The Anti-Cancer Food Plan

Breast cancer can be a deadly disease, killing about 40,000 women in the U.S. every year. But lab tests at Thomas Jefferson University suggest that you can improve your odds against this disease with a simple change in diet.

The lab studies show that sharply cutting the amount of food you eat if you’re being treated for breast cancer may extend your life.

The experiments indicate that a 30 percent reduction in daily calories helps fight off the triple negative subtype of breast cancer, one of the most dangerous forms of cancer. The drop in calories restricts the cancer’s ability to spread and metastasize in other parts of the body outside of the breasts.

The lab tests showed that this drop in food decreases the cancer cells’ manufacture of what are called microRNAs 17 and 20 (miR 17/20). This group of miRs is associated with in triple negative cancers that metastasize and kill.

Women with breast cancer often receive hormonal therapy designed to block tumors. They also get steroids to ameliorate chemotherapy’s side effects. Because of these treatments, their metabolism changes and they gain an average of 10 pounds during a year of treatment.

Unfortunately, that weight gain makes breast cancer patients more likely to die earlier.

“Calorie restriction promotes epigenetic changes in the breast tissue that keep the extracellular matrix strong,” says researcher Nicole Simone. “A strong matrix creates a sort of cage around the tumor, making it more difficult for cancer cells to escape and spread to new sites in the body.”