Breast Cancer: Inacurate Advice
Worldwide, breast cancer is the top cancer among women and their leading cause of cancer death. With nearly 4 million current survivors in the US alone, we must pursue every science-based method to boost breast cancer survival and cut cancer recurrence.
The American Cancer Society states that “no dietary supplements (including vitamins, minerals, and herbal products) have been shown to clearly help lower the risk of breast cancer progressing or coming back.” Ref 1
On October 23, 2021, Park’s team published a remarkable study. Ref 3 They examined the dietary factors among over 120,000 breast cancer survivors and followed them for recurrence and survival. While they could not determine the exact intake of each nutrition in each person, their overall findings do contradict the American Cancer Society's claim that there is no proof that vitamins, minerals, or nutritional supplements impact breast cancer outcomes.
The first results are shown below (for breast cancer only):
Nutrient Decrease in deaths Decrease in Recurrences
General antioxidants 24% 23%
Vitamin C 21% 16%
Vitamin D 16% 18%
Vitamin E 16% 22%
Zinc 18% 21%
The second results are even more interesting.
The overwhelming majority of these critical and life-enhancing nutrients were NOT obtained from the foods people ate. They mostly came from dietary supplements.
What we eat, even if we eat “well,” cannot supply high enough levels of these nutrients to lower cancer recurrence and death rates! Standard multi-mineral-vitamin supplements can help, but it takes far higher doses of these nutrients to make a significant impact on breast cancer survival. Ref 3
For example, a standard multivit contains 600 units of vitamin D. That dose will only produce a bloo dklevel of vitamin D of 24 ng/mL. Clearly inssufficient for producing optimal health. Ref 2
A higher-end, specialty multivit with 2,000 units of D will more than double blood levels.
And taking 5,000 units of D daily will nearly triple blood levels bringing them close to what our ancient ancestors likely had. See my video entitled “PALEO Vitamin D Levels.”
Park’s team is not the first scientific study to contradict the American Cancer Society's above statement. My video “Double Breast Cancer Survival” https://youtu.be/KUCz_lbOS54
analyzes the results of three additional studies looking at different blood levels of vitamin D. They show the progressively better breast cancer outcomes as vitamin D blood levels continue to rise.
My goal here is two fold.
First, I want health consumers to be as up-to-date as possible. I realize that in making policy changes, bureaucracies move at the pace of glaciers. That does not serve health consumers. You need access to the latest scientific findings and presented in an understandable way.
Second, I want to put pressure on bureaucratic health agencies to update their public statements in line with the latest scientific findings. For nearly 40 years, the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine ignored the pleas of dozens of top vitamin D scientists to update their official recommendations regarding vitamin D. Finally, in recent years the National Institute of Health (NIH) has done just that, much to their credit. But the older and outdated recommendations continue to be quoted by health insurance companies, hospitals, and government health clinics which results in health consumers getting highly outdated advice. This must be changed if we want to improve the health of our nation and the world.
References
1. American Cancer Society: (1) recommendations to lower breast cancer recurrence and (2) ACS’s opinion on vitamin supplements for lowering risk for breast cancer recurrence. accessed March 24, 2022.
2. Shirvani A, Kalajian KA, Song A, et al. Disassociation of vitamin D’s calcemic activity and non-calcemic genomic activity and individual responsiveness: A randomized controlled double-blind clinical trial. Sci Rep 2019; 9:17685.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-53864-1
3. Park SH, Hoang T, Kim J. Dietary factors and breast cancer prognosis among breast cancer survivors: A systemic review and meta-analysis of short studies. Cancers 2021; 13:5329-65.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/13/21/5329/htm
