Western diet ups breast cancer risk among Chinese

[Hopeful]

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN0929005420070710

Hopeful

[TSund]

Hopeful,

My spouse is Filipino and showed me this article yesterday. She said that when she came to the U.S. 15 years ago she started eating many more sweets, more meat, more breads, etc. Fits the profile. I wonder how much of this is actually the diet, and how much being exposed to all the pollutants, hormones, plastics, petrol. products, etc. etc. I guess it all plays a role.

[Hopeful]

What is interesting to me is that in the US we have seen a definite link between bc and dietary changes between Western and Eastern diets, but don't know what the cause/effect relationship is. Could be that Western diets promote bc, or could be that Eastern diets have more prophalatic properties that are lost when those specific foods are no longer part of the diet, or could be both. There are a lot of posters in this community who have studied these relationships and researched them. If you are interested, just do a general search of the forums on some of the food terms and see what pops up.

Hopeful

[R.B.]

Re pollution

In general terms it is suggested that Japan has similar pollution to us but lower rates of western conditions.

Why now that is the question.

RB

[Becky]

Why now?

There are much more exposures to "things" (contaminants) - in food, water, air etc. We do not exercise like people did 50-100 years ago (just a sedentary lifestyle). We eat raised meat, processed food with chemical emulsifiers etc.

However, many improvements in food sources, medicine etc allow us to live longer - hence more cancer as (in general), it is a disease of aging.

Just some tidbits.