Tag: cancer
The Effects of the Hops Phytoestrogen in Beer on Breast Cancer Risk
Hops have been used for centuries as a flavoring agent in beer, but “[o]ver the years, a recurring suggestion has been that hops”—and therefore beer—may be estrogenic, thanks to a potent phytoestrogen in hops called 8-PN, also known as hopein....
Estrogenic Growth Promoters in Meat
In 1979, an epidemic of breast enlargement was noted in Italian children. Poultry or veal was suspected, given that estrogens “may be fed to farm animals to accelerate their weight gain.” “After this episode, the European Union banned the application/use...
Is the Risk of Skin Cancer From Sun Exposure Overblown?
By the turn of the 20th century, rickets, the vitamin D deficiency disease, was rampant, thanks to city life with the shade of buildings and coal soot in the air. The dairy industry jumped at the opportunity to fortify milk...
The Best Source of Vitamin D
If one is going to make an evolutionary argument for what a “natural” vitamin D level may be, how about getting vitamin D in the way nature intended—that is, from the sun instead of supplements? I run through the pros...
How Much Do Vitamin D Supplements Affect Lifespan?
In 1822, a Polish physician was the first to publish that sunlight could cure the vitamin D deficiency disease rickets. His work was ignored by mainstream medicine for a century, not coming into widespread use until the 20th century, when...
Where Vitamin D Supplements Fail
As I discuss in my video Do Vitamin Supplements Help with Diabetes, Weight Loss, and Blood Pressure?, review articles continue to be published touting vitamin D as a veritable cure-all. The vitamin D receptor is found in most tissues in...
Changing Protein Requirements
There has been a history of enthusiasm for protein in the nutrition world. A century ago, the protein recommendations were more than twice what we know them to be today. This enthusiasm peaked in the 1950s with the United Nations...
The Downside of Curcumin Supplements
Supplement manufacturers often fall into the same reductionist trap as the drug companies. Herbs are assumed to have only one main active ingredient, so, as the thinking goes, if you can isolate and purify it into a pill, you can...
The Disconnect Between Science and Policy
Back in 1912, when hardly anyone smoked cigarettes, lung cancer was like a museum curiosity: extremely rare. In the next few decades, however, it rose dramatically around the world, roughly fifteen-fold. But researchers had already nailed it way back then....
Consequences of Prostate Cancer Treatment
A cancer diagnosis is seen as a teachable moment in medicine where we can try to get people to eat healthier, but “research has suggested that male cancer patients may be reluctant to introduce dietary modification…This has been attributed to...
