Cancer Cure Now

Breast cancer is less likely to recur in patients who follow a low-fat diet, according to a study published December 2006 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study, led the study, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute in Torrance, California, followed 2,437 breast cancer survivors.

It found that those who reduced their fat intake from roughly 30% of total calories (the amount found in a standard diet) to roughly 20% had a 24% reduction in cancer recurrence.

The effect was seen only in non-hormone-dependant tumors. The researchers were unsure if the effect was a direct result of the low fat diet, or a result of weight loss by the patients, since obesity is related to the development of breast cancer.1

Dr. Dean Ornish, well known for his work on diet and heart disease, also found that a vegetarian, low fat diet causes a decrease in PSA, a marker for prostate cancer. These results were presented at the Scientific Conference on Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Therapies at Harvard University on April 13, 2002. 2

These results were repeated by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, who tested the benefits of a low fat, vegetarian diet in ten men with prostate cancer that had recurred after surgery.

Before the beginning the diet, the patients showed a doubling of their average PSA levels every 6.5 months as their cancer continued to spread. However, after four months in the program, doubling time slowed to an average of 17.7 months, and in three of the subjects, PSA levels actually fell. 3

A macrobiotic diet which emphasizes whole grains, vegetables, and legumes, while avoiding dairy products and most meats, increased the survival of nine men with prostate cancer to an average of 228 months, compared to 72 months for a matched group of men receiving no special diet.

4 In 2002, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles an in-vitro study demonstrating the effect of diet and exercise. Blood samples were drawn from a group of eight men who had following a low fat diet and exercising regularly for several years.

Blood samples were also taken from overweight men who were eating a standard diet and not exercising. Serum from both groups was added to test tubes containing standardized prostate cancer cells. The serum from subjects on the low-fat diet and exercise program slowed the growth of cancer cells by 49 percent, compared to serum from the other men.

Differences in hormone levels and insulin were found to correlate with part of the effect, but other changes which the researchers could not define exerted additional effects.5 The researchers also discovered that a blood serum shows demonstrable cancer-inhibiting power within as little as 11 days after a man begins a low-fat diet and exercise regimen.6

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1).R.T. Chlebowski, G.L. Blackburn, C.A. Thomson, D.W. Nixon, A. Shapiro, M.K. Hoy Dietary fat reduction and breast cancer outcome: interim efficacy results from the Women's Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS) Journal of the National Cancer Institute December 20, 2006, Volume 98, Pages 1767-1776.

(2). Ornish DM, Lee KL, Fair WR, Pettengill EB, Carroll PR. Dietary trial in pros­tate cancer: early experience and implications for clinical trial design. Urology 2001;57(4 Suppl 1):200-1.

(3). Saxe GA, Hebert JR, Carmody JF, et al. Can diet in conjunction with stress re­duction affect the rate of increase in prostate specific antigen after biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer? J Urol 2001;266:2202-7. (4) Carter JP, Saxe GP, Newbold V, Peres CE, Campeau RJ, Bernal-Green L. Hypothesis: Dietary management may improve survival from nutritionally linked cancers based on analysis of representative cases. J Am Coll Nutr 1993;12:209-26. (5). Tymchuk CN, Barnard RJ, Ngo TH, Aronson WJ. Role of testosterone, estradiol, and insulin in diet- and exercise-induced reductions in serum-stimulated prostate cancer cell growth in vitro. Nutr Cancer 2002;42:112-6.

(6). Tymchuk CN, Barnard RJ, Heber D, Aronson WJ. Evidence of an inhibitory effect of diet and exercise on prostate cancer cell growth. J Urol 2001;166:1185-9.