Diet for a estrogen receptive breast cancer

Going through breast cancer treatment Hormone therapy
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I’m posting again, sorry for being a pain. My cancer is estrogen receptive and I am taking Zoladex, letrozole and bisphosphanates. Yesterday I had my first zoladex injection which will put me into the menopause.

 

I’ve been told to be careful with phytoestrogens. Before my diagnosis I ate a lot of soya in my diet, soya yoghurt every day with banana, thinking I was being healthy. I ate a lot of it, including chick peas.  I ate as healthy as I could. I’ve been doing some research and noticed that phytoestrogens are found in soya products, strawberries, cranberries, sesame and flax seeds, sprouts etc,  to name but a few. I’m wondering what on Earth I can eat. Any advice would help x

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Hi Sunflower14, I have the same dilemma as you as my cancer is hormonal as well. I am using the information provided by below website when deciding which food to avoid:

 

foodforbreastcancer.com/

 

There is a section with recommendation of food to avoid for certain AI medication. Hope it will help. 

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Hi Sunflower 14

I’ve had a vegan diet for the last 3 1/2 years and, apart from the obvious, I’ve never felt so well. My cancer was oestrogen positive.

There are a lot of studies out there re soya. Some say cut it out/down, some say it’s actually beneficial. My breast care nurse said no-one actually knows. I’m still having soya in my diet but perhaps a bit less than I used to. It could be like cholesterol - eating food with cholesterol in doesn’t increase the cholesterol in your body, it’s saturated fats that do that. If we listen to all the advice we’d end up eating nothing! I’m going to watch this space for hard evidence! 

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Hi,

I have done a lot of research on this subject too and have read a few articles by dieticians working on nutrition and cancer. As long as you don’t take soya supplements and just eat soya in your diet, I think you will be fine.

i don’t eat a lot of soya, but I eat a lot of chick peas and I put flaxseeds in my porridge most days, both phytoestrogens . Apparently these phytoestrogens ( including soya) are plant oestrogens and are not the same as the oestrogens in our body that helped our tumours to grow. I’m continuing to eat these plant phytoestrogens because they help with menopause symptoms.