Whole-Food Guide for Breast Cancer Survivors (4 page)

Researcher Susan Hankinson first sounded the alarm on IGF-1 in 1998, when she and her colleagues reported that among seventy-six premenopausal women, those with IGF-1 blood concentrations in the highest third had almost three times higher risk of breast cancer than those with levels in the lowest third. And among premenopausal women younger than age fifty, the risk of breast cancer for those with the highest levels of IGF-1 was approximately
seven
times higher than for women with the lowest levels. “The up-to-sevenfold increase suggests that the relation between IGF-1 and risk of breast cancer may be greater than that of other established breast cancer risk factors, with the exception of a strong family history of breast cancer or a high-density mammographic profile,” warned Hankinson and her colleagues.

Given the research, we consider it prudent to strictly moderate your intake of commercial animal products to help keep this risk factor under control. Since the USDA does not require labeling of milk containing rBST as of this writing, it is safe to assume that if your milk is not labeled organic or doesn’t clearly state the
absence
of rBST, the cows that produced it were indeed treated with the hormone. The good news is that you can avoid this risk by choosing milk that is labeled “organic” or “rBST free.”

Sugar and Cancer: A Sweet Relationship?

You may already know that simple sugars and carbohydrates cause an almost immediate rise in blood glucose levels. The problem with this scenario is that cancer cells have a voracious appetite for sugar. Dr. Otto Warburg first discovered the connection in 1924, when his research revealed that cancer cells generate energy in a way that differs from normal cells, utilizing a process called
glycolysis
, a discovery for which he later won the Nobel Prize. He contended that this process was so dependent on glucose that he dubbed tumors “obligate sugar metabolizers”: “Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar” (Warburg 1966). Warburg observed—and that observation has not been challenged in almost a century of subsequent research—that not only does consuming sugars and simple carbs rapidly raise blood glucose, but also the fast, abrupt nature of this increase triggers a healthy pancreas to respond by overproducing insulin in order to bring the levels down to a normal range as quickly as possible. This initially healthy response, however, can lead to very unhealthy consequences. Insulin and its close relative IGF-1 are powerful cellular growth promoters (Hadsell and Bonnette 2000). In other words, these hormones have the job of sending “grow” messages to your tissues.

The connection among blood glucose, insulin, and breast cancer has been documented for decades. For example, a 1985 mouse study (Santisteban et al.) indicated that higher blood glucose levels resulted in shorter survival times in mice with breast cancer, with the response being “dose dependent.” In other words, the higher the blood glucose levels, the poorer the outcomes.

What’s critical to understand is that simple carbohydrates (white bread, rice, pasta, pastries, and so on) convert to simple sugar within moments of your chewing them. Complex carbohydrates, those with intact fiber and germ, on the other hand, release their glucose more slowly and more healthfully into the bloodstream. We’ll discuss more on sugar, insulin, and cancer in chapter 6.

Time for an Oil Change?

Fats and oils have an intimate relationship with cancer, because they either promote or inhibit inflammation, a topic that we will discuss in detail in chapter 8. The nature of fats and oils changed dramatically about fifty years ago, when processed foods started coming into their own as a mainstay of the American diet. During those years, food manufacturers started looking for a way to preserve the shelf life of processed foods as well as home and industrial cooking oils and fats. Very quickly, genuine fats became factory fats; that is, they were replaced with hydrogenated trans fats, a new, lab-created fake fat that was completely foreign to the human body.

So what happens when you actually eat this stuff? Because trans fats are similar in chemical composition to real fats, your body believes that they are real, and uses them in all the places where real fats are designed to go—especially the all-important cell membrane. In the words of diet guru Sally Fallon (2001), your cells actually become partially hydrogenated! Why is this a problem? Because all nutrients and waste products must pass through this vital cellular gatekeeper (the cell membrane), we cannot afford to have membranes that are rigid and hard, inhibiting the smooth exchange of nutrients and waste products. We’ll talk a great deal more about fats that are friends and fats that are foes in chapters 3 and 8.

America’s Other Drinking Problem

In the United States, we’re told that our water is among the purest in the world, but a closer look reveals a startlingly different story. Vital to health and to life, clean water is the only liquid the body actually needs, and nothing can replace it. Opinions vary as to how much we need each day (48 to 64 ounces, by most accounts), but need it we do, whether it comes from our food, our tap, or bottles. In 2009 the Environmental Working Group (EWG) disclosed that more than 260 contaminants had been detected in tens of thousands of samples of tap water, many of them petrochemicals and their by-products. What’s more, over half of the contaminants were unregulated. Of these unregulated toxins, the EWG concluded that 53 are linked to cancer, 41 to reproductive toxicity, 36 to developmental toxicity, and 16 to immune-system damage. For others, no health information seems to exist at all.

Based on these troubling findings, the pollution of our water seems to be one more possible contributor to the ever-growing cancer epidemic in our country. We’ll provide tips for locating and filling up on healthy drinking water in chapter 4.

Nutritional Deficiencies and Efficiencies: When Food Isn’t Enough

A well-nourished body boasts a thriving community of healthy cells, and healthy cells are more resistant to oxidative stress and DNA damage, two factors that increase the chances of their becoming cancerous. Well-nourished cells are also capable of interacting with one another more effectively, making sure that all cells work together as a coordinated community. What’s more, when they are damaged or worn out, healthy cells die in an orderly process known as
apoptosis
.

As much as we advocate the use of whole, nutrient-dense food as a foundation for wellness and cancer prevention, there are many instances when the purest, freshest proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and
phytonutrients
(protective chemicals made by plants) from food simply aren’t enough. We can lay the blame on depleted soil producing less-nutritious crop yields, on toxins in our environment, on endocrine-disrupting chemicals that throw our hormones out of balance, or on digestive issues that prevent us from absorbing and using the nutrients available in the food we eat. Indeed, all of these factors share some of the responsibility, because they all lead to a state of nutrient depletion, which, in turn, leads to a state of diminished health. That’s where targeted nutritional supplementation comes in.

Vitamin D, iodine, and selenium are just three nutrients that have been shown to play a dominant role in cellular and immune health. Copper and iron, in excess, on the other hand, have demonstrated the capacity to
hasten
cancer’s progression. We’ll take a closer look at the relationship of specific nutrients to the risk of breast cancer occurrence or recurrence in chapter 5.

Immune Capability

One way of reducing your risk of breast cancer occurrence or recurrence is to have a healthy immune system, one that recognizes unhealthy cells and destroys them. Cancer, however, is exceedingly cunning in its ability to evade immune surveillance, secreting chemicals designed to camouflage it and confuse our cellular defenders. Think of it as a Trojan horse that cloaks itself in a devious array of disguises to throw your immune system off-track. When your army of T cells, phagocytes, and natural killer (NK) cells—the specific cells that fight cancer—is well nourished and well rested, your immune system has a better chance of mounting a swift and strong response to cancerous cells before they can multiply and become dangerous.

One of the greatest risks to immune health, and one that we
can
completely control, again, involves the intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Excess sugar depresses immunity, as was shown as far back as the 1970s (Sanchez et al. 1973), when subjects ingesting 75 to 100 grams of a sugar solution (about 20 teaspoons of sugar, or the amount in two average 12-ounce sodas) showed a dramatic drop in neutrophil count, a measure of white blood cell activity. This plunge happened within fifteen minutes of eating a high-glycemic meal, and although the immune suppression was most noticeable two hours after ingestion, the effect was still evident five hours after eating. We’ll delve more into this and other factors affecting immune health in chapter 7.

Inflammation Stokes the Fire

A fire can spread quickly and devastatingly, or slowly, making it easier for firefighters to subdue. Inflammation is the fire in the growth and spread of cancer. In a healthy body, inflammation represents a protective response to an emergency, such as invasion by a bacterium, virus, or parasite. Inflammation is a time-tested process that initiates the body’s innate healing process, a lifesaving response to wounds and infections that might not heal without it. An inflammatory state can become chronic, however, which is when it causes problems.

The same inflammatory chemicals that are used to heal wounds can promote cancer growth. One way that this happens is when white blood cells rush to the site of an injury, initiating the development of new blood vessels in a process known as
angiogenesis
. What’s more, inflammation seems to play a variety of roles in all phases of cancer: its initiation, promotion, and invasion (Sgambato and Cittadini 2010).

Fortunately, we are well aware of several natural anti-inflammatory foods and nutrients.
Quercetin
, a bioflavonoid phytonutrient found in apples, onions, and tea; curcumin; ginger; and omega-3 fatty acids are among the best. Likewise, sunlight, which allows the body to make vitamin D, is a natural antioxidant and is anti-inflammatory.

Identifying and eliminating food sensitivities is another key to alleviating undue inflammation. By discovering your own particular food sensitivities, you can avoid foods that are provocative to your system. This is one key to taming the inflammation beast, but we’ll discuss several others in chapter 8.

The Breast Cancer–Iodine Connection

According to Dr. David Brownstein (2008), author of
Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live without It
, iodine is one of the most essential nutrients for breast health. In fact, decades of work have been painstakingly undertaken to confirm this protective role. It is believed that iodine does its work through modulation of gene expression and estrogen containment, while remaining intimately involved in the process of cell division and replication, and apoptosis, the process of normal cell death (ibid.).

From epidemiological studies, we learn that iodine deficiency is linked to a higher rate of goiter and breast cancer, undoubtedly because iodine exerts the lion’s share of its effect on both thyroid and breast tissue. Conversely, high levels of iodine intake are associated with reduced goiter and breast cancer rates (ibid.). Japan, for instance, has the highest dietary intake of iodine (approximately 13 milligrams per day), and the lowest rates of goiter and breast cancer (ibid.). Interestingly, when Japanese women move to the United States and consume the same amount of iodine as American women, their breast cancer rates increase. Dr. Brownstein (personal communication) has tested more than four thousand patients in his practice, and his results have been remarkably consistent: over 95 percent of his patients are iodine deficient. How can this be, when our saltshakers are brimming with iodized salt? Perhaps it’s because Americans also consume three other chemicals in large amounts that compete with iodine for absorption: fluoride, chlorine, and bromide. In chapter 5 we’ll talk more about these iodine-disrupting chemicals and what you can do to make sure that you have enough iodine to confer the maximum degree of breast cancer protection.

Gut and Liver Health

Several theories of cancer development emphasize the concept of “total load,” or the cumulative amount of toxins that your body is challenged to neutralize on a day-to-day basis. When this load gets too heavy to carry, the liver, our primary detoxification organ, can no longer keep up with the job of clearing out waste products. As the wastes continue to build, they recirculate, and they damage, first, our cells as a whole and then the DNA
inside
our cells. By supporting a healthy liver and digestive tract, we help to move toxins through and out of the body, minimizing toxic overload and excessive DNA damage. A healthy liver is also critical in detoxifying human estrogens and foreign estrogen compounds, called
xenoestrogens
, which can initiate and accelerate breast cancer growth (Aschengrau, Rogers, and Ozonoff 2003). We call this good cellular housekeeping.

Cruciferous vegetables, beets, curcumin (from the spice turmeric), and carotenoids, found in carrots, tomatoes, oranges, and many other fruits and vegetables, are particularly good at supporting the liver in breaking down toxic additives, pesticides, hormones, and other chemicals that can threaten our health.

The liver is an organ with awesome executive responsibility; treat it well, and it will return the favor. More on this in chapter 9.

Handling Hormones

All women manufacture a variety of estrogens throughout their lifetimes. Before menopause, the ovaries produce these estrogens, and after menopause, the adrenal glands and adipose (fat) tissue make them, albeit in smaller amounts. Women who are overweight have more adipose tissue, so they produce more estrogen. What’s more, these estrogens do not distribute themselves evenly around the body. In menopausal and postmenopausal women, excessive levels of estradiol, the most dominant estrogen, commonly accumulate in breast tissue, creating an additional risk of developing estrogen-dependent tumors.