MENU

More Health and Nutrition Bites

When is the best time to exercise? 01/18/23
Too much coffee might be bad - for some 01/11/23
Stay hydrated 01/04/23
Lower risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes with a Mediterranean diet 12/28/22
Stay sharp with flavonols 12/14/22
Salting at the table 12/07/22
On time - and Velveeta 11/30/22
Cut calories vs. cut protein intake: the results will surprise you 11/16/22
Mediterranean Diet Improves Symptoms of Depression in Young Men 11/09/22
Weight and vision 10/26/22
When you eat might matter more than previously thought 10/19/22
All Health and Nutrition Bites

Related

Each new research study is a guide
Most studies of diet are conducted in one of two ways. The first type of study is a "prospective" look at the effect of diet, where those in study are asked to follow a particular menu plan designed by researchers. The drawback is that these are very expensive studies and often utilize smaller study groups.

Phew! Good News About Grapefruit and Breast Cancer
It's become one of those emails that people seem to forward obsessively, along with the ones about waking up with a kidney missing and anti-perspirants leading to breast cancer (there's no proof of that, either). Except this one was true: almost a year ago there appeared a study in the British Journal of Cancer that seemed to link eating more than 1/4 of a grapefruit each day to an increased incidence of breast cancer.

Caffeine and the Risk of Breast Cancer
At some point in their lives, as many as half of all women have what is called benign breast disease. This catch-all term can include such diagnoses as fibrocystic breast disease, mastitis (inflammation of the breast), or simply "lumpy breasts." Having benign breast disease is sometimes linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, but this is only true if a breast biopsy shows the presence of abnormal breast cells.


 

Health & Nutrition Bites

Get the latest health and diet news - along with what you can do about it - sent to your Inbox once a week. Get Dr. Gourmet's Health and Nutrition Bites sent to you via email. Sign up now!

Drinking black tea may reduce your risk of ovarian cancer

several glasses of iced tea garnished with lemon slices

Judging from the women in my practice, ovarian cancer may well be the most-feared diagnosis, even more than breast cancer. Why? Because the vast majority of ovarian cancers are not detected until they are quite advanced: only 15% of all ovarian cancer patients are diagnosed at an early stage of the disease (ovariancancer.org). While about 44% of all women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive for at least five years after diagnosis, that statistic is for all women diagnosed at all stages.

Over 60% of ovarian cancers are diagnosed at Stage III: metastatic cancer. Only 27.4% of women at Stage III when diagnosed live for 5 years or more. By comparison, 61% of breast cancers are diagnosed at Stage I, when the cancer is still localized, and 98.5% of those women survive for 5 years or more (seer.cancer.gov).

We don't know what exactly causes ovarian cancer. We do know that while about 10% of cancers are caused by a faulty gene, like many cancers diet plays a role. Recently antioxidants, particularly the subtype known as flavonoids, have come under scrutiny for their role in preventing heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease, not to mention cancers. An international group of researchers recently made use of data gathered through two large-scale, long-term studies of women, the Nurses' Health Study and the Nurses' Health Study II (AJCN 2014; ahead of print), to assess what link there might be between a woman's intake of flavonoids, a group of subtypes of antioxidants, and their risk of ovarian cancer.

After analyzing the food-frequency questionnaires gathered every four years for over 171,000 women, the researchers could group the women's intake of the different antioxidant subtypes into levels of intake by both their absolute intake of the antioxidant as well as by the amounts of the foods which supply the most significant amounts of those antioxidants. Both the absolute intake and the dietary intake were then compared between those women who developed epithelial ovarian cancer and those who did not.

Although the intake of total flavonoids was not significantly related to risk of ovarian cancer, when the researchers looked at flavonoid subtypes the outcome was rather different. Those who consumed the very highest amount of flavonols and flavanones had a much lower risk of ovarian cancer than those who consumed the least: as much as 28% lower risk. Other subtypes of flavonoids were not associated with a change in risk.

What were the foods most frequently consumed that accounted for the nurses' flavonoid intake? Black tea and onions were the two largest sources of flavonols, while citrus fruit and citrus juices (including grapefruit juice) were the largest sources of flavanones.

What this means for you

Even more reason to switch from sodas to teas. Hot or cold doesn't matter, but it appears that even powdered teas, if made from tea leaves, contain some flavonols. In the Summer, keep a batch of iced tea in the refrigerator and drink that instead of soda. Even if you add sweetener, you'll still get far less sugar than you would in a sugar-sweetened soda, and you'll help reduce your risk of ovarian (and other) cancers.

First posted: September 10, 2014