Your Secret Weapon Against Breast Cancer…Platefuls of Plants

Whether you have cancer, had cancer, have a strong family history of cancer, or are trying to make changes in your life to prevent cancer, I have a very empowering message for you.  There are lifestyle changes that you can make that can have a significant impact on this dreaded disease.

Well-built scientific studies published in the peer-reviewed literature continue to demonstrate how this disease can be influenced with some simple but very potent lifestyle changes.  Altering what you decide to eat is one of the most important steps that you can take.  Per Michael Greger, MD, “Diet (food and alcohol) are the number one cause of cancer.”

Some people with strong family histories may feel that their genetic predisposition may be too strong to affect with food, but we are finding that this not necessarily the case.  Our genes have different penetrations, or strengths over ultimate outcomes.  Those genes with 100% penetration act like dictators, like our eye color and our hair color.  Few genetic abnormalities, with the exception of the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntingdon’s disease, approach 100%.  The genes that may predispose us to chronic, degenerative diseases do not have 100% penetrance, and so act more like committees making recommendations.  Even the most powerful breast-cancer associated genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have estimated penetrance of anywhere from 30-70%, and that is the chance of developing the disease by age 70, not dying from it, and these estimates tend to come from women who have both genes and a strong family history which means the actual gene penetrance is even lower for women without family histories.  The expression of these genes is influenced by our environment, including what we eat, what we drink, and toxic chemicals with which we come into contact.  Matthew Lederman, MD describes, “Our genes may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.”  T. Colin Campbell, PhD refers to cancer cells as grass seed.  If they fall on fertile ground, they will grow given the right conditions.  If grass seeds fall on barren, dry dirt, they will fail to thrive and will die.  He urges us to make our bodies inhospitable to cancer.

So how do we make our bodies less hospitable to cancer?  We adopt a low-fat, minimally processed, plant-based lifestyle.  We remove the disease-promoting animal products and added oils, and replace them with protective plants.  We are just beginning to discover the many benefits of the phytonutrients found only in the plant kingdom.

Here are just a couple of the amazing examples of recent research:

• Hormones not only help regular cells to grow, but also help cancer cells to grow.  Estrogen levels are lower in post-menopausal women than in women of child bearing age and most breast tumors are estrogen receptor positive.  Researchers recently discovered that 70% of breast cancer tumors in post-menopausal women were able to use aromatase, an enzyme within our body, to make its own estrogen.  The researchers also discovered that consuming just 5 white button mushrooms a day effectively blocks this process.  Bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, celery, green onions, and spinach also inhibit aromatase activity, but not nearly as effectively as the mushrooms.
• The sulforaphane created when we bite into broccoli appears to inhibit breast cancer stem cells and to suppress the metastatic potential of cancer.  Investigators at Johns Hopkins were able to demonstrate this by adding sulforaphane to breast cancer cells in test tubes.  They found that both estrogen receptor positive and estrogen receptor negative tumors responded.  But in real life, how do we know if the sulforaphane that we eat gets into our breasts where we need it?  The investigators approached women planning to undergo breast reduction surgery.  One hour prior to surgery, they had these women consume a predetermined amount of broccoli, then analyzed the breast tissue that was removed.  They found effective concentrations of sulforaphane in the tissue and were able to calculate that by consuming between ¼ and 1 ¼ cups of broccoli sprouts per day women could sufficiently bathe their breast tissue with an effective concentration of this critical phytonutrient.

When we pack our plates with a variety of vibrantly-colored plants, which include minimally processed whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fruit with nuts and seeds:

• We eat rich sources of hundreds of different kinds of fiber.  Our liver filters our blood and sends excess hormones, carcinogenic substances, and anything it feels we are better off without to our intestines for removal.  Adequate fiber not only binds with these substances in our colon and renders them inactive, but also ensures that they are efficiently removed from our bodies in our fecal matter.  When the liver sends these toxic substances to our colon for removal, if adequate fiber does not exist, the matter sits longer than necessary and can eventually be reabsorbed and recirculated needlessly throughout the body.  This is called enterohepatic circulation and it is something we want to avoid.  With the help of beneficial intestinal bacteria, which flourish by feeding on the plant matter in our diets, fiber is fermented into substances like butyric acid which inhibits the growth of cancer cells.  When we follow a low-fat, minimally processed, plant-based lifestyle, we should have no problem meeting/exceeding the daily ½ pound fecal elimination target that is important for cancer prevention/battling.
• We eat broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables that contain glucosinolates which boost our liver’s ability to fight carcinogens.
• We eat foods that are naturally low in fat.  Those plants that are higher in fat are truly healthy fat.  Dietary fat and fat stores on our body act like hormone factories within our bodies.  Minimizing artificially extracted added oils helps to minimize excess hormone production and keeps our immune system running strong.  In fact, vegetable oils are the strongest promoter of cancer with which we commonly come into contact.  Both men and women that have more body fat tend to have less sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in their blood.  SHBG’s job is to bind with excess hormones and render them inactive and unable to promote cancer.  Your percentage of calories from fat should not exceed 15%.
• We eat plants that contain chlorophyll which may protect our DNA against mutation by intercepting carcinogens.  They prevent their absorption into our blood and bind with them so that they don’t fit into our DNA where they can cause mutations.
• We eat vegetables that can suppress vascular endothelial growth factor, which causes new blood vessels to sprout into a tumor and provide it with a good blood supply, which enables the tumor to grow and thrive.
• We eat ground flax seeds which appear to have the potential to reduce breast tumor growth.
• We eat foods that help to prevent cancer not only by blocking DNA damage but by increasing our DNA repair enzymes’ ability to repair any damage that gets by our first line of antioxidant defense.

It is just as important to remove the foods that are harmful as it is to replace them with foods that are protective.  It’s difficult to imagine that the food that permeates almost every aspect of our culture could be so dangerous.

Animal products and added oils are best left off your plate altogether.  Here are just some of the reasons:

•  When meat is cooked, carcinogenic substances are created within the flesh called heterocyclic amines.  Heterocyclic amines may also make breast cancer more aggressive.  When meat is grilled, the fat dripping onto the grill and the resulting smoke that rises upward toward the meat create carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on the meat’s surface.  If you cook your meat, there is no getting around heterocyclic amines.  The longer and hotter the meat gets, the more these substances form.  Chicken is the largest source of heterocyclic amines in the American diet.  If you don’t cook your meat, then you have to worry about fecal bacterial, viral, and prion contamination.
• Many human cancers, including leukemia and some tumors of the colon, breast, ovary, prostate, and skin, have absolute methionine dependency.  They need methionine to survive.  Chicken and fish are particularly rich sources of methionine, although it is also found in high concentrations in all animal products.  Methionine restriction is best achieved with a plant-based lifestyle.
• Consuming dairy raises blood levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1).  IGF-1 not only encourages the growth of normal cells, it encourages the growth of abnormal cells.
• 87% of the protein in dairy comes from casein.  According to traditional regulatory criteria, casein has been found to be the most significant carcinogen ever discovered.
• Meat and dairy contain no fiber or protective phytonutrients and crowd out the protective plant foods on our plates.  They are also high in saturated fat.  Dietary fat and fat stores on our body act like hormone factories within our bodies.  Elevated hormone levels not only encourage the growth of regular cells, they encourage the growth of cancer cells.  Fat also suppresses the immune system.  Chemicals exposures are stored in the fat of animals and bioaccumulate up the food chain.  Those that eat animal products are at the top of that food chain.  Removing the fat from dairy products results in a higher concentration of dairy protein (casein) in the fat-free product.
• Cancer may use a molecule found in animal products, Neu5Gc, to trick our immune system into feeding it with inflammation.  Our bodies still recognize cancer tumors as “self”.  The tumor incorporates Neu5Gc into itself, our bodies do not recognize the Neu5Gc as “self”, and incite a low-grade inflammation that ultimately feeds the cancer tumor.

Per Neal Barnard, MD, research indicates that if a dietary change is to alter the course of this disease, the changes need to be significant.  A low-fat, minimally processed, plant-based lifestyle can be a thoroughly enjoyable way to eat.  It’s not difficult to eat this way, it’s just different.  For more information or help adopting a plant-based lifestyle, please contact me.

 

Sources:

The Cancer Survivor’s Guide: Foods That Help You Fight Back, by Neal Barnard, MD and Jennifer K. Reilly, RD

The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell, II

Dr. McDougall’s Digestive Tune-Up by John A. McDougall, MD

Keep it Simple, Keep it Whole, by Alona Pulde, MD and Matthew Lederman, MD

Over-Diagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health by Drs. H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz, and Steve Woloshin

The Starch Solution Certification Course by John McDougall, MD

The McDougall Advanced Study Series, Stopping Cancer Before it Starts by Michael Greger, MD

Starving Cancer with Methionine Restriction, NutritionFacts.org, 9/18/13

Broccoli Boost Liver Detox Enzymes, NutritionFacts.org, 7/18/13

Anti-Angiogenesis: Cutting Off Tumor Supply Lines, NutritionFacts.org, 7/12/13

Mushrooms for Breast Cancer Prevention, NutritionFacts.org, 6/6/13

Flaxseeds & Breast Cancer Survival: Clinical Evidence, NutritionFacts.org, 4/10/13

Breast Cancer vs. Mushrooms, NutritionFacts.org, 12/26/12

How Tumors Use Meat to Grow: Xeno-Autoantibodies, NutritionFacts.org, 12/14/12

Eating Green to Prevent Cancer, NutritionFacts.org, 10/16/12

Kiwifruit and DNA Repair, NutritionFacts.og, 7/18/12

Lung Cancer Metastases and Broccoli, NutritionFacts.org, 3/21/12

Sulforaphane: From Broccoli to Breast, NutritionFacts.org, 3/13/12

Breast Cancer Prevention: Which Mushroom is Best?, NutritionFacts.org, 9/21/11

Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer, NutritionFacts.org, 9/20/11

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s Spring-Summer 2011 GOOD MEDICINE

Hot Dogs and Leukemia, NutritionFacts.org, 11/22/10

What is a Plant-Based Lifestyle and Why Should I Consider It?

A low-fat, plant-based lifestyle is comprised of an incredible variety of minimally processed whole grains, legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), vegetables, and fruits with minimal added oils.  These foods provide for an almost endless assortment of tasty recipes and meals.  It is a very satisfying way of eating.

The most comprehensive and well structured scientific studies completed to-date clearly indicate that this way of eating not only promotes vibrant health at any age, but also significantly improves a person’s ability to prevent, arrest, more effectively battle, or depending upon the disease, even reverse, chronic, degenerative conditions including heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, cancer, gastrointestinal disorders, and autoimmune conditions.

Meat and dairy products are so heavily ingrained in our culture that asking you to consider removing them from your plate may sound like heresy, but I hope that the following reasons will be compelling enough for you to “test drive” this lifestyle for just three weeks.  Medical doctors and PhDs in the forefront of nutrition research and lifestyle medicine repeatedly demonstrate the leverageable effect that the right food can have on health.

“All human populations of trim, healthy people have gotten the bulk of their calories from starch.”  John McDougall, MD

What we eat and drink on a regular basis is the single most important environmental factor in our health.  It plays a more influential role than genetics in most cases with regard to chronic, degenerative diseases.

It is widely accepted that increasing our vegetable and fruit intake is a healthy change we can all make.  Plants contain no cholesterol, are low in fat and rich in fiber, antioxidants, and other phytochemicals.  The fiber helps to fill us up, encourages a healthy gastrointestinal system, and facilitates the efficient removal of carcinogens and other waste products, thereby preventing them from recirculating in our body.  Researchers continue to discover additional benefits of the antioxidants and other phytochemicals that abound only in plants.  Plants help to promote alkalinity within the body which encourages a decrease in inflammation.

What most people do not know is that it is equally important if not more important to remove the meat and dairy products from our meals.

•  Meat is not a necessary source of protein.  All of the essential amino acids are found in abundance in plants.  Most of the chronic, degenerative diseases that plague our society are due to excessive protein intake.  The overconsumption of protein in affluent cultures adds stress to the kidneys, which must process and excrete the excess.  “In healthy people with no apparent diseases, it is estimated that they lose about 1/3 of their kidney function by the time they reach the age of 70 because of the high protein nature of the rich, American diet.” John McDougall, MD
• Meat contains saturated fat which can lead to heart and other vascular diseases.  Excess fat in our diet and stored on our bodies can cause us to produce excess hormones, which can increase our cancer risk.  It can also lead to excess intramyocellular lipids, or fat within our cells, which can paralyze insulin and lead to type II diabetes.
• Meat contains cholesterol.  There is no dietary requirement for cholesterol.  Our bodies make all that they need.  Cholesterol cannot be removed from meat as it resides within the cell walls and the cholesterol in all mammals is about the same, so switching from beef to chicken or turkey will not reduce your cholesterol.  Elevated cholesterol levels can also lead to heart and other vascular diseases.  At a cholesterol of 150 mg/dl and below, heart disease does not occur.  This can be attained without medication simply by following this lifestyle.
• Meat contains high levels of the sulfur-containing amino acid methionine, which causes our blood and body tissues to become very acidic and can promote osteoporosis as our body utilizes bone material to neutralize this acid.  Osteoporosis is not a condition of inadequate calcium intake.  It is a condition of overly rapid calcium loss.  The material excreted from our bones to neutralize the acidic environment created by the consumption of meat and dairy products is eventually filtered through the kidneys where it provides the building material for 95% of kidney stones.  Those countries with the highest consumption of dairy products also have the highest incidence of osteoporosis.  No level of calcium supplementation will keep a person in positive calcium balance (that is, keeping more calcium than they are losing) if the person is consuming a diet containing meat and dairy products.
• When meat is cooked, carcinogenic substances form within the flesh known as heterocyclic amines and benzopyrenes.  The longer and hotter the meat is cooked, the more carcinogens form.  Additional carcinogenic substances form on the surfaces of grilled meat, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.  There is no getting around heterocyclic amines and benzopyrenes, unless you stop cooking your food, in which case you need to be concerned with viral and bacterial contaminants such as e coli, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),Yersinia enterocolitica, and the prions that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease.
• All mammals store chemical exposures within their body fat.  As larger animals eat smaller animals, the chemical residues further concentrate within the animals’ fat as they move up the food chain.  This is a process known as biomagnification.  Being at the top of the food chain, not only are we exposing ourselves to all of the chemicals to which animals on the food chain below us were exposed, but a mother’s fat reserves are used to produce milk for her nursing baby and all of the chemical exposures from all of the animals eaten on the food chain below can end up in her milk.

Humans are the only mammals that drink milk after weaning and the only mammals to drink the milk of another species.  Drinking non-human milk causes a number of worrisome biological reactions.

•  Dairy products are not an essential source of calcium.  A study funded by the dairy industry determined that postmenopausal women consuming dairy products were in negative calcium balance (losing more calcium than they were retaining) and lost twice as much bone as postmenopausal women who avoid dairy products.  Instead, obtain your calcium from green, leafy vegetables and legumes (beans, peas, and lentils).
• According to traditional regulatory criteria, the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted, The China Study, determined that casein, which comprises 87% of dairy protein, is the most significant carcinogen ever discovered.
• Consuming dairy products raises the level of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in our bloodstream.  IGF-1 is a powerful stimulus for cancer cell growth.  When IGF-1 is mixed with breast cancer cells in a test tube, the cancer cells begin to grow rapidly.
• Dairy products also inhibit the activation of vitamin D, which is very protective against cancer.
• In 1993, the dairy industry established an internal guideline that there could be no more than 750,000 white blood cells (also known as pus cells) in 1 ml of milk.  1 ml is about 1/30 of an ounce.

Eliminate meat and dairy products and do our part to end world hunger.  It takes 12 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef.  More people could be fed if the grain were eaten directly.

Eliminate meat and dairy and do our part to minimize global warming.  Animal agriculture has the single largest impact on global warming, even more than all of the transportation sectors combined.  In addition, rain forests are being destroyed to provide land for agricultural animals.

If and how much you choose to incorporate this way of eating into your lifestyle is up to you.  I hope that you will test drive it for just three weeks and see how positively wonderful and full of energy you can feel.  Please keep in mind that to reduce your risk or to significantly alter the course of a serious condition such as cancer, heart disease, or an autoimmune condition, dietary changes have to be significant.

Why Choose a Plant-Based Lifestyle?

Have you been following my blog and tossing around the idea of test driving a plant-based lifestyle, but just haven’t made a final decision yet?  Have you recently adopted a plant-based lifestyle and have been unsure how to answer the multitude of questions from friends and family as to why you made this change?  Are you completely unfamiliar with the plant-based lifestyles that have been in the news a lot lately and would love to know what all the fuss is about?

 

Well, I’ve got answers for you.  Just click on the link below to find my most compelling reasons for changing the way you eat (and it all fits onto one sheet of paper!).  I encourage you to take ten minutes out of your busy day and read it.  What you choose to do with it is totally up to you, but I’m hoping for the sake of your health and that of your loved ones, that you’ll give it a shot.

 

http://www.traceyeakin.com/uploads/Why_Should_I_Consider_Eating_Only_Plants.pdf

 

 

I am a Plant-Based Nutrition Counselor, a graduate of Cornell University’s plant-based nutrition program, the only collegiate program in the country which focuses on the medical benefits of a low-fat, plant-based lifestyle,and am board certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.  I help people to achieve their wellness goals by providing them with the tools that they need to gain control over their health.  If you would prefer individualized assistance with your weight, with a chronic, degenerative disease, with other health and wellness aspirations, or if you would like me to speak to a group, please email me at traceyeakin@gmail.com or give me a call at 724.469.0693 to arrange a time.

Dairy…Does it Do a Body Good???

My last blog shared with you how you can protect your bones.  This topic would not be complete without a discussion about dairy products.

We are all taught from the time we are very young that no diet is complete or wholesome without milk, cheese, sour cream, or yogurt.  It is ingrained in us that dairy products ensure strong bones and will protect us from osteoporosis.  However, as researchers have pulled back the layers of advertising that surround these claims, they found that the research just didn’t support what was being sold to consumers.

Humans are the only species to consume milk after weaning and the only species to consume the milk of other species.  The nutrient profile of mother’s milk varies between species in order to provide their young with exactly what they need during the period of their most rapid growth.  Even if you consume organic milk, that milk is going to contain naturally occurring growth factors that are designed to turn a 60 pound calf into a 600 pound cow within six months.

There are numerous worrisome biological reactions to the ingestion of cow’s milk by humans.  Here are just a few things to consider:

•  As explained in my last blog, consuming meat and dairy products can disrupt the slightly alkaline pH that our body strives to maintain within our blood and body tissues.  As a result of the constant acid neutralizing actions that our body must take, we leave our bones vulnerable to osteopenia and osteoporosis, we open ourselves up to the possibility of kidney stones, and we could stress our kidneys to the point that we could lose up to 1/3 of their function by the time we are 70.

• Dairy products have also been shown to increase the levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in our blood.  IGF-1 is a powerful stimulus for cancer and can also impair programmed cell death.  In addition, 87% of the protein in cow’s milk is comprised of casein.  According to traditional regulatory criteria, casein is the most significant chemical carcinogen ever discovered.  Consumption of dairy can also impair the activation of vitamin D, which is protective against cancer.

• Dairy can trigger an autoimmune response.  If partially digested cow’s milk proteins make it through the gut barrier into the bloodstream, the body recognizes them as foreign and could create antibodies against them.  If identical amino acid sequences exist anywhere else in the body, these antibodies may inadvertently destroy that those sequences as well.  This is what is believed to occur with type I diabetes.  There is a 17-amino acid sequence in the beta casein protein in dairy that identically matches a sequence of amino acids in the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.  These pancreatic cells may become the target of antibodies originally designed to attack and destroy the dairy peptides.

• Milk has also been found to contain viruses, bacteria, white blood cells, prions, and other contaminants, and if it is not organic, could contain antibiotics and synthetic growth hormones.  The levels of naturally occurring hormones are also higher now than they were in the past due to the modern farming technique of milking cows throughout their pregnancy.  Milk from cows in the later stages of their pregnancy can contain as much as 33 times more estrogen than milk from a cow that is not pregnant.  And if you recall from my blogs about cancer, we all want to minimize our exposure to excess hormones.

• Dairy products are also the number one source of food allergies.

Look instead to plant sources for adequate but not excessive calcium such as green, leafy vegetables and legumes (beans, peas, and lentils).

For a more comprehensive look at the dangers of dairy products and the studies supporting these findings, please read my attached article.  For your health and the health of your loved ones, I encourage you to click on it.  Knowledge is power.

 

http://traceyeakin.com/uploads/The_Dangers_of_Dairy.pdf

 

 

I am a Plant-Based Nutrition Counselor, a graduate of Cornell University’s plant-based nutrition program, the only collegiate program in the country which focuses on the medical benefits of a low-fat, plant-based lifestyle, and am board certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.  I help people to achieve their wellness goals by providing them with the tools that they need to gain control over their health.  I hope you enjoy my blogs.  If you would prefer individualized assistance with your weight, with a chronic, degenerative disease, with other health and wellness aspirations, or if you would like me to speak to a group, please email me at traceyeakin@gmail.com or give me a call at 724.469.0693 to arrange a time.