Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer
Mushrooms may help prevent breast cancer by acting as an aromatase inhibitor to block breast tumor estrogen production.
Topics
Supplementary Info
Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer,
Sources Cited
Adams LS, Chen S. Phytochemicals for breast cancer prevention by targeting aromatase. Front Biosci. 2009 Jan 1;14:3846-63.
Brunner RL, Gass M, Aragaki A, Hays J, Granek I, Woods N, Mason E, Brzyski R, Ockene J, Assaf A, LaCroix A, Matthews K, Wallace R; Women's Health Initiative Investigators. Effects of conjugated equine estrogen on health-related quality of life in postmenopausal women with hysterectomy: results from the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Clinical Trial. Arch Intern Med. 2005 Sep 26;165(17):1976-86.
Grube BJ, Eng ET, Kao YC, Kwon A, Chen S. White button mushroom phytochemicals inhibit aromatase activity and breast cancer cell proliferation. J Nutr. 2001 Dec;131(12):3288-93.
Desantis C, Howlader N, Cronin KA, Jemal A. Breast cancer incidence rates in U.S. Women are no longer declining. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2011 May;20(5):733-9.
Ghosh D, Griswold J, Erman M, Pangborn W. Structural basis for androgen specificity and oestrogen synthesis in human aromatase. Nature. 2009 Jan 8;457(7226):219-23.
Acknowledgements
Images thanks to Renee Comet at the National Cancer Institute, Miansari66 via Wikimedia Commons, BogHog and By User:Slashme and User:Mikael Häggström (Self-made using bkchem and inkscape) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Transcript
What new developments are there are in the battle against breast cancer? Well, most breast tumors are estrogen receptor positive, meaning they respond to estrogen; estrogen makes them grow. The problem for tumors in postmenopasal women is that there isn’t much estrogen around, unless of course you take it in a drug like pre-mar-in, made from pregnant mare urine, found not to affect the quality of women's lives, just the quantity, increasing the risk of strokes heart attacks blood clots and, breast cancer.
Thankfully millions of women stopped taking it in 2002, and we saw a nice dip in breast cancer rates, but unfortunately, those rates have since stagnated. Hundreds of thousands of American women continue every year to get that dreaded diagnosis. So what next?
Well, with no estrogen around, many breast tumors devise a nefarious plan, they’ll just make their own. 70% of breast cancer cells synthesize estrogen themselves using an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone to estrogen, blue to pink. And so drug companies have produced a number of aromatase inhibitor drugs which are used as chemotherapy agents. Of course by the time you’re on chemo it can be too late, so researchers started screening hundreds of natural dietary components in hopes of finding something that targets this enzyme.
To do this, you need a lot of human tissue—where you going to get it from? To study skin, for example, researchers use discarded human foreskins. They’re just being thrown away might as well use them. Where are you going to get discarded female tissue, though? Placentas. Human placentas. So they got a bunch of women to donate their placentas after giving birth to further this critical line of research.
After years of searching, they found seven vegetables with significant anti-aromatase activity. And here they are,. Seven different vegetables, dropping aromatase activity about 20%, except for this one. That’s like a 60, 65% drop inhibition. ]Which one was it? bell pepper, broccoli, carrots, celery , green onions, mushrooms, or spinach. Not scallions, not celery, not carrots, not peppers, nor broccoli—that would have been my guess, not spinach, but: Mushrooms.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Dianne Moore.
To help out on the site please email volunteer@nutritionfacts.org
Doctor's Note
Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. Be sure to check out the other videos on breast cancer. Also, there are 1,449 subjects covered in my other videos–please feel free to explore them!
For more context, check out my associated blog posts: Stool Size and Breast Cancer Risk, The Most Anti-Inflammatory Mushroom, Breast Cancer and Diet, and Ergothioneine: A New Vitamin?
-
Michael Greger M.D.
-
LynnCS
Next Video
-
Breast Cancer Prevention: Which Mushroom Is Best?
Woodear, crimini, oyster, Italian brown, enoki, button, stuffing, shiitake, chanterelle, and Portobello mushrooms were compared to see which was best at inhibiting aromatase enzyme activity.
Watch Now
Previous Video
-
Cancer Prevention and Treatment May Be the Same Thing
Breast cancer can take decades to develop, so early detection via mammogram may be too late.
Watch Now
Related Reading
-
Breast Cancer and DietOctober is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a concept invented more than 25 years ago by.. -
Are Bioidentical Hormones Safe?Hormone replacement therapy for menopause grew to prominence in the 1990s when millions of women were.. -
Treating COPD With DietThe three top killers in the United States are no longer heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Stroke just.. -
Fighting Inflammation With Food SynergyOne of the reasons some studies haven’t shown more impressive results tying disease reduction to the.. -
Inflammation, Diet, and “Vitamin S”Last month an update was published on the intriguing suggestion that low levels of salicylic acid—the..