BRCA Breast Cancer Genes and Soy

[Music] why do people who eat legums beans chickpeas split peeas and lentils live longer well men and women who eat legums tended towards being lighter having a Slimmer waist lower blood sugars lower cholesterol lower triglycerides better kidney function lower blood pressure so no surprise may live longer but interestingly Bean intake was a better protectant against mortality in women than men they think this may be because cancer was the leading killer of women in this population especially breast cancer and we know that breast cancer survivals who eat soy foods for example have significantly lower likelihood of

cancer recurrence eating soy Foods appears to protect against the cancer coming back this 2012 review looked at three perspective human studies done to date and found that women who ate the most soy had a 29% lower risk of dying from breast cancer and a 36% lower risk of Cancer recurrence and a fourth study was since published and it showed the same thing soy food intake is associated with longer survival and lower recurrence among breast cancer patients with an average intake of soy phytonutrients above 17 milligram a day uh which is about what found in a

single cup of soy milk the mortality of breast cancer may be able to be reduced by as much as 38% here's the survival curve over 5 years the purple line represents the survival of the women with the highest soy consumption as you can see after 2 years all the breast cancer survivors Eventing lots of soy were still alive but a quarter to a third of the women who ate the least soy were dead and after five years 90% of the tofu lovers were still alive and kicking whereas half of the tofu haters kicked the bucket

you can see a similar relationship when you look at breast cancer survival and soy protein intake as opposed to Soy phytonutrient intake how does soy so dramatically decrease cancer risk and improve survival soy may actually help turn back on braa genes braas a so-called caretaker Gene an oncosuppressor meaning a cancer suppressing Gene responsible for DNA repair mutations in this Gene can cause a rare form of hereditary breast cancer popularized by Angelina Jolie's public decision to undergo a preventive double mastectomy but only about 5% of breast cancers run in families so 95% of breast cancer victims

have fully functional bracka genes so if their DNA repair mechanisms are intact how did breast cancer form grow and spread well tumors do it by suppressing the expression of the gene through a process called methylation the Gene's fine but cancer found a way to turn it off or at least turn it down potentially facilitating the metastatic spread of the tumor and that's where soy may come in maybe the reason soy intake is associated with increased survival and decreased cancer occurrences is because the phytonutrients and soy turn back on your bracket protection removing the methyl straight

jacket the tumor tried to place on it so researchers put it to the test these are three different types of human breast cancer specially stained so that the expression of bragin turns up brown so this is what full DNA repair would look like hopefully what normal breast cells would look like lots of brown lots of bra expression but instead we have column two raging breast cancer well if you add soy phytonutrients back to the cancer braa does indeed get turn back on the DNA repair appears to start ramping back up though this was at a

pretty hefty dose equivalent to about a cup of soybeans the results suggest that treatment with soyut might reverse DNA hypermethylation and restore the expression of the tumor suppressor genes braa 1 and braa 2 may help with other breast cancer genes as well women at increased genetic risk of breast cancer May especially benefit from high soy [Music] intake