Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Sodas?
webmd.com
webmd.com
Why the link with sugary sodas? Mueller says they are not certain. "What we believe is the sugar in the soft drinks is increasing the insulin level in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth. That increase in insulin is what may be leading to the development of the cancer."
This doesn't make sense to me. If sugar in soda leads to cancer, then why doesn't sugar in juice?
Maybe because there are various types of sugars (e.g., glucose and fructose), and these are metabolized differently? That could explain it. Just speculating...
Usually the body transforms Fructose/Sucrose into lipids instead of consuming them on the spot like simple glucose. I suppose the body is trying to save the sub-standard fuel for when it has no other choice. Not sure what this has to do with cancer, but I suppose if there are too many insulin needs in the body that the pancreas will break down eventually (and cells turn into cancer sometimes instead of dying when they wear out in rare cases).
"He points out that of the 140 cases, 110 of those people did not drink sodas, while 12 had less than two servings a week, and 18 had two or more servings a week."
So there were only 18/140 people who had 2 or more servings of soda/week. You have to have a good and strong link to find a significant association with those numbers. I would assume the number of juice drinkers would be smaller than the number of soda drinkers, so you would need an even stronger link, so it's very possible that a link of the same strength would not show up as significant.
You'd have to look at the actual study to see if this is plausible (I haven't).
Other possibilities are that juice has some protective properties that nullify sugar's cancer risk, or that something other than sugar causes the problem in sodas, but I would judge those as less likely.
Think of a biased coin that tends to come up heads too often. If it does it every time, you don't need to flip it very many times to figure out beyond a reasonable doubt that it's biased. But if it comes up heads 6 times out of 10, you will have to flip it a lot to be sure that it's bias and not just chance. In medicine most associations are more like the latter case than the former.
I'm speculating that the juice sample is like a too-short run of flips on a slightly/moderately biased coin that's and therefore can't show an association, and the soda sample is like an adequately long run of flips on a similar coin. The sugar in juice is about the same as the sugar in soda, so this seems like the most plausible explanation.
You simply need to correlate the results to other figures to see if HFCS is the major variable sticking out.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup
So both juice and soda have a good deal of HFCS.
Boosting your vitamin D levels can be as simple as being outside in the sun for 15 minutes, if that's not possible perhaps buy fortified juice, or dump the skimmed milk (non-fortified skimmed milk has 0 Vitamin D, whole milk has ~25% of your RDA per serving). Fat-free or low-fat Yogurts are typically fortified too, typically to give 25% per serving. Although fish-oils will always be a great supplement source.
Similarly diets high in B6, B12 and Folate protect against pancreatic cancer, however they don't appear to offer the protection in supplement form, only through actual food.
In Singapore at that time, Mueller says, there was very little intake of diet soda.