AR-News: *December 2003 issue of Dr. Greger's Newsletter*

[Michael Greger, M.D.]

<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 at cornell.edu
http://www.veganMD.org

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