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Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Hold on, tiger. There appears to be some interesting research that supports this indirectly. It's not the meat, it's the methionine. It's highest in animal products (eggs are #1).

Methionine is an essential amino acid that is one of 2 that is used for the start codon for DNA transcription. It follows that if cancer is uncontrolled cell growth, that restricting the resource it needs would limit it's growth.

Appeal to authority: my wife, the molecular biologist pointed out the codon angle. It seems reasonable enough to me to have become a pseudo vegan (without the self-righteousness (at least in regards to that)).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methionine#Methionine_restricti...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11603655

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Whoa whoa whoa, this is a huge huge huge stretch in terms of causing cancer, and is not consistent with any current beliefs and thoughts on oncogenesis. Methionine availability is much more like the Warburg Effect [1], an effect where cells mostly perform anaerobic instead of aerobic metabolism.

Changing one's diet based on this speculation would be absolute quackery.

A cell's addiction to methionine is an effect of cancer, and restricting methionine can be potentially be used to treat cells that are already cancerous, but there's no thought on how this could possible cause cancer. Dump a bunch of methionine in cells and they're not going to develop cancer, as far as anything I've ever seen. Interestingly enough, diabetes patients that use metformin to treat their diabetes seem to have slightly lower cancer rates than diabetes patients that don't use metformin, which has triggered interest in insulin receptors as possible treatment targets or causes, which are vaguely related to metabolism, but such work is extremely early and no conclusions should be drawn. And that's on far far more solid ground than methionine as a cancer risk.

We understand caloric restriction far better than methionine restriction in terms of extending lifespans of lab animals, so if one wants to speculate on dietary changes, this seems like a far better speculative, pre-knowledge, gamble than methionine restriction.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect#Oncology

I don't think I said (and know that I didn't mean to imply) that excess methionine causes cancer.

Methionine restriction by avoiding methionine rich foods doesn't strike me as harmful at all, since there's still plenty in even a vegan diet. And in my case, I said pseudo-vegan -- it's more a mindset than dogma.

Can you explain a bit more? I'm interested, but I'm interpreting your post as "helps with DNA copying so its good for cell reproduction means it causes cancer". I'm sure I have it wrong. I mean.... loads of things we eat are good for cell reproduction. It's almost like saying "living makes you more likely to die"

I'd probably make it more confusing :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_codon

Note the reference to methionine. My understanding is that the body recycles methionine as well. So give your body just enough to let it do it's thing but don't pour gasoline on the cancer fire by supply a surplus of a critical component.

I'm still slowly doing the research on this. It was spurred by my daughter telling me about "the Blue Zone healing cancer". Googled that, and checked out the dietary element, and that led to the topic we're discussing now.

It seems reasonable enough. And simple enough. And you don't have to be vegan, but mindful of intake.

Just trying to share a recent discovery that seems like a possible life changer.

Hmm interesting. I eat a few dozen eggs per month, mostly because they're the cheapest source of protein.

I may have to consider chicken or something else.

I eat at least a dozen per week, and plan to continue. This is non-sense. The "seems to make sense" part especially. You can take any thread from human biology and spin to extremes using inductive reasoning. Fortunately the body has myriad checks and balances.

I submit to you "free radicals". Oh-my-god-theyre-awful-help. Enter anti-oxidants, oh-my-god-theyre-great-yay. Let's supplement them right? Ouch, turns out, those dietary anti-oxidants were the bees knees, but supplementation to extremes might be a bad idea, and we might need some free radicals to prevent cancerous cell growth.

My moral here is, natural whole foods, mostly, will keep you pretty near balance. Eat your berries, whole grains, eggs, and proteins because the one thing we know is bad for us is a lack of balance.

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