Lisa Schneider-Cipriano: The latest about breast cancer news and the correlation of
what we eat may be, well it could either enhance the risk of getting breast cancer or help
to keep it at bay.
Do you want to start with that?
Dr. Jay K. Harness: I certainly do.
What you are alluding to is an article published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
looking at fruits and vegetable consumption and whether it could lower the risk of breast
cancer in general.
Now, this is what we call a cohort study, meaning that there have been other groups,
multiple different groups in fact in this situation, there are 20 different cohort groups
who have been studied Lisa prospectively, followed anywhere from 11 to 20 years and
in this particular sort of amalgamated report if you will, there are over 900,000 women
who have been followed and still what the researchers were doing and these cohort groups,
they have data, you know dietary data, weight data, blood pressure data, I mean these all
sorts of things that they have and so there has been this discussion for some period of
time that if we increase vegetables and fruit in our diet, would it lower the overall risk
of breast cancer and from this particular report, the answer is what is called estrogen
receptor positive breast cancers, which is the majority of breast cancers, the answer
is no, does not seem to have an impact, but what's interesting and what's important about
this study is that in estrogen receptor negative breast cancers, in other words those that
have no hormone sensitivity if you will, that it does have an impact on lowering the risk
of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer.
Lisa Schneider-Cipriano: This is such important information especially those who were diagnosed
with the estrogen receptive negative versus positive because you always hear after you
had your surgery and you had your mastectomy or your lumpectomy, if you are ER negative,
okay what else can I do and so I think the fact that what we eat can also keep it at
bay for the people who are ER negative that's terrific, if you are ER positive, then okay
you have your tamoxifen and like we have talked about the radiation, but this is terrific.
Are there certain foods, I mean I have heard spinach, broccoli, asparagus, have you heard
any others for those who were diagnosed with the estrogen receptive negative?
Dr. Jay K. Harness: Well, first of all, at least in this report, there is not a breakdown
specifically in the types of vegetables.
What's called the subset analysis that actually ends up that the impact of vegetables is greater
than fruits.
Now, Lisa I think we need to put all this in perspective.
One of the things that we know is that breast cancer is more common in industrialized societies.
So what we have in general in industrialized societies.
We have refined fruits, we have higher incidents of obesity, we are probably consuming less
of the desirable foods if you well.
When I read this, I sort of smiled to myself and said remember what mom always said, eat
your vegetables.
Lisa Schneider-Cipriano: It's so true.
Oh I know and make sure that they are fresh if you can.
Right?
Dr. Jay K. Harness: Absolutely correct and now and so one of the things, this reminds
me of is that we have got our good friends at the University of Arizona in the integrative
medicine department and we have had them on Breast Cancer Answers in the past.
This would be a wonderful invite the expert to dissect this kind of study more.
One of the things that we know from Victoria Maizes and the others at the University of
Arizona is, we want a lower inflammation in our body and there has been a fair amount
of research and work done especially by the folks of Arizona and elsewhere that lowering
inflammation has a positive effect not only on our good health, but may also lower the
risk of cancer in general or in other words, put it the other way around that inflammation
in our body created by an inflammation type diet if you will could increase the incidents
of cancer and this is true for men with prostate cancer as well as women with breast cancer
and so you really asked a good question about what we can do dietary wise to not only keep
cancer at a bay, but also once we were diagnosed, how do we help ourselves.