Diet change can slice chance of death by 21%

Cutting down on fat while eating more veggies and fruits might save you from dying of breast cancer

Eating more fruits and veggies, and less fat, can cut women's risk of dying from breast cancer, a new study says.

According to a recent story by Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press, a test involving 49,000 breast cancer-free women between the ages of 50 and 79 over two decades shows that those "who modified their diets for at least eight years and who later developed the cancer had a 21% lower risk of dying of the disease compared to others who continued to eat as usual."

Marchione's piece explains that results of the large, rigorous experiment are notable because, for the first time, researchers didn't merely "try to draw health conclusions from observation about how people eat."

But because the "risk was small to start with and diet's effect was not huge…it took 20 years for the difference between the groups to appear."

The diet change, the AP story continues, "also did not lower the risk of developing breast cancer, which was the study's main goal."

Dr. Rowan Chlebowski

Results, which stemmed from the Women's Health Initiative, a major federally funded study that previously overturned longtime advice on hormone therapy for menopause symptoms, were announced by Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in a telephone news conference held by the American Society of Clinical Oncology prior to its annual meeting.

Chlebowski, the AP story reports, "is working on another study to see whether women who are obese or have certain other health risks get the biggest benefit from trimming dietary fat. Results from this study suggest they might."

Marchione's article adds that Dr. Lidia Schapira, a breast cancer expert at Stanford University and a spokeswoman for the oncology society, says that because of the quality of the study, "we need to take this very seriously. What we eat matters." 

More information about research into possible disease preventions can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.