Regarding links and research

The links I collect may include research studies that don’t seem to be directly about the point I made – sometimes research hasn’t been performed yet and I’m referring to background information in the article to which I linked or I’m drawing inferences from the research that the research authors did not include. Frequently research studies are focused on finding ways to make a medication or technique that can be patented. I am trying to figure out how normal and abnormal physiology may be affected by diet or lifestyle.

Read and live at your own risk. Medical doctors practice the provision of medicine – at least so I was informed by one medical doctor. My training was regarding diet for the lifespan in health and sickness, from perinatal/prenatal, through lactation and introduction of solid foods, to childhood and teen growth spurts through adulthood and into the typical changes in metabolism that occur with aging. Chronic disease is not a typical part of aging but a slowing down of metabolism and reduced need for total calories in combination with an increased need for protein and other trace nutrients is normal. Reduced appetite and thirst signals may also be normal so remembering to eat and drink enough can be a problem during aging.

I care a lot but there are only so many reading hours in a day.

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes. Thanks.

A research study proposal; for clarity

To clarify a point from my last post, the cancer research I would like to see completed would be on the use of a vegan diet with ginger as a preventative or as a cancer treatment. Adding fluoride or bromide to 6-shogaol was simply an example of how other natural products have been made into chemicals that could be patented in the past.

The difficulty with designing clinical research studies is the ethics involved with substituting an experimental treatment for a treatment that has evidence supporting its value. A person with cancer is more likely to be allowed into experimental trials only after they have already been through other anti-cancer treatments that were unsuccessful – but which likely left their bodies in a weakened condition. Trying an experimental treatment as a first attempt would have to be with the patient’s understanding of the possible risks of not using the standard of care treatment instead. Maybe the standard treatment for the patient’s type of cancer provides the 22.5 months of survival on average but the experimental treatment wouldn’t have any history of clinical trials to offer as a comparison. So frequently the experimental treatments are only offered to patients whose cancer has returned or that had failed to respond to standard treatments.

Prostate cancer is a very slow growing cancer that is frequently a benign problem compared to other types of cancer. It is said that more men die with prostate cancer than die from prostate cancer — and surgery in the area sometimes leaves men with worse problems so a watch and wait approach is being recommended more often. A diet based research study designed for patients in the watch and wait phase of prostate cancer treatment might be a reasonably ethical experimental design.

The experimental dietary treatment that I would propose would be based on a vegan diet, possibly with fish, and which is low in arachidonic acid rich foods and is not excessive in total calcium foods or supplements and which provides adequate amounts of CLA fats, [8, 12, 13] and with ginger powder daily, approximately a half teaspoon per day or equivalent ginger root cooked in food — or with an appropriate amount of the purified active compound, 6-shogaol. However, use of the whole root or ginger powder or mixed extract might provide other beneficial phytochemicals, from a summary I wrote years ago:

  • In humans, mice, and in petri dish studies, ginger has been found to inhibit the action of 5-LO from converting as much arachidonic acid into 5-HETE and slowing prostate cancer cell growth. [13]
  • *The cancer cells replicate human enzymes  that increase membrane breakdown and release of arachidonic acid which is then converted into a form the cancer cells can use as an energy source. The ginger extract stopped the step that would have converted the arachidonic acid into the form, 5-HETE, that could be used as a food source for the cancer cells. [13]  So adding ginger to the diet might make avoiding arachidonic acid containing foods less of an issue – but moderation is usually still a good idea. Arachidonic acid is an omega 6 fatty acid found in egg yolks,chicken, liver and animal fats. [14, 15] Arachidonic acid can also be formed out of linoleic acid which is found in seeds and nuts and most vegetable oils. [15]

Approximately a half teaspoon of ginger powder was the amount found helpful for reducing pain for arthritis patients, but I still haven’t found the exact reference link, sorry. A different study on muscle pain due to exercise found that two milligrams of ginger powder given daily prior to the episode of strenuous exercise (approximately 3/4 teaspoon, which was given in capsules) helped reduce the exercise induced muscle pain by 25%. [9, 10] Heat treatment of the ginger powder was not found to give any further reduction in muscle pain in that study however for cancer prevention heat treatment might be increasing the amount of the chemical that is active against cancer, 6-shogaol.

Clinical results that showed benefit for the men with prostate cancer in the watch-and-wait phase might than be preliminary evidence to support trying the treatment plan for men with more advanced stages of prostate cancer or for women with breast cancer — with their understanding of the potential risks of using an alternative treatment instead of the standard of care treatment.

As a nutrition focused member of a multi-disciplinary team I would count on other specialists to work out the details related to stages of cancer and assessment, etc.                  — no one works alone these days.

/Tangent: 6-shogaol and two other phytochemicals found in ginger have also been found to help promote bronchodilation in asthma patients.  [11]/

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. Information is not a substitute for individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

Bias is a part of life that can be difficult to exclude or even to recognize

Words can mean different things to people of different backgrounds. Many words have a variety of meanings or have slightly different meanings depending on how the word is used in conversation. Research teams may seek feedback from a focus group of the target population before proceeding with a planned research study or survey.

The most traditional forms of social science try rigorously to weed out bias. But when studies are consistently designed by one population to use
on a very different population, all the conditions of research become biased. The very words chosen to question people may have quite different meanings to researchers and to people living in extreme poverty.

-Diane Farjour Skelton, p 80, Artisans for Overcoming Poverty [link]

The word bias is also a sewing term used to describe fabric sewn on the bias, or at an angle to the crisscrossing weave of the threads. Fabric sewn on the bias allows for a little more freedom of movement or natural stretch along the seam without the use of elastic. [1] A biased opinion has less freedom of movement, it is skewed by our personal history. Bias reflects our life long expectations of what life is like and it is based on our life experiences. Reading and experiencing a wider variety of things may help combat our tendency to expect everyone to think and react the same as ourselves.

Burlap fabric showing the criss crossing weave of the thread.
Burlap fabric showing the crisscrossing weave of the thread. A typical seam follows the lines of the thread, a seam sewn on the bias is sewn at an angle to the weave.

Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use.