Does cows milk increase prostate cancer risk?

[Break60]

See attached:

nutritionfacts.org/video/th...

[Tall_Allen]

Estrogen is effective against prostate cancer. In fact, it was the first PC drug. A recent study found that "Total dairy product consumption was not statistically significantly associated with risk of any prostate cancer or stratified by disease severity. " This was from a prospective study (PLCO) among 49,472 men with follow-up of 11 years. They filled out food diaries at the start.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

Be wary of videos on the internet.

[Break60 in reply to Tall_Allen]

TA

Glad to hear but I’ve switched to a fish and plant based diet for two reasons: Lose weight and healthier

Bob

[timotur]

Since PCa dx, I dropped milk altogether from formerly drinking 1.5 gallons/wk, because it appears casein, the main protein in milk is associated with PCa progression:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/252...

Abstract

PURPOSE:

Despite most epidemiologic studies reporting that an increase in milk intake affects the growth of prostate cancer, the results of experimental studies are not consistent. In this study, we investigated the proliferation of prostate cancer cells treated with casein, the main protein in milk.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Prostate cancer cells (LNCaP and PC3), lung cancer cells (A459), stomach cancer cells (SNU484), breast cancer cells (MCF7), immortalized human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293), and immortalized normal prostate cells (RWPE1) were treated with either 0.1 or 1 mg/mL of α-casein and total casein extracted from bovine milk. Treatments were carried out in serum-free media for 72 hours. The proliferation of each cell line was evaluated by an 3-(4,5-Dimethyl-thiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay.

RESULTS:

α-Casein and total casein did not affect the proliferations of RWPE1, HEK293, A459, SNU484, MCF7, HEK293, or RWPE1 cells. However, PC3 cells treated with 1 mg/mL of α-casein and casein showed increased proliferation (228% and 166%, respectively), and the proliferation of LNCaP cells was also enhanced by 134% and 142%, respectively. The proliferation mechanism of α-casein in PC3 and LNCaP cells did not appear to be related to the induction of Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), since the level of IGF-1 did not change upon the supplementation of casein.

CONCLUSIONS:

The milk protein, casein, promotes the proliferation of prostate cancer cells such as PC3 and LNCaP.

[LearnAll]

I.3 billion Indians drink milk, eat yogurt and sweets made from Milk almost every day.

They put milk in their tea. Every household wakes up every day to Milk Tea called "chai".

Same is the case with other southeast Asian countries. They all use many milk products.

If Cow's Milk caused prostate cancer , probably hundreds of millions of Indians would have been diagnosed with Prostate cancer.

But, prostate cancer prevalence in India is much lower than western countries

However, too much Milk drinking provides too many calories and may cause obesity and its consequences such as hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, strokes and arthritis.

[jmurgia in reply to LearnAll]

Does the milk in India have IGF-1 in it?

[LearnAll in reply to jmurgia]

Hard to say. As far as I know, people have cows in their yard and feed them grass and boiled lentils.

Use of hormones is not possible because these families own their cows and they do

not have knowledge about high tech foods and milk enhancing supplements.

[MrMcM in reply to LearnAll]

People in India had a lot of vegetables and spices in their diet,with little meat-as well as the clarified butter (Ghee)

[LearnAll in reply to MrMcM]

Eating a lot of vegetables and spices and being in Sunlight and lot of walking every day are some possible factors of lower prostate cancer rates in India compared to western countries. African Americans have the highest rates but Africans living in Africa have much lower rates..again a food and life style factor.

[snoraste]

It's a hard premise to "prove". There are observational/prospective studies on both side of the dairy (using it as a proxy for milk) question, but there are just too many variables to control for, that lead to all sorts of biases, misclassification, and measurement errors. It becomes a personal choice. I stopped eating dairies and have become a pesectarian based on my personal experiences, and my personal read of the papers. I will not preach that it causes/promotes cancer, but I will also disagree with whoever says that it's perfectly safe.

[AlanMeyer]

One of the psychological factors in dealing with cancer is a feeling of helplessness. We want things to do that can contribute to fighting the cancer so we're not just at the mercy of the doctors' treatments. I think good diet, weight control, exercise, and some supplements can be of some help.

I don't know whether giving up dairy products will help or not. I haven't done it myself.

Here is the National Cancer Institute's web page on "Prostate Cancer, Nutrition and Dietary Supplements": cancer.gov/about-cancer/tre... For more technical detail, click on the link at the top to go to the "Health Professional" version. If you search it for "dairy" you'll see some discussion of it, mostly with regard to the calcium in milk. There's interesting stuff in the document on many dietary issues, not just dairy.

Alan

[Graham49 in reply to AlanMeyer]

Alan, there does not seem to be much happening with regard to the NCI and complementary medicine even though each year there are a many studies (albeit mostly in-vitro and mouse studies) reporting promising results that need further investigation. I wonder if this is the influence of big pharma?

[AlanMeyer in reply to Graham49]

I don't think it is the influence of big pharma.

I worked for 26 years at NCI. I'll make a separate post on this issue to explain to everyone what NCI does.

Alan

[AlanMeyer in reply to Graham49]

I spoke to one of my old colleagues at NCI about your question regarding the influence of big pharma in the NCI reporting. She told me that all of the members of the NCI editorial boards, the doctors and scientists that write the NCI public statements, are required to sign a conflict of interest statement.

I think this is pretty common now. More than 20 years ago when I was working at the National Institutes of Health, the director of one of the institutes was fired because he had a conflict of interest. When I worked as a "consumer reviewer" on scientific review boards for the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program, I and every member of the panel, was required to sign a conflict of interest statement. If there was any conflict of interest regarding any proposal, I would have been required to say so, to excuse myself from the room where the discussion would occur, and speak to no one about the proposal before or after the review.

I think that at both NIH and DoD, conflicts of interest are not tolerated.

Alan

[pjoshea13]

Why injest a food that comes with a growth hormone? In fact, IGF-I is separately implicated in PCa risk & progression.

(1998) [1]: "IGFs are potent mitogens for prostate epithelial cells"

-Patrick

[1] cancerres.aacrjournals.org/...

[jmurgia in reply to pjoshea13]

I drank a quart of milk a day for 50 years before diagnosis. I'm sure it's the IGF-1 that got me. I am unanimous on that.

[monte1111 in reply to jmurgia]

I did not drink a quart of milk a day for 50 years before diagnosis. Something got me. I am unanimous on that. Enjoy.

[AlanMeyer in reply to jmurgia]

Some kinds of cancer have clearer causes than others. Skin cancer is strongly associated with overexposure to the sun. Lung cancer is strongly associated with smoking. But so far, no strong association has been found between prostate cancer and any obvious cause. One study I read by a nutritionist (I can't remember his name), found that patients who ate a lot of dairy products had, on average, a 6% faster growth of PSA. It was enough to be considered significant, but was it the cause of their cancer?

I have seen men post in forums like this to say that they had been vegetarians or vegans, sometimes for decades, before their diagnosis with PCa. So maybe diary and/or IGF-1 was a factor in your developing cancer, but I bet it wasn't the only one.

Of course there's no way for me to prove that I'm right either.

Alan

[Break60 in reply to pjoshea13]

Good point. Why hasn’t that come up publicly ( the Dairy Lobby, the beef lobby etc.?) I recently stopped eating hormone based foods but I do take hormones in the form of estradiol patches.

Bob

[Gemlin_]

Early-life milk intake may have a role in the development of prostate cancer, particularly around puberty when the prostate grows and matures. Why would stopping drinking milk in late-life make a difference if you already have cancer?

From a Scandinavian study: academic.oup.com/aje/articl...

Frequent milk intake at ages 14–19 years was associated with a 3-fold elevation in risk for advanced prostate cancer. These findings highlight the potential role of early-life diet in prostate cancer risk and are consistent with migrant studies showing that it takes at least 1 generation for migrants to incur the prostate cancer risk of the host country.

[dadzone43]

If you want another thing to worry about, worry about it. There are estrogens in many foods. There are many other things I can focus on to fight off the beast. Milk for me is not one of them.

[AlanMeyer]

I'll add a bit to what I said above.

I found the following sentence in the NCI web page on prevention of prostate cancer. It includes this sentence: "A diet high in dairy foods and calcium may cause a small increase in the risk of prostate cancer."

See: cancer.gov/types/prostate/p...

Here's the technical explanation of this taken from the "Health Professional" version of the above document:

"A meta-analysis of ten cohort studies (eight from the United States and two from Europe), concluded that men with the highest intake of dairy products (relative risk [RR], 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.00–1.22; P = .04) and calcium (RR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.09–1.77; P = .18) were more likely to develop prostate cancer than men with the lowest intake. The pooled RRs of advanced prostate cancer were 1.33 (95% CI, 1.00–1.78; P = .055) for the highest versus lowest intake categories of dairy products and 1.46 (95% CI, 0.65–3.25; P > .2) for the highest versus lowest intake categories of calcium. High intake of dairy products and calcium may be associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer although the increase may be small.[47]"

The NCI document is here: cancer.gov/types/prostate/h...

And the citation cited above [47] is here:

Gao X, LaValley MP, Tucker KL: Prospective studies of dairy product and calcium intakes and prostate cancer risk: a meta-analysis. J Natl Cancer Inst 97 (23): 1768-77, 2005.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/163...

Should you avoid dairy products? I don't because I like them a lot, the danger appears to be small, my treatment appears to have been successful and I expect to die from something other than PCa. Also, I note that the article is about prevention of prostate cancer not progression or treatment. We don't know how much danger they present to men who already have PCa. If milk, cheese, ice cream, and so on aren't important to you, and/or if you're just as happy with alternatives made from plants (soy milk, almond milk, etc.) it might be safer to avoid dairy.

But, who knows? As with so much in medicine in general and cancer in particular, evidence is based more on observation and statistics than clear biochemistry and molecular biology.

Alan

[j-o-h-n]

Give me a Break....

Chocolate Chip ice cream (two scoops)....Three if no one's watching....

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Thursday 09/26/2019 6:32 PM DST

[monte1111 in reply to j-o-h-n]

Have you hear what chocolate chips do to you? OMG.

[j-o-h-n in reply to monte1111]

They make you Twerk....

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Thursday 09/26/2019 8:54 PM DST