Letha’s Asian Health Secrets

Staying healthy is a challenge that engages our body, mind, and spirit. Because the breast belongs to the energy field of the heart, breast health is subject to our diet, circulation, emotions, and belief system. All such factors are inner-dependent: Improving one aspect of vitality improves others.

Exercise and Weight

Regular exercise, a low fat diet, and a positive attitude all help to prevent breast cancer. Recent studies have shown it to be true. October 9, 2006 — “Postmenopausal women who want to significantly decrease their breast-cancer risk would be wise to exercise regularly and keep their weight within a normal range for their height, according to new findings from the Women’s Health Initiative to be published in the journal Obesity.”

A team of researchers, led by Anne McTiernan, M.D., Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, found that women who had the lowest body mass index, or BMI, and the highest physical-activity levels had the lowest levels of circulating estrogens, sex hormones that can fuel breast-cancer growth.

Specifically, they found a significant decrease in the two most common, biologically active forms of estrogen, estrone and estradiol, among the most active, lean women studied. The researchers found that women with high BMI and low physical-activity had mean estrogen concentrations that were 50 percent to 100 percent higher than that of women with low BMI and high activity levels. The BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. The World Health Organization divides BMI into the following categories for both men and women: underweight (18.5 or lower), normal (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25 to 29.9) and obese (30 or greater). A BMI calculator is available on the National Institutes of Health Web site.

My Advice

Most people over age 30 gain fat not muscle as they gain pounds. A high BMI (over 30) measures obesity. If you are no more than 10 pounds over your ideal weight at age 20, you are more likely to remain safe from cancer, heart trouble, and diabetes. However, the BMI is a mathematical formula that fails to be sensitive to individual conditions. You may be otherwise slim but have excess abdominal or leg fat and cellulite that impair circulation and — (need we mention it?) — MOOD.

Exercise and Breast Health

We are easily satisfied by test results that indicate half truths. What is it about regular exercise that improves breast health? Exercise increases endorphins – natural pain-killers that improve mood and mental clarity. Exercise helps balance blood sugar and, therefore, regulates mood. Exercise causes sweating, which detoxifies the body, especially the lymph system, a repository of impurities and water retention. Exercise improves bone- and muscle-strength, and affects hormones that help keep estrogen in check.

But how can we exercise in ways to protect the breast? Soccer, tennis, running, golf–what movements free circulation in and near the breast?

Swimming and Sweating
Swimming has been called the perfect exercise. It stretches and limbers without increasing stress on joints. The breast stroke and crawl stretch the arms and move lymph fluids to eliminate toxins. The back stroke is also great for stretching the arms. If you feel achy after swimming it is because unfamiliar muscles are in use. You can float for hours daydreaming, relaxing, and rejuvenating in a pool. Your time spent floating is useful to ease tensions and relax stiffness.

However, a cold water temperature retards circulation. After a swim, take a hot shower using a buff pad on your neck, shoulders, breasts, arms, abdomen, and legs. Drink cinnamon tea to increase sweating in order to avoid nerve pain resulting from cold temperatures. Cinnamon frees circulation and mood. Think of cinnamon as a mood lifter from inside, out. People with diabetes especially benefit by consuming 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon daily in tea, cooked oatmeal or added to water as a tea.

Massage

Massage is a fine method of circulation-enhancement that enriches vitality and mood. (If you have an active cancer, consult with your health specialist before using massage.)

In New York, a consortium of Chinese massage therapists has rented spaces in basements or small apartments calling their business “Best Chinese back Rub & Foot Rub.” Some “rub salons” offer qigung massage and tui na, a form of deep-tissue energy work that may feel temporarily uncomfortable, but which frees stuck circulation.

Their charge is usually only about $1 per minute including the tip. You can afford to be good to yourself, especially on cold, rainy dreary days. It is much nicer to get a professional massage in one of these places than a salon flooded with smelly chemical hair dyes etc. Attractive Chinese girls make pleasant massage people. Check to see that the environment is clean and quiet with no one smoking and minimal use of cell phones or other noise.

A Daily Massage at Home

At home give yourself this massage often or daily while watching TV or otherwise relaxing. It takes only 5 minutes and refreshes the entire body/mind/spirit. You will be surprised at the results. Massage eases tension, cleanses the lymph system, and fortifies circulation to reduce breast swelling, pain, and PMS. Do not massage immediately after eating. Allow your food to settle for at least 2 hours. Find a quiet time and location in order to collect your thoughts or merge with a higher being within. If uncomfortable emotions arise, breathe deeply and calmly recognizing that massage is profoundly cleansing and healing on all levels.

A lymph drainage massage gently moves lymph fluids towards the heart and kidneys in order to be eliminated. Rub your hands together to warm them. Place them over your face. Sweep your fingertips from the forehead to the point of the nose and mouth. Move down over the neck to the heart. Sweep from the inner palm, up the inner arm to the underarm. Did you notice any lumpy areas? That indicates lymph congestion. Very gently stroke the lumpy area of your arms moving your hands towards the breast and heart at the center of the chest. Pressure is not necessary to move lymph fluids. Stroke as many as 20 times while breathing smoothly and staying relaxed.

Buy a serious percussion massager the kind used by chiropractors and physical therapists. It will have a smooth area suitable for massaging the breast, arms and legs. I recommend this especially for people who sit or type all day or who carry worry, stress, and negative emotions in the body–most of us. If you have a pace-maker avoid using a massage machine or magnets for healing.

Buzz your machine over the back of your neck at the hairline from ear to ear and up and down cervical vertebrae in order to loosen your entire neck. Then buzz over the top of your shoulder area. That can ease circulation in the upper body and often can eliminate a stress headache. Spend all the time you need. Then buzz on top of and under the collar bone and at thymus, located at the front and top of your chest a few inches below the Adam’s apple. Avoid the heart area.

Massage the breasts especially the area from the underarm towards the nipples. You want to make the breast buzz with freed circulation. Massage up and down the arms to help cleanse the lymph system..

Breathe deeply and buzz massage the abdomen as it feels comfortable. When massaging the lower abdomen and groin, spend time on the tight tendons located where the leg attaches at the pubic bone. Those tendons spasm and feel painful when muscles in the inner leg have jammed in order to protect an arthritic hip. In other words, massaging the groin area will improve your arthritis and your pain free walk. The better to exercise with.

People with serious hypertension should avoid massaging the area of the groin midway between the sexual area to the hip joint because blood vessels there, when stimulated, may increase blood pressure. Otherwise, most people can massage the entire groin area with no problem. Make sure the bladder is empty. If you have arthritis, low back pain, sciatica, or other leg and back discomforts, continue by massaging the legs from thigh to knee, down the calf to around the ankles. After 20 minutes your entire body will be pleasantly buzzing.

A Diet for Cancer Prevention–Low Fat, Low Animal Protein

A one diet for all approach is designed to sell diet bars. It can be especially harmful for the increasingly large number of people who want to prevent or need to treat cancer. Let’s take a typical example: You are a single mother working to support your small family. You want to lose about forty pounds. You avoid obviously harmful habits like smoking and drinking more than an occasional glass of wine or beer, but you can’t lose weight no matter what. In addition, you feel you may be at risk of developing cancer sometime down the line. Either someone in the family has had it, you have had it, or you live in fear of it.

You did a computer search for cancer diet information and were stunned by an avalanche of data. Some research on the relationship of foods and herbs to cancer seemed contradictory. You feel discouraged but still need to know what to eat and cook to lose weight and to protect yourself and family. You are especially worried about preventing breast cancer, which seems to be nearly epidemic.

I have sifted through the current information and can offer some simple, sensible advice, foods to avoid, others to stress, and a few recipes. Let’s break the problem into steps. First, you need an approach that improves weightloss and cancer prevention. Then we can zero in on preventing breast cancer and look at foods and herbs to avoid if you have an active cancer. Lowering excess weight with healthy foods is a major part of prevention and treatment. If you cook and eat with this in mind, you may be able to prevent cancer daily.

The many benefits of consuming fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, whole soy products, steamed fresh fish, flax seed products, and tea are not news. However, they are important to remember. According to the National Academy of Sciences, sixty percent of all cancers in women and forty percent of all cancers in men may be due to dietary and nutritional factors. Other important factors include, of course, stress levels, pollution, age, and possibly infections or auto-immune complications. But let’s imagine that nothing else matters except diet. Which junk foods should you avoid?

Culprits that increase the risk of illness and overweight and slow recovery time show up again: Fat, animal protein, pesticides, sugar, smoked, pickled, and salt-cured foods, caffeine and especially coffee (It’s estrogenic!), food additives, and dangerous molds and fungi.

Fat

The cancers most closely associated with high fat intake include breast, colon, rectum, uterus, prostate, and kidney. Partially hydrogenated oils, commonly found in processed foods, store cancer toxins. Animal fats are also a risk because their fat stores pesticides or chemical toxins absorbed from their diet. In other words, a sick animal’s fat becomes our fat. As we move up the food chain by eating it, we bring along the garbage from below.

Samuel Epstein, M.D., Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health has said, “Although pesticides for the most part have been banned or strictly regulated, they are very durable and remain in the environment for a long time. Crops grown in soil contaminated with these chemicals will pass on their residue to the animals that are fed them, where they will accumulate in the fatty tissue.” Bottom line: Animals absorb pesticides in their fat. When we eat animals, we eat their pesticides. A high intake of animal protein has been associated with an increased risk of breast, colon, pancreatic, kidney, prostate, and endometrial cancer. So much for the high fat, high protein diet!

Healthy fats and oils include: Cold processed healthfood store oils, including grapeseed, olive, and canola oils, avocados, and goat and sheep dairy.

Sugar

Sugar significantly adds to the risk of breast cancer. Sugar substitutes are no better. Saccharin and cyclamates, both used as artificial sweeteners are linked to greater incidence of bladder cancer. Smoked, pickled, and salt-cured foods contain several known carcinogenic substances, including nitrosamines and polycucyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which have been linked to cancer of the stomach and esophagus. Additionally, potentially cancer-causing substances are produced when meat, chicken, or fish are fried, broiled, or barbecued for a long time at high temperatures. So much for the backyard barbecue.
Healthy sweeteners include the herb stevia and vanilla extract
Avoid a sweet tooth with Gymnema sylvestre capsules taken 2 – 3 times daily.

Caffeine

Caffeine found in coffee, colas, and chocolate, is thought to be a factor for cancer of the lower urinary tract, including the bladder. Studies have found the rates for these cancers to be significantly higher in people who drink more than three cups of coffee a day. Tea is better for weightloss and cancer prevention because it inhibits fat absorption in the gut. Red Bush tea contains a high level of antioxidants and no caffeine. Caffeine damages cellular DNA and decaffeinated coffee often uses chemicals that resemble pesticides in their chemical composition. Coffee, bacon, eggs, toast with jam: Is this starting to sound like the typical American breakfast? If so, we push the scales closer to overweight and cancer every morning. What’s a girl to do? Have corn flakes and milk?

Molds and Fungi

Sorry, aflatoxins, found in milk, cereals, peanuts, and corn, have been linked to liver, stomach, and kidney cancer. What are aflatoxins? They are a deadly form of fungal metabolite called mycotoxins. Common contaminants of animal feed and human food, they grow on spoiling food. Not all are carcinogenic. Some just provoke allergies. But aflatoxins, the little devils, can mix up DNA causing unscheduled DNA synthesis and chromosomal strand breaks. It is not surprising that aflatoxin has been found in human liver and breast cancer cells.
There is something to be said for a breakfast of fresh fruit juice, fresh fruit, sprout bread and tea. You might follow it with a milkthistle chaser.

Milkthistle

Studies done in 1999 by Bhatia, Zhao, Wolf, and Agarwal from the Center for Cancer Causation and Prevention, Cancer Research Center, in Denver, affirm the cancer chemopreventive and anti-carcinogenic effects of silymarin, a flavonoid antioxidant isolated from milk thistle. Its anticancer effects were noted for human prostate, breast and cervical carcinoma cells. Scientists isolated an even smaller component of silymarin called silibinin and studied its effects on cell growth, DNA synthesis inhibition, and loss of cell viability. They concluded that the cancer chemopreventive and anti-carcinogenic effects of silymarin are due to the main constituent silibinin.

What interests me as an herbalist is that milkthistle, the whole herb which contains the components studied in the laboratory, is stimulating, rejuvenating, and cleansing for the liver. To put it bluntly, to clean up our act and help prevent cancer, we need to both detoxify and fortify the body. We need to increase the body’s capacity to detoxify itself. We can accomplish this to a great extent daily by eating foods and herbs that build health and do not tax digestion.

Dandelion Tea and Pills

Dandelion has long been used to increase and ease the flow of milk for new mothers. It makes sense that dandelion–lymph-cleansing, anti-stone, laxative, and diuretic–is useful for smooth breast circulation. A combination of dandelion and milkthistle work very well to normalize liver function and chest circulation. Take these herbal capsules with meals, using a dose that is comfortable for you, until you feel no lumps in the breast area or excess water retention in the body.

Avoid Complicated Food Combinations

I was shocked to hear that Vermont has one of the nation’s highest death rates for breast cancer: 29 percent compared to the already high national average of 20 percent. Compare that with 6 – 8 percent in China! Vermont’s environment is famously clean.

The McGill Journal of Medicine found at www.medicine.mcgill.ca reported a study: “Association of Occupation and Breast Cancer Mortality in the State of Vermont, 1989-1993” that considered 12,765 female deaths recorded for the entire state of Vermont of which 512 were attributed to breast cancer. The study considered the women’s occupation, race, and age. The study found that age or race were not significant factors. The researchers thought that since Vermont is a rural state, occupation might be a cause of breast cancer deaths. They figured that farm and forestry workers would be exposed to pesticides and therefore at risk. However, the Vermont women who died most frequently from breast cancer were executives, administrators, managers, professionals, and sometimes well-paid clerks. Housewives had the fewest cases reported. Does this mean that making money is hazardous to your health? No. It may indicate that stress level is a key factor. We already know that.

China has the lowest percentage of deaths resulting from breast cancer in the world. Their diet has little in common with the typical American diet of meats, fats, fried foods, sugar, salt, cola drinks, and artificial sweeteners.

The diet factor was totally ignored by the Vermont study. There is no lack of wholesome food in Vermont. The farmers’ markets overflow with fresh local organic produce. However, a lot can happen to foods from the garden to the table. Consider, for the sake of common sense, how the diet of an administrator and a farmer might differ. People with money to spend go to expensive restaurants. What do you find in expensive New England restaurants?

A sampling of local cuisines shows meats, fish, and game smeared with cream sauces. Want a sandwich? You get grilled chicken with ham, Swiss cheese and honey mustard dressing. Want a fish? You find a seven ounce salmon coated with pine nuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and orange sage butter. Look for something fancy and you find monkfish cooked in butter served with rabbit. Asian doctors warn against mixing meat with dairy in order to avoid parasites, worms, and toxins leading to overweight and cancer, but they never imagined fish served with cute rodent.

The bad news is, the study described in McGill Journal of Medicine concluded that the associations of occupation and breast cancer mortality in Vermont women do not differ significantly from those seen in larger American studies: Whatever is endangering Vermonters is also threatening the rest of us.

Popular Anticancer Herbs and Foods
So what can we eat to lose weight and simultaneously be protected against cancer? Start with a diet of mostly fruits and vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, and whole soy products, which avoids weird food combinations and add some of the following immune-balancing foods and supplements. The National Cancer Health Record Institute (NCI) in Bethesda and the University of Texas at Houston Center for Alternative Medicine have put together a list of the most commonly used alternative remedies for cancer. They list healthfood store items such as Coenzyme Q10 and include a few Asian favorites such as shark cartilage, Coriolus versicolor mushroom (yun zhi), and green tea available from Chinese herb stores, Asian supermarkets, and online.

Coenzyme Q10

Coenzyme Q10 is synthesized naturally in the body. It is used by the body as an antioxidant. It has been recommended as an antistress supplement. Because of its immunostimulatory potential, CoQ10 has been used for patients with various types of cancer. CoQ10 was tested as a protective agent against the cardiac toxicity observed in cancer patients treated with the drug doxorubicin. CoQ10 has lengthened the survival of patients with pancreatic, lung, rectal, laryngeal, colon, and prostate cancers.

Shark Cartilage
It is estimated that more than 50,000 Americans used shark cartilage in 1992 for treatments ranging from cancer and arthritis to psoriasis. The major components of shark cartilage are proteins (40%), glycosaminoglycans (about 5% to 20%), and calcium salts. Chondroitin sulfate may be one of the active ingredients. The use of shark cartilage as a cancer treatment has drawn attention because of the popular belief that the incidence of cancer in sharks, skates, and rays is very rare or nonexistent. But ask any Chinese cook how to use shark’s fin or cartilage and you will get a complicated recipe for soup. Dried shark’s cartilage, much less expensive though similar in actions to shark’s fin, can be bought for a reasonable price in some Chinatown fish stores and as health food capsules sold online. If you buy the real shark bone, simmer it at low heat overnight in a crockpot. Strain it and use the liquid as a soup stock. It is easier to empty a capsule or two into a fish stock.

Coriolus versicolor

Research has found this Asian mushroom to have antimicrobial, antiviral, and anti-tumor properties. It increases the body’s NK (natural cancer-killing) cells because of a protein-bound polysaccharide that can be extracted from its cultured mycelium, thread-like extensions. This polysaccharide K (PSK), also known as Krestin, is extensively used in Japan.

PSK prevents the induction of tumors by chemicals, radiation, or other causes. PSK is considered promising for chemoprevention because of its multiple effects on the malignant process, limited side effects, and safety of daily oral doses for extended periods of time. Research shows that healthy people given a 1,000 mg. dose experienced significant cellular immune response within twelve hours. After cancer surgery, individuals who were not using conventional therapy had significant immune benefit with 3,000 mgs. daily and a subsequent reduced dosage of 1,000 mgs. daily. When chemotherapy or radiation is used after surgery, significant improvements in immunity were achieved with 3,000 mgs. daily dose. For inoperable patients, a dose of up to 9,000 mgs. a day was used with no side-effects or toxicity.

Coriolus is not a mushroom to serve with meals but a medicine made into capsules. I gave research information on coriolus, along with contact information for several American herb companies where it could be purchased to one of my friends a non-smoker who had lung cancer. She shared it with her physician. He told her he had never heard of it and, therefore, discouraged its use. The patient died.

Green tea
Everyone has heard of this one. Like black tea, white tea, and oolong tea, green tea is made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis. Green tea is consumed by billions of people, who enjoy its flavor. It lowers total cholesterol levels and improves the cholesterol profile, reduces platelet stickiness, lowers blood pressure, and enhances the immune system. It decreases the risk of several cancers, especially those affecting the digestive system, and is very beneficial as a weight-loss aid. Green tea contains polyphenols, which include flavanols, flavandiols, flavonoids, and phenolic acids. Many laboratory studies have demonstrated inhibitory effects of tea polyphenols against tumor formation and growth.

Green Tea Extract

Green tea extract is so easy to use. Squirt it into soups, beverages, pasta sauce–any dish you may be cooking. Herbalists living with coffee drinkers have to become sneaky: Use green tea as an ingredient anytime you cook the way you might use stevia extract as a sweetener.

Diet for Prevention vs. Diet for Treatment

A very basic consideration is: Do foods that protect us against cancer work for us if we develop the disease? In other words, should the diets for prevention and treatment be the same? According to New York cancer expert Dr. Raymond Chang, the answer is a resounding NO. I met him one evening at SHARE, an organization of survivors of breast and uterine cancer.

Formerly with the staff of Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, oncologist Dr. Chang advises his private patients to prevent cancer with healthy high fiber foods, vitamin D3, soy products including tofu, maitake mushrooms, and green tea. Soy, he believes, is good for the non-hormonal cancers in women and is “wonderful” for men. Dr. Chang believes that green tea, which is cleansing, is fine for both prevention and treatment. Melatonin seems fine for prevention and treatment of cancers. He said there are significant studies that indicate the lower the melatonin levels in the body, the higher the risk of (breast) cancer. Antistress supplement melatonin is used in Italy as a therapy to reduce the adverse effects of chemotherapy. In America, it is easily available over-the-counter.

Dr. Chang uses PSK (Krestin, Coriolus versicolor) in his practice. Health professionals can order it from Health Concerns in California. Dr. Chang supports the use of ganoderma (ling zhi mushroom available in Chinese herb shops and online), calcium D-glucorate, the Chinese immune-balancing herb astralagus, and IP6. He suggested a patient have their Vitamin A and Vitamin D-3 blood levels checked if they were using those vitamins. He considers acupuncture an adjunctive therapy to help with nausea, pain and relaxation.

Active Cancer: Avoid These Foods

The same hormone-sensitive foods that protect against cancer can increase a cancer that is hormone-dependent. A medical test given by a doctor can inform you if you have an estrogen-sensitive cancer (for women) or testosterone-sensitive cancer (for men.) In an interview found on www.annieappleseedproject.org, Dr. Chang warned breast cancer patients to avoid:

Soy, flax and other estrogenic foods (where ER+ cancer is found)
Estrogenic herbs, rosemary, ginseng, black/blue cohosh, dong quai
Antihistamines, prolactinogens (tryptophan, Tagamet, Cimetidine)
Copper, niacin (B3) which he suggested increases serum estrogen, boron
DHEA and progestational creams (like Progest)

For more information, the government has established a database for CAM complementary and alternative medicine at http://cancernet.gov/cam.

Quite a lot of information on foods, herbs, chemicals, and cosmetics to avoid is offered online by non-drug company sources. The Women’s Therapeutic Institute offers “Breast Cancer News” by The Mid Hudson Options Project, Inc. a grass roots organization that details CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) treatments. The newsletter is located at many websites. Here is a practical summary.
Phytoestrogens, naturally occurring plant estrogens produce chemicals that mimic estrogen, and block progesterone. In general, they may pass through the body within several days in contrast to months or decades that the dangerous xenoestrogens take to be excreted. There are so-called weak and strong phytoestrogens. A “weak” plant or natural estrogen, such as those found in healthfoods, may be protective against cancer-causing “strong” xenoestrogens, such as those found in pesticides. A “strong” phytoestrogen may make the disease worse. Lilian Thompson PhD proved that ground flax seed (a weak plant estrogen) taken as food reduced breast cancer size to one half between the time of diagnosis and surgery. Flax seed oil and Soy oil do not have the active phytoestrogens. Sunflower oil may or may not contain active hormone components.

Whole grains, fruits, seeds, beans and herbs all are know to have estrogen and/or progesterone activity. How can we be safe? Any food that has been eaten by a culture for centuries is probably all right to eat if the people in question are relatively free from estrogen-related diseases. Our best examples are China and Japan, where the number of cancers are low and survival rates are high. People who hope to prevent and treat hormone sensitive tumors are advised to avoid the following:

Coffee
Coffee is a known phytoestrogen. Coffee is commonly known to make fibrocystic breast disease worse. Research has shown that it is not its caffeine, but coffee itself strongly mimics estrogen. Thus, decaffinated coffee still may be estrogenic.

Hormonal Herbs
David Zava, PhD has shown that the following herbs stimulate the growth of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer cells. They should be avoided by women with estrogen-sensitive cancers: Fennel, licorice, red clover, yucca, hops (in beer) and motherwort. Red clover and yucca were found to be equal in potency to estradiol at the same concentrations.

People using synthetic progesterone (pills or creams) should avoid: Alfalfa sprouts, bloodroot, ocotillo, mandrake, oregano, damiana, pennyroyal, verbenna, nutmeg, yucca, thyme, calamus rt., goldenseal, mistletoe, cumin, chamomille, cloves, hops in beer, and motherwort. Bloodroot, mandrake, pennyroyal, yucca, and mistletoe all have very strong progesterone binding activity and are used as abortifacents (create an abortion), and to bring on menses. Bloodroot was used in England to treat breast cancer 100 years ago, and herbalists today use it to treat breast cancers, nasal polyps, and cervical dysplasia. Mistletoe has been used for one hundred years in Europe to treat breast cancer and leukemia.

Xenoestrogens: Deadly Chemicals that Mimic Estrogens
Recent research has demonstrated that synthetic chemicals, found in pesticides, herbicides, plastics containers that are heated, detergents, soaps, industrial chemicals, and cosmetics, which are very different in structure to estrogen may act as an estrogen. Called xenoestrogens, they may either bind to or stimulate the estrogen receptors in the body or imitate the effects of estrogen. They may elicit an abnormal estrogen response. Therefore, these chemicals can cause breast cancer, uterine cancer, fibrocystic breast disease, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, premature sexual development and uterine fibromas. Some have hypothesized that since the prostate and uterus are embyrologically the same, xenoestrogens may also cause benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostate cancer. Some xenoestrogens like DDE (a metabolite of DDT) may persist in the body fat for decades.

You, a careful cook, may think you are safe from most chemical poisons because you use organic foods grown without pesticides. But harmful estrogens can enter the body in other ways. In one Dartmouth University study, the researchers found that plastic wrap with olive oil heated in a microwave produced a concentration of xenoestrogens 500,000 times the minimum amount of estrogen needed to produce breast cancer cell proliferation in a test tube.

Environmental Poisons

You are at risk if you eat foods grown with pesticides and herbicides such as DDT, endosulfan, dieldrin, methoxychlor, kepone, toxaphene, chlordane, and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. DDT is banned in the United States. However, it is present in imported produce. One of my students, originally from Latin America, worked as an airport customs inspector incharge of checking imported foods for contaminants and pesticides. I asked her which foods she avoided and which she ate. She smiled and told me that she ate mostly cooked dried beans because many pesticides cannot cross the barrier of the bean’s tough skin. Her diet is extreme, but you get the picture. I wash my fresh produce with lots of water, a drop of safe non toxic detergent, and lots of apple cider vinegar.

Where you live will greatly affect your environmental toxins.
Farms, lawns and golf courses use pesticides and herbicides that easily enter the body through the skin and lungs. Golf courses use seven times the amount of pesticides that farmers use.

Medicines
Pharmaceuticals such as drug estrogens (Prempro, DES, and Premarin), Cimetidine (Tagamet), marijuana, and birth control pills should be avoided. The Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) lists gynecomastia (breast enlargement in men) as a side effect for the ulcer medicine Tagamet. Many of the synthetic estrogens used in patented drugs are chemically modified to be different from naturally occurring estrogen. Thus, they may have grave side effects. There is also evidence that they can be stored in our fat for months. A good reason to cleanse the body as you reduce fat.

We have to skip the long list of cancer-provoking substances found in ordinary household cleaners such as laundry and dish detergents, industrial chemicals, and dangerous preservatives such as the parabens (methyl paraben, ethyl paraben, proply paraben, butyl paraben), used in skin care products. There are too many to list!

Cooking
However, your method of cooking matters. Avoid using plastic with food and water whenever possible. Especially avoid heating food or water in plastic. When food and or water is heated with plastic, the diffusion of plastic into the food and water is much worse. Avoid plastic cups for serving hot beverages. Heat food in the microwave using ceramic plates and bowls. Avoid teflon and other non-stick frying pans. If you must use them occasionally, wipe them clean with a wet sponge or paper towel. Never scrub them or put them into the dish washer. Tiny bits of the non-stick surface can come off, be scratched off during cleaning, or flake off when the pan is used in the oven. The coating is highly toxic.

It may seem as though the best way to avoid cancer is an exhaustive list of things to avoid. Be comforted: If you follow a low fat, low animal protein, and high fiber diet, increase green tea and avoid obvious threats to healthy weightloss, such as animal fats, sugar, coffee, canned and processed foods, you can stay safe. Lovingly prepared simple, wholesome foods provide a way to nourish and protect yourself and family, a way to teach children healthy habits, and the foundation of physical and emotional wellbeing.