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More about cancer prevention
2009-05-14 |
Last week, we talked about prevention. It‘s not sexy, but it works. We learned how Chinese women lowered their risk of breast cancer by a whopping 87 percent simply by eating mushrooms and green tea. (Missed it? Click on this link: http://www.northstarnutritionals.com/article_list.php?docs_id=123).
I also touched on colon cancer and Genentech‘s über-popular drug, Avastin. It can cost colon cancer patients upwards of $100,000 per year. But recent studies show that Avastin only extends a patient‘s life by a few months.
Is that really the best Big Pharma has to offer colon cancer patients: A drug that costs you more than a new Porsche 911 but only extends your life by a few months?
So this week, I wanted to talk about a powerful and proven way to PREVENT colon cancer in the first place. I just read about a terrific study by scientists from Harvard and Tufts Universities (and GlaxoSmithKlein R&D, if you can believe it!). They found that vitamin B6 can significantly reduce colon cancer risk.
Just how much B do you need and how much did it help? I‘ll tell you that in a moment, but first let‘s talk about vitamin B.
The big news about B‘s
There are eight different B vitamins (together, they form vitamin B complex). They are all water soluble. This means it‘s very rare to get too much vitamin B because any excess is excreted. On the other hand, because your body flushes it out, you need to make sure that you get enough of it daily.
Vitamin B6 is particularly useful. (You‘ll find it in any good B complex vitamin.) It helps your body metabolize protein, keeps your blood sugar in check, and boosts immune system functioning, among other things. And recently, scientists have begun to understand that B6 plays a role in keeping cell DNA intact.
Good food sources of vitamin B6 include: whole grains, bananas, sweet potatoes (with the skin on), carrots, spinach, peas, poultry, and nuts. The recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin B6 is:
- Men (19-50 years) 1.3 mg/day
- Men (51 years and older) 1.7 mg/day
- Women (19-50 years) 1.3 mg/day
- Women (51 years and older) 1.5 mg/day
Most decent multivitamins contain this much, but in my opinion it‘s not enough. Here‘s why...
Slashing cancer rates with B6
For years, different studies have floated around about the role vitamin B6 plays in preventing colon cancer. And maybe that’s why GlaxoSmithKlein (GSK) signed on to help this team of scientists looking at vitamin B6. No doubt, they‘d like to parlay vitamin B6‘s magic bullet into pharmaceutical gold.
When you take vitamin B6 (or eat foods rich in vitamin B), your body converts it into pyridoxal 5‘-phosphate (or PLP). Studies suggest that PLP protects your cells‘ DNA from cancerous mutations.
In fact, last year scientists in Scotland found that you could cut colon cancer risk by 20 percent by getting plenty of vitamin B6. Not bad for one of the most common nutrients on the earth, right?
Well, this latest study looks even stronger.
Researchers from Harvard, Tufts, and GSK analyzed data from the Physicians‘ Health Study of more than 15,000 men. They looked at the relationship between the amount of vitamin B6 found in the blood and the risk of colorectal cancer.
They controlled for known colorectal cancer risk factors such as body mass index (BMI), exercise, and consumption of red meat and alcohol. This means that they left people out of their study if they had those known cancer risk factors.
After some serious statistical analysis, they discovered that high PLP blood levels were inversely linked with colorectal cancer risk. What does that mean? Well, the more PLP the men had in their blood, the less likely they were to get colon cancer. In fact, the men with the highest amount of PLP in their blood had up to a 58 percent decreased risk!
That‘s HUGE! Especially when you consider that nearly 1 million people get colorectal cancer annually around the world. Almost half a million men and women die each year from it. But imagine if we could instantly cut that number in half, just by getting more vitamin B!
Vitamin B: A nutritionist‘s "baker‘s dozen"
Vitamin B is just a great vitamin. It makes me smile just thinking about all it can do. In fact, the Harvard team found that men with the highest vitamin B in their blood, also had lower levels of homocysteine and C-reactive protein (CRP).
Homocysteine and CRP are two of those markers of inflammation that many experts now use to assess risk of heart disease. (As you‘ll recall from previous Guides to Good Health, high blood pressure or high cholesterol just don‘t accurately gauge your risk of suffering a heart attack!)
So this is great news for vitamin B-takers. Not only can you lower your colorectal cancer risk by up to 58 percent, you may also see improvements in key heart disease indicators. How‘s that for a baker‘s dozen?
Just how much do you need?
To get this kind of protection against cancer, the Recommended Daily Allowance just isn’t going to cut it. The men in the study who got the most protection were taking at least double the RDA. Most studies I‘ve seen suggest that protection against colon cancer begins when you start taking at least 3 mg/day of vitamin B.
But remember, these are water soluble vitamins folks! You wash away any excess by the end of the day, so there‘s little risk of an overdose.
Since that‘s the case, I usually recommend 50 to 100 mg of a good B complex vitamin each day. Though, if you can get that much in a multi, that’s fine too. If you go above 200 mg per day (and some people use up to 400 mg per day at the upper limit for interstitial edema), make sure to throw in 500 mg of magnesium. |
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