Breasts: An Owner’s Manual: Every Woman’s Guide to Reducing Cancer Risk, Making Treatment Choices and Optimising Outcomes. Kristi Funk
For example, red jasmine rice extract reduced the migration and invasion of human breast cancer cells in a petri dish; the same thing happened with bran extract from brown rice dripped onto breast cancer cells. But white rice extract did nothing; what’s more, black rice extract fed to mice with human breast cancer grafts (I know, science can be cruel) clearly suppressed tumor growth and angiogenesis.13 So be colorful. And FYI, sprouting, soaking, and fermenting whole grains forms a more digestible carbohydrate.
A typical meal for me follows the 70/30 rule. I’ll eat a huge salad with a thick, delicious whole grain base across half the bottom and legumes on the other. I pile kale, arugula, and broccoli sprouts atop this layer, and then I vary what gets thrown on next among about five to ten different foods that suit my mood: raw broccoli (always), cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sweet yellow peppers, fresh blueberries, avocado, a heap of hummus, and pumpkin seeds. My dressing involves a blend of apple cider vinegar, crushed garlic, ground pepper, and herbs. But honestly, if this concept is new to you, and you need a little Thousand Island or creamy ranch to enjoy it, go ahead. I’m so psyched that your plate has all those antioxidants, you won this meal’s oxidative stress battle already.
MY IDEAL MEAL, DECODED . . .
We all know our fruits and vegetables, and we even have a number of go-to faves, but when I got started eating a whole food, plant-based diet and wanted to find hearty replacements for my butter, eggs, and salmon fillet, I ran into quite a few delicious discoveries. So may I introduce to you . . .
• Healthy fats: Avocados, nuts (walnuts, pecans, pistachios, cashews, macadamia, almonds), seeds (ground flax, chia, sunflower, sesame), nut and seed butters (almond, cashew, sunflower), olives, tofu, edamame, at least 70 percent cacao dark chocolate, extra virgin olive oil, organic expeller-pressed canola oil.
• 100 percent whole grains: Whole wheat and whole grain bread and pasta, brown/wild/black/red rice, whole oats, quinoa, freekeh, farro, popcorn, whole rye, whole barley, buckwheat, whole wheat couscous, bulgur, amaranth, sorghum, teff.
• Legumes: Beans (kidney, garbanzo, lima, fava, mung, black, soy), peas (green, snow, snap, split, black-eyed), special nuts (peanuts, soy nuts), and lentils (brown, green, red, black, yellow).
RELATIVE WHAAA?
Before we chase a rainbow of healthy foods, we need a stat course in statistics. I want you to understand two important terms, relative risk and absolute risk, so you have a way of digesting the numbers I use to explain how your diet and lifestyle choices impact cancer risk.
Relative risk compares the chance of getting a particular disease when people are exposed to a certain factor with the chance of people getting the disease who are not exposed to the same factor. The easiest analogy is smoking and lung cancer; no one will be surprised to hear that the relative risk for those who smoke is way higher than for those who don’t. So now, let’s talk breast cancer and compare not eating enough fiber to chowing down plenty of fiber. Fact: if you don’t eat at least 30 grams of fiber per day, your breast cancer risk goes up 50 percent. This means you have a 50 percent increase in breast cancer relative to the high-fiber consumer. But what you really want to know is how this affects absolute risk. Absolute risk takes you out of the one context of fiber and puts you back into the context of all women, including your fiber factor. The numbers show that women have a 1 in 8 risk of developing breast cancer by the time they reach age eighty, so how does “50 percent” alter this risk in a low-fiber consumer? Well, 50 percent of 1 is 0.5. So a 50 percent increase in relative risk takes your absolute risk from 1 in 8 to 1.5 in 8.
Indulge me as I share two more interesting ways to assimilate this statistical information. First, the other person in our example—the fiber lover—had 50 percent less breast cancer, yes? Again, 50 percent of 1 is 0.5, but this time a decrease in relative risk takes absolute risk from 1 in 8 to 0.5 in 8. As we dive into all that I have learned and plan to show you, we will use these powerful additions and subtractions to our lifetime risk of breast cancer to try to optimize health. Second, risks may come and go, especially if we step up our anticancer game and change our behavior. Sometimes it’s reassuring if you look at your absolute risk over a shorter period of time than an entire lifespan. For example, if you are currently forty-two years old, it turns out that your absolute risk of developing breast cancer this year is 1 in 680.14 If you don’t consume lots of bran cereals and fiber-rich fruit, your risk becomes 1.5 in 680—see, a “50 percent increase” barely moved your absolute risk at the age of 42.
When you read about a risk factor, and it says you are 300 percent more likely to have breast cancer because you drank something, remember to relate it to absolute risk. A 300 percent increase means a forty-two-year-old with a 1 in 680 chance without the drink of something now has a 4 in 680 chance. I doubt you’d take those odds to Vegas. So nobody panic, but remember that eventually all the little trees of relative risk (all the daily choices about each food or habit) add up to a forest, which determines the health of your breasts.
KNOW YOUR PHYTOS
As difficult as it may be to pinpoint a single nutrient and confirm its cancer-fighting capacity, scientists have identified tens of thousands of phytochemicals and continue to study their complex functions. So far, these nutrients appear to be little masterminds at playing the anticancer game. The exquisite and truly unknowable power packed into foods like broccoli and berries, and then the complex cascade of events that follow from your stomach to the insides of your every cell . . . it’s dazzling. If the starring role of that movie goes to a Big Mac, it’s more horrifying than dazzling, but that’s the next chapter.
The following cast of characters represents the A-listers, the most fabulous phytonutrients in town, and they should make daily appearances in the story of your life. Start including these foods in your grocery cart today.15
| THESE PHYTONUTRIENTS | ARE FOUND IN THESE FOODS | AND THIS IS WHY YOU CARE |
|---|---|---|
| Isothiocyanates, indoles, carotenoids, flavonoids | All cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens (kale, spinach, bok choy, collard greens, watercress, arugula), brussels sprouts, cabbage, radishes, rutabaga, turnips | • Reduce breast cancer risk • Decrease inflammation • Neutralize carcinogens • Slow cancer cell growth • Stimulate cancer cell suicide • Limit free radical damage • Preserve memory • Lower heart disease |
| Flavonoids, lignans, phenolic acids, phytic acid, protease inhibitors, saponins | 100 percent whole grains: brown rice, wild rice, whole oats, quinoa, whole rye, whole barley, whole wheat pasta, popcorn, buckwheat, whole wheat couscous, millet, bulgur, freekeh, amaranth, sorghum, teff | • Reduce breast cancer risk • Slow cancer cell growth • Lower heart disease |
| Ellagitannins, flavonoids (anthocyanins, catechins, kaempferol, quercetin), pterostilbene, resveratrol | Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, grapes, wine | • Reduce breast cancer risk • Decrease inflammation • Slow cancer cell growth • Stimulate cancer cell suicide • Limit free radical damage |
| Carotenoids: beta-carotene, lycopene | Tomatoes | • Reduce breast cancer risk • Slow cancer cell growth • Stimulate cancer cell suicide • Limit free radical damage |
| Carotenoids: alpha-carotene, lutein, beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, beta-cryptoxanthin | Everything orange: winter squash (butternut, acorn, pumpkin, spaghetti), carrots, sweet potatoes, apricots, cantaloupe, mango | • Reduce breast cancer risk • Neutralize carcinogens • Slow cancer cell growth • Stimulate cancer cell suicide • Limit free radical damage |
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