This is from one of the largest food diary panels - using 101,257 people in the French NutriNet-Santé cohort with 5 years of follow-up so far. While there was an association for some cancers, there was no significant association between amount of sugary drink intake and incidence of prostate cancer. There was no association whether the sugar was natural (in fruit juices) or whether it was added. Of course, this is association, not causation. And they measured only incidence, not survival. And while they tried to correct for measurable variables (e.g., sugar intake from other sources, sodium, lipid, fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, family history, BMI, diabetes, CV disease, age, smoking, etc.), there are unmeasured variables (e.g., healthy lifestyle, food quality, etc.).
It's OK to put sugar in your iced tea - Advanced Prostate...
It's OK to put sugar in your iced tea
So what is the final verdict ? Is it OK to eat fruits such as pomegranate, banana, apples etc.?
Of course it's ok for your prostate. If you are diabetic, it may be a different story.
Nice to hear.
Allen
How do you square this with the other recent study that says 100cc of sugar drink per day generates a measurable statistically valid increase in the incidence of prostate cancer?
They are both associational studies, but still, how do we process them.
Show me
I saw it somewhere. I thought it was here. Apparently not.
I think this may be it?
google.com/amp/s/www.telegr...
Yesterday, a study in the respected British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that drinking just two glasses of fruit juice each day may increase your risk of cancer by 54 percent.
A small glass of juice or soda a day is linked to increased risk of cancer, study finds
"On average, men consumed more sugary drinks than women -- 90.3 ml daily compared to 74.6 ml. Risk factors for cancer, such as age, sex, educational level, family history of cancer, smoking status and physical activity, were considered in the study.
During the study's follow-up period, a total of 2,193 first cases of cancer were diagnosed, at the average age of 59 years. Of these, 693 were breast cancers, 291 were prostate cancer cases and 166 were colorectal cancers."
google.com/url?sa=i&source=...
One should always be suspicious of any study that lumps all cancers together. Note that the study I posted did find a correlation for all cancers lumped together and for breast cancer, but not for prostate cancer.
Imagine a study that found, for example, that early use of zinc shortens duration of all viruses. This might indeed be true because colds are by far the most prevalent pathogenic virus, and early use of zinc has been found to shorten duration of colds. But one would be crazy to think that early use of zinc can shorten an HIV illness or any other virus-caused illness.
1. Ok, thanks.
2. By the way, I am always suspicious public press interpretation of studies. They have a well known bias of interpreting results in a manner that is newsworthy. LOL
3. Is your interpretation that
(a) there is no evidence that sugar causes or exacerbates prostate cancer, or
(b) there is some evidence that there is no material relationship between sugar intake alone and prostate cancer when taking into account BMI and other similar confounding variables.
I think that e need to be suspicious of YOUR "suggestion"!
Unfortunately, as we age, and start loading up on conditions, diseases, medications, etc, you start running into more and more tradeoffs.
For example there is nothing good about pretty much any of the prostate cancer treatments, but they are generally a better alternative to refraining from any treatment.
For example, you take chemo, you expose yourself to permanent nerve damage.
PCa is very rare in hummingbirds as far as I know. Maybe sugar is fine :-).
After review of the study, there was an increased incidence of cancer with sugar consumption as opposed to sweetners. Also, there were several issues regarding the study to correlation with PCa.
From the study:
Next, mean age at baseline was 42.2 but participants were followed up to nine years, the cohort included a large range of age (up to 72.7), and mean age at diagnosis was 58.5. Furthermore, the cohort was launched in 2009 and follow-up lasted until early 2018, thus, including participant with up to nine years of follow-up.
When you consider the following:
cancer.org/cancer/prostate-...
The mean age for Prostate Cancer diagnosis is much higher...
Second:
Epidemiological studies are notoriously inaccurate regarding diet by self reporting--from the study :
Fifthly, measurement bias owing to misreporting cannot be ruled out, especially since exposures, covariates, and outcomes were based on self report measures. Notably, diet is one of the most complex exposures to assess and its evaluation is challenging.81 This challenge is not specific to our study but rather shared by all major epidemiological studies conducted worldwide in this field.828
Just to name two issues. You could also factor in that this is in France and the European diet and US diet are not the same.
I appreciate your posting. I think sugar is the "white death"...From Revelations 6:8
"I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him."
Sugar has not been proven to be beneficial to the diet...not sure it is the rider on the pale horse--maybe it is the horse, but processed sugar is not good....All IMHO....
Don Pescado
One of my belief is that all the epidemiological studies done with self reported nutrition data are GIGO studies (Garbage IN Garbage OUT).
Agreed. Self reporting on questionable/bad habits for health....Just can not rely on that information....all IMHO...
Fish
I agree, but this was not an epidemiological study.
This was not an epidemiological study. It is a longitudinal cohort tracking study designed specifically to study diet effects on health. Respondents continually filled out 24 hour food diaries (3 in a 2 week period) every 6 months, so it did not require memory. It was also done via internet, so the bias caused by wanting to please the interviewer is eliminated. It is probably the best study of diet and illness out there.
French incidence of PC is similar to US. They controlled for alcohol use, smoking and age. Why would anyone ignore the best data we have just because they have an emotional belief that sugar is the devil?
OK, but this was part of the study information:
Fifthly, measurement bias owing to misreporting cannot be ruled out, especially since exposures, covariates, and outcomes were based on self report measures. Notably, diet is one of the most complex exposures to assess and its evaluation is challenging.81 This challenge is not specific to our study but rather shared by all major epidemiological studies conducted worldwide in this field.828
I guess it boils down to do people not always report accurately on their own behavior? Reality is they do not. It is like asking someone how much they drink and they say 2 beers a day, but their AST/ALT ratio is 3:1...Just looking at someone's intake of a substance makes the self reporting suspect IMHO.
Don Pescado
As long as their bias is in the same direction, it doesn't matter. Their analysis is of the relative sugary drink consumption, not the absolute amount.
The problem is that this is done over time and subjects could change their answers over time based on what they believe the interviewer is looking for in an answer...skewing the results...also, they filled out the information 3x in 2 weeks...what is to say their behaviors on that day were changed just by filling out the questionnaire...Could their bias in answering change over time??
Don Pescado
It is completely anonymous - why would they change it over time? In 20 years of market research, I never saw that happen -- the means are very stable except when there is an intervention. They even corrected for seasonal variations. If I ask you to think about what you ate in your meals yesterday and probed for details (they include food pictures of 250 foods) it is MUCH more accurate than if I asked what you ate in the last week. We know that the closer and better defined the time period, the more accurate the answers. Once again - the absolute value for any one respondent is not as important as the relative values across the entire sample. The respondents who drank more sugary drinks had the same PC incidence as those who drank fewer sugary drinks. We know from MANY years in food research that this is the most valid way to ask and analyze. Companies like Kraft Foods do food diaries exactly this way with exactly these kinds of panels. They spend millions of dollars in marketing based on this.
"Why would anyone ignore the best data we have just because they have an emotional belief that sugar is the devil?"
Agreed
I suggest some research comparing sucrose,,,so called refined unnatural sugar, mostly derived from sugar beets and cane.
Compare this to the so called healthy natural sugar,,,fructose,,,from fruits and many vegetables and of course in worst form when it comes to health,,,so called HFCS, high fructose corn syrup which is endemic in our food and drink supplies. By the way banned in many countries of the world,,,,but not here because of the corn lobby and its allies,,,think Coke and Pepsi for openers,,,just as with the insane ethanol lobby and their power in government.
In particular learn how fructose is processed by the body verses how sucrose is processed,,,completely different pathways once ingested. Oddly sucrose is a single molecule of glucose married to a single molecule of fructose. And yet fructose is highly indigestible in over 1/3rd of people and leads to disorders such as rampant obesity, irritable bowel disease(ibs) and a wealth of other disorders.
Unfortunately the path to body assimilation taken by fructose verses sucrose path,,,is a major root cause of fructose health issues.
I have been very much on top of this topic for some 40 years. It is only in the past 15 or few years that certain medical professionals have finally gotten a glimmer of a grasp of the impact of fructose in many deadly disorders.
Plug “fructose malabsorption” into google for a very rudimentary enlightenment on fructose.
Me,,,,I love my Diet Coke and iced teas with Nutrisweet as the sweetening agent.
If you don't have high blood sugar problems, you should be OK.
Dear Sxrxrnr1
1. fructose - natural from fruits
2. high fructose corn syrup
3. sucrose - a single molecule of glucose bound to a single molecule of fructose (commonly from sugar beets and cane)
4. Glucose
I thought cane sugar was good. I commonly pay extra for food that uses that instead of high fructose corn syrup (normally the only two choices commonly available in grocery store food). If I have to choose between the two which one is worse?
If fructose from fruits is good, why is high fructose corn syrup bad?
So of all these sugars, which is the least worse and why?
The big difference is that the NutriNet-Santé study was designed to determine the effect of diet on health. Respondents fill out three extensive 24-hour dietary questionnaires at baseline and every 6 months. It is a huge study (n>100,000). By contrast, PLCO (n=22,720) only sent out a diet questionnaire at baseline and 5 years into the study and it relies on memory. It's like night and day.
See my comments about the danger of lumping cancers together.
This study TA cites addresses "incidence of", not "progression of", which everybody on this site is concerned with, and it limits sugar intake to drinks, not other sources.
Glucose is indeed related to PCa progression, especially in late stage...
"The exact role of glucose metabolism and prostate cancer has not been well defined; however, it does appear to have involvement in the progression of the disease and cellular division (40). Further proof of this involvement is a correlation between individuals with diabetes mellitus and increased severity of cancer phenotype (41). While glucose uptake does not appear to be increased early in prostate cancer cells as mentioned above, there appears to be an important relationship between these factors, particularly in late stage disease (42)."
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
How are you supposed to live without any glucose? Healthy cells need it to live too. I agree that this study did not have long enough f/u to address death. What have you seen that has?
All cells, healthy and cancerous, use insulin to incorporate nutrients - whether they be carbs/sugars or fats. It's true that simple sugars cause a more rapid spike, but what of it? Eventually, the nutrient gets in and feeds the cell.
Despite some suggestions in earlier studies, blocking Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF) has not shown any benefit.
The question is how much glucose intake is appropriate for a PCa patient. If glucose uptake is indicated in late stage PCa, then limiting sugary drinks would seem to be a factor in slowing progression. BTW, we do live wo glucose when fasting when the liver breaks down glycogen for energy.
When the liver breaks down glycogen, glucose is precisely what it breaks down glycogen into. Our cells do not survive without nutrients. Cells, healthy or cancerous, have various metabolic pathways available. Deprive them of one nutrient, they will shift to another. There is no evidence that limiting sugary drinks slows PC progression - or that increasing sugary drinks increases PC progression -show it to me if you've seen it.
My father said (halfway through stage IV at age 78) was that you need sugar to think. At least I think that was what he said?
Same here, no sugar, plenty of fresh whole fruit, and a healthy diet. Keep the body lean and mean for the fight. I try to ward off the effects of long term ADT which can include weight gain if one is not careful about what you consume.
Ed
as the rabbi said: you are both right
And the Priest said... I think the rabbi's right... and the Minister said I think we're all right... and the Iman said only Allah is right.... Did I get that right?...
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 07/12/2019 6:15 PM DST
I believe that prevention and treatment are two very different animals.
PCa really wants sugar first to feed its explosive life before it moves to other energy sources. I'm going to continue to restrict sugar from my diet in HOPE of having some negative effect on MY PCa. There are studies and studies of studies, all good, but every factor has not been studied to the satisfaction of the community. Just saying I'm hedging all my bets.
2Dee
Most cells, cancerous and healthy, want sugar first - it's the easiest way of making energy. Prostate cancer seems to prefer fat to sugar, until later stages. As treatment, you may be better off restricting fats - even omega-3 fatty acids seem to encourage prostate cancer growth.
Interesting. My hippie doctor has me taking Omega-3. I’ll check your blog for evidence supporting what you wrote (I’m aware you simply said “seem to encourage”, but what the hell, I’m curious). I’m sure I’ll learn something regardless of whether I find anything.
Thanks.
- Bobby
Period.
youtube.com/watch?v=09R8_2n...
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 07/12/2019 6:24 PM DST
Thanks for posting this great video. Maroon 5 awesome!. I wonder if Adam Levine will ever get prostate cancer?
All of us here have already crossed the incidence threshold so incidence statistics are moot at this point.
Unfortunately, it's all the evidence we have so far. It may be 20 years before we have enough deaths to draw a conclusion.
If there exists a connection to being diagnosed or PCa progression to sugars, I submit it is because excessive ingestion of sugars can lead to and extend obesity.
One HFCS sweetened cola will have over 100 calories. Let’s say 100 calories. At one each day that would be 100 times 365 which equals 36,500 calories in a single year.
Assuming 3,000 excess calories from these only once per day colas, we divide 3,000 into 36,500 gives us approximately 12 gained pounds in a year. A mere 5 years adds 60 pounds of additional weight.
Obesity certainly is a major if not the most damning of health risks,,the stats in particular are vicious and incriminating when it comes to PCa risks.
So is it the sugars as the direct cause or is it the more subtle excess weight gain caused by the ingested excess calories?
Warren Buffett drinks 6 cans of Cherry Coke every day. He is neither overweight nor does he have prostate cancer. Of course, he might be an exception.
Umm- he did have prostate cancer.
Yep, I just verified that on the Internet. Something I never knew till now. Luckily for him it was localized prostate cancer and apparently he was given radiation for it.
This was in 2012. Wonder whether the PC gave him any problems later ??
Thanks for correcting me, Tall_Allen.
He was apparently low risk - he should have been on active surveillance. But I'm sure his investors preferred he get definitively treated.
I suggest some research comparing sucrose,,,so called refined unnatural sugar, mostly derived from sugar beets and cane.
Compare this to the so called healthy natural sugar,,,fructose,,,from fruits and many vegetables and of course in worst form when it comes to health,,,so called HFCS, high fructose corn syrup which is endemic in our food and drink supplies. By the way banned in many countries of the world,,,,but not here because of the corn lobby and its allies,,,think Coke and Pepsi for openers,,,just as with the insane ethanol lobby and their power in government.
In particular learn how fructose is processed by the body verses how sucrose is processed,,,completely different pathways once ingested. Oddly sucrose is a single molecule of glucose married to a single molecule of fructose. And yet fructose is highly indigestible in over 1/3rd of people and leads to disorders such as rampant obesity, irritable bowel disease(ibs) and a wealth of other disorders.
Unfortunately the path to body assimilation taken by fructose verses sucrose path,,,is a major root cause of fructose health issues.
I have been very much on top of this topic for some 40 years. It is only in the past 15 or few years that certain medical professionals have finally gotten a glimmer of a grasp of the impact of fructose in many deadly disorders.
Plug “fructose malabsorption” into google for a very rudimentary enlightenment on fructose.
Me,,,,I love my Diet Coke and iced teas with Nutrisweet as the sweetening agent.
Likely then you know of the devastating detrimental effects of how you body mishandled ingested fructose verses the somewhat it’s somewhat more benign dealing with sucrose.
Fructose does not signal the brain that the body has ingested a thousand calories of fructose so is best that you quit stuffing yourself, sucrose on the other hand does.
Any surprise that the incidence of obesity, diabetes, IBS has increased dramatically since the introduction of HFCS in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Look about you in any public place if you doubt this on obesity,,,then compare say to France where HFCS is not used as a sweetening agent. Even at Costco you can purchase Mexican Coca Cola at double the price of the American product. What’s the difference,,,Mexican sweetener is sucrose, American is HFCS.
HFCS is endemic in American foodstuffs,,,you mentioned being once employed by Heinz.
A number of years ago they ran an advertising campaign telling us that their catsup was the same recipe since their inception sometime about 1850,,,I am guessing here.
What they neglected to mention that their standard Heinz catsup has as a primary ingredient is HFCS that was not invented until the third quarter of so of the 20th century.
I do not doubt your claims at all, my point was and is when you say sugar is bad for your health,,,you must too understand that there is sugar as in sucrose which although not exactly healthy but far more benign and then there is fructose that can be particularly unhealthy. Somewhat akin to there is real butter and oleomargarine(anyone recall that), but as a kid it was all just butter.
Again if not for the corrupt bought and paid politicos paid off by the farm lobbyists,,,,it is likely that HFCS or corn syrup would never have seen the light of day in our food supply.
Oh yes,,,,honey considered an iconic healthy alternative,,,is almost 100 percent fructose.
Incidentally high fructose 55 and 44 are not diet sweeteners. They both have about the same calorie count as any other sweeteners designated somewhat incorrectly as sugar.
The check is in the mail
These discussions can be frustrating. Of course all of us would do whatever we could to minimize the chance of BCR or progression. However how we do this nutritionally is not clear. Should we eat meet, fruit, nuts, etc. Some say yes and others disagree. I wish there was clear information and guidelines directing us on what we can do nutritionally to stay healthy and minimize any chance of recurrence
So far there is no convincing information that anything you do nutritionally (and certainly not with supplements) has any impact on prostate cancer incidence, recurrence, or progression. There will never be perfectly clear info until there is a very large random clinical trial. In that trial, people would be forced to eat controlled meals and their health would be tracked over 20 years. This will never happen, obviously. The closest we can come is panel diaries like this one, a very expensive government project. (This is what the large food companies do.) So which info you believe should be based on an assessment of the quality of the study.
