what are the latest thoughts about drinking milk if your cancer is hormone receptive?? I love my organic grass and clover fed unpasteurised milk and the kefir I make from it.
what do people know and think?
So many different opinions on this! I was given a book basically telling me that I was killing myself if I continued to eat cheese and milk!! But at the BCC diet talk at the weekend the dietician (who had had cancer herself - as had her mother) told us that there was proof that low fat dairy had a POSITIVE effect (as in help us) on BC as the additional oestrogen was just a teeny amount compared to the amount our body naturally generates and the growth stuff just gets broken down in our tummies. She said that soy was inconclusive and could actually mimic human oestrogen and have a negative effect. Apparently this is the NICE guidelines.
I asked her afterwards about these books and she said that it has been looked into scientifically and if there’d been enough proof of course they’d be telling us not to eat dairy, but that when the claims are followed up the subject group is always small and there are other factors taken into account.
I have asked for the notes from the talk as I did find it really useful.
I’ve cut out my cheese and yoghurt as can easily replace it and need to lose weight anyway.
I’ll be interested in seeing what everyone else is doing!
x
Hi hun its such a personal choice as you know from the diet & research thread there are many + and -
Mines not hormone receptive but I took the personal choice to avoid (cows) milk & dairy products but this was on something my son said to me several months ago & it dawned on me after diagnosis this was that the cows hormones are so very much like our own, Im under weight so haven’t cut out dairy all together but I use organic goats milk & cheese I have full fat milk not alot once a day on my musli & in one coffee I have a day the cheese I have a little 2 maybe three times a week.
I do not like dairy alternatives personally I feel they are worse for you due to all the processing they go through & all the preserves & E numbers. I feel if you choose to eat dairy its best to eat as 'natural as possible. thats just my opinion
I think im right that you have osteo ? again id get advice from a nutritionalist ( not dietition) on that score
Mekala x
Young and Trendy,
For me it is a no brainer.
As cows are now milked during their pregnancies - even organic - so there is more oestrogen in the milk than in the ‘olden days’. If I have to suffer the joint pain and what seems like accelerated aging because I take aromatase inhibitor drugs to prevent my body making oestrogen, I am certainly not going to eat anything with oestrogen in it.
Simple!
And leafy green veg contains plenty of calcium if you have osteoporosis and anyway most of us are prescribed the Adcal with calcium, magnesium and a squit of Vit D3 in it.
I’ve cut out dairy and use nut butters on bread and toast and organic unsweetened soy milk in baking and on cereal.
Hi Surfie theres alot of ladies feel that way & yes you made a good point that I forgot to mention ( milking during 6 months of being pregnant) I was quite shocked when I read about this to think the hormone injections were banned in UK (new EU rules) yet they still doing this with the pregnant cattle its crazy & very inhuman I feel for the cattle 
Hi Meklar
Cows are not given/injected with hormones to make them give milk while they are pregnant. They calve, start prodducing milk and a two to three months later are put in calf again (by AI or natural service)when they come into season naturally. They continue to give milk (quantity gradually declining) until a couple of months before they are due to calve again. When they have a bit of a rest and it all starts again,
Dx
I don’t drink milk or have any dairy for the simple reason that it contains both oestrogen and progesterone (my cancer is ER+ and PR+).
Why add even the smallest amount of animal oestrogen and progesterone if we don’t need to? It doesn’t seem logical to me.
This study from Japan published in 2010 is small but the data is convincing and they found:
‘After the intake of cow milk, serum estrone (E1) and progesterone concentrations significantly increased, and serum luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone and testosterone significantly decreased in men. Urine concentrations of E1, estradiol, estriol and pregnanediol significantly increased in all adults and children. In four out of five women, ovulation occurred during the milk intake, and the timing of ovulation was similar among the three menstrual cycles.’
The full link is here:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19496976
I don’t know what the dietician was referring to as ‘the growth stuff’? Could be IGF-1. This is found in meat, dairy and soya. I don’t have the research to hand but I’m sure there is strong evidence that dairy raises blood serum levels of IGF-1 (as do meat and soya). There’s quite a lot of info on the diet thread about that - it’s very complex.
It is of course a personal choice whether or not to give up dairy. It wasn’t easy at first but I’m now 2 years dairy free and honestly no longer miss it. Elinda x
Mekalar,
I was really shocked when I found out recently that they don’t treat the organic cows any better and they have just as short a life.
surfie
Can you please recommend a good butter substitute?
I’m using Bertolli…but it still has dairy in it. And I’m not keen to use soy as was told that it mimics human oestrogen.
Sorry if this has all been covered on another thread!
x
Yeah me too Alex
Sandytoes do you like peanut butter the wholeearth one is lovely & sugar free also Or organic raw rainforest nut butter 
although im not too keen on that one
You can use “Pure” - dairy free spread available from most supermarkets and Holland and Barretts. There are conflicting reports about so many things (including sunflower and nut oils) and I think it is almost impossible to avoid them all - personally, I do avoid dairy if I can, but don’t stress if it isn’t absolutely possible sometimes). Kara coconut milk is the best subtitute i have found (I don’t like to use much soya (but again, sometimes I do have it) for reasons stated earlier on this thread by Sandytoes. I have only found Kara in Health Food shops, never in a supermarket, but it is an excellent substitute (does not taste of coconut!)
Ive not tried the coconut milk I became allergic to coconut few years ago ? but not tried since Ive tried the almond milk YUK hated it was like drinking milk of magnesium … never again eeeerk
Vitalite do a dairy free spread
but sandytoes said that at a recent BCC forum a dietician stood up and said milk was fine, was she shouted down? Or were her comments accepted as valid??
I would be wary of a japaneese report–from memory i think that many japanese are lacto intolerant and so would react differently to dairy products.
Nope, she wasn’t shouted down at all. In fact, I think there was only one BC lady who was avoiding dairy. I was confused as had been given so many different books with conflicting information. I think the problem is there is no 100% PROOF of anything. She said that the proof they have so far (and in line with NICE guidelines) is that low fat dairy products actually benefit you. However, it’s a personal choice, and there’s certainly no harm in avoiding dairy as long as you’re getting calcium etc elsewhere.
O&L as you said before, you’re keen to live your life, drink booze etc (although others on here I’m sure will have cut down completely - I’ll certainly be joining in with a few bevvies once I’m over my chemo!) so if you get pleasure from your milk, then do it!!!
She said that the results of research done into comparing us to the east came up with lots of major differences between us in our make up and social situations and so the increased risk in BC in the west can’t be concluded to be down to dairy products.
She (and other things I’ve read) also said goat products are the same (?? Is this true? I LOVE goats cheese! So if it was a safer alternative, then load me up!!).
I don’t know! I’m not an expert and am trying to learn at the moment - but it’s so confusing with so many different and conflicting views!
x
Hi
I have been using Pure Dairy free spread and limiting Dairy and red meat on the advice of the oncologist.Just a splash of milk in my tea once a day and cheese just occasionally.
Have tried the other milks and cheeses but have yet to find ones that taste nice:(
Tracy
x
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OMG i am really worried now - i love milk and drink loads of it, in fact after i have had chemo it is the only liquid i can drink for about 5 days and i am strongly oestrogen positive.
No one has ever told me not to drink milk- don’t know what to do now.
I also use Pure spread, the sunflower one. Although I do use the soya one if I need a margarine for baking. I use Kara milk, organic rice milk and some organic soya milk too.
Re the Japan study. It’s true that in many non-Western countries people are lactose intolerant. However, the Japanese study wouldn’t have included participants who were lactose intolerant as it would make them ill. However, even if they did it was looking specifically at the hormone levels such as oestrogen, progesterone, follice stimulating hormone and testoerone after drinking milk.
Re the low fat dairy - it is possible that the women who were only have low fat dairy also had other lifestyle factors that would reduce their risk. For example, they may be more likely to eat more veg, exercise, keep to the correct weight etc. The other odd thing about that study is that they found no relationship with milk and reduced risk only dairy products. I’d be very interested to know why that might be. Let’s hope more research comes from it.
The other issue is that all the studies that I’ve seen to date are looking at reduced risk of developing breast cancer. I’d like to know, for example, the effect of having dairy with its oestrogen and progesterone on those with hormone sensitive breast tumours - does it stimulate any growth of BC cells?
It’s not easy all this, is it? Elinda x
Norberte,
Femara doesn’t target the oestrogen it just interferes with the body making it. This is an extract from the Macmillan website
’ Aromatase inhibitors
Many breast cancers rely on the hormone oestrogen to grow. These cancers are known as hormone-sensitive breast cancers. In women who have had their menopause, the main source of oestrogen is through the conversion of androgens (sex hormones produced by the adrenal glands) into oestrogens. This is carried out by an enzyme called aromatase. The conversion process is known as aromatisation, and happens mainly in the fatty tissues of the body.
Femara is a drug that blocks the process of aromatisation, and so reduces the amount of oestrogen in the body. As less oestrogen reaches the cancer cells they grow more slowly or stop growing altogether. Drugs that work in this way are known as aromatase inhibitors. Other aromatase inhibitors include anastrozole (Arimidex®) | and exemestane (Aromasin®)| . ’