Foods That Lower Breast Cancer Risk

The latest on links between breast cancer and diet suggests that consuming an abundance of vegetables, fruits and legumes may help women cut their risks of one type of breast cancer. After 26 years of following more than 86,000 nurses in the U.S., researchers have reported that those whose diets were rich in plant foods, while low on meat, sodium and processed carbohydrates had a 20 percent lower risk of developing estrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer, malignancies that account for about 25 percent of all cases. Here, breast cancer cells lack receptors for estrogen. When estrogen receptors are present, as they are in most cases of breast cancer, treatment can include tamoxifen and other drugs to "block" estrogen's access to cells, thus reducing the risk of recurrence. No drugs are currently available to reduce the risk of recurrence of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer. The dietary findings were published online August 10 by the American Journal of Epidemiology. In other news, a study performed with mice published in the August/September issue of Nutrition and Cancer showed that breast cancer risk dropped significantly when the animals' regular diet included walnuts in an amount that would translate to about 2 ounces a day for humans. Neither of these findings proves that eating vegetables - or walnuts - are directly responsible for the reported risk reductions, but suggest that follow up studies are worth pursuing.

While there's no surefire dietary strategy to prevent breast cancer, we do know that women who gain weight as adults are at higher risk, as are women whose diets include the most meat (compared to women who eat little or no meat). In addition to watching your weight and eating less meat, I also recommend avoiding alcohol (drinking can raise your risk), eating lots of cruciferous vegetables, which give you protective phytonutrients, exercising regularly, which can help lower your risk of many diseases, and avoiding the long term use of estrogen replacement therapy at menopause.