Who Knew Ice Cream Could Do THIS?

(By Cathryn Conroy, Netscape News Editor)

Plain old cow's milk--the main ingredient of ice cream--could actually PREVENT breast cancer, according to scientists at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. They're so sure of this, they're predicting milk will one day be the mainstay of cancer prevention.

What's the magic ingredient? It's conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, a minor fatty acid found naturally in milk, milk products, and beef. WebMD reports that study leader Margot M. Ip tested CLA on genetically-engineered mice that had tumors that mimic human breast cancer. "The CLA changed the cells in the cancer and thus cut off their blood supply," she said. As WebMD notes, cutting off the blood supply of tumors is a cancer therapy--called anti-angiogenesis--that has many researchers intrigued. And since CLA is all natural, dairy chemists are working overtime to produce super-CLA milk products. "It's a wonderful approach because you can increase CLA potency simply by changing the cow's diet," Ip told WebMD. "The cow then becomes a factory to produce a chemopreventive agent." She says someday--maybe in a decade or so--we'll be able to go to the grocery store and buy CLA-fortified milk, cheese, and ice cream. Eat ice cream. Prevent cancer. It doesn't get any better than that!

This is all the excuse Mrs TW needs to eat tons of the stuff!

I'm still very wary of cow's milk, I see more milk allergies and people who suffered for years from them and then finally tried stopping dairy products and felt instantly better.
I'm just thinking that digestion wise, cow's milk in the long run isn't necessarily good for humans.

My main problem is introducing it too early into infants' diets.
Wonder if human breast milk isn't a much better thing?
Human breast milk does miraculous things...example: the concentration varies according to the child's age and length of nursing session, increases to compensate for the child's growth, and when a mother is ill with something, her system gives the baby antibodies to what she's got!

The collustrum in the very first mother's milk is very powerful stuff.
Wonder what would happen with mother's milk in a study?

Breast cancer is the most common cancer-related death among women in most of the Western world and the leading cause of death for women under 50. It strikes about 182,000 women in the U.S. each year and kills 46,000. Consuming dairy products is linked to an increased risk for breast cancer because dairy products are high in fat, animal protein, and hormones, each of which increases cancer risk. Since the 1980’s, study after study has linked dairy consumption to a high incidence of breast and other cancers. Women seeking to minimize their chances of breast cancer should avoid milk, other dairy products, and meat.

The American Dietetic Association reports that breast cancer is most prevalent in countries where women consume high-fat, animal-based diets. In Asia, where milk consumption is extremely rare, breast cancer is almost unheard of. International renowned nutrition expert Dr. T. Colin Campbell points to China, a basically nonmilk-drinking country, where cancer deaths among women aged 35 to 64 averaged less than 9 per 100,000, as opposed to 44 per 100,000 in the U.S.

There are numerous other studies to cite. For example, Dr. J.L. Outwater of Princeton University and Drs. A. Nicholson and N. Barnard of The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine cite more than 12 epidemiological studies that show a positive correlation between dairy products and breast cancer. A report published in Cancer Research correlates breast cancer mortality with dairy consumption and suggests that dairy products play a role in the development of breast cancer.

Researchers at Stanford University and the National Institutes of Health found that high concentrations of the IGF-1 hormone stimulate cancer cell growth. IGF-1, a hormone that occurs naturally in humans and cows and in all milk, is increasingly abundant in milk from cows treated with synthetic bovine growth hormone (rBGH). In the International Journal of Health Sciences, University of Illinois scientist Dr. Samuel Epstein warns that elevated levels of IGF-1 in milk from cows injected with rBGH is a potential risk factor for breast cancer in humans who consume cow’s milk.

Studies published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association and the British Medical Journal found that consuming three additional servings of nonfat or 1 percent milk for 12 weeks was associated with a 10 percent increase in IGF-1 levels. The Food and Drug Administration reports that IGF-1 is not destroyed by pasteurization. In fact, pasteurization actually increases its concentration in rBGH milk.

Just wanted you to have *all* the information.

ShadowHippie

THanks, that's why I was wary of this thing.
Now, we had another thread around here about the risk of breast cancer going down very significantly with the number of months you breast fed yourself. It was pretty high too!

I am not alarmist about cow's milk but I believe that we should never forget that we live in places where dairy products are promoted for monetary reasons and that forcing cow's milk on everyone for supposed health reasons is not the right thing to do. Also, as many cows are treated with antibiotics those people like me allergic to penicillin become sensitized to it.
Though I do not think my son is allergic to cow's milk, I would say that his natural tendencies were not towards cow's milk and its products. He was breast fed until about a year and a half but when I was at work, drank water from a cup very early on and ate food. Never took a bottle when offered, nor did he drink cow's milk.
And yet, despite all the talk about milk allergies, in his state subsidied pre school, the children had to have milk served to them by law. I told them that I preferred water with meals and that I did not force my kids do drink cow's milk. It was not just a whim.
But in the States, unless you have a doctor's excuse for a milk allergy, the child must be served the milk. They even required juice at snack. And the latter is just a big old can of concentrate full of sugar that you add tap water too. I worked in preschools myself.

Another reason that drinking milk with meals is not a good idea, it does have a rather large fat content, and if you do drink it to satisfy thirst and aid digestion, you're getting a great deal of fat when you should be satisfying thirst.

Mother's milk however, modifies itself even during nursing sessions! It thins out for comfort nursing, and is richer in the beginning for satisfying hunger.
Mothers who attempt to regulate nursing, and especially doctors, by weighing the kid and putting him or her up against standards of cow's milk formula (baby's milk for our British friends) will become discouraged.
The dairy industry is very very strong in some countries.

France the country of cheese by the way, has a heavily subsidized dairy industry, yet....they still do not really insist as much on drinking milk at mealtimes except...for breakfast and even then, children are not forced to drink hot chocolate or whatever.
I've rarely seen children served milk at mealtimes other than breakfast.

As to treating illnesses via a cow, making the cow into a kind of medicine lab, it's probaby possible because of the way a mammal adapts to its environment, thus, a human mother's milk adapts to environmental stimula too.

Shadowhippie, I didn't see the stats for Asians who came to live in the States and ate an American diet. I believe I recall some study for the cancer rates amongst Asians eating their traditional diet low in fat and dairy products vs. those immigrating to the States.

Sorry I didn't post that bit, I was trying to keep it if not short at least not too long...here you go.

Japanese women who follow a more Western-style, meat- and dairy-based diet are eight times more likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who eat a plant-based diet not containing dairy products.

ShadowHippie