Thannks Elinda
that’s the first time I’ve read that and it’s good news. I think their qualification at the bottom about other contributory factors is also very valid. There is no one thing at play here, and taking loads of soy is not a single cure for all breast cancer.
I’ll be continuing to eat my tofu curries, soya yogurts and porridge made with soya milk. Still eating small amounts of cheese and milk in tea and coffee though.
Helen.
Bit afraid to post on here again after the ticking off from the BCC moderator!
Finty, Annys, nice to hear I’m not the only cynical one when it comes to government info.
Wanted to second (or third) the recommendations made for David Servan-Schreiber’s Anti Cancer book - I thought it was excellent. Reading that led me to The China Study and also Foods to Fight Cancer by Richard Béliveau - all three were fascinating, and gave me hope, not that I could cure my cancer totally with diet (too late for that I fear) but that I could at least improve my chances a little bit. Perhaps I’ll give Jane Plant another look… it’s been a while since I read that one.
Read quite a few other books too - many seem to think soy is safe - but that it’s the derivative/supplements that can be risky.
* Disclaimer: All comments made within this posting concern Scaryfox’s own personal opinions/experience/musings and are no substitute for professional expert advice 
SFx
Hope you don’t mind me jumping in here but thought I would mention a very interesting read called “Cancer - Step Outside The Box” by Ty Bollinger.
Definately looks like one for the wishlist, lots of excellent reviews on Amazon (co.uk and com) - thanks!
Also wanted to thank Elwood for the recipe site garlicandginger.net - hoping to try some of these out soon!
Here’s also another one I use - most recipes are dairy-free:
naturalrecipes.co.uk/search_for_recipes.html
SF
Hi Elinda,
Thanks for reminding me about the earlier post. It was this one: breastcancercare.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=24726&p=383854
The thing is that, despite that study, we are still nervous about it. Perhaps that’s just an irrational fear; I think I need to look into that one more deeply. There is of course the issue that the study was on Chinese women, who may have some relevant genetic differences compared to Europeans.
Also, thanks for the other link. (I think it may relate to the same study in fact.)
Edit: Goodness, my memory is rubbish. Now it is all coming back to me. Thanks Elinda for putting me back on track; this is important!
Thanks for the recipes Scaryfox
x
Thanks for a great discussion. Have been reading a couple of these books and it’s good to get other opinions.
I do think my diet will be changed for good after this. Very emotive subject.
LOL Jayne xx
Be kind to each other ladies, topics quite often get heated on here with different opinions but all members views should be respected .
This topic has been discussed many times before on the forums, and quite rightly people will have very different views on many subjects, it is good that we can all put our points of view accross as it gives different perspectives on issues that are of interest us.
I think we should all remember that none of us here are experts, we research, discuss ,toss ideas about, and come to our own conclusions on what we feel we believe to be the right path for us as indivuals.
Im personaly not convinced on the non diary issue, so i will continue to use dairy albeit organic , untill such times that there is concrete evidence that it is a contributing factor in occurance of BC.
It does puzzle me though that on the PROVEN, risk factors that we are not always so quick to alter our lifestyles, How many of us have given up drinking? im not saying that anyone should , but we know this to be a definate risk factor, and yet a lot of us continue to do it, so are we just picking and choosing what we alter? thinking that we are helping ourselves anyway.I wonder how many people who have given up dairy still continue to drink? im just trying to make a point and not preaching honestly.
At the end of the day for me like others im a firm believer in moderation in all things.
Cancer sadly is on the increase and is expected to rise by 30% in the next 10-20yrs though survial rates are getting better, but why is this ? its not good enough ,if we look back 50 yrs most people didnt know anyone who had cancer, people were poorer but healthier, people had allotments grew there own veg, ate apples off the trees ect . Today our apples are waxed to be shiny on super market shelves, you can buy bread that lasts 2 weeks, canned goods that have a 3yr shelf life, our crops are all sprayed with pestisides ,is it just a coincidence that farmers have a high rate of cancer? its not natural is it? on top of this chemicals in everything we use, so called safe products (of course they are it is the 21st centery after all), but still many many products that we use daily have been found to contain known carcinogics. another good book to read is “Not Just A Pretty Face” if anyone is interested.
For me Dairy if anything would have a very minimal impact if any at all on cancer development,we shouldnt forget that milk has always been considered a important part of our diet, should we not feed our babies milk ?because if its not safe for us then it surely isnt for our babies.
We cant all go live on a desert island and be self sufficiant so whatever we all decide to change is up to each of us, but life is too enjoy and i intend too.
As for soya, personaly i wouldnt touch it with a barge pole,( ive read the studies for and against) and for me anything that contains high amounts of phytoestrogens is not something that i want to eat, yes the east has lower cancer rates than the west but again many of their lifestyle/genetic factors are different to ours ,not just soya consumption.
Its great to hear everyones views on here, whatever side of the fence your comeing from.
All the best
Linda
Hello,
For those who prefer to read about diets and cancer from writers with a medical/scientific background, I would like to recommend the book Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life by Dr David Servan Schreiber. He is a French/American neurologist who had surgery, radiation and chemo for a brain tumour, and again for a recurrence seven years later. When the recurrence happened, he decided to look beyond the usual western protocols for answers. I trust him because he definitely has an agenda: he is a cancer patient, and he wants to live as long as he can in good health. He is also a western-trained doctor, with a keen bullsh*t meter.
He writes about diet and our western environment, about the industrialisation of food production in the last six decades, the massive increase in use of pesticides and fungicides in the food chain which coincides with western increases in cancers of all types. He does not pretend to have all the answers, but he has pulled together into one book all the case studies, lab experiments and population studies about foods and environmental toxins that he could find. And he’s written about the tested benefits of excercise and mental/emotional training to reduce stress on the body’s immune system.
Another subject I would recommend people look into is salvestrols, one of which is resveratrol, the substance in grape skins that is considered to be anti-cancer. The scientists researching salvestrols believe that these are the vital components of a plant’s immune system, which enable it to fight off disease, and from which humans benefit when we eat them. The theory behind the development of salvestrols for cancer is linked again to industrialised farming, and the belief that because of widespread and longtime use of pesticides and fungicides, the plants grown for food no longer need to fight diseases themselves, so the plants’ immune systems have gone to sleep. So, even if we eat lots of vegetables, humans may no longer be getting the immune benefit from these plants that our grandparents’ generations did. This may apply even to organically grown vegetables today, if they are strains that have been heavily industrially farmed over recent decades.
The scientists working on the salvestrols theory are growing older varieties of fruits and vegetables (organically), these are varieties which have never been industrially farmed, and therefore retain their immune properties to recognise and kill off diseased cells. I started taking salvestrols soon after my diagnosis 4 years ago, and I will not stop, because the theory makes sense to me.
For those who insist on controlled scientific studies for solid proof before you will believe ideas about the relationships between foods and cancers, well I think you will never get the proofs you want. This is because nature cannot be patented, so the companies that could afford to run the necessary research trials cannot be bothered to do so, because they cannot profit from the results.
The hard truth for patients to hear is that pharmaceutical companies profit from selling drugs that, in many cases, try to mimic nature. If they find a substance from nature that seems effective to fight some disease or other, they invest a lot of lab time and money into developing a synthetic version of that substance, making enough changes to the molecules here and there, so their new lab-created subtances can be patented - because they are not natural. And that is what makes them profits.
Dr Schreiber’s advice seems the most balanced and sensible to me: do the surgery, do the radiation and do the chemo, but do more than these: consider also the contributions that diet, excercise and mental attitude can contribute to ongoing wellness.
Best wishes,
Buckwheat
Hello
this is a really interesting thread. I was sorry it got a bit ‘testy’ at one point, but I guess that’s just a reflection of the strength of feeling about the subject.
For me, the problem is living day to day, week in, week out, with the implications of my own bc, and making sense of it and how I deal with it.
I don’t see myself as an academic, although I have a somewhat academic background, and my take on ‘scientific facts’ is that a ‘fact’ is valid until it is disproved by a new ‘scientific fact’, which for me invalidates, to a degree, the whole notion of scientific validity. Its why, having read Jane Plant and David Servan Shrieber, I still hark back to what Susan Love puts forward - we don’t actually know what causes bc or what can cure or prevent it.
I don’t go for the dairy free hypothesis because I see it as flawed science, in that its too tightly focussed and doesn’t take into account the wider picture. Just prior to my first diagnosis there was a piece on local news about all the fish in the upper Tees becoming female, due to the amount of oestrogen in the river. The supposition was that the amount of oestrogen was due to female hormones entering the water system directly from women on the pill and those using tampons. That kind of stuck with me, and a few months later when I was diagnosed (March 1997) I talked about it a bit until I realised that people weren’t taking me seriously, and shut up!
The point I’m making is that theories come and go and we are stuck in the position of having to live with this disease and find a way to move forward .
Lots of us are in very different positions, from those of us newly diagnosed to those of us with extensive secondaries, and each will have a different perspective, and we need to respect that and hopefully value it.
I did a fairly lighthearted posting a few pages ago about ‘moderation in all things’ but actually, its a serious point - we don’t know what complex series of events has caused our own personal cancer stories, so I don’t know how we can make a scientific judgment about how to avoid further disease, or promote any kind of ‘cure’. I think, in the 21st century, we are uncomfortable with the notion that we don’t yet understand causation and therefore cure/prevention, but thats where we are right now.
For me, personally, its a case of looking at my own situation (recurrence after 12 years, mutated from grade 1 to 3, always been ER+++ - I know that it is likely to recur again or metastasise within the next few years) and deciding what I need to take me forward. So I’m having every treatment available to me, and then I’m returning to an adaptation of the lifestyle I have had, the adaptation being a reduction of work and an increase of play, so that I have the best chance of a good life. I’ll eat and drink what I feel like eating and drinking, and what I feel keeps me healthy, but I’m not obsessing about it or getting hung up on specific issues until there’s evidence that convinces me.
I hope everyone finds their own route through all this and isn’t troubled or concerned about the routes others put forward. Every cancer, every body, and every person’s context IS different. We need to all respect that and focus on supporting each other.
sorry, this has been a long posting
monica xx
Thanks for the links to the recipe sites - they are excellent and some more interesting recipes there.
I’ve decided to continue with soya if no other reason than it stops me eating fat laden foods like cheese, chocolate, lattes etc. I totally agree with having things in moderation but having very little willpower it is better for me (and my husband) if we cut things out.
(Jansman - that was the link thank you)
Linda I think you make a good point about what we know and what we do. None of us wants to hear that things we like aren’t good for us. It makes me feel quite angry sometimes as I feel it’s bad enough for example having been diagnosed with cancer then to be told that drinking alcohol is associated with increased risk.
Having the cancer diagnosis has really opened my eyes to what I was eating. I never had a terrible diet but I used to think someday I must improve what I eat. The diagnosis has made me look at everything differently and with regard to food for the better. We keep saying why didn’t we change our diet years ago.
We don’t have a huge garden but we’re growing some of our own veg and have just bought miniature apple trees that we’re growing in containers. We’re even trying to track down an allotment space. Having had lots of home grown tomatoes last year it was a revelation - they were delicious and so much better than from the supermarket. So much of what we’re offered by supermarkets has little taste or good texture that it’s not surprising that many of us are topping up with the addictive combinations of fat, salts and sugars.
I’d like to ask a question. I thought that many foods contained phytooestrogens such as cereals, nuts etc or have I got that wrong? Also very many processed products contain soy.
Elinda
Hi Elinda,
There are quite a few foods that contain some phytoestrogens , but there are some foods that have a much, much higher content than others , (soya is known to have very high amounts) ive copied below a list of the foods which have the highest content, it would be almost impossible to eliminate all foods that have phytoestrogens in them but for me i try to limit my intake as much as i possibly can .
The changes ive made in my life is a personal decision on how i feel about the oestrogen/ chemical overload in our world today, and i understand that not everyone will feel the same on these issues,we all have our own views, i just dont feel comfortable adding more oestrogens to my diet than nessessary when i am trying to limit the amount in my body.
Table 1. Foods high in phytoestrogen content.
Phytoestrogen food sources Phytoestrogen content (µg/100g)
Flax seed
379380
Soy beans
103920
Tofu
27150.1
Soy yogurt
10275
Sesame seed
8008.1
Flax bread
7540
Multigrain bread
4798.7
Soy milk
2957.2
Hummus
993
Garlic
603.6
Mung bean sprouts
495.1
Dried apricots
444.5
Alfalfa sprouts
441.4
Dried dates
329.5
Sunflower seed
216
Chestnuts
210.2
Olive oil
180.7
Almonds
131.1
Green bean
105.8
Peanuts
34.5
Onion
32
Blueberry
17.5
Corn
9
Coffee, regular
6.3
Watermelon
2.9
Milk, cow
1.2
all the best to all
Linda
so… all the stuff we’re generally told is incredibly good for us???
yeesh, you just can’t win, can you?
Thanks very much Linda for the clarification and the list. I am definitely not going to reduce my intake of any of those though - they are all things I regularly eat and to me are preferable to other less healthy options I might choose. I’ve already cut out sugar, coffee, alcohol, dairy and red meat and I can’t cut out any more.
One thing all this debate has done is galvanised me to get out the juicer again. Had broccoli, celery, carrot, melon and apple juice yesterday. Looked terrible but tasted nice.
Elinda x
Of course, it’s a case of each to their own. But my Doctors have told me that it makes no difference what you eat - and frankly, as a stage 4 person, I don’t want to spend my last few years depriving myself of food that I enjoy.
I’ve not read Ms Plant’s book, but frankly it strikes me that the difference between western diets and Chinese are more than just dairy. For a start off they don’t have ovens,so nothing baked or roasted, and what about all the rice they eat! Still given the pollution levels in that country it does make you think.
I’m a great believer in an everything in moderation approach. Having said that, I’ve been a vegetarian for 20+ years and do eat a lot of cheese, so this is what I’ve decided to do
If it was as simple as going Dairy Free or anything else free, why don’t the hospitals/ GPs just hand out a diet sheet. If you feel better by going on any “diet” as long as it is giving you all the nurtitional things you need then why not. But until there is conclusive evidence that going on a “diet” will definately help then I will eat as I do now. That is I am trying to eat more fruit and veg and less fats, more to lose some weight.
I know lots on here are quoting Jane Plant, I have not read this book, or any other “cut this out and you will be better” book. These fads tend to come and go (remember the Atkins diet, cambridge diet).
I prefer to put my trust in the tried and tested hands of my oncologist who knows more about cancer than I do and has seen more cancer than I ever want to.
Marian
Hi,
I have been dairy free for over a year now and couldn’t go back to eating it if I wanted to. The reason is that milk/dairy products really smell bad to me. It’s a bit like smokers who don’t appreciate how much their cigarette smoke stinks. It is only when people give them up that they appreciate this. So be warned, if you do decide to give dairy free a try there may be no going back…
Snoogle
x
Found this old thread while reading about the possible links between dairy and Breast Cancer, and decided to resurrect it, as it’s very interesting.
Having read through the posts I tend to agree with MS Molly. As far as I’m aware, the link between milk consumption and breast cancer is unproven, so nobody really knows whether dairy should be included or excluded from the diet. But the problem with Plant’s book is that it could lead some people to believe there are scientific grounds for excluding dairy products, as it presents itself in a quasi-scientific way (some say psuedo-scientific way). As a result, this could lead people to make drastic dietary changes that may have no benefit at all on the basis of one persons unproven theory.
Personally, I tend to be very cynical about dietary advice, because there is so much vested interest out there. The vegetarian/animal rights lobby have been very successful at getting their message out (especially on the internet). Likewise, the food and farming industry have enormous power, because of their importance to the economy, and well honed political lobby. If they didn’t the high sugar/fat/chemical ladden foods they peddle would have been outlawed years ago. I disagree with MS Molly in her assertion that the food industry does not have this power. The point she made about the Government allowing Cadbury to be taken over, does not prove that the food industry is weak - in fact, it suggests quite the reverse. Allowing Cadbury to be taken over by an American company simply showed how impotent the Government was in protecting our domestic econonomy from global capitalism.
So, is there any benefit to going dairy free? Answer = Don’t know.
What about a Mediterranean food. Cancer is very low over there.
Rose x