My follow up was uneventful. I am still Iron deficient. No one is worried. I've been eating less meat and I've been running. Not uncommon. I'm still not deficient enough that I have to take iron supplements or have further tests. So a hamburger and some Grape Nuts (highly fortified cereal) will be in my future.
While riding the bus home from work, smiling about good blood work I came across an article stating that sucrose (sugar) consumption had been linked to breast cancer. My dream bubble filled with cookies shattered into a million chocolate chips. I then hunted down the research study.
The article I read was siting the research study by Jiang et al, A Sucrose-Enriched Diet Promotes Tumorigenesis in Mammary Gland in Part through the 12-Lipoxygenase Pathway, published in the January 2016 edition of Cancer Research. Basically, the group at The University of Texas/MD Anderson took mice who had been injected with triple negative breast cancer cells or breast cancer lung mets and then randomized the mice varying levels of sucrose enriched diets. The control group received 0 g/kg of sucrose, then 62.5 g/kg of sucrose, 125 g/kg, 250 g/kg and 500 g/kg. The study found that those on the higher sucrose diets (125, 250, 500) had an early onset of tumors although no information about the statistical significance is stated. The statistically significant results that the study did find were that the mice on the high sucrose diets had larger tumors than the control (no sucrose) and had a significantly greater number of lung met tumors. Therefore this study did show that the inflammatory pathway (12-Lipoxygenase as referenced in the study title) which is stimulated by the ingestion of sucrose may play a role in the growth and spread of breast cancer tumors. However, the authors admit that the knowledge on the pathway that was being studied was incomplete. It also was testing triple negative breast cancer (that without hormonal markers). And it was also mice. And the results of the mice fed 62.5 g/kg were not mentioned.
Very interestingly, the mice on the higher sucrose containing diets did not gain statistically more weight than the control mice. Therefore, overweight-a known risk factor for breast cancer, cannot be the cause.
What does it mean? Well, it is difficult to ascertain what the results in a human will be from animal studies. Also, the mice were already given breast cancer so it does not address sugar consumption and the cause of breast cancer. It does however give me pause coming off the holiday season were I definitely over indulged in the sweets. It also makes me pull up my dietitian boot straps and start working towards getting back to the American Heart Associations goal of 24 g of added sugar. Which, I have tried to do every year as noted by my post from 2014. But, when I look at today I only had 12 g of added sugar. So, it can be done.
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