*December 2003 issue of Dr. Greger's Newsletter*

[Guest guest]

<http://www.veganMD.org>**************************************

 

December 2003 issue of Dr. Michael Greger's Monthly Newsletter

 

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CONTENTS

 

I. Latest Updates in Human Nutrition

A. Fish Consumption and Breast Cancer

B. Enlarged Prostate and Tomato Sauce

C. Sore throat? Try Gargling with Green Tea

D. Prostate Cancer and Cranberries

 

II. Top Mad Cow Disease Story of the Month

 

III. Gift Idea -- My DVD!

 

IV. FTAA Meeting -- Another Victory for the Animals

 

V. Personal Update

 

VI. MAILBAG: " 'Milk Negates Chocolate's Health Benefits.' What benefits? "

 

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I. LATEST UPDATES IN HUMAN NUTRITION

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A. Fish Consumption and Breast Cancer

 

In general, grisly experiments on nonhuman animals has shown a

protective effect of fish consumption on breast cancer risk, which is

one of the reasons some authorities recommend that women eat fish.

Yet there have never been any large forward-looking HUMAN studies.

Never, that is, until now.

 

The results of the Diet Cancer and Health Study were finally

published last month in the Journal of Nutrition. Over 20,000 women

were grilled about their fish consumption with a detailed

questionnaire and then followed for 5 years. And those eating the

most fish had a 50% greater risk of developing breast cancer. The

researchers estimate that women may raise their breast cancer risk

13% for every 25 grams of fish they eat every day (which is but a

quarter of a serving). And the increased breast cancer risk from

fish consumption held strong even after controlling for other risk

factors such as alcohol and obesity and hormone use, etc.

 

It didn't matter whether it was fatty fish or lean fish. It didn't

matter if the fish was fried, boiled or pickled or smoked or

whatever, the more fish these women ate in any form, the more at risk

they were for getting breast cancer. Researchers guess it may be the

organochlorine pesticides like DDT contaminating the worlds oceans

that make fish flesh so carcinogenic.[1]

 

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B. Enlarged Prostate and Tomato Sauce

 

Last year, a Harvard study of 47,000 men found that those who ate ten

servings a week of tomato products cut their risk of developing

aggressive prostate cancer in half. Researchers suspect this may be

due to the pigment that makes tomatoes red, lycopene. We now know

that lycopene is the most powerful carotene discovered so far, with

fully ten times more antioxidant power than beta carotene.

 

We've known that in the lab even just purified lycopene slows the

growth of human prostate cancer cells, but what researchers didn't

know is whether lycopene had any effect on noncancerous prostate

cells. In an article published last month, California researchers

set out to answer just that question, and indeed lycopene inhibited

the growth of normal human prostate cells as much as 82%.[2]

 

This is good news for those trying to prevent or treat an enlargement

of the prostate (also called BPH, or Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy), a

condition that affects the majority of elderly men in this country.

This research shows for the first time that not only may tomato sauce

prevent prostate cells from turning cancerous, it may prevent

prostate gland enlargement as well.

 

Lycopene is one of those phytonutrients which is actually absorbed

better from cooked foods, so you get more from tomato sauce than raw

tomatoes. And eating tomato products with a bit of oil may also

increase the absorption of this fat soluble molecule. Why not just go

out and buy lycopene pills? That's actually the latest marketing

scam from Centrum. Their latest multivitamin formulation boasts " Now

with lycopene! " If you look on the label, though, indeed you'll see

if has 300 mcg of lycopene. Yeah, but a single tomato has more like

5000! Pass the vegan pizza

 

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C. Sore throat? Try Gargling with Green Tea

 

During my monthly treasure hunt for articles, I ran across a title I

couldn't resist: " Antibacterial Activity of Vegetables... " And the

experiment it described is indeed as cool as it sounded.

 

California researchers were evidently sitting around some day and

thought, " Hmm, I wonder if rutabagas have any antibiotic quality? "

So theygot funding to take a few dozen organic fruits and veggies,

put them each through a juicer and dripped some juice into bacterial

broths and saw if the veggies kicked any bacterial tush.[4]

 

None of the green veggies affected the bacteria, but interestingly

the red fruits and veggies--beets, red onion, red cabbage, cherries,

cranberries, and raspberries had a mild inhibitory effect on

pathogenic bacteria, with pomegranates coming out on top. That is,

until they tested green tea and garlic, which had some serious

bacterial butt kicking abilities.

 

To test just how powerful our plant-based champs were, they put

garlic and green tea up against three of the scariest bacteria known

to humankind, the bacterial strains resistant to almost every known

antibiotic (thanks in part to modern agribusiness saturating animal

feed with antibiotics). And our little plant-based defenders

prevailed, killing the unkillable bugs. The researchers proposed that

maybe hospital staff ought to start washing their hands in green tea

or dripping some into antibiotic resistant infections.

 

So, gargling with warm green tea may help those with infected sore

throats. (But, if your sore throat is accompanied by swollen glands

and fever, you should get tested for strep throat. This study didn't

test efficacy against the strep bug, and untreated strep can lead to

long-term heart complications.) We don't yet know if green tea or

garlic will help with internal infections, but many of the garlic

compounds are exhaled through the lungs after ingestion and could

conceivably help fight off respiratory tract infections.

 

Note that they also tried commercial garlic tablets, which were found

to be useless. And cooked garlic didn't work either, so to help fight

off infections you'd have to eat the garlic raw (like maybe in

hummous, salsa, guacamole, etc). And all that raw garlic may even

prevent disease transmission as no one will want to come kiss you

 

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D. Prostate Cancer and Cranberries

 

I hope everyone had some cranberry sauce on their tofu turkey!

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among men

in North America. The current hormonal treatments we have for this

disease have a number of toxic side-effects and only seem to be able

to control cancer growth for a few years before the cancer mutates

and becomes resistant to the treatment. Researchers desperately

needed to come up with a treatment that was effective against even

advanced disease, but whose side effects were tolerable. Researchers

at the University of Western Ontario came up with cranberries.[3]

 

Cranberry extracts have been found to have antitumor effects against

a number of other hormonally regulated human tumors like breast

cancer, so they tried dripping a few millionths of a gram of ground

up cranberries on a number of human prostate cancer cell lines in

petri dishes. They found that the growth of even the chemotherapy

resistant cancer cells was successfully inhibited.

 

Of course you can't patent cranberries and make monstrous profits off

them, so researchers tried to identify the compound that was

responsible for the anti-tumor effects. They ran through all the

well known phytonutrient compounds in cranberries and came up dry.

They concluded that the anti-cancer compound in cranberries remains a

mystery. While they continue to try to isolate " the " active compound

so they can put it in a pill and bankrupt some poor seniors who don't

have prescription coverage, how about we just eat some darn

cranberries!

 

But how to eat them, though, without all the corn syrup and sugar in

processed cranberry products? I'm sure there are lots of good

suggestions out there, but what I do is just put a spoonful of

cranberries in my morning flax smoothie.

 

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II. TOP MAD COW STORY OF THE MONTH

 

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last

month, researchers discovered that prions infect the muscles of

people who die from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.[5] This is the first

time these infectious prions have been found outside of nerve tissue.

This raises concerns about the cross contamination of surgical

instruments (since standard sterilization methods cannot guarantee

the inactivation of prions) and of course continues to challenge the

National Cattlemen's Beef Association's continued insistence that

prions are only found in the central nervous system.

 

Across the Atlantic, Great Britain is launching a national tonsil

archive this month to estimate how many Britons have already been

infected with mad cow disease and are currently incubating the fatal

disease. By collecting and testing tonsil samples from people

undergoing tonsillectomies, the UK government is hoping to estimate

how many beef-eaters might die in the coming years from the human

form of mad cow disease. The infectious prions seem to build up first

in lymphoid tissues such as tonsils and appendixes years before the

person starts showing symptoms and spirals towards death.

 

For more on the mad cow disease crisis, please see my paper

" <http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm>U.S. Violates WHO

Guidelines for Mad Cow Disease " on the Organic Consumer Association's

<http://organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm>mad cow disease website.

 

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III. GIFT IDEA -- My DVD!

 

Funnyman Vance Lehmkuhl. author of the cartoon collection,

<http://www.citypaper.net/hth/soyjoy.html>The Joy of Soy, was sweet

enough to review my DVD in the latest issue of America's Favorite

Vegetarian Newsmagazine, <http://vegnews.com/>Veg News.

 

My DVD evidently " delivers the nutritional case for veganism with

memorable charm... So you may want to

<http://www.veganmd.org/dvd.html>get a copy for yourself, plus a fun

gift for someone who may be leaning toward plant-based nutrition (all

proceeds from the DVD sales go to animal charities). "

 

I couldn't have said it better myself

 

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IV.FTAA MEETING -- Another Victory for the Animals

 

Armed checkpoints, embedded reporters in flak jackets, brutal

suppression of peaceful demonstrators. Baghdad? No, Miami. See Naomi

Klein's

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1093185,00.html>excellent

piece in The Guardian about the protests of the FTAA meetings in

Miami last month.

 

While yours truly was being shot at by rubber bullets, plastic

bullets, tasers, pepper spray rounds and tear gas canisters, the FTAA

talks inside the Intercontinental Hotel collapsed. Like the World

Trade Organization negotiations two months before, the proposed Free

Trade Area of the Americas, which could cripple animal, environmental

and human rights legislation throughout the hemisphere, seems on the

rocks as more enlightened populations than ours in South America have

forced their leaders to proceed with caution. The grassroots

resistance movement against corporate power continues, but this

certainly seems a victory for global justice.

 

To learn more about this important issue, listen on-line to my talk

" <http://www.veganmd.org/talks/>Corporate Globalization: Trading Away

Our Right to Protect Animals " on my <http://www.veganmd.org/>website

(I can also send you a <http://www.veganmd.org/talks/#global>CD of it

if that's easier) or visit Compassion in World Farming's spectacular

website, http://www.WorldTradeCruelty.com

 

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V. PERSONAL UPDATE

 

I got a car! Yeah! I want to sincerely thank everyone who helped me

out with this. It was a noble effort and now I'm back in business!

Now that I'm ready to venture out on the road again, though, the book

project I'm currently working on (an update to Dr. Klaper's Vegan

Nutrition: Pure and Simple) is taking longer than expected, despite

me trying to clock almost 100 hours a week on it. I'm just blown away

by the amount of new research that's come out over the last few years

and am still wading through the research phase. But hopefully I'll be

done in a few months and able to resume my speaking tour this Spring.

 

One thing people can do to help is ask around to see if anyone they

know has a scanner they'd be willing to donate or lend to me. Every

month I need to jump on a bus to Boston to make my

time-to-make-the-newsletter pilgrimage to Harvard's medical library.

The libraries in new York City where I'm living now are good, but

just cam't compare. Other medical libraries, for example, have a

section devoted to journals they received that year, but Harvard's

library has a whole wall dedicated to the journals they received that

DAY! The problem is that I'm like a kid in a (vegan) candy store up

there and typically xerox about 1400 pages of articles every month,

which is getting pricey.

 

Veg movement computer guru Eric Zamost came up with a brilliant

suggestion: Why don't I just scan articles into my computer? Then,

not only will I save the expense of copying and the back strain from

lugging around boxes of articles, I can make all the articles

available to everyone. Then, if there's ever an article anyone is

interested in reading themselves, I can just email it to them. I'd

love to be able to provide this service to the movement, but... I'd

need a scanner.

 

Anyone have one they're not using? I checked a few models out and it

turns out most of the really affordable ones are too slow for my

purposes--it would take me days to input that many articles every

month. According to Consumer Reports, though, the two fastest models

are the Epson Perfection 2400 photo and the HQ Scanjet 4570c. I

tried them both, and the Epson wins--I can get a readable page in

less than 25 seconds! Epson is selling refurbished models with free

shipping for $99, but if anyone out there just happens to have one

like it lying around, I'd definitely put it to good use.

 

Though I don't miss the traveling, I definitely miss seeing all of

you. Happy Holidays everyone!

 

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VI. MAILBAG: " 'Milk Negates Chocolate's Health Benefits.' What benefits? "

 

This has been a good year for chocolate lovers. Three months ago,

research letters published in the Journal of the American Medical

Association showed that people with hypertension fed a daily bar of

dark chocolate significantly improved their high blood pressure

within 10 days. The controls who ate bars of white chocolate, which

lacks the cocoa bean solids, experienced no benefit.[6]

 

Another letter in the same issue showed that cocoa might actually

help arteries become more flexible, improving blood flow.[7] Other

human studies show that chocolate also reduces the clumping of blood,

which might lower heart attack risk as well.[8] Cacao beans are,

after all, a plant food and contain a healthy dose of certain

minerals and antioxidant phytonutrients called flavonoids similar to

those found in green tea and red wine.

 

But it does have to be dark chocolate. A study two months ago

published in one of the most prestigious journals in the world showed

that the milk in milk chocolate actually cancels out the antioxidant

power of chocolate.[9] So, chocolate lovers, come over to the dark

side

 

Within an hour of eating a bar of dark chocolate,the antioxidant

levels in your blood shoot up almost 20%. But if you eat a bar of

milk chocolate, nothing happens. We always used to think that this

was because there were just less flavonoids in milk chocolate--which

is true, but why were people getting literally zero benefit from milk

chocolate?

 

Researchers wondered if it was something about the cows' milk itself

that interfered with the absorption of the antioxidants in chocolate.

So they gave people a bar of dark chocolate and then had them wash it

down with a glass of cows' milk. Lo and behold they were right--the

milk somehow blocked the expected rise in antioxidant levels. Because

researchers suspect the cows' milk proteins are the culprit, we would

not expect nondairy milks to have a detrimental effect.

 

The primary ingredient in chocolate though, is not the antioxidant

anti-aging, anti-tumor, heart healthy flavonoids; it's cocoa butter,

one of the few plant fats that's highly saturated. The primary

concern with saturated fats is that they tend to raise your

cholesterol, but strangely, even in studies in which volunteers had

to eat a half a pound of chocolate a day (sign me up! , it didn't

seem to affect cholesterol levels, at least in the short-term.[10]

Unfortunately saturated fats may have other deleterious effects such

as increasing one's risk of blood clots, perhaps making non-alkali

processed cocoa powder (which is very low in fat) a better chocolate

choice. Unfortunately, there have been no population studies looking

at chocolate consumption and cardiac risk, so we don't have all the

answers.

 

Bottom line? Dark chocolate is probably actually healthy for you,

BUT there are indeed healthiER choices--fruit and vegetable sources

of similar antioxidants that contain more nutrients, more fiber and

less calories. But even anti-fat man himself, Dr. Dean Ornish,

indulges in a little bit of dark chocolate every day. So, don't be

afraid of the dark

 

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REFERENCES

 

[1] Journal of Nutrition 133(2003):3664.

[2] Journal of Nutrition 133(2003):3356.

[3] Journal of Nutrition 133(2003):3846S.

[4] Nutrition 19(2003):994.

[5] New England Journal of Medicine 349(2003):1812.

[6] Journal of the American Medical Association 290(2003):1029.

[7] Journal of the American Medical Association 290(2003):1030.

[8] Journal of the American Dietetics Association 103(2003):215.

[9] Nature 424(2003):1013.

[10] Harvard Heart Letter. November 2003:8.

 

 

If anyone missed previous months, check out my newsletter

<http://www.veganmd.org/newsletters.html>archive.

 

Until next month,

love,

Michael

 

--

(206) 312-8640

mhg1

http://www.veganMD.org

 

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