Knotweed and estrogen positive breast cancer
by Stephen Harrod Buhner | Apr 16, 2010 | Columns, Healing Lyme, Herbs, hormonal issues, japanese knotweed, miscellaneous, other diagnoses, stephania root, Symptoms, women's issues |
Dear Stephen,
Thanks for a wonderful book and forum. I was diagnosed with early stage estrogen positive breast cancer and one of my doctors told me not to take the knotweed because: “As resveratrol exhibits estrogen-like properties and activates transcription by estrogen receptor and androgen receptor that leads to stimulation of cancer cell proliferation, patients with hormone-sensitive cancers should avoid resveratrol. ” However, my integrative lyme doctor said the effect was so minute that she finds it hard to believe that with all its positive effects that I was asked to discontinue taking knotweed. Please, what is your opinion on the above?
Stephen’s response:
The effect is minute but you can substitute stephania instead to make him/her happy. You should not be taking pure resveratrol in any event but knotweed standardized for resveratrol content; such a mix contains a lot of things besides resveratrol.
Stephen
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Stephen Harrod Buhner was an Earth poet and an award-winning author of twenty-four books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine including the acclaimed book Healing Lyme: Natural Healing & Prevention of Lyme Borreliosis & Its Co-infections.
Stephen came from a long line of healers including Leroy Burney, Surgeon General of the United States under Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Elizabeth Lusterheide, a midwife and herbalist who worked in rural Indiana in the early nineteenth century. The greatest influence on his work, however, was his great-grandfather C.G. Harrod who primarily used botanical medicines, also in rural Indiana, when he began his work as a physician in 1911.
Stephen’s work has appeared or been profiled in publications throughout North America and Europe including Common Boundary, Apotheosis, Shaman’s Drum, The New York Times, CNN, and Good Morning America. Stephen lectured yearly throughout the United States on herbal medicine, the sacredness of plants, the intelligence of Nature, and the states of mind necessary for successful habitation of Earth.
He was a tireless advocate for the reincorporation of the exploratory artist, independent scholar, amateur naturalist, and citizen scientist in American society – especially as a counterweight to the influence of corporate science and technology.
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