The Impacts of Plant-Based Diets on Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer

"Impacts of Plant-Based Diets
on Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer" There appears to be
a signiﬁcant protective effect of a vegetarian diet for heart disease
and all cancers combined, particularly for those eating vegan,
but that’s for total cancer. What about breast cancer
and prostate cancer specifically? There’s been about a half dozen studies
on breast cancer risk and various plant-based dietary patterns,
and they all found lower risk, as expected. In some studies, vegetarians
had less than half the odds of breast cancer
compared to nonvegetarians, suggesting vegetarian diets
show a protective role against breast cancer risk. In another study, eating
a nonvegetarian diet was one of the important risk factors, nearly tripling the odds
of breast cancer. In the California Teachers Study, a more plant-based pattern was associated
with a significant reduction in breast cancer risk as well.

So, even trending in that direction
towards a greater consumption of, for example, fruits
and vegetables is associated with a reduced
breast cancer risk, particularly for the hardest
to treat tumors, which is interesting, offering a potential
avenue for prevention. Some of the reductions in risk
were only statistically significant if you included the weight loss benefits
of plant-based eating and associated lifestyle factors
and other reductions of risk, not statistically significant regardless. Lower risk but not significant. Lower risk but not significant,
meaning like in half of these studies, the lower risk may have just been
statistical flukes by chance.

Okay, but this, for example,
was for vegetarians. Do vegan women do any better? Vegetarian diets seem to offer
protection from cancers of the gastrointestinal tract;
whereas vegan diets seem to confer lower risk of all cancers
put together and female-speciﬁc cancers,
in particular, which included breast cancer
but also included cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer. After a few more years, they were able
to tease out the breast cancer data, and vegans showed consistently
lower risk estimates, but not statistically significantly. So, one study in India even suggested
that vegetarians who eat eggs have lower risk
than vegetarians who don’t.

But, put all the studies on egg intake
and breast cancer together, and eating like one egg a day—
five or more eggs a week— appears to increase
breast cancer risk compared to not eating
any eggs at all. An increase of five eggs
a week was also associated with a 47 percent increase
in fatal prostate cancer. In general, if you look
at the effect of plant- and animal-based foods
on prostate cancer risk, most studies showed that plant-based
foods are associated with either decreased
or neutral risk of prostate cancer, whereas animal-based foods,
particularly dairy products, are associated with either
increased or neutral risk. The dairy and eggs may be why all
three studies on prostate cancer in vegans found decreased risk, but half of the vegetarian
studies showed no change. It’s not just about avoiding
meat, though. Vegetables and beans specifically
were also associated with lower risk, and the same
with breast cancer. High intakes of vegetables and pulses,
like beans, lentils, and chickpeas, were associated with protection
against breast cancer. We’re talking about half
the odds of breast cancer eating four or more
vegetable dishes a day or a daily serving
of beans or lentils, regardless of whether you eat meat.

Note this is one of the studies
that only showed that non-statistically significant drop
in risk among vegetarians; so, it may be better
to be a meat-eater who eats lots of greens and beans
compared to a vegetarian who instead eats lots of junk. Now, diet recommendations should go
beyond just pushing a specific array of foods and really just
promote the overall benefits of eating more
whole plant foods in general. But what happens if you do
just push more veggies? You don’t know…until
you put it to the test: "Effect of a Behavioral Intervention
to Increase Vegetable Consumption on Cancer Progression Among Men
With Early-Stage Prostate Cancer." Oh, that’s exciting, trying
increased vegetable intake to not just prevent
but treat cancer. Men with biopsy-proven prostate cancer
were randomized to an encouragement to eat seven
or more servings of vegetables a day.

Nice! And the control group
was just given some generic dietary info. And…among men with early-stage
prostate cancer under active surveillance,
a behavioral intervention that increased vegetable consumption
did not significantly reduce the risk of prostate cancer progression. Bummer. But wait a second. The trial wasn’t testing
increased vegetable consumption, but the effect of advice
to eat more vegetables. Did they actually do it? The behavioral intervention
in this study produced robust, sustained increases in
vegetable intake for two years, the researchers wrote. But alas,
it still didn’t work. At the end of those two years,
they were eating two more servings. Wait, just two, not seven? And so, the difference
between the vegetable group and the control group
was less than two servings.

They were also supposed to get at least
two servings of tomatoes a day, and two servings of broccoli-
type cruciferous vegetables every day; yet, they ended up only eating
about an ounce of cruciferous, and less than a tenth
of a serving of tomatoes. So, with so little dietary change,
it’s no wonder there was so little change
in the cancer. Though it’s possible
you also have to cut down on animal foods. In this three-month study for men
who had prostate cancer come back after surgery
and radiation, they were able to boost plant foods,
restrict animal foods, actually eat some more tomatoes. And the average PSA
doubling time (meaning how fast
the tumor was growing) slowed from about 22 months
to 59 months. So, doubling in less than two years
to then taking nearly five years.

All just from a three-
month dietary intervention, whereas the control group
didn’t change. Now, slowing down
a tumor is nice, but how about reversing its growth
or shrinking it down? Are strict vegetarians protected
against prostate cancer? Yes, those eating strictly plant-
based diets have only a fraction of the risk of getting it
in the first place, but that’s not the half of it. Yes, the Ornish study. I’ve talked about this before, notable in my How Not
to Die from Cancer video. Randomize men with prostate cancer
to a diet packed with fruits, vegetables,
whole grains, and beans and tumors on average
appeared to shrink, as noted by PSA trending down, while the control group’s cancer
continued to grow. Drip some blood from the plant-
based group on some prostate cancer growing in a petri dish,
and the plant-based blood suppressed the cancer growth
almost eight times better.

And the more
they stuck to their diet, the more their bloodstream
suppressed the cancer growth..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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