Alternative Therapies

Recent experiments show that low-fat diets may prevent breast cancers from returning in women whose tumour growth was not driven by hormones.

Dr. C. Kent Osborne of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston said, “That’s as great or better than any treatment intervention that we’ve given” for this type of cancer, which is notoriously hard to treat”.

But for women whose cancers are fuelled by hormones, diet changes may make little difference in the risk of recurrence or survival. There were mixed results in women which surprised the doctors, because they had expected all women to benefit. Experts said that hormones might play such a strong role in some cancers that dietary changes may not have a significant impact.

It was still not clear whether the women benefitted truly by cutting fat or by weight loss, or just by eating more fruits and vegetables.