How very complicated this whole oestrogen /phytoestrogen topic is .
Since having to wave "goodbye " to my HRT .then within a very short space of time having to deal with all the awful symtoms of menopause same as i did nearly 19 years agoat age 40 .
Being ER positive , I had to think of something else .
Over the months I have tried various different herbal remedies .You name them , I´ve tried them .
Now six months on I can say that something has definately worked , but because I´m still taking so many , I´m not sure which .
Being ER pos , I know and understood that photoestrogens should be a no no , but how potent are these plant estrogens ? Certainly nothing like the chemical HRT that I took .
I´ve tried to find out as much as i could , and actually it gets quite mind bogling . Well it did to me , but perhaps my mind is more easily bogelld (?)
I recognised that red clover , black cohosh were on the hit list but what I did´nt realise was that so many ordanairy everyday foods were also .
Grains ,including wholegrains ,buckwheat,rye, seeds , legumes ,chickpeas , cherries even root vegetables . So now where does this leave me ?
Well , I´ve decided to see a qualified herbalist . I´ve never been down any alternative route before but it seems that there is no "medical " alternative to HRT and life without it ,plus cancer is a bummer , so I shall give someone else a chance to explain all of this to me .
The more I read i have to say the more confused i become . If I cannot take red clover , then how come nobody has told me to lay off the spuds ?
Maybe another idea:
I took tamoxifen for 5 years, and felt like a 50 year old in a 70 year old body. However what I did notice was when I put on weight (lost a stone during chemo) at a certain weight, the symptoms were a lot better. Great excuse for not loosing it again, but it was true. I calculated that once my BMI got to 25.6, yes overweight, but not obese, I was much better.
On arimidex, it was not the same, my wieght no longer made any differnce. My onc said it was OK so I took lots of soja food stuff and it did help a bit.
Maria
I´m just hoping that plant phyotoestrogens are less harmful than chemical ones .
So much of our food is contaminated by chemicals sometimes consiously ,especially meats as the animals are fed all sorts of things to speed up growth and keep down disease , what does it do to us ? Crops are sprayed , they say that peppers and lettuce grown in Spain has the highest levels of heavy metals in them …scary .
Weight seems to be a factor in most diseases . Trouble is I have really found that the older I have got , the heavier I am . Never used to be overweight, I cannot believe the photos taken in my 20´s and 30´s !
I would really love someone to explain to me the difference in taking plant oestrogens in tablets and eating chickpea stew !
You should read David Servan-Schreiber. It is a matter of concentration, the tablets are too strong
when i started the menopause way before my b.c. diagnosis, i went to my g.p. to discuss alternatives to h.r.t. as at the time there was a big thing in australia about eating ‘bergen bread’ to help menopause symptoms as it contained high levels of plant oestrogens from it’s soya content.
she told me that i would have to eat the equivalent of the produce of a small country everyday to gain any benefit:-) ! thus the content must be tiny.
i too am totally confused as i thought that we were ok with the phytoestrogens.
gill x
Dear Jackwagstaff, Phytoestrogens actually compete and help contol human oestrogens and so all the foods you talk about are the ones you should be eating!
Foods that elevate oestrogen levels are a diet of high calories and high saturated fat.
Pulses and large consumptions of fruit and vegetables all help to combat oestrogen levels.Have a look at the canceractive web site, there is a wealth of information that help you understand the phytoestrogen debate
Best wishes
Leadie
What I do is avoid any phytooestrogens in tablet form but I do eat plenty of phytooestrogens in my diet. Oestrogen is stored in fat in the body so the best thing is to reduce body fat (easier said than done but I’m trying!).
I’m not sure what the difference is between a tablet and say eating some tofu. Logically it would be that they are extracting certain compounds for tablets so you get a very concentrated amount of certain substances. I will try and look this up unless anyone else knows.
The other thing to avoid is alcohol particularly is ER+.
elinda x
Hi
Can anyone tell me why you need to avoid alcohol if your cancer is oestrogen positive? I have read that a few times but I am not sure why.
I enjoy the occasional glass of wine (or two!) and I would hate to have to give that up. I don’t get many pleasures at the moment!
Love
Maude xx
Some of the stuff I’ve read re alcohol has suggested it’s because it makes you put weight on, hence you produce more oestrogen. An oncology Professor told me this as well, he said they have known about this connection for many years now.
Well I´ve certainly put on weight since coming off HRT , a stone , and all around my middle , so if the cancer does´nt get me , a heart attack proberbly will ! Actually it´s not really funny , in my family it´s always been heart or some form of cancer . However they do say that you have less menopausal symptoms if you are overweight . That I can assure you does not seem to apply to me !.
I still truely cannot get my head around the difference between a red clover tablet or a chickpea stew with nice grainy wholemeal bread and a glass of wine .
So why not the alchohol ? Is that simply because you could put on weight ? I know a few alchoholics and they are usually slim , proberbly because they drink and don´t eat .Why especially if you are oestrogen positive ?
I´m sure diet has a lot to do with many diseases , think of all the steroids , antibiotics , growth hormones , pesticides etc etc that go into our foods . But phyotoestrogens are a natual part of that particular plant not artificial chemicals .
The more I think about things the more confused i get .
Alcohol changes hormone levels including oestrogen - I’m posting a link to Breakthrough BC and near to the bottom is a link to a pdf which explains it in more detail.
breakthrough.org.uk/breast_cancer/breast_cancer_facts/risk_factors_general_information/alcohol.html
Elinda x
Thanks Elinda.
Maude xx
Thanks Elinda , just downloaded that .Oh dear . I´m not what anyone would call a big drinker ,but I do have a couple of glasses of cava weekend evenings . plus i suppose , it´s not so much what i do now ,but perhaps what i did years ago , I definately drank more spirits when i was younger .
Why is everything I like immoral , illegal , fattening or cancer forming ??!!
Hi Jackwagstaff,
I don’t know if this will help, but my onc actually recommended I try red clover for the SEs of Tamoxifen so these phytoestrogens tablet form can’t be that bad.
For what its worth, I would say unless something is a definite no no, then anything in moderation is a good way to go. You’ve got to get your quality of life right versus being too restrictive.
There is an interesting thread that started out on ‘Lyn Redgrave’ that has now evolved into a discussion on risk and relative risk and it has some links to information on things like alcohol.
E xx
It is depressing that so many things we enjoy can cause problems. I do miss drinking wine but can’t now anyway as I’ve developed acid reflux since the chemo. Can’t eat chocolate, drink coffee etc etc.
I think it is important to remember it is about risk. I’ve never really been one for moderation so it’s easier for me to cut things out and then over time i forget about them. I have things like a piece of chocolate cake only occasionally when I go out. I’m no saint though, I had given up sugar but had some coconut ice over the weekend and since then I’ve been having such sugar cravings. I need to lose another 2 stone so that’s not good.
One Oncologist I saw told me that he was happy with me taking phytooestrogens such as red clover only while I was on tamoxifen.
Elinda x
also have a look at cancernet.co.uk
I agree it’s all a bit confusing. I would like a definitive list of what I can’t eat - if only it was that simple.
I am currently taking part in a 5 year study which is being run by UCL looking at diet etc called dietcomplyf, also very interesting. They are recruiting!
I have done some reading about this. It is still pretty inconclusive, but I wrote a bit on my blog, along with a list of the papers I looked at. (See my profile for the address.) Hope it is of use.
I’ve gone the way of moderation. I stopped eating meat 20 years ago so I do eat some soy “meat” substitutes. In addition, I share a couple drinks a week with my husband. I’m a few years out from diagnosis with no problems.
Hi
Interesting thread and i must admit i found it all very confusing and still do. I went through the stages of no to low dairy, then soya had long chats with my breast nurse to find out no real evidence had been found to support any food causing breast cancer or stop it returning. I must admti i have given up caffine which has reduced the hot flushes. I have been one of the lucky ones with my weight i was quite leight to start with and lost about 1/2 stone.
I think if you eat well plently of fruit veg , meat and fish. I do have a drink but not as mush as i use too…body does not react well to it any more. Great thread.
It´s very interesting , although somewhat confusing when you get into reading the cancer / diet debate .
I personally think that there proberbly is an excellent anti cancer diet out there . The problem would be to find it amongst all the "crackpot "diets .
Obviously any diet based treatment would´nt be funded , which is proberbly why nothing is ever conclusive .
Many years ago , our wellfare and health was taken care of by herbalists using …( what else !) herbs and plants . Obviously some herbalists were better than others because they were able to red and understand better the interactions between different plants and also quantities , or you could go to the ancient crone .
I know people think that there´s much more cancer around now , but we live on average so much longer that it must be hard to get the real figures.
Next week , I go back to the UK for a couple of weeks to visit family , when I return I must have a new regime . Also , by then i will have visited a herbalist in the UK , and hopefully will have abetter understanding of what is and what is´nt right for me .