[2559] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Fwd: *November 2003 issue of Dr. Greger's Newsletter*
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dilley@MIT.EDU)
Thu Nov 13 16:39:13 2003
From: dilley@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <1068759304.3fb3f9082dabb@webmail.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:35:04 -0500
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I thought many on this list might be interested in knowing about Dr. Michael
Greger's monthly newsletter. Below is the November 2003 issue.
laura
----- Forwarded message from "Michael Greger, M.D." <mhg1@cornell.edu> -----
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:34:19 -0800
From: "Michael Greger, M.D." <mhg1@cornell.edu>
Reply-To: "Michael Greger, M.D." <mhg1@cornell.edu>
Subject: *November 2003 issue of Dr. Greger's Newsletter*
To: michaelgregermd@optonline.net
<http://www.veganMD.org> **************************************
November 2003 issue of Dr. Michael Greger's Monthly Newsletter
*******************************************************
CONTENTS
I. Latest Updates in Human Nutrition
A. Soy Foods and Bone Health
B. Meat Molecule Builds Up in Human Tumors
C. Got Testicular Cancer? The Dairy Connection
D. Best to Keep Dead Birds Out of Your Kitchen
E. Long-term Multivitamin Use May Lower Colon Cancer Risk
F. Iodine Deficiency Reported in Vegetarians and Vegans
G. Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?
II. Top Mad Cow Disease Story of the Month
III. Personal Update -- Help! My car is totaled :(
IV. MAILBAG: "I'm a vegan and yes i suffer from GAS!!"
I. LATEST UPDATES IN HUMAN NUTRITION
-----------------------------------------------------------
A. Soy Foods and Bone Health
Wyeth pharmaceuticals, the marketer of Premarin hormone replacement
therapy, has been killing both women and
<http://www.equineadvocates.com/premarin.html>horses for over 50
years. Last Summer, the hormone replacement therapy arm of the
Women's Health initiative was stopped abruptly, years before it was
supposed to end, because there were so many more deaths in the
treatment group. Women taking the hormones had more heart attacks,
more strokes, more fatal blood clots, and more breast cancer than the
control group.
But the treatment group did have less hip fractures; the hormones did
seem to protect the womens' bones. A review published last month in
the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded, however,
that even for women at high risk for osteoporosis, the benefits of
drugs like Premarin do not outweigh the risk.[1] So what's a
postmenopausal woman to do? Soy.
A randomized double blind placebo controlled clinical trial (the
"gold standard" study design) just published showed that the
isoflavones in soy seem to protect menopausal women from bone loss
just as powerfully as hormone replacement therapy, but without the
side-effects.[2] So drinking the equivalent of about 2 cups of
soymilk a day, women can go through menopause with strong bones, and
without the cancer, heart disease, a stroke or two and blood clots in
the lung. And using soymilk instead of Premarin, your smoothies won't
taste like urine :)
-----------------------------------------------------------
B. Meat Molecule Builds Up in Human Tumors
For years there has been suspicion that components of meat and dairy
were absorbed whole through the human digestive tract, triggering
autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and childhood diabetes
as our bodies try to fight off these foreign substances. Last month,
researchers published new evidence that a substance found in lamb,
pork, beef and dairy can build up in human tissues and may contribute
to chronic disease.
If you take autopsy samples, you can find traces of a molecule called
NeuGc in human tissues, particularly in human tumors (especially
breast cancer). And you can find relatively high concentrations of
anti-NeuGc antibodies in human blood. This mystified researchers, as
human beings can not produce this substance. But other animals can.
Maybe, the researchers proposed, human beings absorbed it from eating
these other animals.
So the researchers went vegan for a few days to clear their system
(no animal-derived ingredients in foods or drugs or shampoo), and
then basically drank a glass of diluted pig mucous. Within days this
invading meat molecule could be found oozing from their bodies, in
their saliva, urine--even their hair clippings.
Maybe, the researchers speculate, this is why meateaters have such
higher rates of cancer and heart disease compared to vegetarians.
Yes, they acknowledge it could just be the saturated fat in meat and
dairy, but maybe it's also because of the incorporation of this
foreign substance found exclusively in animal products (plants don't
produce NeuGc either). The researchers found it particularly
interesting that vegetarian diets seem to improve rheumatoid
arthritis. Maybe this reactive alien molecule also triggers
autoimmune diseases like hepatitis and arthritis.
This article was published in the proceedings of the most prestigious
scientific body in the United States, the National Academy of
Sciences. The researchers end their provocative article wondering
what the long-term consequences might be of constantly challenging
our immune systems in this way, and what the long-range implications
are of having anti-Neu5Gc antibodies circulating throughout the
bodies of meateaters and milk-drinkers.{3]
-----------------------------------------------------------
C. Got Testicular Cancer? The Dairy Connection
Testicular cancer is the most rampant cancer among young men in North
America. The rates of testicular cancer have been steadily climbing
over the last fifty years, yet there's been little data on dietary
risk factors for this dreaded disease. A study published last month
in the International Journal of Cancer changed all that.
Last month, the biggest study on diet and testicular cancer ever
conducted was published, studying the diets of hundreds of cancer
victims. By far the strongest, most significant dietary risk factor
associated with the cancer was the consumption of cheese. Those men
that ate the most cheese were almost 90% more likely to develop
cancer of the testicles. The investigators guessed that it may be the
hormones in milk and dairy that were to blame. The second strongest
dietary risk factor seemed to be the consumption of lunch meat.[4]
-----------------------------------------------------------
D. Best to Keep Dead Birds Out of Your Kitchen
Normally I only discuss studies that were published within the last
month, but with the holidays coming up I wanted to share with you a
landmark article on food safety which was published earlier this year.
Knowing that poultry is the most common cause of food poisoning in
the home, researchers had 50 people take chicken straight from a
supermarket and prepare a meal with it as they normally would in
their own kitchen. The researchers then took samples from the kitchen
sponges, dishcloths, hand towels, etc and tested them for the
presence of diseases like campylobacter and salmonella.
And indeed they found a number of contaminated samples.
"Antibacterial" dishwashing liquid did not seem to offer any
protection. They conclude that "Pathogenic bacteria can be recovered
relatively frequently from the kitchen environment." Yet another
reason to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving.[5]
-----------------------------------------------------------
E. Long-term Multivitamin Use May Lower Colon Cancer Risk
Last month, a massive study of almost 150,000 people was published
and found that those who reported they regularly took multivitamin
supplements were less likely to be diagnosed a decade later with
colon cancer.[6] Breaking down the various nutrients, it's thought
that perhaps it was the increased calcium and vitamin D intake from
supplements that was responsible for the reduced risk.[7] Note that
dairy products were NOT found to be protective.
The Harvard School of Medicine recommends that everyone take a
multivitamin (containing vitamins B12, D, E, B6, and folate),
although the Institute of Medicine has not made such a
recommendation. If anyone isn't getting enough color or variety in
their diet (like at least DAILY dark leafy greens) a multivitamin may
be useful. I compare the pros and cons of all of the vegan
multivitamins currently on the market in a
<http://www.veganmd.org/writings.html>handout on my
<http://www.veganmd.org>website.
-----------------------------------------------------------
F. Iodine Deficiency Reported in Vegetarians and Vegans
Last month, yet another article appeared on iodine deficiency in
vegetarians and vegans [8]. Quoting from the paper: "One fourth of
the vegetarians and 80% of the vegans suffer from iodine
deficiency..." Only 9% of the meateaters were deficient. The milk
drinkers were protected in part because iodine containing
disinfectants are used to clean the milk processing equipment which
kind of leach into the milk. None of the vegetarians and vegans were
eating sea vegetables. And none were using iodized salt--they were
all using "natural" sea salt, which has significantly less iodine.
Iodine deficiency was actually a prevalent problem in the U.S. before
the iodization of salt became a common practice in the 1920's.[9]
So, vegetarians who don't eat sea vegetables or use iodized salt
should consider supplementing their diet with iodine. I don't
encourage people to add salt to their diet--it's not good for your
bones--but if you do use table salt, use iodized salt. For more
information, see the British Vegan Society's
<http://www.vegansociety.com/html/info/info56.htm>iodine page. The
best source, though, is sea vegetables (seaweed).
Sea vegetables have lots of B vitamins and lots of minerals,
particularly the trace minerals, like iodine. The only problem with
seaweed is that you can actually get too much iodine. The World
Health Organization places the safe upper limit of iodine intake at
1000 mcg per day. And it's less for kids-like 300 mcg may be too much
for a five year old. See my <>handout on nutrients for the amounts
found in common seaweeds.
-----------------------------------------------------------
G. Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?
"Raw foodist" lifestyle advocates tend to argue that cooking is
unnatural. They often argue that since we evolved eating raw foods
like the rest of the animal kingdom, we are better adapted to eat
that way. In a landmark article just published in the journal of
Comparative Biology and Physiology, however, two Harvard
anthropologists argue just the opposite.[10}
First, they note that other than the new deliberate "raw foodists,"
there do not seem to be any current or historical populations, small
groups or even individuals living for more than a few days without
access to cooked foods. Then they take on the belief that cooking is
a recent phenomenon for our species.
Mammalian species like ourselves can evolve adaptations in as few as
5000 years. Human beings have been cooking for at least 250,000
years, and maybe as long as 1.9 million years, long before we were
even Homo sapiens. They argue that not only have humans adapted to
eating cooked foods, they argue that human beings have adapted so
much that eating cooked food now seems obligatory for optimum health.
And indeed the medical literature backs them up.
The only study I know of 100% raw foodists followed for years was
published in 1999.[11] It showed that a third of the raw foodists
were suffering from Chronic Energy Deficiency. Many were just wasting
away. Most of the women suffered menstrual irregularities and half
of the women lost their menstrual periods altogether, which could
lead to devastating osteoporosis. And this was in modern urban people
with relatively low activity levels who had access to high-quality
high-calorie produce from around the world year-round. How might our
nontropical gatherer/hunter ancestors lived through a single winter
without cooking, especially with their extreme energy expenditure?
There have been major changes in our digestive biology over the past
few hundred thousand years, and the researchers argue that these
changes may have been due to the availability of cooked foods.
100,000 years ago, for example, the size of our jaws and molar teeth
started to shrink, perhaps as an adaptation to softer, easier-chewed
cooked foods. They also posit that perhaps other differences between
our digestive systems and those of the great apes may also have been
because of our adaptation to cooked foods--our smaller gut volume,
longer small intestine, smaller colon, and faster gut passage rate.
They conclude that while well-supported individuals in an urban
environment with a relatively sedentary lifestyle may be able to
thrive on a raw food diet, it is neither natural nor necessarily
desirable for optimal health.
*******************************************************
II. TOP MAD COW STORY OF THE MONTH
Every month I update the Organic Consumer Association's
<http://organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm>mad cow disease website. I
thought I'd start including highlights from each month for the
newsletter. For background on this critical issue, I encourage people
to read my paper
"<http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm>U.S. Violates WHO
Guidelines for Mad Cow Disease."
This last month, yet another case of mad cow disease was discovered
in Japan, but what makes this one so special is that the bull was
just a baby, only 23 months old. Since mad cow disease is almost
unheard of under 24 months of age, countries like Germany and the UK
don't even start testing their cattle until two years of age, and the
rest of Europe doesn't start testing until 30 months.
Japan remains the only country that tests every single animal that
enters the food chain, so they picked up what may turn out to be a
new strain of mad cow disease attacking younger cattle. This is
particularly troublesome as the U.S. is considering opening it's
borders to Canadian beef from cattle under 30 months of age, thinking
that this would protect the American public. But they may be
wrong.[12]
In other news, the Premier of Alberta, the Canadian Province in which
the mad cow disease was uncovered this year, took aim at the owner of
the now infamous mad cow at a meeting of U.S. governors. Any "self
respecting" rancher, he said, instead of taking the animal to
slaughter where it was discovered, would have "shot, shoveled and
shut up."[13]
And finally, vying for the number one mad cow disease story of the
month, Peter Putnam. Peter is dying from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in
Washington state. He is 35 years old. You can read about his family's
struggle <http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/putnam92203.cfm>here. On
autopsy the world will discover whether or not this is the first
domestic death from mad cow disease in the United States.[14]
*******************************************************
IV. PERSONAL UPDATE -- Help! My car is totaled :(
This has been a tough month. I hit the father of all potholes and
bent the chassis so bad that one of the wheels of my car is at such
an angle that it was pronounced unfixable. My mechanic told me the
best thing I could do was just junk it. :( So I'm stuck. I was
planning on resuming my speaking tour in January, but obviously I
can't without a car.
So, if anyone, anywhere, knows anybody with a car they want to get
rid of, I'm desperate. And not picky. While a relatively safe car
with decent gas mileage would be ideal, I've been driving an old
beater shooting for 200k miles with half the doors, windows and locks
broken--missing one window entirely, no radio, etc.--so almost
anything would be a step up.
And since I have pending 501c3 status, a donated car may be able to
used as a fully tax deductible donation. So please, if anyone can
help, I'd be forever grateful. And using my frequent flyer miles I
can fly one-way from New York anywhere to pick it up and drive it
back.
And I know miracles can happen. Last month I sent a shout out there
for an LCD projector to liven up my talks this coming year. And
Thomas Barnard, THE Dr. Thomas Barnard--physician, professor, author,
lecturer, radio host--donated to me his $3000 LCD projector!
People ask me how I do it. How I can keep going, doing 40 talks a
month, on the road full time most of the year. This is how. Because
of everyone's amazing support, not only materially and logistically,
but all the incredible vegan love coming my way. Thank you Tom.
Thank you everybody.
*******************************************************
V. MAILBAG: "I'm a vegan and yes I suffer from GAS!!"
I actually get asked that question rather frequently--in private.
Usually takes the form of woman asking me if I can do something about
her husbands gas. And meanwhile the poor guy is there, you know,
lookin' down at the floor. Perhaps it's time I clear the air :)
There was a review article published few years ago in the Quarterly
Journal of Medicine entitled: "Vegetarian Diet: Panacea for modern
lifestyle disease?" And of course the answer was yes, noting that
vegetarians had less obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart
disease, high cholesterol, cancer, kidney disease, maybe less stroke,
less age-related vision loss, less diverticulosis, less gallstone and
of course, less constipation. But after going through how
vegetarianism is this cure-all panacea, the article did say that
there were two drawbacks of a vegetarian diet--vitamin B12, we all
know we need to take our B12, and... increased intestinal gas. Hmm,
one one hand heart attacks, cancer, and strokes... or on the other,
flatulence. Hmm.
Let me start off by saying that intestinal gas is normal and healthy.
Everyone seems to think they have too much gas. According to the best
research, though, the average American passes gas 14 to 23 times a
day.
Now if you're thinking to yourself, who the heck funded this
research? You may be surprised that the real ground-breaking work in
this area was done by NASA in the 1950's. So this is your tax dollars
hard at work. :) They were actually really afraid that astronauts
would like suffocate on their own gas, or that some spark would
ignite the methane. I'm serious; so this is like space age research.
So anyway, the average person passes gas almost every hour. That's
the norm. It is rare that a person has too much gas. Of course, when
I gave this talk at the Vegetarian Summerfest conference last month,
I asked if anyone in the audience cared to venture a guess as to how
many times the average person passes gas every day. I was hoping
someone would say like 5, 10, and then I could wow them with "No, 14
to 23!" So of course what's the first guess? 200. So, OK, maybe some
people do have too much gas. :) For those wanting to cut down on
emissions, here are some tips.
Flatulence come from two places: swallowed air, and fermentation in
the bowel. Things that can cause you to swallow extra air include gum
chewing, ill-fitting dentures, sucking on hard candies, drinking
through a straw, eating too fast, talking while you eat, and
cigarette smoking. So if the fear of lung cancer doesn't get you to
quit smoking, maybe fear of farts will. :)
The main source of gas, though, is the normal bacterial fermentation
by bacteria in your colon of undigested sugars. Thanks to the poorly
digested sugar lactose, the number one source of farts in the United
States is dairy products. I don't know why that's not on any of the
got milk ads... They don't call it cutting the cheese for nothing. :)
In fact, in the medical literature the two most flatulent
patients--thunderously farting every ten minutes around the clock,
reportedly interfering with their sex lives--were both lactose
intolerant and were cured once dairy products were removed from their
diets. The actual Guinness book world record belongs to a guy named
Frank who drank a glass of milk then farted 70 times in 4 hours. Whew!
Other indigestible sugars include sorbitol and xylitol in sugar free
candies. The fizziness in soda is carbon dioxide which gets absorbed
by your gut, but the fructose in the high fructose corn syrup that
sweetens the soda, may contribute to gas. Bread can do it; there's a
sugar in wheat that the body can have a hard time digesting. In
fact, the word Pumpernickel in Old German--and I swear I'm not making
this up--means "goblin that breaks wind." :) The second leading
cause of gas, though, after dairy is sadly beans, which contain two
poorly digested sugars, raffinose and stachyose.
Now beans are so incredibly nutritious, that you should experiment
with ways to keep them in your diet at all costs. Lentils, split
peas and canned beans tend to be less gas producing. Tofu usually
isn't an offender. Repeated soakings of dried beans, and tossing the
cooking water may help if you boil your own.
Some of the gas associated with eating beans or other healthy foods,
is simply due to an increase in fiber. To help your body adapt, you
can increase your fiber slowly. Within two weeks your body should
adapt and the gas problem should diminish.
In terms of things you can take, there is a vegetarian Beano out
there, that contains enzymes which break up those musical bean
sugars, called
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22say+yes+to+beans%22>Say
Yes to Beans! The Beano product itself contains fish gelatin.
If you're going to be stuck on like a nine hour flight or something
and need a windbreaker, pepto bismol and generic equivalents can bind
up the sulfur in your gut and eliminate odors, but this is a short
term solution only. It should not be taken for more than a few days
at a time; you can actually get bismuth toxicity.
There's also an activated charcoal-lined cushion you can sit on to
absorb the smell for like long plane trips or something. It's called,
and again I just couldn't make this stuff up, the "Toot Trapper." :)
In fact because people kept thinking the product was a joke, the
company actually was forced to change the name. It is now the
Flatulence Filter.
For natural solutions, there's peppermint, which can aid digestion,
relax smooth muscles, help with any cramping or bloating. Exercise
helps your body absorb gas, so less comes out in the end. If you
really have gas pains or something there's a position we use in the
hospital to release trapped gas. Basically it uses the principle
that gas rises, so if you kneel down on your knees and elbows, head
down with your butt in the air, and stay there for 10 minutes things
will start to move.
But to reiterate, intestinal gas is normal and healthy. As a medical
review article on the various methods to control flatulence
concluded, "Perhaps increased tolerance of flatus would be a better
solution, for we tamper with harmless natural phenomena at our
peril." In fact these sugars in beans that don't get digested--and so
make it down to our colon--feed out good bacteria. So they function
as prebiotics and make for a healthier colon. So, every time you
fart, think "happy bacteria!" :)
*******************************************************
REFERENCES
[1] Journal of the American Medical Association 290(2003):1729.
[2] Nutrition reviews 61(2003):346.
[3] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(2003):12045.
[4] International Journal of Cancer 106(2003):934.
[5] Journal of Applied Microbiology 94(2003):842.
[6] American Journal of Epidemiology 158(2003):621.
[7] Cancer Causes Control 14(2003):1.
[8] Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 47(2003):183
[9] Journal of the American Dietetics Association 79(1981):17.
[10] Comparative Biology and Physiology 136(2003):35.
[11] Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 43(1999):69.
[12] October 8, 2003 Financial Times (London, England)
[13] September 17, 2003 Winnipeg Sun (Manitoba, Canada)
[14] September 22, 2003 Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA)
If anyone missed previous months, I've revamped my newsletter
<http://www.veganmd.org/newsletters.html>archive.
Until next month,
love,
Michael
--
(206) 312-8640
mhg1@cornell.edu
http://www.veganMD.org
Check out my new cooking show DVD at :
http://www.veganmd.org/dvd.html
Four of my most popular talks are now online (free) at:
http://www.veganmd.org/talks/
To subscribe to my free monthly email newsletter send a blank email to:
mailto:drgregersnewsletter-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
HEART FAILURE: Diary of a Third Year Medical Student (Full text now
available free):
http://www.upalumni.org/medschool
The thinker that most changed my life: Noam Chomsky
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
The single article that most changed my life:
http://www.petersingerlinks.com/famine.htm
Please everyone donate money to Tribe of Heart
http://www.tribeofheart.org/jointoh.htm
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