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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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11029921.000
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1993-04-08
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THE WEEK, Page 23HEALTH & SCIENCERelax, Mrs. Sprat
High-fat, low-fiber diets may not cause breast cancer after
all
Women have been told for years that one way to reduce the
risk of breast cancer is to eat the right diet: plenty of fiber,
not too much fat. But a major new study published in the Journal
of the American Medical Association says it ain't necessarily so.
After keeping tabs on nearly 90,000 women for eight years,
doctors at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and other
institutions found no evidence for the assertion. Earlier
studies had pointed to the same conclusion, but diehards still
think the link may exist. They point out that all the women in
the study ate plenty of fat; it was just that high-fat diets
generated no more cancer than moderate-fat regimens. Perhaps
women who eat negligible amounts of fat do have reduced
breast-cancer levels. It's hard to test, since such women are
scarce in the U.S. But because high-fat, low-fiber diets cause
other health problems, women should avoid them anyway.
Meanwhile, a study in the Lancet appears to strengthen
another suspected breast-cancer link. Women whose mothers had
toxemia during pregnancy (a form of high blood pressure that can
also lower estrogen levels) are 75% less likely to get breast
cancer as adults. High estrogen levels, in other words, are
still a danger signal.