Go to the website address below for an interesting recent article on triple negative breast cancer which isn’t all doom and gloom (for a change):
ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070801/triple_negative_070801/20070801?hub=Health
Hope you find it helpful/interesting.
Adele
Thanks for the link Adele. Yes interesting. The article confirms that triple negative cancer is more likely to recur in early years after initial diagnois (peaking at 2-3 years). By 8 years after diagnosis they reckon recurrence unlikely enough to be considered cured…so good news for any long time trip neg survivors.
Unfortunately I didn’t make it 8 years…made it to 3.5 which I thought was pretty good. Can’t say I’m encouraged by the statistic that period from recurrence to death in triple negatives is median of 9 months compared to median of 20 months for other cancers. Thank goodness I understand a bit about statistics or this piece would feel like doom and gloom on this miserable wet morning.
Jane
Aren’t these statistics just crazy? Survival from when? From diagnosis? If so,w as this an early diagnosis, or a very late one? From first intervention? Early or late? Effective or misguided?
I’m trip-neg too and made it to 6.5 years, then another nearly 4, to diagnosis, that is, the first time to a local recurrence, the second to metastatic disease.
But who knows when their cancer started in the first place? My surgeon reckoned it had been busy for at least 1.5 to 2 years by the time it was detected, so that makes my first time around 8-8.5 years.
When the chemo drug merchants push a new chemo drug because it lengthens RELATIVE time to recurrence by 3.5 months, or some such period, they don’t mention that chemo on its own rarely extends life. What most of these research papers point to is Billions of dollars of profit and little additional quality of life to the patients but still most cancer resaerch funding is spent on what suits the pharmaceutical industry to satisfy their shareholders.
Meanwhile, the other GOOD NEWS about trip-negs is that there is a dose dependent response to green tea which promotes cancer cell suicide and some other anti-angiogenic foods such as turmeric, irrespective of the receptor status of your original tumour. So if you haven’t made it to 8 years, don’t despair - put the kettle on and spice up your life!
Wishing you well,
Jenny
wish I believed in green tea but I don’t! I don’t believe much in chemo either. I like lemon and ginger tea though…do you think that will help?
Jane
I also like lemon and ginger tea and it’s stuffed with good things to suppress cancer and alter the conditions from cancer promoting to cancer-suppressing in your body - so get out the lemons and the ginger and put the kettle on…
The green tea thing I didn’t really believe until I read a scientific review of this and other food factors and triple neg. cancers written by 2 medical scietists in Leeds. They found that a number of reputable research projects had discovered a dose-response to green tea consumption and tumour suppression in both hormone receptor positive and negative cancers. I’m not sure I can dredge up the ref. again quickly but if you like, I’ll post it here when it next surfaces…?
Wishing you well and raising a cuppa to our very good health
Jenny
Hi Jenny
My remark about lemon and ginger tea was rather tongue in cheek. I love the stuff and drink it at home rather than coffee…which I used to do far too much of …but still do caffeine occasionally as a treat! I don’t think for one moment that lemon and ginger tea has any cancer preventing qualities and nor do I believe that by drinking it I am making an iota of difference to my cancer.
The research on green tea is very tentative and is I think mainly laboratory/test tube. rodent stuff. I’m not aware of any studies which show that green tea makes any difference to established cancer. But would love to see links to the Leeds research.
Going back ot the triple negative article: I think it is interesting…partly because there are relatively few peer reviewed articles on trip negatives bc. The statistics are just that…statsitics taken from the study participants, Survival statistics alwasy start from the date of diagnosis…I’d have thought it would be scientifically difficult to do otherwise…some cancers grow very quickly and some much slower. This article simply backs up other studies which show that triple negative breast cancers are more likely to recur in the early years after diagnosis. By 10 years the rates of recurrence for er+ and pr+ cancers are I believe evened out.
I agree that there is insufficient information about the fact that chemotherapy is by no means a wonder cure and often all that chemo does is prolong survival time or disaese free progression by a few months…and then there are numerous quality of life issues about whether that is ‘worth it’. I also dislike the dominace of pharmaceuticals companies (and am not too keen on global capitalism) and the impact their dominance has on reserach, but i don’t go for ‘conspiracy theories’ about them. Yes the pharmaceuticals make a profit out of cancer, as they do out of all illness but nothing would suit the pharaceuticals and their shareholders more than a cancer cure…but there just isn’t one…there will be I belive for our children or grandchildren.
So I’m raising my cup of lemon and ginger tea with a healthy touch of scepticism and hoping for a scietific wonder cure!
Jane
Hi, Jane. Of course lemon and ginger tea is not a cure for cancer… but in the realm of nutritional aids to wellbeing and factors which alter our internal environment to become unfavourable to cancer, they and all the other natural sources of chemopreventive phyto-chemicals as they’re called, will do no harm and may do good. Both ginger and lemon are good for liver and gall bladder function - the primary organs for detoxification of chemotherapy agents and the liver a prime site for cancer fighting functions. I drink it because I like it and it’s a digestive aid and anti-nausea too during chemo.
As to green tea, if you go to www.breastcancer.org and search on green tea, you’ll find their experts’ information on this. Also check out their research news, and a link to the Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre database on herbs. Quite interesting.
The link I have on file for the Leeds article is this:http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/6/3/119 It talks about green tea as a promoter of apoptosis (cancer cell suicide). The ref. on www.breastcancer.com is to its power as an anti-angiogenic (prevents new blood vessels from being formed to feed the tumour).
The Leeds article points out how difficult it is to get intracellular levels in breast cells or tumour cells as high as serum levels and to get serum levels high enough from simple ingestion. Recent research in US has led to the govt. funding the research into developing a green tea chewing gum as research hsa shown clearly that in the mouth, in saliva, its anti-oxidant and other properties work to prevent and treat cancers in the mouth and throat.
It’s the widespread problem of a lack of delivery mechanisms to get the active ingredient from the food into the tumour cells where it is needed. Nanotechnology is showing some promise but who knows what effect nano-particles have on normal cells. The little I understand about them suggests that they are so small that they can pass through any cell membrane. That’s great if they and what they are delivering is guaranteed to select only tumour cell chemistry to damage and disrupt. The existing cancer treatments are extremely blunt instruments.
As to conspiracy theories, no, I think most pharmaceutical companies act independently. I recommend you read The China Study, published 2006, by Prof. T. Colin Campbell, for details of his experience. He is an eminent scientist from Cornell university, who has often been called on by the US govt. for his expert opinions in his field, including testifying before Congressional committees and has been honoured for his work. He has nothing to lose as his long career is reaching its end so he is free to talk and to publish. Appparently pharmaceutical interests have committees which appoint watchers to investigate research and the researchers who do it, which may damage their shareholders’ interests. They then deploy spoiling tactics and in some cases act to prevent work being published. This is not the main purpose of his book The China Study, by the way, which is to publish his life-long research findings into diet and cancer, heart disease and obesity and endocrine and growth factor disruption and conclusions on prevention and dietary change as an element of treatment. I got the book for his nutritional views and was sickened to read how independent research in the interests of humanity is in reality suppressed for commercial gain.
Tell me what you think. There are a number of websites and lists which promote just the kind of diet he is advocating if you become interested.
Wishing you well,
Jenny
I’m triple neg. but find it all so confusing - yes I’ve heard chances of reoccurence happen within three years but my onc told me that as I was young and cancer very agressive and triple neg my body is jjust prone to cancer - scary to say the least - so still don’t know were I stand.