BTW, if anyone doubts that the establishment favours meat consumption as part of its “cheap food at any price” policy and “to hell with the consequences for the population as long as industry lobbyists are happy” (meat and livestock and cereals for animal feeds are a business which net around 700 billion dollars a year in the US alone!), read the info on the www.pcrm.org website about the forthcoming Farm Bill legislation in the USA. The EU is marginally better on this due to the USA not wanting any competition and the Europeans wanting to make their own agricultural subsidies policy weaker …
Over the decade from 1995-2005 70 billion US Dollars have been given in subsidies to agriculture: 99% to meat and livestock and dairy and feedstock agricultural businesses and 1% to fruit and vegetable and grain-for-human-consumption growers. To put this in some kind of context, US70 billion is the approximately equivalent to the GDP of any of the following countries: Nigeria, Bangladesh, Romania or Peru - put directly into the pockets of the industries in the meat and livestock and dairy supply chain in the USA.
Furthermore, millions of dollars are given annually to individual congress members and senators by the meat and dairy lobby to ensure their loyalty. Sadly our meat and dairy and processed food consumption in UK is modelled on US patterns due to globalisation of the food industry and the number of products on supermarket shelves here with an American flavour to the tastebuds or packaging is massive but only a small part of the culture which has hopped across the pond in the last 50 years.
Refreshingly though, the Scientific American editorial this month(09/07) says “dietary studies sponsored by the food industry are often biased” warning “all organisations, including the government,a s well as industry and activist groups, tend to finance resaerch that is aligned with their interests…” “It makes sense to find public monies with which to suport the independent studies needed to develop the necessary guidelines” and their feature article on nutrition by the Paulette Goddard Prof. in nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, Marion Nestle, (her books include “Food Politics: HOw the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health”, “Safe food” and “What to eat”) cites the evidence that high dairy and calcium intake is linked to hip fractures and concludes finally “eat less, move more, eat a largely plant-based diet and avoid eating too much junk food” as her recipe for health". Maybe the times they are achanging?
Also check out an article on Dr. Tori Hudson’s blog which points to how soya strengthens bones. It is research into genistein. I am not happy to take extracted genistein as I believe that concentrates and extracts can upset the balance of oestrogens in my body but while you can’t get the wholefood benefit of soy by taking genistein, you can get the benefit of genistein by eating wholefood soya. torihudson.com/ Read her remarks on the side effects of this pone strenghtening strategy vs bisphosphonates… another little controversy for you?
Jennyw, you are the most amazing mine of incredibly indepth info - I thought I was clued up about these nutrition and hormone topics, but your’re streets ahead of me!
You’re more than welcome - I’m the same as you in these respects too, although we can’t trace a genetic predisposition to anything remotely scientific - if I try to explain even simple processes to any of my family they just close down saying it’s all too hard to understand!
The thing that probably p**** me off the most about this illness and the treatments is the way it enfeebles my brain and turns it into a perfectly useless sludgey mass that can’t even work out how to boil a kettle - kills me.
or even that you put the kettle on? I’ve just remembered the rice! My old dog used to come and get me from the study when another of many pans was burning out but she died a few weeks back so I have to become more self reliant… I know exactly what you mean - the space where the brain used to be feels really draughty! Gotta go rescue the cooker - too late for the pan!
Jenny. Do you have access to ScienceDirect? No luck with the Campbell reference I’m afraid.
I’d prefer to read the original paper (and the same with later research too) so that I can look at how the research was done and whether any of the researchers had competing interests.
Hi everyone
I’m so glad I started this thread - it’s certainly stirred a lot of interest and comment both for and against. Jennyw is just so clued up on the whole thing. I’m 68 so the thought of the cancer eventually coming back and causing my death isn’t quite as worrying as for you younger women. Nevertheless, being both er+ and her2+, on Arimidex but not able to have Herceptin I want to do whatever I can to fight the her2 side of this. If there is even a small chance that giving up dairy will help then it’s not that difficult to do. I am slim, fit, take exercise, had 4 children, all the things that are supposed to protect against this disease. Having said that I had a cholesterol reading of 7.5 a few months before I discovered the lump in my breast. My doc suggested seeing if I could bring it down naturally, so I gave up butter and cream. I used to eat both in abundance. I had my next reading shortly after my cancer was diagnosed and it was 4.2. I assume having what’s termed ‘hidden fat’ is just as bad as being overweight. I’ve now cut out beef and dairy and eat more fruit and veg, but that is as far as I’m prepared to go. If it helps, great, if not, too bad. At least I tried.
I ma taking part in a 5-year study re: diet and breast cancer/recurrence. For those that don;t remember me form last year, i had chemo, oestrogen+++ lump and lymph nodes removed and radiotherapy. That was 2006 taken care of. Now on Tamoxifen. I attended Guys hospital, and am doing this through researchers who approached me at the hospital while i was attending appointments. I am just eating what i want to eat (have gereally cut down on cheese/dairy, red meats, and eat more fruit - already ate tons of veg & home cooked rather than bought food - otherwise just eating what i want to). It won’t necessarily benefit anyone for some time as the research extends over 5 years, but perhaps give some helpful hard facts a few years from now.
I think you have to subscribe to ScienceDirect to gain access otherwise you only get the abstracts. (I used to work for them - Elsevier Science - in the good old days).
I wrote a long post the other night in the middle of a torrential storm in reply to Valanne and Sue but had a powercut and subsequently a flood - 1st day back online so I’ll catch up eventually but probably not before next week. There’s a good ref. for the study, Sue, from Oxford, which I’ll dig out again.Science Direct is very limited as to the journals it covers and type of articles searchable. I liked Elsevier Science in the good old days, Jenny and often consulted their journals and even subscribed to some! I’m delighted to hear about the study you’re part of, Tigerlily. Who’s running the study? As you say, all these things take time to reach conclusions, but it’s better than each of us being a research cohort of 1 and no publication of the results of our attempts and no conclusions. You’d think someone would have devised a way of getting individual approaches collected and collated for analysis via internet participation by now…
Wishing you well,
Jenny
Hi Jenny
The study is based at University College London and is sposnored by ABC (Against Breast Cancer). It involves 40 hospitals in the UK. see ucl.ac.uk/abc-research-group/home.htm for more info about the research.
Dawn
It is depressing. I’m not overweight, I used to be superhealthy and fit, I had survived chemo and radio working and going to gym, I don’t eat procesed food, I try to avoid milk now and opt for organic most of the time. Yet it is still NOT ENOUGH. As you said “even a bit of hormone disturbes the balance” so my reduction of diary is pointless - only it’s complete elimination is usefull. I have the feeling it is NEVER enough and it makes me angry and not wishing to try at all.
I was away while most of this thread was posted so obviously wasn’t able to join in the debate. It seems to have moved on from discussing Jane Plant, but that’s what I want to talk about.
Most of what I would have said about Plant has been said, mainly by JaneRA and Holeybones. I’d just like to add a couple more observations.
I’ve read YLIYH twice. The first time I felt really smug. Why? Because I had been a vegan for several years (no meat, no dairy, no eggs etc) - something else my fantastic diet was protecting me from! She gave up dairy and immediately her tumour began to shrink then went! Wow!
A great deal less smugly, I re-read it six months after I’d been diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer. It was only on re-reading that I spotted what I’d overlooked the first time: when she had this eureka moment - giving up dairy and seeing her tumour shrink - she was also undergoing a course of chemotherapy.
Apparently this isn’t that unusual - when people claim to have been cured by a diet, or herbs or somesuch, it turns out that they were having conventional treatment at the same time, but choose to give credit for the improvement to the alternative, unproven treatment. It seems fairly clear that this is what happened in Plant’s case.
As I’ve said before, if dairy was the cause of breast cancer, I’d still have two breasts.
‘‘when people claim to have been cured by a diet, or herbs or somesuch, it turns out that they were having conventional treatment at the same time, but choose to give credit for the improvement to the alternative, unproven treatment.’’ Yes Louise this is so very true!
I’ve kept well since being diagnosed with both bc and mets in 2003. This is due to a marvellous response to at first Tamoxifen and currently Arimidex. I also have a spoonful of Manuka honey every day. I could suggest it was all down to my daily dose of honey that I’m feeling so well whilst so easily overlooking or dismissing my conventional treatments.
Jane Plant strongly advocates chemotherapy and radiotherapy as mainstays of cancer treatment as appropriate and complementary means of healthily supporting the treatments and when treatment stops - 10 food factors and 10 lifestyle factors in all. Dairy-free is just one food factor of the Plant Programme.
Dairy products aren’t the only factors which drive growth and sex hormones and growth factors.
It is possible also to be vegan and yet maybe have a low omega-3 intake and to have a poor renal acid load which can severely restrict how much benefit we can get from vitamin D and can upset our calcium uptake and bone strength and susceptibility to disease. This is simple to address once you know how.
The overall objective is to support your health and not your cancer. From not just her evidence but from many others, it can be effective.
Personally, her programme is the kernel of what I do to look after myself and some of the factors she mentions I take further than others. I take stress reduction more seriously than she does, for instance. I feel well and am enjoying life and have an open mind if I shall need more conventional treatment or not. If I do, I shall not give up what makes me feel so fit and strong and is doing me no harm. I found it difficult to make the changes and fine tune the details in the first months and found her books and website and her personal advice helpful. It’s not difficult to stick to once you get going. Hey, Anotherone, sound like you’re almost there… If it made sense to start, it makes even more sense to keep going and you’ll gain in confidence with time and begin to enjoy it.
Wishing you well,
Jenny
I know Jane Plant advocates chemotherapy; my point was that she was undergoing a course of chemo at the time she stopped eating dairy, and chose to put the tumour shrinkage down to the absence of dairy rather than the chemotherapy.
Dairy-free is not ‘just one food factor of the Plant programme’. It is the quite clearly the thing she identifies as the main cause of breast cancer. I know she makes other dietary recommendations but refraining from dairy is the main one, and the main argument of YLIYH.
And I still haven’t heard a plausible explanation as to why, if leaving out dairy for a matter of weeks cured Plant’s recurring breast cancer for ever, leaving it out for several years didn’t stop me getting breast cancer.
Hi
Long thread - did anyone mention that whatever you do to your diet does not change our environment? That bc occurrence is higher in developed world suggests it is our “lifestyle” but that includes environmental factors: hormones in meat, in water; hormone disrupters in plastics - etc. - who knows? Maybe those things will all turn out to be harmless. Maybe not. Maybe dairy will be implicated, or the hormones used in production. Or not.
I eat loads of fruit. One reason only. I like it. Is it full of phytooestrogens? I don’t know. If it is, are they acting like tamoxifen and helping me? Or acting like oestrogen and possibly harming me? Actually, I like oestrogen. It is a female hormone. I am a female. How can a normal female hormone be killing me? This thought makes me doubt that it is my body alone that is killing itself by being a normal female body producing normal female hormones. But what would I know? I’ll die investigating…or get on with what remains of my life.
snowwhite
Hi, Snowwhite.
Long life and happiness to you! I also leave most of the research to others - I just read it! And oh how I wish that the disgustingly polluted environment were not polluted with all the xeno-oestrogens that have stopped our regular supply of female hormones doing their job as they have for the last many millions of years! Saving the planet for the future sometimes seems futile when the chemical junk it in probably condemns so many future generations to worse and worse health. I’ve done with investigating and now just get on with enjoying life. I may also soon stop posting in places like this as the info I found out is available to everyone and maybe one day it wont have to be searched after with so much effort.
Wishing you well,
Jenny
Like Tigerlily I have also been asked to participate in a research study by the Institute of Cancer Research. This is a national study of the causes of breast cancer, concentrating on the risks of cancer in the family. Quote;" Some families appear to have an inherited tendency to breast cancer. We have been trying to find out how common this inherited tendency is and what the specific factors are that might be causing it"
This study entails giving a blood sample, and permission to look at hospital case notes and stored cells from the breast cancer. Also a detailed questionaire on the history of me and my family (blood related).
