Breast Cancer, Diet, Nutrition
In this video, Susan Silberstein spends about 28 minutes speaking on "Breast Cancer, Diet, Nutrition" at the 40th Annual Cancer Convention held on Labor Day weekend by the Cancer Control Society.
About Susan Silberstein
SUSAN SILBERSTEIN, Ph.D. received her Doctorate Degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1977, after the death of her young husband to cancer, she founded the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, where she still serves as Executive Director. The Center is a national not-for-profit cancer information, counseling and referral organization. It provides nutritional, immunological and psychological resources as well as other complementary and alternative resources. For several years, Dr. Silberstein taught the Psychology of Health and Disease in the Graduate Division of Counseling Psychology at Immaculata University, and served as Director of the Integrative Program for Cancer Prevention at the Newtown Medical Center in Pennsylvania. She has also served as Educational Advisor to the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine and consultant to Atlantic Hematology Oncology Group. Dr. Silberstein is author of the books Hungry for Health and Hungrier for Health, creator of the video Breast Cancer: The Diet Connection, editor of "Immune Perspectives" magazine, and originator of the BeatCancer Kit Series. A frequent contributing writer and interviewee for various health publications, she is featured in Rutgers University Press's "Evaluating Alternative Cancer Therapies" and "Change Your World Press's Cancer Report." Since 1977, she has coordinated dozens of health conferences, has appeared on hundreds of radio, television and internet talk shows, and has counseled thousands of patients. A Phi Beta Kappa and Fulbright scholar, Dr. Silberstein is the recipient of the Jefferson Award of the American Institute for Public Service and the Founder's Award of the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine. Dr. Silberstein may be contacted at the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education by phone 610-642-4810, website www.BeatCancer.org and e-mail [email protected].
Transcription
Thank you, Frank.
So today we're going to be talking and very quickly about the powerful role of diet and preventing breast cancer in preventing recurrence of breast cancer. And also in helping to reverse the disease when it is active. And first, we're going to talk about the bad news. But hang around. I'm going to give you a lot of good news as well. The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that 75 percent of all cancers are diet related. And the National Cancer Institute has stated that 70 percent of breast cancer deaths could be avoidable through dietary change. In fact, a tremendous body of research demonstrates that diet has a major impact on both the development and progression of breast cancer. Most of that information comes to us from studies of Asian women in Japan, for example. The cancer is traditionally breast cancer is traditionally quite rare. But according to the British Journal of Cancer, Japanese women who moved to the United States and adopt a Western diet end up having the same risk for breast cancer that American women have. And that's about 400 percent higher than in Japan. Now, the critical factor seems to be the fat in the diet. And in Japan, the traditional diet has only about 15 percent total calories coming from fat in this country. We end up with a diet that's between 40 and 50 percent total calories from fat. We also have an obesity epidemic in this country. And according to the American Institute for Cancer Research, that will add another 17 percent to breast cancer risk. Now, fat is important in three ways. The amount of fat, that type of fat and the quality of fat with a high fat diet. The dangerous as Pugin, known as Estra Dial, is going to increase with a low fat diet. It tends to decrease. Now, this is because synthetic hormones and zino estrogenic chemicals that promote breast cancer growth are like bofill. They love the fat. They live in the fat. They don't tend to metabolize out of the fat. And if you look at the list of foods that are high in fat, essentially what you're seeing is the entire American diet. All right. So how do we define low fat? Actually. Fat is a threshold nutrient and reducing fat calories down to 30 percent of total calories will not really do anything for us. It's that 15 to 20 percent window that is magic. And that's why the National Institutes of Health Women's Health Initiative study was so disappointing when the researchers incorrectly concluded that reducing total fat had little or no effect on risk for breast