Those eating vegan had significantly lower IGF-1 levels and higher IGF-binding proteins than those just eating vegetarian, suggesting that the more plant-based one’s diet becomes, the lower one’s risk of fueling growth hormone-dependent cancer growth.
How Plant-Based to Lower IGF-1?
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Just a few days of walking and eating whole healthy plant foods, and our IGF-1 levels drop low enough to reverse cancer cell growth.
What if we stick with it? Going to some Pritikin spa and getting healthy for two weeks is one thing, but what about long-term? Does your IGF-1 start to creep back up to standard American diet levels again?
No. Here’s after 11 days, and it just gets better. People eating plant-based diets for 14 years have half the IGF-1 in their bodies, and more than twice the amount of IGF-binding protein than those on the Standard American Diet.
We know decreasing animal product consumption decreases our IGF-1 levels, but how low do you got to go? How plant-based does our diet need to get?
Well, let’s look at IGF-1 levels in meat-eaters, versus vegetarians, versus vegans. The aim of this study was to determine whether a plant-based diet is associated with a lower circulating level of IGF-1, compared with a meat-eating or lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. And this is what they found. Only the vegans had significantly lower levels. And the same relationship found with IGF-1 binding capacity. Only the vegans were significantly more able to bind up excess IGF-1 in their bloodstreams.
This was a study on women. What about vegan men? They found the same thing. So, even though vegan men tend to have significantly higher testosterone levels than both vegetarians and meat-eaters—which can be a risk factor for prostate cancer, the reason plant-based diets appear to reverse the progression of prostate cancer may be due to how low their IGF-1 levels drop. So, more testosterone, but less cancer.
The bottom line is that male or female, just eating vegetarian did not seem to cut it. It looks like to get a significant drop in cancer-promoting growth hormone levels, one apparently has to eliminate animal products altogether. The good news is that, given what we now know about IGF-1, we can predict that “a low-fat vegan diet may be profoundly protective with respect to [for example] risk for postmenopausal breast cancer.”
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Kerry Skinner.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Allen NE, Appleby PN, Davey GK, Key TJ. Hormones and diet: low insulin-like growth factor-I but normal bioavailable androgens in vegan men. Br J Cancer. 2000 Jul;83(1):95-7.
- Ngo TH, Barnard RJ, Tymchuk CN, Cohen P, Aronson. Effect of diet and exercise on serum insulin, IGF-I, and IGFBP-1 levels and growth of LNCaP cells in vitro (United States). Cancer Causes Control. 2002 Dec;13(10):929-35.
- Allen NE, Appleby PN, Davey GK, Kaaks R, Rinaldi S, Key TJ. The Associations of Diet with Serum Insulin-like Growth Factor I and Its Main Binding Proteins in 292 Women Meat-Eaters, Vegetarians, and Vegans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2002 Nov;11(11):1441-8.
- Ornish D, Weidner G, Fair WR, Marlin R, Pettengill EB, Raisin CJ, Dunn-Emke S, Crutchfield L, Jacobs FN, Barnard RJ, Aronson WJ, McCormac P, McKnight DJ, Fein JD, Dnistrian AM, Weinstein J, Ngo TH, Mendell NR, Carroll PR. Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer. J Urol. 2005 Sep;174(3):1065-9; discussion 1069-70.
Images thanks to Pritikin Longevity Center, and twob and Ana Santos via flickr
Just a few days of walking and eating whole healthy plant foods, and our IGF-1 levels drop low enough to reverse cancer cell growth.
What if we stick with it? Going to some Pritikin spa and getting healthy for two weeks is one thing, but what about long-term? Does your IGF-1 start to creep back up to standard American diet levels again?
No. Here’s after 11 days, and it just gets better. People eating plant-based diets for 14 years have half the IGF-1 in their bodies, and more than twice the amount of IGF-binding protein than those on the Standard American Diet.
We know decreasing animal product consumption decreases our IGF-1 levels, but how low do you got to go? How plant-based does our diet need to get?
Well, let’s look at IGF-1 levels in meat-eaters, versus vegetarians, versus vegans. The aim of this study was to determine whether a plant-based diet is associated with a lower circulating level of IGF-1, compared with a meat-eating or lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. And this is what they found. Only the vegans had significantly lower levels. And the same relationship found with IGF-1 binding capacity. Only the vegans were significantly more able to bind up excess IGF-1 in their bloodstreams.
This was a study on women. What about vegan men? They found the same thing. So, even though vegan men tend to have significantly higher testosterone levels than both vegetarians and meat-eaters—which can be a risk factor for prostate cancer, the reason plant-based diets appear to reverse the progression of prostate cancer may be due to how low their IGF-1 levels drop. So, more testosterone, but less cancer.
The bottom line is that male or female, just eating vegetarian did not seem to cut it. It looks like to get a significant drop in cancer-promoting growth hormone levels, one apparently has to eliminate animal products altogether. The good news is that, given what we now know about IGF-1, we can predict that “a low-fat vegan diet may be profoundly protective with respect to [for example] risk for postmenopausal breast cancer.”
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Kerry Skinner.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Allen NE, Appleby PN, Davey GK, Key TJ. Hormones and diet: low insulin-like growth factor-I but normal bioavailable androgens in vegan men. Br J Cancer. 2000 Jul;83(1):95-7.
- Ngo TH, Barnard RJ, Tymchuk CN, Cohen P, Aronson. Effect of diet and exercise on serum insulin, IGF-I, and IGFBP-1 levels and growth of LNCaP cells in vitro (United States). Cancer Causes Control. 2002 Dec;13(10):929-35.
- Allen NE, Appleby PN, Davey GK, Kaaks R, Rinaldi S, Key TJ. The Associations of Diet with Serum Insulin-like Growth Factor I and Its Main Binding Proteins in 292 Women Meat-Eaters, Vegetarians, and Vegans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2002 Nov;11(11):1441-8.
- Ornish D, Weidner G, Fair WR, Marlin R, Pettengill EB, Raisin CJ, Dunn-Emke S, Crutchfield L, Jacobs FN, Barnard RJ, Aronson WJ, McCormac P, McKnight DJ, Fein JD, Dnistrian AM, Weinstein J, Ngo TH, Mendell NR, Carroll PR. Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer. J Urol. 2005 Sep;174(3):1065-9; discussion 1069-70.
Images thanks to Pritikin Longevity Center, and twob and Ana Santos via flickr
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How Plant-Based to Lower IGF-1?
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
To review, I started out introducing Nathan Pritikin (Engineering a Cure), and the elegant series of experiments that became part of his legacy (Ex Vivo Cancer Proliferation Bioassay). They were able to demonstrate the means by which a plant-based diet and exercise could suppress the growth of breast and prostate cancer cells (see The Answer to the Pritikin Puzzle), and protect against prostate enlargement (see Prostate vs. a Plant-Based Diet). For more on BPH, see Some Prostates Are Larger than Others. I also asked, and answered Is It the Diet, the Exercise, or Both? We learned in IGF-1 as One-Stop Cancer Shop that the cancer-promoting growth hormone IGF-1 seemed to be The Answer to the Pritikin Puzzle—but why? What is it about plant-based diets that lower IGF-1 levels, and increase our body’s ability to neutralize IGF-1? Find out in Protein Intake and IGF-1 Production.
For further context, be sure to check out my associated blog posts: Vegan Men: More Testosterone But Less Cancer, and Animal Protein and the Cancer Promoter IGF-1.
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