Study Sees More Breast Cancer at Young Age
Walk for the cure, hope & pray for a miracle, get routine screenings and keep on doing what you’re doing—while everyone in the industry keeps getting paid.
That’s the headline that first caught my eye. Then, a few days later I saw this one: “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.” That’s when I decided to write a blog featuring both of those articles.
When I saw that first headline, I immediately thought of early puberty and its association with breast cancer. From my “Extremely early puberty” article below, I quote Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
Early puberty is obviously not due to any one factor, but rather to the combined effect of the modern diet of processed foods, cheese, daily animal products and the lack of fresh produce….Early puberty is strongly associated with breast cancer and the occurrence of breast cancer is three times higher in women who started puberty before age twelve.
From a 2010 USA Today article, “Early puberty in girls is raising health concerns.”
Repeat. The incidence of breast cancer is three times higher in women who started puberty before age twelve. What about age 7 or younger? (See graph). So when I see news about more breast cancer in younger women, I naturally think about early puberty—which is largely the result of eating the wrong food for our species. Yet, none of the many articles even mention this blinding flash of the obvious observation.
The solution. We’ve been eating the wrong food for our species in a big way for about thirty years and we’re now reaping what we sow—with diseases that seem to baffle our entire medical community.
The simple answer to most of our chronic diseases is to begin feeding our children mostly whole plants from the time that they are weaned. In so doing, we’ll give those kids the best possible chance to avoid ALL chronic disease for the rest of their lives.
More on early puberty in girls. So what are the average numbers in the United States these days? This quote comes from the New York Times article referenced in my blog about “puberty before age 10” shown below.
In the late 1980s, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician’s associate in the pediatric department of the Duke University Medical Center, started noticing that an awful lot of 8- and 9-year-olds in her clinic had sprouted pubic hair and breasts. The medical wisdom, at that time, based on a landmark 1960 study of institutionalized British children, was that puberty began, on average, for girls at age 11. But that was not what Herman-Giddens was seeing. So she started collecting data, eventually leading a study with the American Academy of Pediatrics that sampled 17,000 girls, finding that among white girls, the average age of breast budding was 9.96. Among black girls, it was 8.87.
So there you have it. The average age of puberty in the United States was below ten years old way back in the early 90’s. And now some of those little girls are getting breast cancer in their twenties. As for the current average age of puberty; it continues to worsen and may now very well be under 9 years of age. See Guardian article below: Onset of puberty in girls has fallen by five years since 1920.
Why do we not hear this kind of cancer information from the American Cancer Association?
Suffering, expense and tragedy. Meanwhile, the cancer train keeps right on picking up speed—delivering fame and fortune for a privileged few, employment for millions— but primarily suffering, expense and tragedy for the rest of us. And our “cancer organizations” never even mention the following information as stated by Dr. T. Colin Campbell in The China Study:
1. [C]asein (the protein in cow’s milk) and very likely all animal proteins, may be the most relevant cancer-causing substances that we consume.
2. There is enough evidence now that the U.S. government should be discussing the idea that the toxicity of our diet is the single biggest cause of cancer.
3. There is enough evidence now that doctors should be discussing the option of pursuing dietary change as a potential path to cancer prevention and treatment.
4. Our institutions and information providers are failing us. Even cancer organizations, at both the national and local level, are reluctant to discuss or even believe this evidence.
5. Food as a key to health represents a powerful challenge to conventional medicine, which is fundamentally built on drugs and surgery.
They’re making history alright—making more money off a preventable disease than any organization in history.
Cancer is a HUGE business. And there is no money to be made in prevention. Consider this list of three facts from a recent TIME article mentioned earlier (See link below)
1. Our nation’s largest cancer center. Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas, MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010, the most recent annual report it filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was $531 million. That’s a profit margin of 26% on revenue of $2.05 billion, an astounding result for such a service-intensive enterprise.
2. Mckinsey reports on nonprofit medical organizations. The 2,900 nonprofit hospitals across the country, which are exempt from income taxes, actually end up averaging higher operating profit margins than the 1,000 for-profit hospitals after the for-profits’ income-tax obligations are deducted. In health care, being nonprofit produces more profit.”
MD Anderson, one of the largest employers in the state of Texas
3. Salaries for big cancer executives. The president of MD Anderson is paid like someone running a prosperous business. Ronald DePinho’s total compensation last year was $1,845,000. That does not count outside earnings derived from a much publicized waiver he received from the university that, according to the Houston Chronicle, allows him to maintain unspecified “financial ties with his three principal pharmaceutical companies.”
The above three paragraphs are just a few of the hundreds in the TIME article below that cover the out-of-control cost of healthcare that is occurring in all diseases—not just cancer. Want to see more? Take a look at the second source article below. I have to confess; I did not finish the article—the whole mess just makes me sick.
The Bottom Line. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and all the other food-driven chronic diseases in the western world are HUGE businesses. And 35 million jobs in the USA are dependent on them staying in business—and growing. What can you do about it? You can take charge of your own health, you can help prevent early puberty in your daughters and you can share this wonderful news with everyone you know—even your doctor.
- Source article. Advanced Breast Cancer May Be Rising Among Young Women, Study Finds – NYTimes.com
- Source article. Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com
- Source article. Onset of puberty in girls has fallen by five years since 1920
- Source article; graph (USA Today). Early puberty for girls is raising health concerns
- Extremely early puberty…Would you believe 6 years old?
- Puberty Before Age 10 – A New ‘Normal’?
- Early puberty — a realtime update from a reader
- Money and cancer. Riding the cancer train to fame and fortune
Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com
- The movie that’s changing the lives of millions: Forks Over Knives DVD
- Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
- An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell
- Dr. McDougall’s new book, The Starch Solution, with lots of great recipes.
Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com
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J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.
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—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation
J. Morris Hicks, engineer. writer. big picture guy. 
Don’t forget the other bad guy in this. The FDA, by law, is obligated to promote agriculture and somehow this is twisted up to mean animal agriculture (meat and dairy foods). The FDA’s wicked ‘wisdom’ gets passed down to doctors and teachers and schools and on and on. There must be a way to stop these deadly lies of the experts and authorities but I don’t know what it is. Yet.
An article in NYT on Sun, 02/03/13 stated the exciting “news” that the Mediterranean diet was halted after 5 yrs. because the 1/2 of participants in the study (the control group) were dying of stroke, heart attacks & cardiovascular disease while the other 1/2 got healthy. To quote “this a watershed moment in the field of nutrition, for the first time, researchers have shown that diet can have an effect as powerful as drugs in preventing what really matters to patients”. Are they kidding? Didn’t their mothers tell them “You are what you eat”?? Doctors & the medical profession have known for years about the connection of disease & nutrition but the CEO’s of food & drug companies have managed to quiet their voices. Junk food makers have known how addictive their processed foods are & that they have contributed to the epidemic diabetes, obesity & heart disease but they don’t want to change their formulas for making–$$$. Sadly, there are a lot of people in the medical profession that have the same attitude so we will continue to have our food sources contaminated with steroids & antibiotics and all sorts of other poisons. Was it really headline news that very young women are getting breast Ca.?? Studies have been telling us of the danger of hormone replacement therapy leading to breast ca. since I was in nursing school, (back in the Dark Ages), so they take it away from women suffering menopausal symptoms & then let the meat & poultry industries give it to us in steady doses where it poisons every one from a very young age. I started a plant based life 9 mos. ago & have never felt better in my life, so sorry that it took me so long. Try to eat foods produced locally & greenwise.
Reblogged this on Ruminations from a Generation X Gemini and commented:
Another excellent post by J. Morris Hicks, author of “Healthy Eating, Healthy World”.
Sorry that it left a comment like that automatically. I wanted to personally comment that I am grateful for your post and all the work you are doing.
Hi from New Zealand – Radha here. Many experts now lay the main blame on our being over exposed to environmental phytoestrogens – eg in plastic food wrap, food, etc. I’ve read that these phytoestrogens also affect feminisation in males as well. The BIG problem with this is that the jury is out on phytoestrogens in general and pro-soy research, showing that increased consumption of soy in girls helps prevent breast cancer, seems to stay out of the limelight. Hence, the soy industry is copping the flack due to the high level of phytoestrogens in soy beans. Needless to say, this is great for the beef and dairy giants (sound familiar?). With Monsanto planning to take over the world via GE seed, and the adverse effects of GE kept hidden, the mainstream soy industry is not exactly pure as the driven snow either. Where are we up to regarding good research on phytoestrogens? – in defining the good and bad phytoestrogens? – and in getting that knowledge out there? We need do do a heap more to overcome the now dominance of anti-soy sentiment in the health food industry – unfortunately they are all currently in love with coconut oil and raw milk!!! I despair.
Unbelievably, yesterday on NPR, there was a story on exactly this topic. Sadly, the “expert” being interviewed attributed the increased cancer rates to increased exposure to artificial lighting and flat out denied that breast cancer had ANY dietary link. I want to send this guy The China Study!