Sugar and Cancer

Gear said...
...They pointed out, however, that the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear....

This thread is going ok, hoping we can disagree without being disagreeable!

Gear, what you said right there is one of the most classic issues with so much that's published.

Take this to the bank: "Correlation without causality is meaningless." Period. Full stop. Read no further.

Association - I got up this morning, then the sun rose. In fact, this happens every day.

The wrong-headed will publish: "We've discovered a strong association with the sun rising. There's a guy in Michigan who gets up every morning, and then the sun rises. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear."

If you can't determine causality, the association, the correlation, is meaningless.

I think a healthy diet involves eating a diet that is low in processed food. Sugar is a processed food derived by taking healthy foods and processing the sugar out of them. The amount of sugar we consume is now enormous compared to the early 1900s and sugar is added to all types of products.

I don't think you have to avoid the odd desert but if you have health issues it makes sense to eat the most healthy diet possible so it likely is a good idea to limit processed sugar consumption.

I love to eat sugar, i mean something like sweets, but i slowly change it to fruits that have sweets tastes also. I do believe that, cancer is due to genetics and family background also. Sugar is needed for our body to operate and the cell to work. but if it is also specifically trigger the cancer cell, it is very hard to avoid sugar in daily life

Another great researcher with prostate cancer relevance is Dr. Charles Snuffy Myers. Most if us know him as a medical oncologist that only does advanced stage prostate cancer work. For some 30 years he was a researcher at NIH, NCI, and the University of Virginia.

Among his success include developing AZT which was a breakthrough treatment for HIV-AIDS. He also developed drug therapies for prostate, cervical, and breast cancers.

In his research he found that arichidonic acid is converted to the hormone 5-HETE and fosters the progression of prostate and breast cancers. This fatty acid is found in land animals and poultry fat.

Thus his advice is to avoid it by greatly reducing animal fat, poultry skin and fat, dairy and eggs. This is in line with many other studies linking fatty diet with increased incidence of breat and prostate cancer.

So diet is important but for us fat is more the probable culprit than sugar as TA has aptly reported. By all means reduce sugar and other processed foods for better health.

And as to taking the word of a Nobel prize winner as gospel.....I am sure that 99.9999% of the great work in science and medicine is performed by people that have never even been considered for such an award.

As a general rule, sugar is bad. Enough evidence now implicating it to heart disease, cancer, etc. to take action.

All should strive to reduce as much as possible. And to those who think because they are not adding sugar to their coffee or eating deserts they are not getting much sugar, they need to evaluate processed/packaged foods in their diet to see how they may still be getting sugar.

X2 re JNF's warning on simple carbs.

And refined sugar is evil, per InTheShop. But unrefined sugar such as in honey, maple or agave syrup, etc. should also be used in great moderation. Even fruit, which has its place in a good diet, should not be unlimited. Fruit juice - juice without the fiber - is not great. Higher glycemic response as juice than as whole fruit.

..and , if you are into this poison sugar theory and believe it you do have to limit your intake of fruit..although no one want to say it. Whole grain, leafy veggies and oily fish..that's it.

<< Insulin receptor expression by human prostate cancers. Cox, Gleave, Zakikhani, Bell, et. al

Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Although recent laboratory and population studies suggest that prostate cancer may be responsive to insulin, there is a gap in knowledge concerning the expression of insulin receptors on benign or malignant prostate tissue.

METHODS:
We immunostained 644 cores on tissue microarrays prepared from 29 prostate tissue samples without malignancies, 78 Gleason grade 3 cancers, 21 Gleason grade 4 cancers and 33 Gleason grade 5 cancers with antibodies against the insulin-like growth factor I receptor and the insulin receptor.

RESULTS:
We observed immunoreactivity with both antibodies, which implies the presence of hybrid receptors as well as IGF-I receptors and insulin receptors. Insulin receptor staining intensity was significantly (P < 0.001) higher on malignant than benign prostate epithelial cells. Analysis of information from public gene expression databases confirmed that co-expression of insulin receptor mRNA and IGF-I receptor mRNA is common in prostate cancer specimens. RT-PCR methods provided evidence for the presence of mRNA for both IR-A and IR-B insulin receptor isoforms.

CONCLUSION:
These observations document the presence of insulin receptors on primary human prostate cancers. The findings are relevant not only to ongoing clinical trials of drug candidates that target IGF-I and/or insulin receptors, but also to the hypothesis that obesity-associated hyperinsulinemia mediates the adverse effect of obesity on prostate cancer prognosis. >>


So, insulin receptors are overexpressed in cancer cells. Insulin regulates glucose uptake. Thus, sugar spikes results in insulin spikes, and thereby feeds prostate cancer cells disproportionately.

Cashless

Allen, no argument from me. We are taking two different approaches to this.

You are looking at it from a rigorous science viewpoint, while I'm trying to
postpone further treatment through diet and exercise. You are more effective
in your approach due to significant medical knowledge. I'm more effective
in my approach because:
1. my prostate out
2. my PC has returned
3. I'm very disciplined in my diet and exercised
4. I'm getting an ultrasensitive PSA test every 2 months.

In other words, I'm a walking laboratory. I may not know why, but I do know
that when I minimize sugar/fast carb intake, exercise and stay on a vegan
plus seafood diet, my PSADT goes from 6-7 months to 3 to 6 years.

Cashless

As has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, science and especially medical science, is complex...

InTheShop said...
most cancer is caused by eating.

just stop eating and all cancer goes away.

I figure you said that at least partly tongue in cheek. But I will respond as though it was serious. When our 40 year old step daughter - and mother of 11 and 14 year old boys- got Mesothelioma a couple of years back, she had already almost stopped eating for about a year before diagnosis. She had one of the those gastric sleeve surgeries for obesity. And she ate almost nothing for a year and the weight just fell off. Then when she had lost more weight than anyone wanted her to, she still didn't eat despite our begging, and became emaciated. BTW, even though what little she was eating was balanced, I figured she was in ketosis due to eating such a small amount of carbs(also small amount of protein and fat) and the fact that she was never hungry. I got her to test for ketones in her urine, and sure enough, she was.

Once she was diagnosed, she ate- if possible- even less. She had gone from well over 200 to about 120 in the 15 months leading up to diagnosis. But even very low carbs and fat, ketosis and calorie restriction did not keep that cancer from viciously killing her about 6 months after diagnosis, about 21 months after her obesity surgery. ( her diagnosis was a few months after my PC surgery). She was maybe 80 lbs by the time she died.

So though I find low sugar, or ketogenic or even low fat diets vs cancer all very interesting subjects and feel they all show some promise, I have to admit that while that was happening I was thinking it was all worthless, at least in her pitiful case. And in fact, considering that many cancer patients waste away ( cachexia ), and in fact it is that cachexia that actually seems to be the cause of, or at least a big big factor in, their death, that makes me wonder about diet vs all cancers. Aren't most cancer patients kind of automatically/involuntarily being treated with calorie restriction, which also means low carb/sugar ( and low everything). which are also ketogenic diets, at least until they run out of fat to burn? It does sometimes make me wonder.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 1/17/2017 9:28:44 PM (GMT-7)

BillyBob, these are the hormonal cancers.

The effects of estrogen in women and testosterone in men play a similar role in these cancers and there is much evidence that some of the same lifestyle factors will increase incidence, such as a more fatty land animal based diet. Incidence of both cancers is lower in the far east (China, Korea, Japan) than the west (Europe, North America) where we consume far more dairy and land animal meat and far less leafy vegetables, soy and seafood than those areas do.

Hormonal based treatment regimes also have a marked effect on these cancers. Think about reducing testosterone (ADT a common treatment method) to starve PCa and the effects of estrogen replacement therapy (which is now rarely done) that caused a lot of post-menopausal BCa.

I have been low carb for bout 18 months now, lost about 25 pounds, fairly quickly, then about 3 months ago, started eating sloppy again, due to stress, and gained back 15. I was able to right the ship and have lost bout 5 of it, being back on low carb. (Wouldn't call it ketogenic, about 50 grams NET carbs a day)

But I did it more for heart issues, than for cancer issues

When I started this thread, I mentioned that the links I provided were from not her forum , cancer but not prostate. Here's a post that showed up today in that forum, in that thread, that makes me wonder if the whole diet thing is a load of crap....I know it's probably not. But seeing stuff like this is very frustrating. There is no one answer for all people.

"my husband drinks 2 liters of coke a day, eats lays chips for lunch, only coffee for breakfast, not active at all. only eats once a day (diner) also a heavy smoker, has been doing this for as long as we are married, 37 years this june. I am the complete opposite of him and iam the one the got the cancer, what the heck!!! this past year I been having a few sweets a sip of coke here and there, not excercised at all. I figured if I got cancer regardless of my clean eating, then might as well enjoy. he was 22 when we got married, his mom told me he was always like this.. picky eater. no caring for his health..etc.'