A novel study suggests women who get plenty of mushrooms and green tea in their diets may significantly cut their risk of developing breast cancerdefine.
In the study of more than 2,000 Chinese women, researchers found that women whose diets included plenty of green tea and mushrooms were at considerably decreased risk of developing the disease.
In the lab research, lead researcher Dr. Min Zhang of the University of Western Australia in Perth and colleagues studied 1,009 breast cancer patients aged 20 and 87 years old and compared them with an equal number of healthy women of the same age.
The researchers’ team gave all the study participants a detailed dietary questionnaire that asked them how often they ate specific foods.
After studying the data, Zhang’s team noticed women who consumed the freshest mushrooms, 10 grams or more daily, were approximately two thirds less likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not consume the diet rich in the popular fungus.
Moreover, the women who ate 4 grams or more of dried mushrooms per day halved their cancer risk compared with non-consumers of mushrooms.
Furthermore, the mushroom eaters who drank green tea every day had only 11 to 18 percent of the breast cancer risk of women who neither consumed mushrooms nor green tea.
Previous studies have demonstrated that mushroom extracts have anti-tumor properties and can promote the immune system
define's cancer defenses in animals, while green tea contains important antioxidant compounds, called Polyphenols, which have also shown promising results in fighting breast cancer in animals.
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap, just as store-bought white mushrooms do.
Currently, many species of mushrooms and fungi used in folk medicine for thousands of years are under intense study by ethnobotanists and medical researchers. Maitake, shiitake, chaga, and reishi are prominent among those being researched for their potential anti-cancer, anti-viral, or immunity-enhancing properties.
Breast cancer is the most common tumor in women. It is a malignant form of tumor spreading quickly to the bones, hips, lungs and in some, the brain. One in ten women is likely to develop breast cancer, and almost 75 percent would do so after menopause.
Besides hereditary or genetic factors, some other causes of this form of tumor are early puberty, late menopause, not having a child or having a first child after age 30. Risk is considerably lowered if one has short menstrual life, large family or first child before the age of 18.
The latest study findings are published in this month's "International Journal of Cancer".
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