Do you Think Stress can cause cancer to reoccur?? I am living under intolerAble stress at present, none of my own making??? I to suffer from mistakes ref apostrophes , grammar awful since chemo. I am sure it has killed ny brain cells of!!!
corsa
Hi, if stress causes cancer to reoccur then I am doomed.I personally don’t think it does,but what do I know.My grammar is rubbish to and can’t seem to spell the simplest of words,and my mind goes totally blank half way through a sentence and I cant remember what I was talking about,I get really frustrated sometimes lol
Mel xx
I don’t think Stress actually causes cancer but I am sure it contributes to it. In order to get your body strong and fit we are told to eat healthily, exercise ect and i think your mind is a big part of this. A strong healthy mind will contribute greatly to your overall well being and Stress will affect his.
I think If you are stressed then you need to find out the cause of the stress and do something about it (if you can) and generally chill and don’t allow others to dump their stress on to you!
In respect of Chemo brain - its strange but yes I think it does exist - I don’t think its stress related. My spelling etc has gone haywire since I started treatment - although I am managing to function ok at work and people say I am the same as ever - although sometimes my brain feels a bit foggy and I forget things/words etc!! but again that might be old age. Thank god for spellchecks!
Think stress causes/contributes to almost every illness as it affects the immune system. I was doing just fine after treatment for my primary bc, but the moment I went back to work and got really stressed it recurred. I am sure this is no coincidence - I am working on reducing stress but it’s so hard when there are external causes, like screaming toddlers and stressed out husbands! And the fact that my DLA still hasnt been granted!
Chemo brain, totally. Luckily my iPad corrects most of my spelling mistakes but half the time I don’t know what day it is!
There is no doubt in my mind that stress plays a role in cancer. One of the main effects of stress is that it reduces the effectiveness of the immune system and this is one factor that plays a role in disease. For example, a research study was carried out by Riley (I forget the year!). He took a group of mice and injected all with aggressively growing cancer cells. Half of the mice were caused stress by being placed on a rotating turntable for periods of time. The stressed mice all went on to experience tumour growth while the control group (not exposed to stress) did not.
Having said that it is easier said than done to work on stress levels. I have turned to meditation and tai chi to try and help 
alex
Hi,
I have a friend who is a research scientist and breast cancer is his specialist area. He says studies have proved a link between stress and some cancers. A lot of the detail went over my head but it is interlinked with the immune system and relates to hormones produced by the body when you are stressed. Some cancer cells feed on these hormones. On the positive side they also have proof that cancer cannot survive in oxygenated cells and some of the things we do to reduce stress, such as Tai Chi, yoga, pilates and other types of exercise all increase the oxygen in our cells.
Jan xx
Hi Corsa
I find stress a big issue too and am dreading the stress when i go back to work. I have been reading a great book called anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber and it covers stress and the immune system and techniques for reducing stress like breathing techniques and meditation. It is a really interesting book and covers everything from food to attitude. he seems to have based a lot of it on reasearch and his own personal experience.
I know what you mean abot chemo brain too my hsort term memory is rubbish now and i do mix up my letters a lot.
Jxxxx
Hi Corsa.
My life has not always been easy, and often quite stressful, however I have friends who seem to have more stressful lives than me and are fit and well.
In April 2003, I was just thinking life was getting easier for me, after many years of stress, bringing up a handicapped child, death of my sister, living a long way from my family, working full time before and after a spell of unemployment, only bread winner of the immediate family, and probably stuff I can’t even remember now !! June 03 got my dx. Stress related ??
In May 2009 my husband died after many months of illness, in June 09 my annual mammogram was clear. in March 2010, I was just thinking, in 2 months, a year will have passed and things will get better, had plans… And had my annual mammogram. New primary bc. Stress related ??
I am a fan of David Schreiber and I believe stress does affect our immune system and therefore our capacity to fight the cancer cells that develop in all of us.
I wish you all the best and I hope you find ways of coping with the stress of life, because you cannot stop stress, only cope with it.
Hugs
Maria
Stress weakens the immune system and can lay us suseptible to all kinds of illness, not just cancer. I have a chronic illness (not cancer) that started after a very severe bout of stress. However I don’t believe there is ever one cause of an illness as there is usually a multitude of factors coming together. Some people can live their lives in severe stress and not end up with any major health problem and others can live sedentary lives and get up severely ill.
I love the David Servan Schreiber book too. He came to the conclusion that it is not necessarily the stress itself, but how we deal with it that determines it’s affects on our immune systems - whether we feel the situation is hopeless and overwhelming, or whether we can steps to help ourselves. I imagine some stress is so severe that it is intolerable, but studies have shown just simply talking about a stressful situation can be beneficial to survival rates. This is why I believe it is so important for us to try and take some control of our disease either by adopting a cancer diet, or exercise, or meditation, a support group - preferably ALL of these - but at the very least anything that feels like a positive step to help treatment.
It’s a very interesting subject - pity there is so little info from the medics about it.
Little info? There is plenty of information around relating to stress and cancer.
No definitive link has been found.
If stress caused cancer then war zones would have high rates of it - but they don’t.
This current study reveals that stress can be beneficial and caused tumours to shrink in stressed mice.
sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100708122611.htm
This is what Cancer Research have to say -
info.cancerresearchuk.org/healthyliving/cancercontroversies/stress/
And this is the NCI
cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/stress
This is an interesting piece from the NHS which unpicks the fruit fly research and shows how the newspaper claims of stress causing cancer were monumentally flawed.
nhs.uk/news/2010/01January/Pages/emotional-stress-causes-cancer.aspx
Servan-Schreiber’s book is the least annoying of these ‘lifestyle guides to beating cancer’ books. But he is yet another self-proclaimed expert (like Jane Plant) who underwent traditional cancer treatment but still thinks his remission is due to lifestyle choices.
Made a hell of a lot of money out of his book though hasn’t he?
What a smashing lot you all are. I have lost my two baby grandaughters , mother has taken them abroad to her home country . Her husband my son is in a psychaiatric unit after suffereing a complete mental breakdown. My youngest lads wife had a bleed and blood clot on her brain , three weeks after giving birth to her first child six months ago, she had craniostomy and cranioplasty weeks later. She is slowly getting better but is very anxious at the slightest pain in her head. How can I switch off from all that. I know time will heal but the way I feel at present I think I am inviting cancer back , will read all your tips through again and see if I cam get book from library
corsa
I think stress can have a major effect on us even if we don’t feel stressed, a couple of weeks ago I was fine just getting over treatment, surgery, rads and starting to feel normal, then in the space of a few hours I was coughing as if I smoke 60 a day, non smoker, which I believe was brought on by stress at something which happened over the internet and deeply upset me, so upset I was crying and shaking, now I have a lung infection which has carried on and on, I had to have an xray last week and should get the results next week, now I’m stressing in case it’s something more than the infection, what if the rads has damaged my lung or what if something else is growing…stress shold be banned and after next week I hope to make a positive start on de stressing whatever I can
HI Corsa, You need more than a book to help you come to terms with all your stress. Please look after yourself. I am so sorry to hear about your sons’ problems. We are Mum’s for life and will always worry about our children, but you seem to have more than your fair share. You will get some support here, there are people who have a wonderful way with words, I can just let you know I am thinking of you and wish you are your family happier times ahead
Hugs to you all
Maria
msmolly your NCI link seems to say the opposite of your comment - studies suggest a link with stress and tumour growth and virus related cancers, but that the studies were not long term enough for the mechanism to be well understood. My own view that it is not stress itself but how we handle stress, is not incompatible with cancer rates and large scale traumatic events - wars etc.
I am sorry you find “lifestyle” books irritating - do you feel diet has no role to play whatsoever in preventing or treating cancer? Are you aware of the many research programmes linking IGF1 (found in dairy and meat) to hormone positive breast cancers? Here’s just one:
breast-cancer-research.com/content/10/4/R56
As someone trying to navigate a way through secondary cancer without falling apart, who finds a cancer fighting diet extremely helpful to my well being, I do find your comments unnecessarily dismissive. To suggest anyone who has written a book is just doing so for the money, and should therefore be treated with suspicion, is ridiculous. No-one knows when they write a book whether they will sell a single copy - I worked in publishing and I can tell you very few authors ever think they will make a living from it. I am fairly sure if Prof Plant’s first book was meant to be a money spinner it would have been much shorter, easier to read and without the 80 pages of footnotes.
There are well documented cases of cancer patients who go into remission through diet alone. As it is well understood that certain foods put us at higher risk of many cancers - bowel cancer for instance - isn’t it logical that removing foods from our diet might also prevent a recurrence or slow progress? At the very least Prof Plant’s case of having an aggressive advanced cancer which has not returned in 17 years is interesting. We know chemo doesn’t work in the long term on advanced cancers, particularly the ones available when she was treated 20 years ago, otherwise they would be considered curable - they are not. Do you think it is impossible that her diet has made the difference?
If you do not believe diet and lifestyle are contributors to the huge increase in breast cancer rates since WW2, I would be curious to know what you do think is the cause.
Finty - first may I say how sorry I am to hear you have secondaries and I do understand a driving need to empower yourself in tackling this illness. However - in the 2 years since my diagnosis I have spent a very large amount of time reading about, thinking about and debating issues surrounding this disease.
I am very much aware of all the arguments relating environmental factors to cancer - but the bottom line is that there have been an inordinate number of studies but absolutely no convincing proof whatsoever - but that doesn’t prevent self proclaimed gurus from jumping on the bandwagon and claiming XYZ cures or prevents cancer.
(Ask yourself why Jane Plant - the eminent geologist - now thinks herself qualified to also publish books on prostate cancer, osteoporosis, stress and depression. I assume that she cannot depend on her own anecdotal evidence regarding prostate cancer.)
Life In Your Hands is execrably bad in so many ways. A first year science undergrad can rip its supporting strategies to shreds in a matter of minutes.
There are SO many proven risk factors for breast cancer which account for increasing numbers of diagnoses - obesity, inactivity, early onset menses and late start menopause, increased alcohol consumption, having children later in life, having fewer children, not breastfeeding, use of HRT, use of IVF. All of these factors have been proven to impact on BC risk. The biggest risk of all of course is simply being female, getting older and having breasts.
I can understand if people have not led a particularly healthy lifestyle that they would make drastic changes to their diet in the hope it would do some good. But I, and many like me, have always lived very healthy lives. I have been a vegetarian all of my life and for a very large period of it I was vegan. I have always loved raw foods - even before it became fashionable. Ate tons of Jane Plant’s beloved tofu. Was always very slim and fit. Didn’t make a jot of difference to preventing cancer though.
The problem I have with all of these claims about prevention is that cancer is not one disease - it is extraordinarily complex. Breast cancer alone is an umbrella term for so many varying diseases all of which carry their own distinctive characteristics and progonoses. Yet we are told by Plant and Servan-Schreiber et al that just by eating X and not Y then all cancers will respond accordingly. By your own admission chemo doesn’t work on everyone in the same way - so why should excluding milk from your diet or eating more cashews?
It is up to each and every one of us to find our way through this disease - and if adjusting your diet works for you then great. What I don’t like is myths and hypotheses being peddled as recognised facts and people feeling compelled to make lifestyle changes that have no basis in science, which may make them very miserable, compromise their diet and overall health and have no effect on their cancer at all.
We now know that the 5-a-day thing is pretty much ineffective against preventing cancers. This was hailed as the answer to everything - it was going to slash European cancer rates by half. It hasn’t. And in fact the whole concept began as a snappy slogan from a Californian nutritionist years ago with zero evidence to support it.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8605270.stm
Nobody denies that eating fresh fruit and veg is good for general health - but they claimed that it could SPECIFICALLY prevent cancer. And it doesn’t. Same goes for all the “superfoods” like blueberries which are basically the product of some terrific marketing campaigns. I recently read that in order for them to have any impact on the body whatsoever you would have to ingest 2 and half tons a day and that the polyphenol compund probably cannot survive the digestive gut anyway.
As I said - if you feel that it helps you individually then great. But I don’t think claims about cancer prevention and treatment can be made in an open forum without inviting contention.
I would heartily recommend Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science as a must-read for anyone interested in this subject.
msmolly I think you contradict yourself. You say breast cancer is a complex disease with many causes - of course it is, nobody doubts that. Then you say that you have eaten healthily, were once a vegan, and have had cancer - so effectively dismiss diet as a cause - surely a single data point that a first year science grad would laugh at? You say the biggest risk factor is being female and getting older - yet this goes precisely nowhere in explaining why age adjusted rates of BC are increasing year on year in countries with a western diet.
None of the books I have read claim anywhere that adopting a specific diet will cure your cancer. They are not claiming wacky cures. You say “Yet we are told by Plant and Servan-Schreiber et al that just by eating X and not Y then all cancers will respond accordingly” - absolute rubbish, they say no such thing. They do however document well regarded, peer reviewed research that shows specific diets are associated with lower incidents of certain cancers, and that certain foods may help in prevention. They give examples of specific cases where individuals have responded well to diet changes. They document the role of phytochemicals in plants, and how in laboratories (mice or test tube cancer cultures)certain foods can destroy cancer cells or prevent mice developing cancer. They do not claim they will automatically do so in humans, but suggest it is worth eating these foods.
With regard to who writes the books and their qualifications - it is easy to dismiss Jane Plant as a Geologist - although she has studied chemistry to a higher level than most medical doctors. Most medical doctors have virtually zero knowledge of nutrition - and even less experience of conducting or reviewing research. I am sorry you found Life in Your Hands execrably bad. I am sure it has many faults - it is a long, densely written book - I am sure it is easy to find things to disagree with.
But here’s the problem - there is no medical cure for cancer. There isn’t time to wait 50 years to see if a study shows that a dairy free diet reduces the risk of cancer. Nobody is conducting any such long term studies. She has put forward an interesting proposition, with a wealth of supporting evidence - supporting, not proof. But I think it is also rather unfair to characterise her book in the way you do - she doesn’t claim to have conducted her own research, but rather tells the story of trying to piece together a rationale for her own disease from existing research, and questions the role of certain foods. She was trying to save her own life in the absence of any medical advice, not conduct an experiment to Ben Goldacre’s satisfaction. She would love for there to be more research - but by it’s very nature, research on diet is extremely hard to conduct, and I know of very few long term studies under way.
You didn’t comment on the role of IGF’s in hormone responsive cancers. This is a large part of Plant’s hypothesis, and I linked to some recent research. Is this bad science?
GO FLINTY!!
I absolutely agree with what you say.
Diet, exercise,meditation and stress relief may not have been proven to cure cancer but there is lots of indications that it might. Not least considering the fact that it improves life on a day-to-day basis.
I believe the people that write these books do it from a genuine desire to help people and I for one are extremely thankful to Chris Woollams, cancer active for his outstanding books. I changed diet halfway through chemo and the results were instant and incredible and meant that I could continue my business and not become bankrupt. I feel far more empowered and positive, but actually I simply feel better and healthier and WELL.
The big drug companies don’t want money spent on more natural remedies. The NHS hands out drugs (and then more drugs for the side effects), like sweets, with a small footnote that a good diet is a good idea. After giving a year of my life to bc treatments, I still have a 20% chance of reoccurrence - hardly a fool-proof cure for cancer. I am doing everything I can to reduce that 20% reoccurrence rate.
Regarding stress, I have had a very stressful time of it all for lots of reasons. I walk every day and have also taken up a meditation type yoga. My housework standards have slipped and my boys, my boyfriend and my friends have been moved up the importance scale. Good food is a part of everyday.
I try to take a far less cynical and negative out look on life too, inner happiness is an important aspect of well-being and one that is very difficult to measure or prove.
I’m probably with msmolly on this one, in that I enjoy ‘self-help’ books, but treat them with a pinch of salt.
Cancer is very complex, and we have a myriad of partial answers on some issues, but little that is conclusive. Stress experiments in labs, on flies/mice etc do not necessarily translate to humans. Population studies show certain tendencies, eg that slimmer women are less likely to get cancer (except for younger women) but is it becuase they are slim, or because they may exercise more, or eat less fatty food…? It’s difficult to isolate any specific factor.
I like Professor Plants book, and adopted many of her suggestions. At the same time can see that it is flawed. None of these books should be followed slavishly, but each probably each contains some partial truths. It really can’t do any harm, and may do some good to adopt a healthy lifestyle, so I try as a general rule, but don’t ban the occasional caramel Magnum if I really feel like it!
Those of us who prefer to be involved in our health will spend time and energy researching not just the traditional forms of treatment, but also the wider issues such as nutrition and lifestyle. Based upon this we can make our individual decisions about how we will live our life in the future. Where there is no qualitative and quantitive clinical research to support any particular theory, the individual nature of this decision making becomes even more important. I know that this forum is here for sharing of experience, but I think its very important that we don’t become too evangelical about our personal beliefs - for that is what they are when they is no clinical evidence to back them. Don’t get me wrong, I have had tremendous success after seeing a nutritionist and have always preferred the natural rather than drug route. I also believe a healthy mind and body will help us to handle whatever life throws our way.
But …
My particular concern is that anyone reading this thread could go away with an additional stressor - that the stress they are living under could give them cancer, or cause it to reoccur. I realise some people very much believe this to be the case, but unless there is scientific proof, the expression of that belief could be adding more stress to another person’s already stressed life without due cause.