A study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that total calcium intake is related to the development of cancer, especially in women. They followed an elderly population for years and determined their total intake of calcium from their diet and supplementation. Among women, the overall cancer risk of cancer decreased as the total intake of calcium increased up to 1300 mg/day. Gastrointestinal cancers decreased in both men and women who had the highest intake of calcium. Women saw a decrease of 23% and men a decrease of 16% of gastrointestinal cancers. The risk was especially low for colorectal cancers.
Higher Vitamin D levels are Associated with Better Outcomes in Prostate Cancer Patients
There was a recent study published in the February, 2009 edition of the British Journal of Cancer that investigated vitamin D levels in prostate cancer patients. They found that prostate cancer patients that had a medium-high level of vitamin D (20 to 32 ng/ml) had a 66% increase in survival rate and those who had a high level of vitamin D (greater than 32 ng/ml) had an 80% increase in survival compared to those with a low level of vitamin D (less than 20 ng/ml).
This is a pretty amazing study when you realize that I recommend that you should have at least a vitamin D level over 50 ng/ml and ideally over 60 ng/ml. This is just another good reason to be sure that your vitamin D levels are optimal. Obviously, if you have recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, you should get your vitamin D levels checked right away.
From Dr. Ray Strands – Health Nuggets
Diet high in omega-3 fatty acids offers protection against advanced prostate cancer
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A diet high in omega-3 fatty acids offers protection against advanced prostate cancer, even in men who carry a particular variant in the COX-2 gene that is known to raise the risk of the disease.
“Previous research has shown protection (by omega-3 fatty acids) against prostate cancer, but this is one of the first studies to show protection against advanced prostate cancer and interaction with COX-2,” Dr. John S. Witte of the University of California, San Francisco noted in a statement from the American Association for Cancer Research.
Witte and colleagues studied 466 men diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and 478 healthy matched controls. They assessed diet using a “food frequency” questionnaire and genotyped the men for nine COX-2 variants.
The researchers report in the journal Clinical Cancer Research that increasing intake of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids — the kind found in dark fish, like salmon, and shellfish — was strongly associated with a decreased risk of aggressive prostate cancer.
Men who consumed the most long-chain omega-3 fatty acids had a 63 percent reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer compared to men who consumed the least.
“Importantly,” Witte and colleagues say, this protective effect was even stronger in men who carried the COX-2 variant, rs4647310, which is a risk factor for prostate cancer.
Specifically, men with low intake of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and this particular variant had a more than fivefold increased risk of advanced prostate cancer. But men with high intake of omega-3 fatty acids had a substantially reduced risk, even if they carried the COX-2 rs4647310 variant.
In other words, the increased risk of prostate cancer associated with the COX-2 rs4647310 variant was “essentially reversed by increasing omega-3 fatty acid intake by a half a gram per day,” Witte said.
“If you want to think of the overall inverse association in terms of fish, where omega-3 fatty acids are commonly derived, the strongest effect was seen from eating dark fish such as salmon one or more times per week,” he added.
SOURCE: Clinical Cancer Research, online March 24, 2009.
The Truth about a recent study about MultiVitamins and Cancer & Heart Disease
by Joan E. Baumann, NutriSeach
MULTIVITAMINS CONSIDERED USELESS IN PREVENTION OF CANCER OR HEART DISEASE
Dramatic, misleading headlines such as the one above are so frequently picked up and run by the press.
I decided to check out the source in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
At the bottom of the abstract there was a clinical trials Identifier Number: Trial Registration Number NCT0000611.
The identifying number gave a clearer picture of the criteria. Here is what the Government Trials website stated as to eligibility:
Eligibility
Ages Eligible for Study: 50 Years to 79 Years
Genders Eligible for Study: Female
Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
Criteria
Postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79.
The Trial Criteria allowed for Postmenopausal Women Ages 50 – 79 BUT excluded healthy volunteers! http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00000611/
The women were asked if they took multivitamins, and a detailed record of their vitamin of choice was kept. The Data regarding their vitamin use was accepted even if they took their multivitamin as infrequently as once a week!
SomeBIG IFSbecame apparent: if they took one of the heavier advertised brands, with their minimal amounts of basic nutrients,if their vitamin contained nutrients that were not optimal in quality, such as synthetic vitamin E instead of the natural form,if it contained very low levels of vitamin C,if it did not include nutrients such as inositol, choline, alpha lipoic acid, quercetin, flavonoids, n-acetyl L-cysteine, coenzymeQ10, beta-carotene instead of vitamin A, optimal levels of Folic Acid ……..then one would expect the outcome the study announced. Too many IFS! There was no apparent baseline for either levels or quality of nutrients.
Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D., vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Natural Products Association, a non-profit organization, had a few interesting comments on the study.
Fabricant said it is “unprincipled” that the authors arbitrarily lumped supplement types into generalized categories that do not represent nutrient intake accurately. And when coupled with the fact that nutrient intake through the diet was not accounted for, Fabricant explained, the study has no means of establishing a baseline for which to draw any comparisons or eliminate bias.
He further stated: “ Taken as whole, the research on dietary supplements in the prevention of chronic diseases, is strong and consistent. To suggest that taking vitamins and minerals with a demonstrated health benefit is unnecessary sends the wrong public health message.”
There are literally thousands of research studies which have shown the benefits of many nutrients, from food and/or supplements. To ignore such a large body of research and depend solely upon our food supply to provide the level of nutrition that can keep us healthy makes absolutely no sense.
We can trust in the science and integrity of a company like Usana; the longer we maintain the health of our cells on a regular basis, the greater the benefit as we age.
In health,
Joan E. Baumann
Thank you Joan for this excellent replay to a headline which received too much press. We must realize that there are many companies who want to keep these sorts of headlines in front of the public. There are thousands of medical studies which show that optimal levels of high quality nutritional supplements can have a tremendous impact on preventing or reversing almost every degenerative disease. If this were brought to the public’s attention it could cost big pharmaceutical companies billions and billions of dollars. Yet headlines such as this help insure big pharma’s monoply of our medical system.
NutriSearch has evaluated over 1,500 different multivitamins available in the US and Canada. Usana Health Sciences has received their top rating for for the past 9 years.