The foreign meat molecule Neu5Gc builds up in human tumors and atherosclerotic plaques, and may play an inflammatory role in the progression of both diseases.
Nonhuman Molecules Lining our Arteries
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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
The foreign meat molecule Neu5Gc tends to accumulate, particularly in the lining of hollow organs—where carcinomas, like breast cancer, develop inside your glands, and in the lining blood of vessels, where atherosclerosis occurs.
“Evidence for a novel human-specific xeno-auto-antibody response against vascular endothelium.”
“The Neu5Gc accumulation may facilitate production of anti-Neu5Gc antibodies and further aggravate chronic inflammation in atherosclerosis progression”—in addition to just cancer.
Here, you can see it, stained in red, lining the aorta of a human autopsy sample. And here, you can actually see it inside atherosclerotic plaques, providing multiple pathways for accelerating inflammation in this disease.
Remember, we lost the ability to make this substance millions of years ago. Whether it’s feeding inflammation to our cancer, or to our heart disease, it all came from the animal products in our diet.
“Taken together, these findings suggest a mechanism whereby anti-Neu5Gc antibodies can initiate, perpetuate, and/or exacerbate an inflammatory response at the endothelium [the lining of our arteries], potentially playing a role in disease states such as atherosclerosis, [where] vascular inflammation is involved. Neu5Gc is a novel dietary and human- specific ‘xeno-auto-antigen’ that may exacerbate a variety of vascular pathologies.”
They go onto note that if we actually ate what the USDA recommends for protein, in the form of meat and dairy, we could ingest as much 10 milligrams of Neu5Gc per day, which is 10 milligrams more than we evolved to have in our bodies since, as a species, we stopped making it millions of years ago, before we started eating meat.
“…[N]ovel therapeutic approaches to reducing or dampening flares of immunologic responses against the endothelium…could include reduction of dietary Neu5Gc intake and accumulation through simple diet-based interventions.”
Not so novel, perhaps, but definitely simple. This inflammatory cancer promoter “has never been reported in plants.”
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Pham T, Gregg CJ, Karp F, Chow R, Padler-Karavani V, Cao H, Chen X, Witztum JL, Varki NM, Varki A. Evidence for a novel human-specific xeno-auto-antibody response against vascular endothelium. Blood. 2009 Dec 10;114(25):5225-35.
- Varki A. Colloquium paper: uniquely human evolution of sialic acid genetics and biology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 May 11;107 Suppl 2:8939-46.
- Hedlund M, Padler-Karavani V, Varki NM, Varki A. Evidence for a human-specific mechanism for diet and antibody-mediated inflammation in carcinoma progression. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Dec 2;105(48):18936-41.
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
The foreign meat molecule Neu5Gc tends to accumulate, particularly in the lining of hollow organs—where carcinomas, like breast cancer, develop inside your glands, and in the lining blood of vessels, where atherosclerosis occurs.
“Evidence for a novel human-specific xeno-auto-antibody response against vascular endothelium.”
“The Neu5Gc accumulation may facilitate production of anti-Neu5Gc antibodies and further aggravate chronic inflammation in atherosclerosis progression”—in addition to just cancer.
Here, you can see it, stained in red, lining the aorta of a human autopsy sample. And here, you can actually see it inside atherosclerotic plaques, providing multiple pathways for accelerating inflammation in this disease.
Remember, we lost the ability to make this substance millions of years ago. Whether it’s feeding inflammation to our cancer, or to our heart disease, it all came from the animal products in our diet.
“Taken together, these findings suggest a mechanism whereby anti-Neu5Gc antibodies can initiate, perpetuate, and/or exacerbate an inflammatory response at the endothelium [the lining of our arteries], potentially playing a role in disease states such as atherosclerosis, [where] vascular inflammation is involved. Neu5Gc is a novel dietary and human- specific ‘xeno-auto-antigen’ that may exacerbate a variety of vascular pathologies.”
They go onto note that if we actually ate what the USDA recommends for protein, in the form of meat and dairy, we could ingest as much 10 milligrams of Neu5Gc per day, which is 10 milligrams more than we evolved to have in our bodies since, as a species, we stopped making it millions of years ago, before we started eating meat.
“…[N]ovel therapeutic approaches to reducing or dampening flares of immunologic responses against the endothelium…could include reduction of dietary Neu5Gc intake and accumulation through simple diet-based interventions.”
Not so novel, perhaps, but definitely simple. This inflammatory cancer promoter “has never been reported in plants.”
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Pham T, Gregg CJ, Karp F, Chow R, Padler-Karavani V, Cao H, Chen X, Witztum JL, Varki NM, Varki A. Evidence for a novel human-specific xeno-auto-antibody response against vascular endothelium. Blood. 2009 Dec 10;114(25):5225-35.
- Varki A. Colloquium paper: uniquely human evolution of sialic acid genetics and biology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 May 11;107 Suppl 2:8939-46.
- Hedlund M, Padler-Karavani V, Varki NM, Varki A. Evidence for a human-specific mechanism for diet and antibody-mediated inflammation in carcinoma progression. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Dec 2;105(48):18936-41.
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Nonhuman Molecules Lining our Arteries
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
See The Inflammatory Meat Molecule Neu5Gc for background, and How Tumors Use Meat to Grow: Xeno-Autoantibodies for the role it might play in cancer growth. Inflammation is also caused by exogenous endotoxins (see The Exogenous Endotoxin Theory), and is one of the three steps en route to fatal heart disease; see Arterial Acne; Blocking the First Step of Heart Disease; and Making Our Arteries Less Sticky. Antioxidants found predominantly in plants (see Antioxidant Power of Plant Foods Versus Animal Foods) may also decrease inflammation within the body (see Anti-Inflammatory Antioxidants). Nuts may be particularly useful in this regard; see Fighting Inflammation in a Nut Shell. Tomorrow, we’ll close out the Neu5Gc story with Meat May Exceed Daily Allowance of Irony.
For further context, check out my associated blog post: Plant-Based Diets for Rheumatoid Arthritis.
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