The breast cancer survivor’s low-fat diet

The American Cancer Society predicts that about 41,400 women will die of breast cancer in the coming year.

With breast cancer the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women, it’s no wonder that research efforts are ongoing and intense.

And, as with most any illness you can think of, the possibility that dietary choices influence whether a woman will get breast cancer has been a large part of that research.

While no definitive answers have been reached to date, many studies have shed light on how women can make the best food choices, particularly if they know they are at high risk for breast cancer.

Dietary fat has been marked as a very possible culprit in the development of breast cancer.

Although the jury is still out, a very recent study is shedding some light on this connection and offers information that can be useful to women right now.

Low fat means low death risk

“Until this study, we lacked any data from a prospective randomized control trial, which is the gold standard, for showing that a dietary approach really does reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer.”

This was a comment from Dr. Neil Iyengar, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, regarding a new study showing that a low-fat diet, similar to the kind doctors recommend for heart health, could be linked to a lower risk of dying from breast cancer.

Notice, we said a lower risk of dying from breast cancer, not necessarily of getting breast cancer. This is one intriguing result of the study, which will be presented in June at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The subjects of the study were a group of about 49,000 women who had been part of the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term national study on women’s health conducted by the National Institutes of Health.

This new study was a long-term study as well. At the start, none of the women had breast cancer and each woman was randomly assigned to follow either a low-fat diet plan or a control diet for a period of 8 ½ years. The low-fat group tried to limit their fat intake to 20 percent of their daily calories and to eat more fruits and vegetables.

The results at the end of the study:

The rates of new breast cancers were about the same for both groups
The women who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the interim had a 35% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those on the control diet.
Twenty years after the study ended, the women who ate the low-fat diet had a 15 percent lower mortality rate.
In even longer-term follow-up, the women on the low-fat diet had a 21 percent lower risk of dying of breast cancer.

Where you get your fat may matter

A ten-year-old study found that, although alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is an omega-3 fat known to be one of the “good” fats, it also has a high association with breast cancer.

Sometimes.

The study found that, depending on the food source of ALA, it could either raise or reduce the risk of getting breast cancer.

Breast cancer was inversely related to ALA from fruits and vegetables. In other words, the more ALA you consumed from these sources, the lower your risk.

On the other hand, breast cancer was positively related to ALA from nut mixes and processed food.

So what do you do now?

The results of these studies point to eating practices that can only lower your risk of breast cancer. In fact, many of these should sound quite familiar, as they also address other health issues such as heart disease and hypertension.

Lose the processed foods. Ultra-processed foods contain chemical additives such as emulsifiers, the stuff that makes salad dressing creamy. These chemicals are linked to metabolic syndrome, part of which is obesity.

Fat cells release hormones that fuel the growth of breast cancer. Are you beginning to see why processed foods are a direct route to cancer?

Get enough Vitamin D. Vitamin D has been shown to block the growth of breast cancer tumors. Not everyone gets enough in their diet, which is why a D3 supplement is recommended for anyone concerned with breast cancer.

Give up sugar. You’ve heard us say this over and over. Sugar really has nothing to recommend it and everything against it.

Sugar is behind heart disease and diabetes. It also makes cancer tumors more aggressive.

Try a Mediterranean diet. One study showed that, over a 20-year period, women who ate a Mediterranean-style diet were forty percent less likely to get ER-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat form of cancer.

Editor’s note: Discover how to live a cancer prevention lifestyle — using foods, vitamins, minerals and herbs — as well as little-known therapies allowed in other countries but denied to you by American mainstream medicine. Click here to discover Surviving Cancer! A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding the Causes, Treatments and Big Business Behind Medicine’s Most Frightening Diagnosis!

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