Alternative Health Blog

It is too simplistic to say that eating or drinking—or not eating or drinking—a certain food causes breast cancer. But there are patterns that can be undeniable. A new study of the nutrition habits covering more than 2,000 Chinese women is a good example.  It shows a diet high in fresh and dried mushroom lowers breast cancer risk.

What’s more, the same study indicates a daily green tea habit can also drive down breast cancer cases, and that combining mushrooms and green tea creates a super-healthy synergy.  

Now for one of those undeniable patterns: The rate of breast cancer in China is four to five lower than rates in developed countries (though the rate is increasing in more affluent parts of China). Lead researcher Min Zhang of the University of Western Australia said the mushrooms and green tea in large quantities represent a potential explanation for the dramatically lower breast cancer rate in China.

Zhang and her colleagues published the study in the International Journal of Cancer and evaluated 1.009 women with breast cancer in southeast China plus an equal number of women who were cancer-free. All volunteer subjects completed a detailed food questionnaire aimed at how often certain foods and drinks were in the diet.

The women with the lowest risk for breast cancer ate more than 10 grams of mushrooms daily, leading to two-thirds less risk of breast cancer than non-mushroom eaters. Women who ate at least four grams of dried mushrooms cut their breast cancer risk in half. If those mushroom consumers drank some green tea every day, they turned out to have only 11 to 18 percent of the breast cancer risk of women who eschewed mushrooms or green tea.

Again, there is no cause and effect posited by the researchers. But the trend is hard to deny. The plant substances abundant in mushrooms and green tea are documented to be highly effective in fighting cancer cells. It seems like a healthy idea for women to add one or both items to their daily menus.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.