[quote]grippit wrote:
I’m not sure what you precisely mean by casein being an “activator”, but it’s not a conclusion I would draw after reading the articles.
[/quote]
The data is sound. Nobody disputes that casein promotes growth of pre-existing cancer cells. But it’s important to make the distinction between EXISTING tumor growth (which has been proven to be facilitated by isolated casein) and tumorigenesis (which is basically the creation, for lack of better word, of a new tumor.) I don’t know if there is data that says isolated casein literally CAUSES cancer. In fact, I’m realtively sure there is NO data to suggest that!
But all the data, (even detractors of Campbell agree) states that casein promotes pre-existing cancer cell growth.
So if you have cancer/tumors, stay the fuck away from casein. Whey might be the way to go for you guys.
I found this quote on the web which of course means I can trust it 100% (note hint of sarcasm):
If the above is true, shouldn’t one with an extensive family history of cancer simply avoid isolated casein to be safe? Thoughts?
[quote]grippit wrote:
I’m not sure what you precisely mean by casein being an “activator”, but it’s not a conclusion I would draw after reading the articles.
[/quote]
The data is sound. Nobody disputes that casein promotes growth of pre-existing cancer cells. But it’s important to make the distinction between EXISTING tumor growth (which has been proven to be facilitated by isolated casein) and tumorigenesis (which is basically the creation, for lack of better word, of a new tumor.) I don’t know if there is data that says isolated casein literally CAUSES cancer. In fact, I’m realtively sure there is NO data to suggest that!
But all the data, (even detractors of Campbell agree) states that casein promotes pre-existing cancer cell growth.
So if you have cancer/tumors, stay the fuck away from casein. Whey might be the way to go for you guys.
I found this quote on the web which of course means I can trust it 100% (note hint of sarcasm):
If the above is true, shouldn’t one with an extensive family history of cancer simply avoid isolated casein to be safe? Thoughts?
[/quote]
You really seem to be missing the point. It’s not that casein promotes cancer growth, it’s that ANYTHING that promotes cell growth can promote cancer growth. The examples about included wheat, beans and rice, fish, etc. Mertdawg mentions HGH and insulin as well. You seem determined that casein is still the bad guy in all this talk.
And what do you mean by isolated? In the studies the rats and monkeys were fed very little other than casein. I think it mentioned casein, corn oil, and sugar with the different percentages of casein. That seems isolated. Is this what you planned on eating? Or were you going to have a scoop of casein along with your regular diet several times a week? Huge difference.
[quote]grippit wrote:
I’m not sure what you precisely mean by casein being an “activator”, but it’s not a conclusion I would draw after reading the articles.
[/quote]
The data is sound. Nobody disputes that casein promotes growth of pre-existing cancer cells. But it’s important to make the distinction between EXISTING tumor growth (which has been proven to be facilitated by isolated casein) and tumorigenesis (which is basically the creation, for lack of better word, of a new tumor.) I don’t know if there is data that says isolated casein literally CAUSES cancer. In fact, I’m realtively sure there is NO data to suggest that!
But all the data, (even detractors of Campbell agree) states that casein promotes pre-existing cancer cell growth.
So if you have cancer/tumors, stay the fuck away from casein. Whey might be the way to go for you guys.
[/quote]
First off, Whey is more anabolic than Casien, or at least I think it is more insulinogenic which would still promote growth of stuff like cancer cells. Leucine is highly insulinogenic.
Second, it is NOT clear that the study showed that casien promoted cancer. It extended the lifespans of the rats that ate more of it, so they lived LONG ENOUGH to have their stimulated tumors grow. It has been shown that casien itself improves liver function and makes it HARDER to induce tumors with the chemical used in the study. They waited until the rats HAD tumors induced and then gave some of them large amounts of casien. The ones with more casien grew larger tumors, and lived longer, and in part grew larger tumors because they lived longer! The monkey study that I liked to showed that giving a high casien protocol to a monkey with the same tumor inducing agent as in the rat study BLOCKED the induction of tumors in the first place!
I read something else about the China Study today. Campbell tried to demonize butterfat by showing that isolated palmitic acid caused insulin resistance. Palmitic acid is high in milk and animal fat.
However other studies that Cambell won’t discuss showed that insulin resistance from Palmitic acid was completely blocked by adding oleic acid to the Palmitic in about a 40/60 ratio of oleic to palmitic. Guess what ratio butterfat and animal fat has of Oleic to Palmitic. Butter fat is about 25% oleic acid, the good stuff from olive oil, and a little over 30% Palmitic.
Guess what, animals make fat that happens to contain a ration of different fatty acids that work together best to avoid being toxic! Is it any wonder that cows store Palmitic and Oleic in the ratio needed for the Oleic to 100% offset the harms of pure isolated Palmitic acid?
If you induce tumors in yourself (which is harder to do if you have casien in your diet) you have a choice. Take casien and live 15 years while your tumors grow with you, or eat a LOW TOTAL PROTEIN DIET like the other rats did, and die in 2 years before the cancer has a chance to kill you.
[quote]grippit wrote:
I’m not sure what you precisely mean by casein being an “activator”, but it’s not a conclusion I would draw after reading the articles.
[/quote]
The data is sound. Nobody disputes that casein promotes growth of pre-existing cancer cells. But it’s important to make the distinction between EXISTING tumor growth (which has been proven to be facilitated by isolated casein) and tumorigenesis (which is basically the creation, for lack of better word, of a new tumor.) I don’t know if there is data that says isolated casein literally CAUSES cancer. In fact, I’m realtively sure there is NO data to suggest that!
But all the data, (even detractors of Campbell agree) states that casein promotes pre-existing cancer cell growth.
So if you have cancer/tumors, stay the fuck away from casein. Whey might be the way to go for you guys.
[/quote]
First off, Whey is more anabolic than Casien, or at least I think it is more insulinogenic which would still promote growth of stuff. Leucine is highly insulinogenic.
Second, it is NOT clear that the study showed that casien promoted cancer. It extended the lifespans of the rats that ate more of it, so they lived LONG ENOUGH to have their stimulated tumors grow. It has been shown that casien itself improves liver function and makes it HARDER to induce tumors with the chemical used in the study. They waited until the rats HAD tumors induced and then gave some of them large amounts of casien. The ones with more casien grew larger tumors, and lived longer, and in part grew larger tumors because they lived longer! The monkey study that I liked to showed that giving a high casien protocol to a monkey with the same tumor inducing agent as in the rat study BLOCKED the induction of tumors in the first place!
I read something else about the China Study today. Campbell tried to demonize butterfat by showing that isolated palmitic acid caused insulin resistance. Palmitic acid is high in milk and animal fat.
However other studies that Cambell won’t discuss showed that insulin resistance from Palmitic acid was completely blocked by adding oleic acid to the Palmitic in about a 40/60 ratio of oleic to palmitic. Guess what ratio butterfat and animal fat has of Oleic to Palmitic. Butter fat is about 25% oleic acid, the good stuff from olive oil, and a little over 30% Palmitic.
Guess what, animals make fat that happens to contain a ration of different fatty acids that work together best to avoid being toxic! Is it any wonder that cows store Palmitic and Oleic in the ratio needed for the Oleic to 100% offset the harms of pure isolated Palmitic acid?[/quote]
Very interesting. I do appreciate this discussion and I realize it can be an inflammatory topic especially on a forum of this specific nature so it’s refreshing to see I’m not just getting bashed and there is an actual dialogue going on.
I’ve been reading this stuff (see link below) all day. More very interesting stuff (peer reviewed/scholarly type stuff) critiquing many of Campbell’s claims. The article you quoted above mentions that the studies on isolated casein cannot be extrapolated to animal fats (thereby acknowledging the findings) but does not rebuke the findings of the casein based studies. She merely states that those findings cannot be generalized to that of animal proteins and therefore ANIMAL PROTEINS should not be condemned in the manner Campbell does.
Anyways, very interesting stuff here (that may or may not be informative) discounting Campbell’s study (which is NOT even peer reviewed apparently!):
It’s worth noting…Minger is an English major and a blogger, not a scientist.
Either way…having experience with ketogenic diets and having done research (of the internet search kind) in that area, I’ve always believed wheat and refined sugar was the real killer. I noticed the Shugart’s avoid wheat like the plague as well.
Not clear to me from your last post, but are you still convinced casein is the bad guy and to " stay the fuck away from it if you have cancers/ tumors"?
[quote]grippit wrote:
Not clear to me from your last post, but are you still convinced casein is the bad guy and to " stay the fuck away from it if you have cancers/ tumors"?
[/quote]
I don’t know if you’ll believe how objective I’m being but maybe it’ll help to say that I love this site and it’s products and buy a good deal of Biotest supps. That said, it appears there is a lot of evidence of links to casein and cancer. Yes, there are also detractors in the scientific community. It’s one of those things where both sides will have valid arguments with legit studies to back them up and no one will really truly know the truth.
I am currently debating giving up MD Drive but I’m well aware that Mag10 and Plazma also contain casein. My problem is, I could live with replacing MD Drive with a pea protein isolate, but even despite potential risks (and maybe this is crazy) I don’t think I can ever give up Mag10 and Plazma. I literally love what those supplements have done for me.
Basically I’m thinking, maybe I’ll minimize risk (if there even is any) by just cutting out MD Drive. LOL
EDIT: I’ve stated this before but I only ventured down this path because there is SO MUCH cancer in my family both on mother and father’s side…
I have to say, and with no disrespect, that it’s an opinion that “a lot of evidence of links to casein and cancer.”
It is absolutely not a factual statement, at least if by “links” one means anything warranting a conclusion that dietary casein causes cancer or worsens existing cancer.
To the best of my knowledge it is a [b]rare[/b] opinion that one must dig to find, and certainly not only is not a consensus opinion in science, it’s not even a significant minority opinion.
That’s because all the evidence for it is such as has been cited already, which doesn’t hold water for reasons already said.
Almost any strange opinion can be found with digging. For example, there are a lot of things linking WWII with flying saucers and manned travel to Mars. Seriously. There are. That opinion is out there, and books too, and the authors have evidence of various sorts. All kinds of opinions are out there. Campbell’s opinions, which you cited, are out there. The question is, how do they hold up?
Absolutely every person is free to weigh evidence for themselves and should, but I have to take exception with “there’s lots of evidence of links to casein and cancer.” No there’s not, unless counting links that don’t hold water.
Seriously, please pick the one best link or evidence and let’s look at it. (Presumably this won’t be the ones already, because they don’t show it.)
If there isn’t even a single one that doesn’t have extreme weaknesses to it such as the ones already posted, then no there is not a lot of evidence that should cause such an opinion.
If the one best doesn’t show the point, then can we agree that this is not a thing with evidence for it? (It can still be an opinion, and a personal choice of a thing to avoid of course.)
The study examines administration to rats simultaneously of aflatoxin in large amounts and casein. Results could be different when not consuming aflatoxin.[/quote]
MAJOR EDIT:
Actually, this has been clarified to me…So the researchers gave all of the rats in the study aflatoxin-induced tumors, but some of the rats were fed a diet of 5% casein and others were fed 20% casein. The rats that were fed 20% casein exhibited a 6-fold increase in the size of the tumor compared to the mice on the 5% diet. What was also interesting was that when they switched the amount of protein, i.e. 20% to 5% and vice versa, tumor growth actually reversed. Thus, if was found that casein, the main protein in milk, was a significant factor in tumorigenesis. The fact that they were actually able to REVERSE the growth of cancer on a low protein diet is pretty astounding.
[/quote]
Let me explain something. The reason that tumor growth reversed when they reversed the casien doses was that moving the rats with tumors to a low casien diet caused them to atrophy and die, and moving rats with smaller tumors to high casien let them live longer. that is basically the conclusion I draw from the entire study.
If two people have tumors, the one with the diet that lets them live longer will die with larger tumors because they lived longer.
From my second post, the long one: “This apparent paradox highlights a major problem in Campbell?s rat research: the level of aflatoxin exposure plays a critical role in how protein affects cancer growth. When the aflatoxin dose is sky high, animals eating a low-protein diet don?t get cancer because their cells are too busy dying en masse, while animals eating a higher protein diet are still consuming enough dietary building blocks for the growth of cells?whether healthy or cancerous. When the aflatoxin dose is more moderate, animals eating a low-protein diet develop cancer while their higher-protein counterparts remain in mighty fine health.”
I don’t want to beat a dead horse and so this will be my last with the aflatoxin rats, but to have a single brief thing to show the problems:
The study didn’t compare casein-containing diet against a standard diet.
A standard diet for lab rats (Labdiet 5012) is about 23% protein.
If a person is a scientist instead of an idealogue, to study the effect of a treatment he’d compare that treatment (20% casein for example) to a standard, control condition. Not to something abnormal, such as a 5% protein diet.
Casein was not compared to any other protein at the same dietary level.
If a person is a scientist, he will not conclude anything about how a substance compares to others while totally mismatching levels between them.
Did the study compare casein at 20% versus another protein at 20%? No.
Did the study show whether the rats might have done the same, or perhaps (hypothetically) worse, on a standard lab diet versus the casein diet? No.
As mertdawg has pointed out, If the rats lived longer with the casein than with the substandard diet, then it does not follow that casein worsened the cancer.
It’s plain why exactly zero scientific papers have ever cited this “study.”
If wanting to use this study to decide how to adapt diet to reduce cancerous growth if a person has it, why pick the casein aspect rather than the 5% protein aspect? If I were going to take this study seriously I’d pick the 5% protein as the most likely responsible. So aim for 30 g protein per day, thereabouts. It’s quite plausible the person choosing this will waste away and die sooner, with smaller cancer growths. Why assume casein gave the rats a problem? No comparison was made with 20% protein but different protein than casein, or with 5% casein. So there’s no basis to point a finger at casein.
The China Study, while it contains a lot of good raw data, has long been considered to be an agenda driven research project, funded I believe by a pro vegetarian group. It is considered in the scientific community to be a “textbook” example of how to lie with statistics.
One common tactic that the author uses is to show that a certain animal based food raises the mortality rate from one particular type of disease, like colon cancer, only to ignore the fact that “all cause” mortality was lower in the animal based food groups, such that there simply were enough fewer people dying of all causes that they lived long enough to die of one cause in particular. It would be like if we ended all car accidents and concluded that ending car accidents increased cancer because some of the people who would have died in car accidents lived to die of cancer instead.
In another example they tried to show that the American diet caused heart disease by comparing American soldiers serving in Asia during wartime to Asian natives who ate less cholesterol. They ignored the fact that the American soldiers were under the stress of war far away from home.
In another study they produced a correlation coefficient showing a correlation between high blood pressure induced heart disease and dairy in China. They failied to explain that only 3 counties out of maybe 50 in China ate significant dairy, one ate a medium/small amount, one a medium amount and one a VERY large amount. The counties that ate virtually no dairy ranged from high to low in blood pressure. The small and medium were right in the middle and one high dairy county had about 130% of the rate of high blood pressure as average (though less than 1/3 of the counties that ate NO dairy.) They also excluded the fact that this one county averaged 3x the sodium intake (about 4000 mg a day) as ANY of the other counties.