NO THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT, I MEANT IT SHOULD BE DEALT WITH CAREFULLY. AND SOMEONE SMOKING WHEN PREGNANT IS A COMPLETLY DIFFERENT SITUATION.
AND YES I AM WRITING THIS IN ANGER.
REPLY HOW YOU WISH I AM OUT OF HERE.
( not to do with your post finty i posted the same time as you)
Mel
Remember stress, anger and guilt is VERY VERY detrimental to recovering from breast cancer.
BUT don’t beat yourself up about it.
It is hard to accept that we may have done something to contribute to our disease. It is also difficult when you see conflicting advice. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the benefits of red wine detailed in women’s magazines even some cancer diet books. As Finty says there are so many different types of cancer so what may be fine for one isn’t okay for another or for some other disease. What a minefield!
The problem with being told something once you’ve got a disease is it leads to the question why wasn’t I told before? I had no idea that breast cancer risk was linked to alcohol for example.
Interestingly, advice does differ. My husband’s aunt is a oncology nurse consultant in Canada. When I was diagnosed she went to speak to the lead Oncologist and BCN and I was then told to start taking vitamin D and to continue for the rest of my life.
Reminder to all users to stick to our community guidelines. breastcancercare.org.uk/forum/community-guidelines-please-read-t25602.html
Specifically these bits:
Give each other the benefit of the doubt: it can be very easy to misinterpret other people’s comments, especially when read or written in haste. Sarcasm and humour are particularly easy to misunderstand.
Please don’t post comments just to annoy or inflame other users.
A couple of tips suggested by forum users:
ive gone for good this time
wishing you all well Melx
you will be pleased to know i wont be back this time 
Just as a sideline…
Is there any definitive proof of the effect of stress on cancer? Or, as it is not 100% proven, does it mean that there is no correlation at all?
Hi All
I don’t believe that oncologists are at all well informed about the possible helpful/harmful effects of food. There is still a lot of controversy about what constitutes a healthy diet, and I have read a number of books now suggesting that carbohydrate rich foods are the most harmful to our health. So ‘fat’ is not seen as a baddy, and cereals are not ‘good’ according to these books.
It makes sense to me that the diet we evolved to have was the most adaptive for our health and until 10,000 years ago the diet was ‘hunter gatherer’. At that time agriculture was introduced and now cereals and grains are a substantial part of most people’s diet. However, our bodies are not particularly well adapted to these foods. It also makes perfect sense to me that processed and packaged foods cannot be optimum for the health of our bodies.
As far as cancer is concerned I believe that some of us have a predisposition to developing the disease and that its development is probably nudged along by a collection of other factors, such as alcohol, overweight, stress and the diet we have.
For me the two worst things we can do are (a) eat a diet high in refined sugar or high GI foods, and (b) suffer from stress.
There is evidence of the effects of stress on tumour growth. For example researcher Riley (1981) caused a group of mice to have a stressful experience of being placed on a rotating turntable for periods of time. Stress was measured by differences in T cell output before and after exposure to the stressor. Another group was not placed under stress. All mice were injected with aggressive cancer cells. The tumours grew substantially under the high stress condition but there was no increase in rumour growth in the control condition.
Visitainer et al (1983) have shown that the injection of cancerous cells followed by exposure to an uncontrollable stressor dramatically weakens non human animals’ ability to resist the effects of the cancer cells. Exposure to a stressor is also linked to a higher incidence of malignancy than is observed in non stressful conditions.
In humans, Jacobs and Charles (1980) have shown that cancer patients have often experienced higher than normal levels of stress prior to the onset of their illness. For example a significant percentage of children with cancer had experienced severe life changes within the year before diagnosis.
There is a substantial amount of evidence that stress also causes suppression of the immune system and that might be linked to tumour growth also as one of the jobs of a healthy immune system is to destroy cancer cells.
There is also evidence that the production of protective cells drops dramatically after a high sugar intake.
Eat as a hunter gatherer and try to avoid stress - that’s my advice
I do my best but am far from being successful all the time!
love to all
alex
xxxxx
Just to comment on what Linda said (quoted at the bottom).
Doctors are not trained in nutrition, so they are not able to make nutritional recommendations. When a new medical discovery is made then it often takes 20-30 years for that to become established medical practice, after research has been done (and research can take several years), things don’t happen immediately. If some wonder food was discovered today that was a cureall for breast cancer then it would be many many years before it was used in regular practice.
Carol
“I realy dont think the worlds leading cancer specialists / oncologists/doctors/ research scientists/cancer charities ect ect have some vested interest in promoting the occurence of cancer this isnt some sort of conspiricy by the medical profession, we/cancer patients cost the Health Service/insurance companys around the world billions , if there was any creditable evidence that following any particular diet helped in breast cancer fighting/prevention then these methods would be used in practise today and actively promoted by the health service, then mabe the NHS wouldnt be in the state it is in.”
Hi Alex - I completely agree about the carb / fat issue. Someone here, it might even have been you, recommended The Diet Delusion, and although I have yet to finish it (it is a very long book) it has raised some very interesting issues. It spurred me into reading more about sugar and how carbs turn into fat - I had no idea about this before. I was eating a low fat diet and gaining weight! I now realise I was eating far too many carbs, and have cut right back and completely cut out sugar - I feel so much better.
I also agree about stress, although some of the research seems to suggest it is not necessarily being in a stressful situation per se that is damaging, but how we deal with stress. I’m sure we all know people that get very despondent and panicked by difficulties and can’t see a way out, whereas others will pick themselves up and calmly find a way of dealing with it, or making the most of a bad situation. This is the nub of the diet/lifestyle issue for me - cancer is inordinately stressful, and even though I am stage 4, by doing all I can with my diet, exercise etc I feel pretty positive about things (for now) most of the time - and even if it all turns out to be worthless, it has enabled me to deal positively with a very stressful situation.
finty x
finty x
Hi Carol
I’m sorry you are a having to deal with other medical issues on top of breast cancer. Regarding keeping your fat intake up - are you able to tolerate olive oil and fish oils? As olive oil is an Omega 9 fat and fish oils are omega 3, this would at least give you a source of fat without the bad stuff (omega 6).
finty x
Hi Finty
yes I did recommend The Diet Delusion. Another good, if controversial read is Trick and Treat by Barry Groves. I’ve also recently read The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. A good read. I just bought a book called “the 150 healthiest foods on the planet” (I think!). It is like an encyclopaedia and it details each food explaining why it is healthy and what it does. Another great reference for those interested in diet. I do think it is a great shame that some people are not even open to the idea that certain foods can help/harm our health. Doctors don’t know everything.
In addition there is a vast amount of money to be made out of cancer - by the pharma companies who manufacture the drugs. Sadly, chemotherapy is not that effective in many cases, making only a small percentage of different to prognosis, and with horribly toxic side effects.
If nature can offer foods that can help or alternatives that can work alongside conventional therapies, why wouldn’t we want to try them?
alex
x
ps you hit the nail on the head Finty. The key thing in whether or not stress is harmful is not the event per se. We differ greatly in what constitutes a ‘stressor’ for us. The important thing is (a) how we perceive the stressor, and (b) how we perceive our coping abilities. When the perceived demands of the stressor outweigh our perceived coping abilities, stress is detrimental.
This can offer hope for sufferers of stress. It is possible to change your perceptions and in doing so your coping abilities increase and the detrimental effects decrease.
alex
x
Hi Ladies,
Please lets be kind to each other , these discussions help no one if they become angry or personal , i hope in discussing these issues in relation to BC that we can all remain respectfull to one another as this is so important for anyone who may be interested in this topic.
Finty, yes i have read the link you put up, however whilst i find some of these small studies are interesting , i ultimeately feel if any connection between any dietry food and BC was firmly established then a dietry treatment plan would be put in place for helping breast cancer patients i think that is a fact that we cant get away from.
I think the problem seems to be that not everyone feels their oncologists are forthcoming in informaion on these issues im sure this is not the case for a lot of BC patients though.
I havent found this fortuneately ,i have discussed at length with my oncologist diet issues on more than one occasion, i was also advised from the beginning that Obesity/Alcohol were established known risk factors in relation to breast caner , as are many other things , this information is also widely available for anyone who looks for it on all the BC charities websites and of course cancer research UK.
Cancer research UK has a list of definate/possible/and unlikely risk factors for anyone who is interested so that is a good place to start if anyone wants more information .i dont think it is entirely accurate to say that this information ,if not told to you by your med teams is not easily available to find for anyone who wants to research these issues.
The watercress story recently published was on the front page of a few major newspapers and was featured on news/radio stations, so i should think most people was awear of this too, though i think if im correct it was stated that a person would need to eat the equivalent of a cereal bowl a day of watercress to have any kind of benefit.
Gretchen, i believe stress or rather prolonged intense stress has an affect on our immune systems, therefore i do believe in that sense that this could be a factor in cancer , we know that a low immune system is not able to fight desease as effectively .Though again i am awear that most of the current research does not hold to this theory.
Elinda, Yes i was told about vitamin D so i do make sure i eat plenty of foods rich in this vitamin Good food sources of vitamin D are oily fish , eggs ,breakfast cereals ,Salmon ,Tuna,shrimp these are a few.
My point which i am trying to make on this subject, is that no one is being dismissive on this topic, so it certainly should not be taken in this way by anyone, people are putting accross their different viewpoints according to their own beliefs and research which is right and proper in any discussion ,because only then can any of us concerned about any of these issues can make informed choices for ourselves. I welcome all views.
Linda
Linda I am sorry but I completely disagree with your assertion that if there were any link between diet and cancer established then a treatment plan would be put in place. It is disproved entirely because several posters here have told you, including me, that they have been given no advice whatsoever - even though the link with cancer is well established, in my case with weight and alcohol. No advice, no treatment plan, nothing.
Regarding the watercress - yes you do have to eat a bowlful. Are you suggesting that is too much effort so the advice should be withheld? I would eat a bucketful if it prevented my tumours growing - it wouldn’t be any worse than chemo. I suppose some people would choose not to eat it even if they knew the benefits - I think they would be barmy - but they should have that choice. And yes it was in the papers - so doctors shouldn’t need to mention it? I didn’t read the papers that day so only knew about it because it was posted about here. What about all the people that never read a paper, or didn’t read the article because at the time they had no interest in cancer research? But watercress is just one example of many, many such foods that can aid in fighting cancer. We aren’t told about any of them. So if your only reason for dismissing all the research is that your doctor doesn’t mention it, I’m afraid I find that very unconvincing. I would need to know the doctor had read the research and if so, his/her reasons for dismissing it. I would also need to know what credentials they have that outweigh those working full time in the field of cancer nutrition.
finty
Hi everybody
I am arriving late to this thread, and not sure what all the arguments have been, but think Linda deserves a little support - there are no definite links between specific diets/food and cancer, for the simple reason that using population studies (the normal method of analysis) it is impossible to rule out all other factors entirely (eg overweight post-menopausal women are more likely to get cancer, but is it diet, particular foods, lack of exercise or simply the weight itself?). There are risk factors as she points out, and it is also well known that many substances found in food have been shown in laboratories to prevent growth of tumours, so it seems sensible to eat lots of these. However they have not done enough large comparative trials where eg 1000 women have eaten only a very restricted diet of a particular combination of vegetables, and others a ‘normal’ diet, to know for sure how it affects chances within the human body.
Doctors prefer to deal with the results of large established scientific trials, and as only pharmacutical companies fund these, they tend to be about drugs, so there is not enough data for them to put people on restricted diets (which some people might find very unpalatable). Many doctors would love to have more conclusive information, but without it they are a bit stuck. In the meantime making what scientific and authoritative information there is about diet available on well known web sites, so that people can make there own choices, seems the most sensible way forward.
Sarah
Hi Sarah
Thanks for joining in. Actually there has been such a study with a group of individuals who have eaten a very restricted diet and compared with a similar group of individuals on a normal diet. The study lasted two years, and was of a group of men with active cancer (early stage prostate) undergoing no other treatment. It concluded that the group on the diet did significantly better than the control group, showing an average 6% reduction in their tumour markers, no progression at all after one year, and their serum was analysed and applied to cancer cells and found to be 8 TIMES as potent as the control group in fighting cancer cells. I think this gives great encouragement to anyone interested in a cancer fighting diet.
I think we all agree that there is no such research regarding breast cancer, nor is there ever likely to be - it would be unethical. Large scale population studies such as EPIC are virtually useless in evaluating such an approach, because a cancer fighting diet just doesn’t exist in the normal population. The nearest would be a vegan diet, but as vegans represent 0.3% of the UK population and are predominantly women aged 17 - 34, and the EPIC study was skewed towards the middle aged, there are likely to be very few involved. It looks at consumption of fruit and vegetables, but if you look at the top 10 fruit and veg consumed in the UK, only one or two are considered cancer fighting, and then only if prepared in a certain way (eg broccoli must be eaten raw or very lightly stir fired - most people boil it to death). So it is highly unlikely that EPIC will tell us anything useful in regards to a cancer fighting diet, although it may well be helpful for single issues like consumption of red meat.
So all we are left with is the numerous studies that look at individual foods and their effect on cancer cells either in vitro or in animal studies. It is frustrating not to be able to have more human studies, but I personally believe the evidence is strong enough to give it a go. Of course when it supports the evidence of population studies, as it does in the case of asian diets, so much the better. The website we are discussing - food for breast cancer - actually does include some population studies as well, if you are interested.
The particular discussion with Linda is solely about whether our oncs are sufficiently knowledgeable to give diet advice.
finty x
Finty, i think it is a waste of time anyone posting a different view on this or any of the diet topics as quite clarly you will not allow for anyone else to put forward their arguements on these issues , you seem to be so fixed in your beliefs that you continualy knock back anyone who disagrees on the subject , that is your right of course and if you believe your views are correct even though they disagree with many others and much of the scientific evidence available than thats fine for you , but for most people they would like to have all the current information/evidence available to them in order to make their own decisions, this is what discussions are about they are not about trying to convince or ram ones personal views down anyones throat.
As i said earlier i welcome and respect all views even if they dont agree with mine and i hope others will do the same otherwise decussions like this become not helpfull to anyone in making decisions on these issues.
Perhaps It would be helpfull to some of us if one of the BCC nurses could give us their view on the subject of Diet and BC as i am sure most people find the minefield of information out there especialy on the internet on this subject alone very confusing to them.
Linda
Linda I’ve stayed respectful and tried to discuss things factually, asking many times if we can discuss the research and not personal opinion. You joined the thread to say you disagreed with us, and we have given very reasoned explanations for why we think oncs aren’t giving good diet advice. Many good reasons were put forward by several people. It doesn’t matter if I disagree with you - let the people reading make up their minds. But I think it is perfectly ok to respectfully disagree, especially if backed up with evidence, which is what I try to do. I’m not the one trying to close down any discussion - I welcome debate, I find it stimulating.
finty
Hi Sarah thank you,
Finty is correct in that there was a prostrate study preformed with a group of individuals who have eaten a very restricted diet and compared with a similar group of individuals on a normal diet.
This study has been discussed a few times and whilst it may initally sound encourageing to some of us ,we have to remember that this study was tiny and much larger studies would need to be done to establish a firm link.
This particular study focussed on prostrate cancer patients with a very early DX ,as we already know most very early prostrate cancers can take many many yrs if ever to develope and ultimately kill someone so it will take a lot longer follow up program and many more larger studies to be conducted to ever conclude if this particular diet change worked long term, as i recall the first yr findings we slightly different to the second yrs findings too.
There are also a few critics of this study also ,below is an artical which is one view on the study.
Prostrate Study Article
This article is an example of the increasing efforts to apply clinical
trials science to the claims of complementary medicine. Several
criticisms seem appropriate.
The fact that no one switched to active therapy in the experimental
group is no surprise Relative PSA decreases in the experimental
group, while “significant,” were meager, especially when one considers
that the coefficient of variation for most PSA assays is 15% and
the number of patients in the groups is relatively small. Also, PSA
decrease differences do not necessarily translate into differences in
progression or survival. Experimental serum seemed to contain something that differentially inhibited cell line growth but so what.
Just because these serums were different does not mean that they
were good. They might have also killed normal cells.
This report undoubtedly will excite the aficionados and devotees of
lifestyle changes for cancer .Appropriately it will encourage other and more vigorious and scientific scrutinies of complementry medicine strategies.
For those of us taking care of patients with prostate cancer it will reinforce the use of lifestyle changes in management.
Even if scientific evidence is still meager,
complementary medicine approaches have strong appeal
in practicing the medical art since they give the patient an
active role in his care and promote an attitude of optimism and hope.
Paul H. Lange
Department of Urology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Linda
Linda - I don’t disagree with anything in that analysis, it’s all fair - although it doesn’t offer any proof, it is just an opinion. The research wasn’t perfect - it would be nice to study the group for longer and with a larger sample - but it’s all we have to go on, and I think it is very promising. Of course many of those men may have progression in the longer term, but the diet may delay for a while or even permanently. It’s important to remember nobody is suggesting a diet replaces treatment, but may be a useful addition to conventional treatment. Whatever the shortcomings of this trial, it does tend to support that. And don’t forget that trial was of people with active cancer - most people considering diet changes are doing so without active cancer to prevent a recurrence.
finty