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Why Do Asian Women Have Less Breast Cancer?

Mushrooms, green tea, and soy consumption may decrease breast cancer risk, but how many mushrooms, how much green tea, and what’s the best soy strategy?

December 27, 2012 |
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Why Do Asian Women Have Less Breast Cancer?, 4.9 out of 5 based on 7 ratings

Sources Cited

Zhang M, Huang J, Xie X, Holman CD. Dietary intakes of mushrooms and green tea combine to reduce the risk of breast cancer in Chinese women. Int J Cancer. 2009 Mar 15;124(6):1404-8.

Hilakivi-Clarke L, Andrade JE, Helferich W. Is soy consumption good or bad for the breast? J Nutr. 2010 Dec;140(12):2326S-2334S.

Parkin DM, Fernández LM. Use of statistics to assess the global burden of breast cancer. Breast J. 2006 Jan-Feb;12 Suppl 1:S70-80.

Wu AH, Butler LM. Green tea and breast cancer. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2011 Jun;55(6):921-30.

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.

Acknowledgements

Image thanks to Nomadic Lass / Flickr.

Transcript

Mushrooms appear to work in the lab to suppress breast cancer cell growth, but what about in the real world? Though breast cancer is the most common cancer among women around the world, the rate in some areas of the world, such as Asia, is up to six-fold lower than in North America. Maybe it's the green tea and soy? If anything, green tea may only drop risk by about a third. Soy works better, but only, it appears, if you start young. Soy intake anytime is associated with decreased breast cancer risk, but the strongest most consistent effect was for childhood intake, cutting the risk of later breast cancer by as much as half, but if you don’t start consuming soy until teens or adulthood is only associated with a more green tea type 25% drop in breast cancer risk. The best is actually when we do soy throughout our life, though, as “soy intake during childhood and adolescence might provide lifelong protection against breast cancer and sensitize for greater protective effects as an adult. Combined, though, green tea and soy consumption would only account for maybe for a two fold difference in breast cancer risk—not 6-fold, so researchers looked into what else Asian women were eating. They already had that intriguing laboratory mushroom data, and so asked a thousand breast cancer patients how many mushrooms they ate. Then they asked the same question to a thousand healthy women who they tried to match to the cancer patients as closely as possible, age, height, weight, exercise, smoking status, etc. Based on those answers they calculated that women who averaged at least a certain daily serving size of mushrooms appeared to drop their odds of getting breast cancer 64%. What was that average serving size? A half a mushroom a day. Who eats half a mushroom? Well, that was averaged over a month. So compared to women who didn’t regularly eat any mushrooms, those who ate just 15 a month appeared to dramatically lower their risk. Similar protection was found for dried mushrooms. And if you combine mushrooms with green tea, sipping a half teabag worth of green tea every day along with that half a mushroom was associated with nearly a 90% drop in breast cancer odds.

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 Ashley Rhinehart, RN.

To help out on the site please email volunteer@nutritionfacts.org

Dr. Michael Greger

Doctor's Note

For background on the role mushrooms may play in suppressing breast cancer growth, see Vegetables Versus Breast Cancer and yesterday’s NutritionFacts.org video-of-the-day Breast Cancer vs. Mushrooms. Green tea may also help account for the Asian Paradox. Which type is best? See Antimutagenic Activity of Green Versus White Tea. And what may be the best way to prepare it? See Cold Steeping Green Tea. I have another video on Breast Cancer Survival and Soy, though it may be possible to overdo it.

For some context, please check out my associated blog posts: Ergothioneine: A New Vitamin?, Mushrooms for Breast Cancer Prevention, and Why Less Breast Cancer in Asia?

If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here.

  • Elpoo

    Pass the shrooms! Just a note – the top source does not link to the right article. Links to article on childhood soy consumption.
    Cheers
    e

    • http://nutritionfacts.org/ Michael Greger M.D.

      Fixed–thanks!

  • Tko

    My friend lives in US is a very healty and muscular 70 years old Japanese woman who swims 11 laps a day, and eats many mushroom. She got the brest cancer a few years after she started taking the hormone replacement treatment from the Gynocologist.

  • JohnC

    Is there a worry about what mushrooms might be grown in? Someone was recommending mushrooms from Monterrey mushrooms because they also contained vitamin D. According to Monterrey’s website, one of the things it uses as substrate to grow them in is “protein meal.” Researching the rendering industry, “protein meal” may not be something you might want to risk consuming. Are there “clean” or vegan sources for commercially grown mushrooms?

    • Rph1978

      Mushrooms naturally contain Vitamin D2 and the Monterey mushrooms lists their D content as 400 iu per 84 g serving. They list it as 100% Daily Value which is low and based on an old (1977) recommendation. The Vitamin D content of mushrooms can be increased by UVB and UVC irradiation.(J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Apr 22;57(8):3351-5.) You may want to try growing your own mushrooms. You can buy mushrooms kits: http://www.mushroomadventures.com/t-mushroom_kit_instructions.aspx
      They use peat moss and compost as the growing medium but you might want to contact them about the composition of the compost.

      • JohnC

        Good idea to try growing mushrooms. But the kits works out to about 10 bucks a pound for shrooms if you include shipping.

    • JohnC

      I sent an email to Monterrey asking the source of “protein meal” (indicated on their website). Here is their response:

      “The term protein meal is misleading. We grow mushrooms in compost that we prepare according to specific formulas.
      The compost is primarily wheat straw, which has a lot of protein, in
      addition to other products that supply nitrogen. The supplements we use are soybeans and feather meal, both very high in protein. We use a lot of protein in order to get a fast and consistent growth.
      I am not aware of any food company that uses rendered animal products in items for human consumption; the risk of e. coli is too great.”

      I am sending them back a reply indicating that feather meal IS rendered
      animal products and that it is contaminated with arsenic (learned from
      Nutritionfacts). Not to pick on Monterrey, other commercial growers
      likely use similar substrates.

    • Thea

      JohnC: re: “Is there a worry about what mushrooms might be grown in?”

      I thought you would be interested in the company where I bought a couple of mushroom kits from:

      http://www.backtotheroots.com/

      They grow their mushrooms from recycled coffee grounds. I don’t usually like the process of growing things, but this was super fun and super-easy. Even I could do it. And the mushrooms came out beautiful. Yes, growing mushrooms from a kit is not the cheapest route to go, but it is sure satisfying to me to be able to eat very fresh mushrooms that I grew myself. Great project for kids too. And I like the above company for how they appear to be responsible concerning the environment.

      Good luck if you decide to try growing your own mushrooms. Hope you found this helpful.

  • Karen

    Couldn’t it also be what Asian women are NOT eating, like maybe dairy?

  • Thea

    This is an awesome video. I love powerful and practical videos like this one. Most of Dr. Greger’s videos are great. I don’t usually bother logging in to rate them. But I did this time. 5 stars!

  • Michael

    In Table III, why don’t the numbers add to up 1,009 in both the cases and the control groups? They have the dietary intakes divided in quartiles, but they don’t add up.

  • http://www.vwvagabonds.com VW Vagabonds

    After attending your talk here in San Diego where you mentioned your tea gulping habit, I began mixing white and hibiscus tea with my regular green tea all-day drink. A few weeks later I began adding a pinch of the 14-mushroom powder blend from mushroomharvest.com along with a pinch of amla powder (another of your videos) and a pinch of fenugreek powder (yet again).

    Tea is a wonderfully easy way to incorporate these into our diet.

    Thank you for the great videos!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=699049119 Theresa Markham

    There is such a huge difference between the asian diet and the US diet. how can we pinpoint just one or two items and call it the source? Asian diets are heavy in seafood which is rich in omegas, asian diets contain several unique varieties of mushrooms, root vegetables, greens, and do not contain heavy doses of several of our American diet bad guys, like wheat, beef, dairy…while they do eat these things, it’s not a regular part of their diet. In the US, we might eat wheat and dairy at every meal! Portion sizes are smaller and I found the people I talked with to be very aware of what goes into their food. They ate at home more often, were wary of fast food, particularly McDonald’s (which is different there) and reserved it for very special occasions. We need to get serious about our basic health needs in this country. we allow the FDA to run virtually unchecked, and things like GMOs and additives are introduced to our diet with almost no warning. We don’t insist companies prove it safe, we wait for issues to arise before we determine things to be unsafe. sure, eat mushrooms, mushrooms are packed with trace nutrients. drink green tea, herbal tea, whatever awesome, but also, stop eating processed food. stop eating at fast food restaurants. eat whole grains, avoid GMOs and additives. Reduce the amount of meat and dairy you eat. (I did not say eliminate, so don’t yell at me about vegetarianism, I love meat but I also have a family history of colon cancer, and I KNOW it is triggered by over-consumption of meat.) eat more vegetables and WHOLE fruit. do you even know what is in your juice in America? Google that. it’s disgusting. I’ve lost 50lbs over the course of two years and all I changed was what I eat. my cholesterol dropped 35 points (it wasn’t high, but now it’s awesome) my triglycerides went down, every aspect of my health is improving.

    • beccadog

      China and Asia have GMO’s, also. But they have mandatory labeling and the right to know unlike the USA. (We need more activists in the USA, who contribute money when they live out of state of California (like I do). I contributed part of my food allowance for several months to the Yes Proposition 37 Right to Know campaign in California, even though I could not vote. BTW, supporters were outspent by 30 million dollars, but lost by a very narrow margin. The vote will come up again in 2013. Perhaps you can join us in contributing to the Right to Know. Where California goes so goes the rest of the country!

      My guide in China pointed out that limited dairy is used there. They use yogurt to speed digestion along and keep the fluids moving throughout the body. They do not use sugar or flavored yogurt, even though their yogurt is from animals.

      Portion sizes of meat are smaller. There is some chicken, duck, pork, and occasionally beef, and of course lots of seafood. But, they use more vegetables and rice than meat, not the other way around as it is in the USA. I found I could not eat all the food served to us. The portions of veggies in soups, and entrees was huge!!!!

      The Chinese also walk a lot because driving and parking is so difficult. We Americans are spoiled with our government subsidizing Big Oil to keep the cost of driving a vehicle down and our waist line growing. I think the USA economy runs on making people sick!

      BTW, in China, human manure is used to grow food. Coal is the predominant fuel and coal dust is everywhere, even in the air along the Great Wall. But, the food is cooked at high temperatures, I presume to reduce bacteria in the human manure. The entire country is very toxic –the soils, the air, the waters and there is zero regulation.

      Chinese medicine is primarily plant based like their food, it is not made from petrochemicals unlike in the USA, although they may be using recombinant DNA in China alike the USA. I’ve seen lots of patents for biotechnology and toxic herbicides in China and Asia. Although both the continent and the country has the right to know, unlike North America. More at:. http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/ge-map/

      .

  • rachel vegetarian

    I agree, what they are NOT consuming is as important. They do consume
    less meat and much less dairy. I think everything taken into consideration
    is more important than isolating certain foods or nutrients, its’ the WHOLE
    picture that counts like lifestyle, stress, exercise and so on.

  • http://ClinicalPosters.com/ ClinicalPosters

    “Women with dense breasts have been shown to have a four- to six-fold increased risk of developing breast cancer.” Asian women, in general, have less dense breasts. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/6/443.full

    • http://www.vegcoach.com/ Ellen Jaffe Jones

      That is the case in my family…mom, aunt & BOTH sisters had breast cancer. We were part of the original breast cancer gene studies. I’ve been eating a low-fat vegan diet for most of 32 years which includes lots of shrooms and soy, among many other cruciferous and varieties of plants. Plus running. It seems to be magical on many fronts besides avoiding cancer. 3rd in state Senior Games in the 200, 400 & 1500 meters. Plants rock!

  • http://www.vegcoach.com/ Ellen Jaffe Jones

    As usual, great info. As a cooking instructor for The Cancer Project, and in other talks, I always get the soy and cancer question. Thanks for the concise info on that. I’ll refer to this often.

  • CaveChick

    I think lower cancer rates are attributed to what IS NOT eaten to a high degree. No dairy products and very little animal protein is key!

  • Norna

    I actually just read a report recently by a scientist. Her husband, who is also a scientist, inquired while in China why 1 in 10,000 women get breast cancer and found out it was because they don’t eat any kind of dairy. When his wife took all dairy out of her diet, in a very short period of time, her numbers they chart went straight down off the chart. Her oncologist told her that meant that her cancer was completely gone, not just in remission. We in the Western world are the only mammals on this Earth that drink another mammals milk meant for their offspring. I, myself, haven’t had cow’s milk in 6 years. I love either Almond or Brown Rice milk.

    • blueturtles

      Keep in mind that the milk we drink in the US is loaded with hormones. That is more likely to be affecting breast cancer rates than the milk alone – I mean, hormones designed to make cows produce more breastmilk is likely going to affect human breasts, too.

  • rick

    90% drop with small amount of green tea and mushrooms! Once again my head is spinning. Is this just what one study found and really not completely true? If it really is true then why does the American Cancer Society get this published everywhere?

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