Flaxseed: It's Role in Breast Cancer Prevention

Editor's Note: The goal is to create an environment in your body where cancer cells can't thrive.

You may be bummed to see which foods create pro-cancer environments...

Watch in this order

Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Prevention


Takeaways from "Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Prevention":

1. 25 years ago we knew that plant-based dieters had lower cancer rates
2. They had 3x level of lignans in body
3. Seeds, vegetables, whole grains, berries responsible for reduction in breast cancer risk
4. In Petri dish, Lignans do suppress cancer growth but only after plant lignan converted to human lignan by bacteria in the gut
5. Antibiotics dropped ability to make anti-cancer compounds and weeks to recover that ability.

Study Completed

• On women who had pre-cancer or already had cancer, carcinoma in situ
• Gave teaspoon of ground flax seed for a year
• KI-67 expression: a proliferation marker that indicates cancer
• 9/45 women it went up
• 80% went down

Findings:

• less cellular deterioration in breast tissue
• fewer precancerous changes

Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Survival: Epidemiological Evidence


Takeaways from "Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Survival: Epidemiological Evidence":

• Lignans
• have anti-cancer properties
• NY Study
• Found reduced risks of breast cancer mortality
• Italy Study
• At surgery, tumors removed
• Germany study
• Postmenopausal women
• High serum lignan levels have better survival
• Most lignans lived the longest and the longest disease-free
• Conclusion
• Robust clinical evidence needed
• Not based on lab and population alone

Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Survival: Clinical Evidence


Takeaways from "Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Survival: Clinical Evidence":

• Review: Population results referenced in the previous video were promising
• Begins to feed women flax seeds
• Tamoxifen – a breast cancer treatment drug
• 6 weeks, endostatin levels in breasts go up
• Endostatin levels going up is a good thing because it stops tumors from hooking up with the blood supply
• Same thing happens when you add little under a quarter cup of ground flax seed to daily diet
• Flax seed didn’t seem as powerful as the chemo

• Second study: Flaxseed muffin 25g/placebo
• Flax seed: richest source of lignans 800x higher than five dozen other plant foods
• Study had tumor biopsy before study started
• 5 weeks after flax tumor sample
• Tumor cell proliferation go down
• Cancer cell death goes down
• c-erbB2 score: indicator of cancer aggressiveness , indicates potential for cancer metastasis
• c-erbB2 score goes down
• Conclusion
• Quote: “Dietary flaxseed has the potential to reduce tumor growth in patients with breast cancer.”
• FURTHER: They said that if the study was sustained flaxseed may be an alternative or used with breast cancer drugs.
• Term: Microdialysis – stick needle in breast to “suck out fluid bathing the breast cells”

Can Flax Seeds Help Prevent Breast Cancer?


Takeaways from "Can Flax Seeds Help Prevent Breast Cancer?":

• Lignans
• have anti-cancer properties
• Lignans in general have direct anti-cancer spreading powers. The technical term is "anti-proliferative."
• Prevents migration of breast cancer cells
• Study Quote: "If the therapeutic index seen in this short-term study can be sustained over a long-term period, flaxseed, which is inexpensive and readily available, may be a potential dietary alternative or adjunct to currently used breast cancer drugs."
• Another study: Women who had a teaspoon a day had on average a drop in pre-cancerous changes.
• Yet another NEW STUDY: "Consumption of flaxseed, and of flax bread, was associated with statistically significant 20-30% reductions in breast cancer risk."
• Yet another study, this one called "Flax and Breast Cancer: A systematic review" showed that flax intake led to lower breast cancer mortality among breast cancer patients. 
• This latest study also showed better mental health and decreased risk of breast cancer in the first place.
• IL-1, a most dangerous property
• IL-1 helps feed cancer, spread cancer, and assist in the invasion of cancer cells.
• However, the body produces it's biological archenemy (and friend to you) IL-1Ra which blocks the actions of IL-1.
• Tamoxifen or eating flax seed can increase your body's ability to create the protective inhibitor IL-1Ra.
• In other words, eating more flax seeds will create little anti-cancer blockers that your body naturally produces.
• Unlike the study from the first video, "Flaxseeds and Breast Cancer Prevention,"where the women only took one teaspoon for a year, in a new study, "a few spoonfuls" were given to women and it counteracted the IL-1 (the cancer protagonists).
• After a month of taking two tablespoons of flaxseed, the women's anti-cancer blockers known as IL-1Ra increased by 50%.
• Study Quote: "The IL-1Ra levels in breast tissue increased by over 50% after flaxseed ingestion, which was the same range and even slightly higher than in women after tamoxifen therapy where IL-1Ra increased by appoximately 40%.
• In other words, you get 10% higher levels of anti-cancer properties in your body by using the natural method of eating flaxseed.
• Removing ovaries would reduce breast cancer risk by 60% but has major side effects.
• Tamoxifen reduces breast cancer risk by 40% but may have severe side effects such as endometrial cancer (uterus cancer) and thromboembolism (obstruction of blood vessel by blood clots).
• Study says lignans are not a "magic bullet."

Bringing it all together

While the study referenced in the video "Flaxseed and Cancer Prevention" noted that women were given a teaspoon to women with breast cancer, you're going to need a lot more of it. 

Instead, take two tablespoons of ground flaxseed daily -- not whole flaxseed, which will simply will pass through your body.

As mentioned in the last video, flaxseed "may be a potential dietary alternative or adjunct to currently used breast cancer drugs." I would never recommend you to stop using whatever your doctor prescribed to you. 

But why not eat healthily on top of what you are taking as medicine? 

So even if you have to get surgery to get the tumor removed, you dramatically decrease your chances of the cancer coming back with flaxseed as a regular part of your diet.

There are a few more things that I must mention even if I must go into detail in another blog post or two.

• Cancer loves sugar, especially processed refined sugars. (See here, here and here)
• Refined sugar is an immune system depressant.
• That's not good, since strong immune systems can kill cancer.
• It hates oxygen.
• Meat is a cancer-helper. (See "Article: How Tumors Use Meat To Grow")
• Excess estrogen is not your friend. Eliminate it with larger bowel movements.
• Alkaline is your ally, but proper balance is the key.
• Exercise is your ally.
• Forks over knives.
• In other words, food over surgery.
• Too much fat in the abdominal area produces insulin resistance. Raised insulin tells your cancer cells to divide more rapidly (See here).

Read Chapter 24 of The Hallelujah Diet "In Love With Food All Over Again" for alternative recipes.

The entire article should be read, but a certain statistic from the "Dangers of Refined Sugar" article also linked above is so important that it must be highlighted here:

“Six teaspoons of sugar (the amount of sugar in a single candy bar) reduces the ability of these white blood cells to destroy unfriendly bacteria by 25%; 12 teaspoons (the amount of sugar in a single can of soda pop) reduces the ability of these white blood cells to destroy unfriendly bacteria by 60%; and 24 teaspoons (just half the average daily intake of refined sugar), reduces the ability of these white blood cells to destroy unfriendly bacteria by 92%.”

Simply put, the more refined sugar you ingest, the less able your body will be to kill unfriendly bacteria.

With the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons coming up, there will be a huge temptation to eat lots of food with refined sugars and of course meat. Simply put, these are Thanksgiving staples.

But as explained in the "How Tumors Use Meat To Grow" video, meat has compounds in it that are co-opted by the cancer cells. The cancer cells then trick the body into creating an environment that creates more cancer cells.

In The China Study the Campbell men say that animal-products increase female hormone levels. Additionally, they say that risk for breast cancer increases precisely "when a woman has high levels of female hormones in the blood."

Additionally, given that estrogen makes many breast cancer cells grow, the more you get out of your system (and there is only one way food leaves the body) at once, the more excess estrogen leaves your body and the bloodstream.

So when you're eating things that exacerbate these pro-cancer environments, then take drugs to prevent the pro-cancer environment, then you are going around circles that most likely isn't going to end well.

If you're a coffee person, then you probably are going to want to immediately put that to a halt. I get this from a chapter near the end of The Hallelujah Diet:

Let me suggest that you go through your pantry, cupboards, and refrigerator; and get rid of all food items that are harmful to your body and that will hinder you from reaching your goal of health. Use the chart of Foods to Avoid on page 144 of Chapter Ten, and be unmerciful. After all, these foods haven't done you any favors, have they? This food evacuation would include getting rid of:

• all animal products (meat, dairy, eggs);

• all products containing refined sugar (pastries, candy, soda, etc.);

• all bleached white flour and all products containing bleached white flour;

• all caffeine products (coffee, tea, and chocolate);

• I would also get rid of the salt and black pepper shakers.

The items listed are the cause, or are a contributing cause, of most of the physical problems people experience.

Watch this last video to see how the Vegan diet is eight times better at fighting cancer. Watch it all the way to the end.

Choose life! (Deuteronomy 30:19)