Tag Archives: health

When I was a kid, my father, having grown up on a farm, was obsessed with having me drink lots of milk. There was a milk delivery service in Chadron, NE, that brought rich, fresh, whole milk to our door, and I recall drinking at least a gallon a week – sometimes twice that. I was told it would “build strong bones and healthy teeth”, especially during my pubertal years, when there is of course a growth spurt that does indeed require more calcium and good nutrition. (Hence the increased height of American children over the past century…)

But there is a dark side to this story. In an article in Medscape today, there is a lovely review of another pathway that stimulates prostate cancer, namely one that involves the PI3K-Akt-mTORC1 pathway. It is way beyond this blog to try and go into this pathway in any detail, but suffice it to say that the authors present a powerful (albeit very long) argument that leucine, a branched chain amino acid found in high concentration in cow’s milk stimulates this pathway and can lead to prostate cancer growth and metastases. I will reproduce here (and without permission….I wonder if that is needed in the blog world…) a couple of the figures that illustrate the point. (note I am not plagiarizing since I give you the link to the original article containing these figures)

This figure illustrates how leucine interacts with the signaling pathways that might lead to prostate cancer or stimulate its growth.

This figure demonstrates the increased consumption of milk products like cheese and milk that have occurred over time in western countries.

The bottom line here is that milk and cheese have a dark side and we should probably curtail our intake, especially in families who have high prostate cancer rates. It would be nice to go into all 250+ articles the authors cite, but trust me, their arguments are very well founded. Too bad, since I love cheese so much !