Breast cancer dietary taboos

1. Foods illegally added with exogenous estrogen/medicinal supplements clearly containing estrogenic activity； 2. Alcohol and alcoholic beverages ； 3. Moldy, spoiled food containing carcinogens. The rest of the statements such as "you can't eat soy products", "you can't touch your hair" and "you can't drink milk" circulated on the Internet are either clearly controversial or just rumors without scientific basis. There is no need for blanket taboos at all.

Let’s talk about the controversy over soy products that everyone has asked about the most. Two years ago, I met an aunt who was 5 years after surgery. She didn’t dare to touch a sip of soy milk for 5 years. She even avoided making tofu because she was afraid that the soy isoflavones in it would stimulate the breast cancer to relapse. As a result, the bone density was so low that it was close to osteoporosis. After asking the orthopedic doctor for a long time, he found out that she had stopped eating all soy products with high calcium content. In the past two years, the Shanghai Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed up on 10-year follow-up data of nearly 10,000 breast cancer patients and found that patients who continued to eat soy products 3-5 times a week for a long time had a risk of recurrence that was nearly 10% lower than those who did not eat it at all. Of course, some conservative breast doctors will recommend that patients who are taking endocrine drugs such as tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors should not take additional purified soy isoflavone supplements. Drinking soy milk and eating tofu in normal dietary intake will not cause problems at all, so there is no need to scare yourself.

As for alcohol, there is really nothing controversial. Don’t listen to the pseudo-science that “a small amount of red wine softens blood vessels.” Whether it is white wine, beer, red wine, or even fruit wine with a low alcohol content, as long as it contains alcohol, it will increase the estrogen level in the body and affect the liver’s ability to metabolize drugs. Alcohol during radiotherapy and chemotherapy will affect the efficacy of the drug at best, and increase the burden on the liver and kidneys. It is completely worth the loss. If someone tries to persuade you to drink at a Chinese New Year dinner, just take out your medical records and no one will force you.

There are also ingredients such as royal jelly, snow clam, and purple river car that everyone often asks about, but they are actually quite controversial. I met a 28-year-old early-stage patient before who recovered very well after surgery. However, my best friend told me that she ate snow clams to replenish qi and blood. She continued to eat them for 3 months. During the reexamination, her hormone levels suddenly dropped, and the attending doctor scolded her. Of course, some studies have shown that the estrogen content in fresh royal jelly is actually very low, and eating it once in a while will have no impact at all. However, most clinicians will recommend that patients with ER/PR positive (that is, hormone receptor positive) patients should try not to eat large amounts of these ingredients for a long time, let alone those unknown health care products sold by WeChat merchants that claim to be "ovarian maintenance" and "anti-ageing." Many of them secretly add exogenous estrogen, which is like setting a trap for yourself.

Needless to say, there is no need to talk about moldy food. Aflatoxin is a clear carcinogen. The older generation always thinks that they can just pick off the moldy parts and eat them. In fact, the toxins have already penetrated into the whole food, especially moldy nuts, corn, and leftovers that have been stored for several days. Just throw them away. There is really no need to take risks just to save a little money.

Finally, I would like to talk about the "fat foods" that everyone is most concerned about, such as chicken, beef, mutton, seafood, and milk. There is really no evidence that these will cause the recurrence of breast cancer. I have seen too many patients who dare not eat this or touch that after surgery. They only drink white porridge and vegetables every day. In the end, they were checked for anemia, low protein, and poor immunity, which gave them an opportunity for recurrence. Of course, if you are undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy and have ulcers in your mouth or rashes on your body, temporarily eat less food that is too spicy, too hot, or too irritating to avoid suffering. This is a personal adjustment to the symptoms and is not a unified taboo.

In fact, my deepest feeling after meeting hundreds of patients is that the diet of breast cancer patients really does not have as many rules as everyone thinks. The core is "don't take supplements, don't quit, and have a balanced diet." If you are really not sure about what you can eat, just asking your attending doctor casually during the next review will be more effective than searching ten rumors on the Internet. After all, instead of worrying about whether you can eat a mouthful of tofu, maintaining a stable good mood and regular work and rest are more important things to prevent recurrence.