IS THE VEGAN WAY THE CANCER-FREE WAY?
Dr Kristi Funk, Angelina Jolie’s cancer doctor, on the biggest lifestyle risk factor for breast cancer
most women ignore their breasts. We know they may kill us one day – breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women aged 35 to 50 – but why dwell? We stuff them into a bad bra, like being forced into wearing an underwired version of a terrorist bomb vest, and get on with it.
Breast cancer: act of fate! It never once occurred to me it was the other way round. That I was responsible. That I was poisoning my boobs daily, or at almost every meal.
That is until my audience with Angelina Jolie’s breast surgeon. Dr Kristi Funk’s esteemed breast cancer centre is in Beverly Hills and has the Barbie-ish name of Pink Lotus. She became the most famous breast cancer doctor in the world when Jolie credited her in her decision to have a preventative double mastectomy. When I call Dr Funk she’s just woken up in her Santa Monica home, with her triplet boys heading out past the swimming pool to summer camp, and she still has the big hair and power smile of the radioactively glamorous.
Yet there is a reason Jolie, Sheryl Crow and more powerful women than can be disclosed trust Dr Funk. At 48, she’s been at the forefront of breast cancer treatment for decades, including a long stint as the director of the breast cancer centre at the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. When the call came for her to write a book, Breasts: An Owner’s Manual, Dr Funk had a lifetime’s experience to draw on. However, she wanted the book to be meticulous and definitive, so she immersed herself in the latest research. She felt a slightly sickening shock.
‘I felt betrayed by my own medical education.’
Pretty much overnight she changed her family’s diet to avoid dairy and meat, and prescribes food for her patients as if it is medicine. All you need now, I say, is for someone with the star power of Angelina Jolie to tell the world she went vegan for her boobs.
‘I know, right? That would be fabulous. It will come. I don’t know if you know who Ellen Pompeo is, the lead actress on Grey’s Anatomy? She saw me the other month. That same day her whole family went vegan, then she told People magazine why. So I just need a few more people like Ellen to come out with the news.’
This isn’t exactly what I want to hear. I mean, I like my breasts fine, but I really love ice cream. Dr Funk already knew that women get complacent. When polled, most say that breast cancer is down to genetics, when in fact 87% of women diagnosed do not have an immediate relative with the disease. Dr Funk says that up to 90% of the risk factors for the disease lie in our control, ‘not your doctor’s, genes or fate’. She assumed that they were the usual commandments to exercise and avoid ‘chub’ and alcohol, but she was surprised to see study after study proving how much diet plays a role.
What is the biggest lifestyle risk factor for breast cancer? ‘Definitely nutrition. Then obesity, alcohol, exercise, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), stress.’
What is the biggest lifestyle risk factor for breast cancer? ‘Definitely nutrition. Then obesity, alcohol, exercise, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), stress.’
That is astounding to me. The only connection I made between food and my breasts was when I spilt sauce down my front. The Cancer Research UK website advises women that research on the link between diet and cancer is ‘inconclusive and inconsistent’. The medical establishment believes it’s too soon to advise women on meat or dairy. Dr Funk believes it’s already too late, a gross betrayal of women’s intelligence.
‘If you had asked me this question a little over a year ago, I would have ranked everything the same, but put diet somewhere around fourth. Even after 17 years of being a laser-focus breast cancer surgeon, I had no idea. But when I delved into the literature regarding food, I was literally shocked. It’s crystal clear that the body’s cellular response to animal protein and fat is nothing but dangerous.’
Breast cancer survivors are sent home without a word about diet, she says. Why? ‘Oh, doctors don’t tell them because they don’t know. They eat cake and ice cream; they had a turkey sandwich for lunch. I didn’t have a nutrition class in medical school.’
When research does come up with striking findings, doctors always urge caution, she says.
‘I’m opinionated in the book because I feel like we’re patronised as people consuming medical information. They feel you’re too entrenched in your ways to make a dramatic change. So they spread this false message that moderation is the key. And it’s not.’
Or, as she says in the book about processed meats such as sausage, bacon and ham that are carcinogens: ‘The everything-in-moderation mantra rubs me up the wrong way… Why consume cancer-causing meats in moderation? So that maybe I can remove a moderate part of your breast?’
sO, what to eat? Let’s back up a little. Her book is full of facts I didn’t know. If you’re tall you should be aware that you’re more likely to get breast cancer. This means that the nations with the tallest women, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, overlap pretty heavily with the nations with the highest breast cancer rates (and the reverse goes for countries where the women are short, such as Japan). Why? Theories abound, but for Dr Funk the clue is in the growth factors in dairy and meat, which are loved by the tallest nations.
The studies on vegans and breast cancer risk are, she concedes, somewhat muddy. The numbers of vegans have just been too low in the West, although it’s worth noting that populations with low breast cancer rates typically eat little meat or dairy. The
‘The everything-in-moderation mantra rubs me up the wrong way… Why consume cancercausing meats in moderation? So that maybe I can remove a moderate part of your breast?’
largest study on vegans and breast cancer is the Adventist Health Study, in which vegans (as opposed to vegetarians) showed a 44% drop in breast cancer rates compared with meat eaters. Or, as researchers wrote in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, ‘A vegan diet seems to confer lower risk for… female-specific cancer than other dietary patterns.’
Dr Funk is confident that future studies will prove more conclusive because of other research done on the effects of animal fat and protein. Essentially, this is where the hormones and ‘growth factors’ that make Westerners so big, tall and possibly cancerous are stored. So, in the case of dairy, studies show no breast cancer risk when it comes to consuming low fat.
Yet a study of breast cancer survivors showed that those eating one or more daily serving of high-fat dairy (cheese, for example) were 50% more likely to die early. Another study that followed post-menopausal women showed that their intake of saturated fat, like butter and meat, was ‘directly associated’ with the risk of breast cancer. Women eating like typical Westerners had their blood taken, were put on a low-fat vegetarian diet for two weeks and had their blood taken again. The second batch of blood suppressed more breast cancer growth in petri dishes.
‘If I had a big salad, I used to dump a bunch of feta on top. My breakfast was a big plop of Greek yoghurt. I thought that was healthy,’ Dr Funk says. ‘But I became so overwhelmed by the rock-solid evidence that my three sons, my husband and I all became 100% vegan and never looked back.’
After this, my mind wanders to my adolescent daughter, who likes to drink a glass of full-fat milk a day because the evidence shows that this boosts height. A preliminary study by Michigan State University showed that a high-saturated fat diet in puberty sped up breast cancer in adult women.
‘If she drinks milk she’ll grow, because her body’s response to that is to spike her insulin-like growth factor, but she will also be setting the stage for illness. So I’d rather her be a little shorter,’ says Dr Funk.
She is not unrealistic. Yes, any alcohol consumption increases breast cancer risk, but because of alcohol’s heart-healthy benefits she compromises on about one glass a day – and studies suggest that red wine may be the least damaging to breasts. Also, you know that thing people do when they eat a big salad to ‘trade off’ their drink? It’s not ridiculous – it actually works. In the Nurses’ Health Study, among those drinking at least one glass of wine a day, those who also ate a few servings of green vegetables (adding up to 600 micrograms of folate) were 89% less likely to develop breast cancer than drinkers who did not.
what protects? Dr Funk is a fan of veggies, obviously, as well as green tea, olive oil (one study showed that those adding it to their diet were 68% less likely to get breast cancer) and ground flaxseed. Those eating one teaspoon a day of ground flaxseed for a year showed, in a biopsy on their breasts, a reduction of biomarkers for cancer of 80%. Dr Funk has at least one teaspoon a day in her smoothie or on a salad. She’s also interested in the research showing that a regular aspirin reduces breast cancer cases by as much as 20%.
I’m sort of reeling. I consider myself reasonably informed, yet I didn’t know any of this. Who is responsible? Me? I’m still pondering when we digress a little to discuss Jolie’s decision in 2013 to have her breasts removed. Since then, Dr Funk says, the number of people getting genetic testing for breast cancer has ‘sky-rocketed, with tremendous service to people’s health’, and ‘without a doubt the prophylactic mastectomy rates have increased since then’.
Also, she says, a woman’s family used to try to talk them out of doing something so drastic, but with Jolie’s example they feel they have a ‘comrade in arms’, a ‘philanthropic service to women everywhere’.
‘I have counselled countless women prior to 2013 in the decision to do a prophylactic mastectomy. They felt isolated and ostracised – their families thought they were losing their minds to do something self-destructive. But now they can point to Angelina’s experience, and their families better understand that dilemma.’
I guess the theme running through all this is responsibility. If the medical establishment feels the case on diet and lifestyle is still too unproven to advise women, who is left? Us?
A study of breast cancer survivors showed that those eating one or more daily serving of high-fat dairy (cheese, for example) were 50% more likely to die early.