Link between milk and prostate cancer

lola_run

I was just watching prime time doc on prostate cancer. Seems we've got a real problem with this in Ireland, possibly due to our consumption of milk. It's a pity that instead of looking at how to solve the problem, through screening, test, etc. not enough seems to be done to educate men about preventing the disease occurring in the first place. For example, a health warning should be carried on all milk and dairy products or GPs should tell male patients to limit their consumption of milk and other dairy products. Milk after all is not the best source of calcium. What do you think? Do any of you GPs out there educate your male patients about the risks of drinking milk?

After reading so many bad things about milk, I decided to drastically reduce milk in my diet. The proof that there is enough calcium in nuts, seeds and leafy green vegetables (also good sources of magnesium and selenium - vital minerals) is that in my last blood test my calcium levels were perfectly normal. :-) I now only use a small drop of milk in my tea.

Breast and prostate cancer is much less common in Asia, perhaps because they eat much less dairy products. Would be interesting if Prime Time compared statistics in different countries/regions of the world more don't you think? I mean comparing with the Uk and the US doesn't really help us that much to understand why it's a problem.

John

I've never heard that about milk before, does anyone know of any studies linking the two?

Jimoslimos

What???

Any links on this please? I think that the link (if any) is more due to increased fat intake, which is a factor in many tumours (especially colorectal), rather than milk being inherently bad for you.

lola_run

Jimoslimos wrote:

What???

Any links on this please? I think that the link (if any) is more due to increased fat intake, which is a factor in many tumours (especially colorectal), rather than milk being inherently bad for you.

Here are some interesting links to start with. It's quite a complicated topic, but the evidence is mounting. Eating things like broccoli and cauliflower can reduce the risks of prostate cancer. Meat is also dangerous, and should only be eaten max three times a week and always with vegetables.

http://chetday.com/prostatecancermilk.htm

http://www.drmirkin.com/men/8334.html (one of the largest studies ever done)

http://www.paho.org/English/CFNI/NassauDeclaration.pdf

http://www.cancerproject.org/survival/cancer_facts/prostate.php

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/bernard_milk_prostate_cancer.htm

http://dfwnetmall.com/veg/milkcancerprostate.htm

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/5/956

http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2137

http://www.cspinet.org/nah/07_01/

DrIndy

looking at the swedish trial, the data seems weak at best. This is the problem with epidemiological analysis of diet and other lifestyle factors. The people who have prostate cancer MAY drink more milk, but they may also be doing something else in conjunction which is the actual cause of the cancer, rather than the consumption of milk.

There are too many confounders and these have to be clearly excluded before drawing conclusions.

lola_run

DrIndy wrote:

looking at the swedish trial, the data seems weak at best. This is the problem with epidemiological analysis of diet and other lifestyle factors. The people who have prostate cancer MAY drink more milk, but they may also be doing something else in conjunction which is the actual cause of the cancer, rather than the consumption of milk.

There are too many confounders and these have to be clearly excluded before drawing conclusions.

And the Harvard study?

So many studies have been done that there has to be some truth in them, don't you think? The high levels of prostate cancer in the West must have something to do with our diet, no? In Asia, where they consume less dairy products this cancer is much less common.

If I was a man I'd stay on the safe side and avoid milk anyway! Prevention is better than cure! After all, we don't need milk as adults.

John

lola_run wrote:

The high levels of prostate cancer in the West must have something to do with our diet, no? In Asia, where they consume less dairy products this cancer is much less common.

But dairy products aren't the only difference between Asian diets and western ones. They could be eating something that we tend not to that helps protect against cancer (so they are just as much at risk at base levels but have something to push the odds in their favour). It's really impossible to say definitively. You'd have to find a group of people in the west who all come from the same background (so say of European descent) and who don't drink milk but keep all other aspects of their life the same as the people around them to see if there's an effect. Even then there's going to be many, many, many confounding variables.

DrIndy

There was an interesting paper from the swedish cancer cohort (a prospective population trial which was set up in sweden originally to track breast cancer, but has since been expanded).

They were able to definitively prove that pancreatic cancer rates were reduced in people who had a high intake of methionine in their diet.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17241865&dopt=AbstractPlus

But this is a single nutrient - to connect milk to prostate cancer is much more difficult as there are so many dietary components in milk. What if the rate is in fact caused by an environmental factor like pesticides that are being concentrated in milk? What if it is connected to the feed that western cows happen to receive?

We just don't know this as yet, hence lola, I state that it is too early to conclude something like this. Simply put, the jury is still out, but this opens an interesting avenue for investigation.

Jimoslimos

DrIndy wrote:

looking at the swedish trial, the data seems weak at best. This is the problem with epidemiological analysis of diet and other lifestyle factors. The people who have prostate cancer MAY drink more milk, but they may also be doing something else in conjunction which is the actual cause of the cancer, rather than the consumption of milk.

QFT! IMO this is the laziest type of science (and the easiest for the media to report on).

If you compare data from two distinct population sets (with several differing factors) you'll be reasonably confident that your statistical software will throw up a few interesting results. Fine, but if you want to make a claim, such as the link between prostate cancer and milk, than come up with a hypothesis and test it rigoursly before coming to any conclusions.

For example, an imaginary situation would be that lactose intolerant men were in some ways less susceptible to prostate cancer. Now since these people are less likely to drink milk, this may be hidden in the data and the incorrect conclusion reached would be that drinking milk increases prostate cancer.

bluerose

I haven't known that milk is connected with prostate cancer. Are you sure? Maybe the fat milk can be bad, but I don't see any connections...