Green tea and mushrooms: 89% less breast cancer
Chinese women who regularly eat mushrooms and drink green tea daily have 89% less risk of developing breast cancer than those who consume neither.
Australian researchers from the University of Perth compared the diets and
lifestyles of more than 2000 women who attended a breast clinic in China.
Working with detailed registers of their consumption of a variety of foods,
they observed that, all other factors being equal, women who consumed an
average of more than 10 g of fresh mushrooms every day had 64% less risk of
developing breast cancer than those who did not eat mushrooms. Those who ate 4
g of dried mushrooms saw their risk diminish by 47%. When consumption of green
tea was added (more than 1g of tea-leaves infused per day), the protective
effect of the two factors combined reached 89%! [1]
We already knew that Japanese farmers who have a large consumption of these
mushrooms are up to half as likely to develop stomach cancer (which is
frequently observed in Japan) as people who do not eat them. [2]. Several large
cancer centers in Japan now systematically deliver standardized extracts of
these mushrooms to accompany chemotherapy treatments [3, 4, 5].
Japanese
researchers have observed that patients who receive these mushroom extracts see
the number and activity of their white blood-cells increase sharply, including
in the interior of the actual tumor [4, 6, 7, 8, 9].
At Kyushu university
researchers have observed that when chemotherapy is accompanied or followed by
consumption of these mushrooms in patients suffering from colon cancer, they
considerably extend the patient’s survival [4].
In the Montreal lab headed by Prof Richard Béliveau, extracts of various
mushrooms have been tested against breast cancer cells in vitro. The benefits
are not limited to Asian mushrooms: some mushrooms in the pleurotus family
enable the almost complete cessation of growth of cancer cells in the
laboratory.
Although the effects of mushrooms on cancer were already partially known, what
is surprising in this study is their potentialization through the consumption
of green tea. The principle of the synergy of different food products is a
constant feature when we explore the action of our natural defense system
against cancer.
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