Coffee and Prostate Cancer

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees in over 70 countries, cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Findings have historically been contradictory as to whether coffee has any specific health benefits, and results are similarly conflicting regarding the potentially harmful effects of coffee consumption. Men who regularly drink coffee appear to have a lower risk of developing a lethal form of prostate cancer, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers.  The lower risk was evident among men who drank regular or decafffeinated coffe.

Coffee contains several compounds which are known to affect human body chemistry. The coffee bean itself contains chemicals which are mild psychotropics for humans. These chemicals are toxic in large doses, or even in their normal amount when consumed by many creatures which may otherwise have threatened the beans in the wild. Coffee contains caffeine, which acts as a stimulant.


Several benefits have been proposed or identified such as:

-Reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and Dementia

-Reduced risk of gallstone disease

-Reduced risk of Parkinson disease

-Improved short term recall

-Analgesic (Painkiller)enhancement

-Liver protection

-Reduced cancer risk

-Moderate reduction of the incidence of dying from cardiovascular disease

-Antioxidant; Coffee contains the anticancer compound methylpyridinium. This compound is not present in significant amounts in other food materials.

However, there are some potential risks.

Over 1,000 chemicals have been reported in roasted coffee, and 19 are known rodent carcinogens; however, most substances cited as rodent carcinogens occur naturally and should not be assumed to be carcinogenic in humans at exposure levels typically experienced in day-to-day life.

Coffee can damage the lining of the gastrointestinal organs, causing gastritis and ulcers. The consumption of coffee is therefore not recommended for people with gastritis, colitis, and ulcers.

Many coffee drinkers are familiar with "coffee jitters", a nervous condition that occurs when one has had too much caffeine. It can also cause anxiety and irritability, in some with excessive coffee consumption, and some as a withdrawal symptom. Coffee can also cause insomnia in some.

A Harvard study conducted over the course of 20 years of 128,000 people published in 2006 concluded that there was no evidence to support the claim that coffee consumption itself increases the risk of coronary heart disease. The study did, however, show a correlation between heavy consumption of coffee and higher degrees of exposure to other coronary heart disease risk factors such as smoking, greater alcohol consumption, and lack of physical exercise.

The prostate cancer study was published May 17 in an online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"Few studies have specifically studied the association of coffee intake and the risk of lethal prostate cancer, the form of the disease that is the most critical to prevent. Our study is the largest to date to examine whether coffee could lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer," said senior author Lorelei Mucci, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH.

Lethal prostate cancer is cancer that causes death or spreads to the bones. Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among U.S. men, affecting one in six men during their lifetime. More than 2 million men in the United States and 16 million men worldwide are prostate cancer survivors.

"At present we lack an understanding of risk factors that can be changed or controlled to lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer. If our findings are validated, coffee could represent one modifiable factor that may lower the risk of developing the most harmful form of prostate cancer," said lead author Kathryn Wilson, a research fellow in epidemiology at HSPH.

The study examined the association between coffee consumption and the risk of prostate cancer, particularly the risk for aggressive prostate cancer, among 47,911 U.S. men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who reported their coffee consumption every four years from 1986 to 2008. During the study period, 5,035 cases of prostate cancer were reported, including 642 fatal or metastatic cases.

Among the findings:

- Men who consumed the most coffee (six or more cups daily) had nearly a 20 percent lower risk of developing any form of prostate cancer.

- The inverse association with coffee was even stronger for aggressive prostate cancer. Men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer.

- The reduction in risk was seen whether the men drank decaffeinated or regular coffee, and does not appear to be due to caffeine.

- Drinking one to three cups of coffee per day was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of lethal prostate cancer.

The results need to be validated in additional populations that have a range of coffee exposure and a large number of lethal prostate cancer cases. If confirmed, the data would add to the list of other potential health benefits of coffee. The authors are planning additional studies to understand specific mechanisms by which coffee may lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer.

Source: http://www.enn.com/

Seven Harmful Chemicals Added to Processed Food

Chemical food additives are used by food manufacturers to preserve the flavor or improve the taste and appearance of processed junk foods. They are found in foods which require long shelf lives, and are used widely in "diet" foods which need the flavor boost. Some additives come from natural sources, but some are highly process substances derived from unhealthy sources such as coal tar and peroxide.
Here's a list of seven chemical food additives you may want to avoid:

1. FD&C Red Dye #3: A cherry red dye derived from coal tar. In 1981, NIH researchers reported that this substance may interfere with the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain. In 1996, researchers at Northeastern Illinois University conducted studies and found that even low does of Red #3 caused cancerous changes in human cell cultures. The FDA banned the use of Red Dye #3 in lake form in cosmetics, but still allows the dye to be used in food products.
2. BHA (Butylated hydroxyanisole): a preservative used in cereals, potato chips and chewing gum to stop them from becoming rancid. It accumulates in the body fat and it is known to disrupt the body's hormone balance. This widely used food additive has been shown to cause cancer in mice, rats and hamsters. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers BHA to be a carcinogen and has said that it poses a reasonable risk to health. Despite this warning, the FDA still allows BHA to be used as a food additive to prevent fat rancidity.
3. Sodium Benzoate, Benzoic Acid: a preservative added to fruit juice, carbonated drinks, and pickles. Problems occurs when sodium benzoate is used in beverages that also contain ascorbic acid (vitamin C). The two substances, in an acidic solution, can react together to form small amounts of benzene, a chemical that causes leukemia and other cancers. In the early 1990s the FDA had urged companies not to use benzoate in products that also contain ascorbic acid, but companies are still using that combination. A lawsuit filed in 2006 by private attorneys ultimately forced Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other soft-drink makers in the U.S. to reformulate affected beverages, typically fruit-flavored products.
4. Acetone peroxide: a bleach and conditioner used in milling flour and maturing dough. It is basically acetone (nail polish remover) with an oxygen compound added. It is also extremely unstable and explosive, and has been used by criminals to make bombs. It is strongly oxidizing and can damage the skin and eyes.
5. Diacetyl: a chemical that imparts the buttery flavor in microwave popcorn. It has a disease named after it because many microwave popcorn factory workers exposed to it have developed a lung condition called Diacetyl Induced Bronchiolitis Obliterans or "Popcorn Worker's Lung". There is no official ban in the EU, and U.S. companies are starting to voluntarily replace this ingredient in the microwave popcorn. The CDC has issued a safety alert for workers in factories that use diacetyl. There are currently two bills in the California Legislature to ban the use of diacetyl.
6. Polysorbate 80 (also known as tween 80): a stabilizer used in a wide variety of products including ice cream, milk products, vitamin tablets, lotions and creams and medical products like vaccines and anti-cancer medications. This food additive has been linked to nonimmunologic allergic reactions, and one study has linked it to infertility. The study found that polysorbate 80 caused changes in to the vagina and womb lining, hormonal changes, ovary deformities and degenerative follicles in mice. (Food Chem Toxicol. 1993 Mar;31(3):183-90. PMID: 8473002.) This is disturbing because this substance is in the new Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine which is being marketed for girls aged 9-26 in the United States.
7. Potassium Bromate: a chemical added to flour to make bread rise better and give it a uniform consistency. Most of what is added to flour breaks down during the cooking process into bromide. An excess intake of bromide has been associated with the inhibition of iodine enzyme metabolism, which weakens the thyroid and kidneys. The potassium bromate that isn't broken down remains in the baked good and is a known carcinogen. Numerous petitions have been made to the FDA to ban this ingredient and many flour mills have voluntarily stopped adding it to their products. This food additive is banned in most countries except the U.S. and Japan.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com

 

How The Environment Affects Your Health

It has been a banner week for biomedical news. The Institute of Medicine released a provocative and somewhat controversial report on calcium and vitamin D intake; the American Cancer Society announced results of an enormous study reaffirming the link between body mass index and mortality; there was at least aleatory passage of a historic food safety bill in Congress; and a long awaited update to federal policy governing child nutrition was passed and awaits the President's signature.


Ordinarily, this content would populate my public health reflections to their far horizon. But seen from just a bit of altitude; viewed through a wider angle lens than my habitual routine accords -- these headlines announce modest news about modest measures related to our singularly immodest perspective on our own health. There is far more to health than is generally dreamed of within the purview of biomedicine.

I know, because my horizons have been widened. This past week I was privileged to join an illustrious group, convened by the Wildlife Conservation Society at their headquarters on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, to address the contention that there is only one health. The "one health" concept stipulates, essentially, that the health of people will be promoted along with the health of the planet, its diverse ecosystems, and its biodiversity, or it won't be promoted at all.

What made the group illustrious? Aside from the fact that virtually everyone in the assemblage, with the exception of me, has a career devoted to protecting the native magnificence of our planet, the group was noteworthy for every aspect of its pedigree. Outstanding work, outstanding achievement, extraordinary devotion. Intelligence, passion, eloquence, fortitude, resourcefulness. Participants represented premier organizations, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, to Conservation International, to the Nature Conservancy, to World Wildlife Fund, to Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and in the case of my modest contributions, Yale University.

What was I doing there? Ah, there's the rub! Alas, this group -- to which I should simply be sending accolades -- has ostensible need of me.

The scientists at the meeting -- many of whom have spent arduous years in some of the planet's most dazzling, important, fragile and embattled ecosystems -- from the Arctic to the Amazon, from the Australian Outback to the Mongolian Steppes, from the jungles of Borneo to the jungles of Brazil, from the island of Madagascar to the islands of Fiji -- have collectively reached this fundamental conclusion: nobody really cares.

Well, I suppose that takes it a step too far. Lots of people do care about our planetary cohabitants and the places they and we call home. But not nearly enough people care, and people care not nearly enough to make the requisite differences. Not enough to stop the damage. The places and their denizens are ever more imperiled as we collectively squander every successive opportunity to rectify the trajectory of our impacts.

So the conservationists and wildlife biologists have conceded that the only way to make the case for what they do is through the lens of public health, and that's where I -- and others like me -- come in. We, from the human health community, are being asked to draw up chairs at the big table -- the "let's save the planet" table and help elucidate how saving oceans and lakes, mountains and jungles -- will help save people.

More specifically, the enterprise incubated at the meeting I attended involves the generation of specific, collaborative research projects to show the costs to human health of ecosystem-degradation-as-usual: the costs to human health of burning down rain forests; the costs to human health of cyanide fishing of coral reefs; the costs to human health of disrupting traditional food sources; the costs to human health of increased CO2 in our atmosphere.

We gathered secure in the conviction that there are such costs, that they can be measured, and that they are high. But that they need to be on the marquee is sad testimony to our world view. The global human population does not, apparently, acknowledge intrinsic value in the status of the globe. My conservation colleagues' unfortunate need of me is predicated on the sad inability of our species to see intrinsic value in any other species.

Environmental scientists can readily show on their own the cost to the rain forest of burning down the rain forest; public health counterparts are needed to help show the immediate cost to human lungs downwind of those fires. Environmental scientists can show on their own the cost to coral reefs of cyanide fishing; public health scientists are needed to help show the toll on nutritional status of coastal peoples dependent on the diversity of sea life those reefs formerly supported. Environmental scientists can show on their own the impact on biodiversity of human incursions into pristine areas; public health colleagues are needed to help demonstrate the association with emerging infectious diseases and potentially devastating outbreaks. Environmental scientists can tell us what species are being dispossessed by deforestation; public health counterparts are needed to help tally the human cases of malaria directly attributable to the enterprise.

And so I go from my routine allocation of effort to cultivating the health of humans who, in our masses, routinely abuse the planet, to offering what I can to a group trying to save the planet from those abuses. I love the people I care for, and that's why I do what I do. And what I do is important both for the immediacy of its responsiveness to human need, and its scope.

One in three American adults will have diabetes by 2050, testimony to the importance of work I and others do related to diabetes prevention. But all three of those three American adults, and their counterparts around the globe, will have need of a habitable, vital planet in 2050 and every year thereafter. So I can't help but view my invitation to the One Health table as a promotion.

For there is indeed but one health for all -- people, animals and planet -- to share. Our neglect of this imperative, our blindness to this blunt reality is at our collective peril. It is borne by either egomania, or mindlessness.

If mindlessness is our excuse, we must concede we are much like a parasite or virus that replicates at the expense of its host. And once its mindless replication toasts the host, the parasite, too, is doomed. One health, indeed. Are we that parasite, and earth the host?

If not, and sentience is our distinction, we are the more malignant for it. If we are destroying our host mindfully, there can be but one explanation: we are so ego maniacal as to think that the short term pursuit of our own profit -- however measured -- justifies the plunder of the planetary body that sustains pursuit and profit alike.

We are pillaging the planet that hosts us for short term gain. If anything ever epitomized penny-wise, pound-foolish conduct -- it is to profit in the short term at the long term expense of the source of all profit, and of life itself. Indeed, one of the objectives of the One Health initiative is to show that even in the short term, costs of environmental degradation outweigh profits; health economists were at the table to advance this agenda. In all likelihood, our plunder of the planet has established a new frontier for calamitous folly: penny-foolish and pound-foolish alike.

We have but one home. We have but one health. That we can manage to see it only through the lens of short term human impacts is testimony to the limits of our sight. But this view, too, will make the case.

Eventually the lens won't matter. Sooner, later, just in time, or tragically too late -- every view will reveal just one health, or just what's left when it's gone.


Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP


Director, Prevention Research Center


Yale University School of Medicine


http://www.davidkatzmd.com/

http://www.turnthetidefoundation.org/