Green over pink

More than one million women every year receive the dreaded diagnosis of breast cancer, making it the most common type of cancer among American women. More than 460,000 die from it every year making it one of the leading causes of death. Among others, I’ve known three different young women to receive the terrible news that they had breast cancer – sadly one of them lost her battle after fighting for more than 3 years.

There are no words to adequately express how terrible this disease is.

But are pink ribbons really the answer?

While nothing in life is ever a guaranteed, the medical literature suggests that there is a link between diet and this type of cancer, and it seems that at least sharing some of this information - so that every person can make an informed and educated decision -is a worthwhile pursuit.

By now, I hope this isn’t coming as a surprise, but a strict whole food, plant-based diet is considered to be the most beneficial form of eating to reduce ones risk, and may potentially prevent the disease altogether.

Look, I can go on with tons of data and research from different papers. For instance, I can talk about a paper that followed 4,000 women with breast cancer for seven years who found a strong link between saturated fat and mortality. One paper found that just 2 weeks of plant-based eating and exercise can slow tumor growth rates (in vitro) by 20%. I can cite a meta analysis of 12 papers that claims for every 10 grams of fiber consumed, the risk is reduce by 7%. But in all honesty, does it matter?

The truth is, sometimes eating healthy and exercising isn’t enough. And I know a lot of us our guilty of pretending otherwise. Even this blog tends to act as if just going vegan, or whole-food plant based is the answer every time.

And sometimes it is. Far too many people, not just women, eat terrible diets that harm our bodies every single day and ultimately impact our health. But others, to no faults of their own, still end up with the disease.

My good friend who recently passed away was like that. She was vegan for as long as I knew her, at least 8 years. Yet we all watched, horrified, as the disease returned time and again. 

It’s hard to reconcile something like this, my friend was young, charismatic, and beautiful. She exercised and ate well, and yet, that wasn’t enough.

I’ve read far too many pieces about the face of this disease, but for me, the only face this disease has is the face of my friends. The fear I’ve seen in their eyes and the fear that was in my own.

But the face of this disease is two fold because it can also be surprisingly beautiful. I chose to remember my friend as the vibrant, smiling person she was when we met. I chose to remember the fun and the laughs we shared together. But even as the cancer and the chemo wore on her body, the strength and courage she demonstrated is one of the most beautiful memories I have of her. When we all realized that her struggle was coming towards a close, the outpouring of support and love for her was truly overwhelming.

Maybe diet can’t change the world, it didn’t for my friend. But that also doesn’t mean that we should just give up and accept our fates. I wouldn’t be doing justice to my friend or her legacy. I wouldn’t be doing justice to my other friends who are struggling with this disease either. 

I don’t believe in pink ribbons.

I believe in living your life. I believe in laughing and crying together. I also believe in eating your broccoli.

As some may have noticed, I took a month off from posting as I need some time to find the motivation to continue writing this blog. Many of my posts, particularly the research heavy ones, are very time consuming. And while research and writing this post, I’ve decided that if the news I share can help a single person, than that this is a worthy pursuit. My friend spent her time on this earth helping others. I hope to do the same. 

In loving memory. SLN 1981-2015 

***

Gonzalez, Barnard, et. all., “Effects of a low-fat, high-fiber diet and exercise program on breast cancer risk factors in vivo and tumor cell growth and apoptosis in vitro,” Nutrition and Cancer 55(1) 2006.

Cade, J.E. “Dietary fiber and risk of breast cancer in the UK women’s cohort study.” International Journal of Epidemiology 36 (2): 2007.

Newcomb, Beasley J., e.t all., “Post-diagnosis dietary factors and survival after invasive breast cancer,” Breast Cancer Research Treatment 2011.

Aune, D., et. all., “Dietary fiber and breast cancer risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies,” Oncology 23(6) 2012.

As always the information presented in this blog is for educational purposes only. It should not be considered as specific medical, nutritional, lifestyle, or other health-related advice.

The Carbo-Loading Tradition?

As many of you may remember, I returned from Nepal just a few days before being whisked off to Miami for my first half marathon! Traveling with a large group of friends- all more experienced runners than me- the night before the race I was out voted on what we would do for dinner. Everyone seemed to agree, lentils were out. Italian was in.

We found a small, lovely Italian restaurant somewhere in Miami. Everyone was getting the same thing- pasta.  For those of you who have been with me since my first post know I’m skeptical about the benefits of having pasta in my diet. Actually, to be specific, I think processed wheat products are a detriment to athletes due to their low nutrient value. Anyway, out numbered and hungry I created a custom order. It was a huge bowl of whole-wheat pasta, cannellini beans, kidney beans, spinach, garlic and fresh, diced tomato sauce. In all honesty, it was both beautiful and delicious. 

Sorry I didn’t think to grab a picture of the actual dish!

The next day I awoke at 4 am for the race and I didn’t feel anymore fueled than usual. While I did fine during the race, and so did all of my companions, it got me thinking about how carbo-loading actually works and so here is my understanding of the science behind the tradition. 

The earliest research on carbo-loading dates back to the 60s when Scandinavian scientists studied non-athletic men’s ability to perform on low carbohydrate and high carbohydrate diets. They found that the low carbohydrate diet resulted in lower muscle glycogen stores which negatively impacted their endurance. When the same men consumed a high carbohydrate diet for several days, their muscles became supersaturated, and endurance times were significantly extended. Based off these studies they created a 7-day program. This program has since been replaced and updated although the general idea has remained the 

Other studies have shown more effective approaches. Tapering your workout regimen while simultaneously boosting your carbohydrate intake can allow you to supersaturate your muscles in as little as three days. When used correctly, this method can amplify your endurance by nearly 20%. In practice, this can help you increase your distance without “hitting the wall” as well as your time. Some studies suggest that your time can improve by as much as 2 or 3%. While it sounds like a small increase, in a multi-hour event that will add up to several minutes!

   Okay, so how and when should you carbo-load? Carbo-loading only works for endurance events. Most authorities agree that the performance needs to last at least 90 minutes before carbo-loading will begin to help improve your performance, so unless you are crawling, you probably won’t need to eat a large bowl of pasta every night for a week before your big 5K that you are training for. Instead just try consuming healthy, high-net value foods. These studies even suggest that the most elite marathon runners, those freaks, mutants, people who run 26.2 miles around the two hour mark also don’t greatly benefit from carbo-loading. This is because it typically takes around 90 minutes of sustained exercise before glycogen levels begin to run low. (More elite athletes will be able to train their bodies to sustain themselves off their fat storages during these endurance events rather than depending on carbohydrates.) If however you are running a marathon and you’re not a super human, carbo-loading is a great idea. 

But before you go running off to your local organic grocer to buy them out of whole-wheat pasta finish reading. Gender also plays a role in how beneficial carbo-loading will be. As evidenced from above, the earliest studies were all conducted on men-and those sexists scientists simply believed that women would experience the same results with muscle supersaturation. However, more recently, studies which focused specifically on women found that females have a more difficult time reaching a supersaturate point than men. Another study was unable to demonstrate any measurable benefit to the women’s performance after reaching supersaturation. Part of the reason has to do with the menstruation cycle. Women have an easier time carbo-loading during and immediately after menstruating. Another factor is that women typically have smaller caloric needs than men and simply can't increase their carbohydrate intake enough to gain benefits from it. As such, women may need to dramatically increase their calorie intake for several days prior to an endurance event, paying particular attention to carbohydrates.

Finally, no matter how much pasta you eat the night before a race, no matter how much you gorge, chances are you will not be able to carbo-load that night. To reach a point where performance will actually improve, one needs to eat roughly 4 g of carbohydrates per pound of body weight each day. In a person who weighs roughly 150lbs, that means nearly 2,000 calories in carbos alone! I don’t know about you, but that seems intense!

 

note: Rich Roll no longer rides Jamis bikes.

The final verdict, in my opinion, is that most non-professional athletes won’t be able to achieve supersaturation of glycogen and should instead focus on staying hydrated and eating a large healthy meal before and after the event. As a very close friend always tells me, “you should never try anything new on race day.” That seems like sound advice to me! Luckily for me, green lentils are 70% carbohydrate so I’ll be BYOL’ing for my next endurance event!

Brazier, B. Thrive (2007)

Burke, L. Middle- and long-distance running. (2007)

Burke, L. Preparation for competition. (2006)

Coleman, EJ. Carbohydrate and exercise. (2006)