To Prevent Breast Cancer Should At-Risk Women Begin Taking Tamoxifen Or Take Garlic Instead?

Posted February 13, 2013: by Bill Sardi

Should 500,000 British women (2.4 million U.S. women) take Tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer? A British health agency report (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) says so. Families with a history of breast cancer should also undergo genetic testing, says this same agency.

Tamoxifen was presented by this British health agency as an alternative to having a preventative mastectomy, or breast removal. (However, a recent 20-year study of aged women showed Tamoxifen is no better than mastectomy in regards to survival.)

According to a study, which is not available for examination, 29 cancers and nine deaths could be prevented for every 1,000 women taking tamoxifen for five years. That comes to 1 in 34 Tamoxifen users who would benefit from taking this drug over a 5-year period while subjecting themselves to a long list of potential side effects.

These side effects include: headaches, migraines, back pain, pelvic pain, bone pain, muscle pain,　chest pain, fatigue, skin infections (like hives, rashes and irritation), ovarian cysts, weight gain, anemia, loss of appetite, heartburn, indigestion, high cholesterol, constipation, diarrhea, hair loss, incessant cough (with blood), swelling of the lips, mouth and face, sore throat, mood swings, depression, insomnia, disorientation, appearance of lumps in the breast, breathlessness, yellowish eyes, and vision/speech problems etc. (Whew, that is a long list, and it isn’t all of them.)

Side effects represent disease substation, not disease prevention

It’s not like a small percentage of women will experience problems when taking tamoxifen. Here is the incidence of symptoms caused by tamoxifen: hot flashes (40.9%), joint pain (29.4%), bone fractures (7.7%), blood clots (4.5%), vaginal bleeding (10.2%), endometrial cancer (0.8%), cardiovascular disease (3.4%), and stroke (2.8%).

The cost of Tamoxifen is ~$100-400/year, but the real cost may come in battling all of its side effects and other drugs to combat them.

A lot of women in the change of life experience these same symptoms, but tamoxifen increases the incidence and severity of all these side effects compared to women who don’t take it.

For example, among women age 35-39, hot flashes will occur among 63% of tamoxifen users and 45% of non-users. In the same age group, 32% will report vaginal problems versus 19% for non-users.

A half-million British women taking Tamoxifen should be a bonanza for doctors who treat these women. They will simply be exchanging one disease for many others. See the chart below.

Doctors won’t be going out of business any time soon and pharmaceutical companies will be selling billions of dollars of drugs (blood thinners, bone drugs, sleeping pills, etc.) to treat diseases or side effect emanating from use of Tamoxifen.

Incidence Of Side Effects: Tamoxifen Versus No Tamoxifen Among 500,000 Women Over 5 Years As Proposed By A British Health Agency
	Endometrial Cancer		Strokes		Blood Clots (deep vein thrombosis)		Pulmonary Embolism
Age Group	Tam	No Tam	Tam	No Tam	Tam	No Tam	Tam	No Tam
35-39	150	50	300	200	1700	1050	500	150
40-49	1300	500	1250	1100	1950	1200	1100	350
50-59	8000	2000	4300	2700	2150	1750	3700	1250
60-69	13,500	3550	12,350	7000	3750	2350	6450	2150
70-79	15,000	3750	26,900	17,100	5700	3700	13,300	4450
Adjuvant Online http://www.adjuvantonline.com/breasthelp0306/TamoxifenRegimen.html

Tamoxifen reduces cancer mortality, but not overall mortality

One of the common sleights of hand in the cancer industry is to pose anti-cancer drugs as an effective way to bring down cancer mortality rates, but because of severe side effects, but overall no more people survive than if no treatment was rendered. The oncologist treats the patient, says to loved one that the drug was effective in reducing the size of the tumor, but unfortunately the patient didn’t survive. This is a common experience.

Such is the case with tamoxifen. While Tamoxifen may reduce mortality from breast cancer, it is not likely to reduce overall mortality because of its propensity to cause blood clots, strokes, cancer and other life-threatening maladies.

What about less problematic alternatives?

Are doctors searching for less problematic alternatives to tamoxifen? Apparently not. According to a recent report, 25 grams of flaxseed per day increased an anti-inflammatory marker that is associated with reduced risk for spreading (metastasizing) breast cancer by +50% whereas tamoxifen increased this marker by +40%. Flaxseed is not associated with the many side effects produced by tamoxifen. But no bought-off health agency is going to promote flaxseed.

Safety studies for tamoxifen are skewed

The statistics used to substantiate the safety of tamoxifen are specious because they only include women who are able to continue taking this medication for 5 years. Its dastardly side effects keep many women from continued use.

For example, among 96 women treated with tamoxifen or placebo pills for 5 years, 44% were forced to discontinue use due to thickening of their endometrial lining versus 22% for the placebo group. In another study, 31% of women prescribed tamoxifen were unable to complete a 5-year regimen due to side effects.

Fortunately, only 51,500 U.S. women out of an at-risk group estimated over 2.4 million women actually were taking tamoxifen in 2005. So word of tamoxifen’s side effects has reach most American women.

Natural alternative to tamoxifen

For those savvy women who don’t want to naively fall for the misdirection of tamoxifen, it would be helpful to know that some prevention-minded researchers already explored which natural remedies might prevent breast cancer.

These researchers say: “Although extensive efforts have been made to understand the molecular mechanism of cancer reduction, a specific approach to reduce breast cancer has not yet been identified.”

These researchers go on to say it may be possible to reduce the incidence and development of cancer with dietary supplements, particularly garlic pills or fresh-crushed garlic cloves.

Forty-eight published studies going back over 25 years all positively indicate garlic may be just the simple and economical antidote against breast cancer they need.

Despite the fact garlic has been shown to inhibit the growth of breast tumors in laboratory animals, human studies have not followed. So cancer doctors (oncologists) say garlic is unproven. But the anti-cancer drugs they use have been disproven (they only work 2-3% of the time according to one study).

In particular, these researchers lament is that there is only limited research on the use of fresh garlic to prevent or treat breast cancer.

They write that: “the most desirable approach to treat cancer would be to identify the molecular signals that induce tumor growth arrest and that trigger cancer cells to return to a normal state of health.”

These researchers discovered that the macerate from fresh crushed (but not boiled) garlic cloves arrests the growth and favorably alters the form and structure of breast cancer cells.

These researchers tested fresh extracts of various plant products (bitter melon fruit and seed, neem leaf and seed, mint leaf, spring onions, and garlic) to assess their ability to modify the shape and structure of a common strain of breast cancer cells in a lab dish.

The observable shape and structure of breast cancer cells is predictive of their rate of growth.

When other molecules that altered the shape of breast cancer cells were used, these malignant cells reverted back to their original shape. But fresh-garlic-treated tumor cells were irreversibly changed and their growth halted.

One of the remarkable ways garlic works is to eliminate cell-to-cell contact between healthy cells and tumor cells, so the cancer doesn’t spread. There also are numerous other unique ways fresh garlic kills off cancer cells these researchers uncovered.

Other garlic molecules inhibit tumor cell growth, but in a much slower manner. It is only fresh-crushed garlic cloves, which produces allicin, the first breakdown product of garlic, which rapidly and non-toxically kills cancer cells.

Most garlic pills won’t do

Most garlic pills sold in retail stores are tested for allicin in a water dish which does not represent the acid environment in the human stomach. Tested in acid (vinegar- acetic acid), garlic pills produce very little allicin.

Stomach acid negates the enzyme (alliinase) that converts alliin to allicin. So most garlic pills, even though they are labeled to yield allicin, in fact produce little allicin when consumed.

A fresh-crushed clove of garlic is the most economical, but is quite pungent on the throat and stomach.

A new type of buffered garlic pill, which utilizes alkaline minerals to buffer the stomach acid, has been demonstrated to produce as much real allicin as a fresh-crushed clove of garlic.

Having read all this ladies, are you now more interested in flaxseed and garlic, or tamoxifen? Just don’t ask your doctor about all this. According to most doctors, garlic and flaxseed are still unproven. © 2013 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.

Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Index to reports

List all reports

Bill Sardi
the vitamin supplement answer man