BC but I do believe it will help stave off heart
problems which, unfortunately it seems more women will die of as opposed to BC.
Again, not eating meat, will this harm me, will it prevent me from having heart problems down the line, who knows, I sleep better THINKING it might. I know this all sounds a little overly simplistic but it works for me because as an ex dietitian I know I could become
obsessed with it all and for me I need to expel lots of positive energy dealing and trying to heal my very raw emotional new self which, from reading some other threads, I'm not alone in. Take care everybody and my thoughts and prayers are with you all.0 -
Where can I buy Fucoidan capsules? Anybody have a brand that they recommend?
Scottiee, I'm sorry you have joined this club. You are at a tough point in your treatment - I felt pretty raw last year, too. It gets better, I promise.
I'm with you - happily eating my mostly vegan diet because it will keep me healthier in every respect.
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wenweb - thx for the suggestion for CANCER FIGHTING KITCHEN ! got it from the library and love it! will be ordering it for sure!
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I just purchased this yesterday and looks like it will become my new best friend in the
kitchen....thank you wenweb.0 -
Shayne and Scottiee1. You are most welcome, enjoy!!
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