- Note - Robert Cohen of NotMilk.com has been pointing
to the hormone IGF-1 in milk
- and dairy products as being 'fuel' for cancer cells.
This new documentation backs his
- contention. Enjoy that milk moustache...and remember
each glass of milk contains
- 59 different hormones which interact/interfere with the
human body. -ed
-
-
- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pregnancy
may lower a woman's risk of cancer but drinking milk could raise it, researchers
reported on Tuesday.
-
- Both factors, as well as the use of hormone replacement
therapy, affect levels of a hormone that may influence the development
of some cancers, a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical
School in Boston found.
-
- The finding could explain why women who have had children
have a lower risk of cancer -- something doctors have noticed but been
unable to explain, Dr. Michelle Holmes, who led the study, said.
-
- Pregnancy, HRT use and milk drinking all affect levels
of insulin-like growth factor 1 or IGF-1, a hormone linked to an increased
risk of cancer, Holmes and colleagues report in the journal Cancer Epidemiology
Biomarkers & Prevention, which is published by the American Association
for Cancer Research.
-
- "This is the first study to report that the more
pregnancies a women had, the lower was her blood level of IGF-1,"
Holmes said.
-
- "Pregnancy is known to protect against several cancers
such as breast and colon cancer. It is possible that the mechanism of this
protection could be through lowering IGF-1 levels."
-
- Women who had four or more pregnancies had IGF-1 levels
that were on average 15 percent lower than in women who had never been
pregnant, the researchers found.
-
- Using data from a large, long-term study of more than
1,000 nurses who record their diets carefully and who are then watched
for changes in health, Holmes' team also found that those who drank the
most milk had higher levels of IGF-1.
-
- IGF-1 is important to the growth and function of many
organs, but higher levels have been associated with an increased risk of
prostate, colon, lung and breast cancer.
-
- "We concluded that greater milk consumption was
associated with higher levels of IGF-1," said Holmes. "This association
raises the possibility that diet could increase cancer risk by increasing
levels of IGF-1 in the blood stream. However, more research must be done
to determine whether milk consumption itself is directly linked to cancer
risk."
-
- The role of HRT and cancer is less clear -- it can raise
the risk of breast cancer, for instance. But Holmes's team found that women
who were taking estrogen after menopause had the lowest levels of IGF-1,
followed by women using oral estrogen plus progesterone.
-
- This may explain why HRT reduces the risk of colon cancer,
Holmes said.
-
- Now more research needs to be done to find out why this
does not counteract the effect of HRT on breast cancer, Holmes said.
-
-
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