Category: MilkAndBones

Vinegar & Osteoporsis

What is the relationship between white vinegar and osteoporosis you might ask?

Well, a few weeks ago I read on a web board that not all calcium supplements are created equal. If the pills don’t break down, your body will not absorb the calcium.

The woman who wrote the post was being treated for osteoporosis. She was told that a cheap way to test a calcium supplement is to put the calcium pill into a glass of white vinegar for 20 minutes. White vinegar has a similar pH as the inside of a human stomach. If the pill is not at least partially dissolved, your supplement is likely to be ineffective.

I put my wonderful all natural calcium citrate ( reputed to be the most absorbable form of supplemental calcium ) pill, perfectly balanced with magnesium and vitamin D2 into a glass of white vinegar.

Twenty minutes later the pill was still intact. Ouch.

Believing what you read on the internet, especially web boards, is similar to believing what you read in those newspapers in the check out line at the super market.

Is this test really meaningful?

I asked the registered dietitians at the The Vegetarian Resource Group in Baltimore Maryland. They emailed me this response:

There is a group, the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) which is an official public standards-setting authority for all prescription and over-the counter medicines. They have a standard test that measures how well calcium supplements dissolve. Scientists have compared the USP’s method to the method you describe using white vinegar and found that the results were comparable. In other words, if a calcium supplement doesn’t dissolve well in white vinegar, it raises a concern that the supplement won’t dissolve well in your stomach. Hope this helps.
Reed Mangels, PhD, RD
Nutrition Advisor, The Vegetarian Resource Group

That is the bad news.

The good news is that a quick web search shows that it is easy to buy calcium citrate powder. Pill crushers can also be bought in most drug stores for under $10, so you can make use out of any supplements you already have.

Update:
I got this response from Jack Norris, vegan RD:
http://jacknorrisrd.com/?p=1014

” – but people have drank milk for centuries”

Bathsheba with The Letter Of David by Rembrandt 1654.

The picture above is called “Bathsheba with The Letter Of David”. It was painted by Rembrandt in 1654. I came across it in “The No Dairy Breast Cancer Prevention Program” ( page 101 ).

As you can see the model Rembrandt used has a large tumor on her left breast. I am not an art expert of any kind. I don’t know if the tumor was painted there as part of the story of the painting or if this particular model just happened to have breast cancer.

Dr. Plant mentioned the painting in her book as food for thought to people who make the point ” -but people have been drinking milk for centuries”. People have also been getting cancer for centuries and often enough to show up in the art of the time. In the year 1654, any cows milk people were drinking was likely raw, unpasteurized and organic. So, while modern production methods undoubtedly contribute to the unhealthy nature of cows milk it isn’t the whole story. For more details please click on the above link to my review of her book.

A frequent topic of conversation about medical science and research is how it seems like many diseases are more frequent in our time. Nobody doubts that the changes people have caused in our environments helps explains this. However, the very salient point is made that with improved diagnostics another possibility is that it only seems like particular diseases are increasing. Some diseases seem to be on the increase because we now know how to recognize those diseases and we now have the institutional infrastructures to measure the occurrence of those diseases as well as communicate about it.

In other words, yes, back in the good old days people drank milk, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were free of breast cancer. It could be that they didn’t know what it was, that they didn’t call it the same thing we did or that they didn’t communicate about it as much as we do.

The painting above at least tells us that breast cancer existed back in the year 1654.

So, if you are concerned about your health you might take the argument ” but people have always drank milk” with some salt.

Quit Milk, Survive Cancer

The No Dairy Breast Cancer Prevention Program

The leading cause of death for women between 25 – 75 years of age is cancer. The type of cancer that kills the most women is breast cancer. About 1 out of 10 women will contract breast cancer.

That is a large number of wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, friends and coworkers who will be lost to people.

One of these victims was almost Dr. Jane Plant, the first female head of the British Geological Survey and one of the first women hired by the British Geological Survey as a scientist.

Floored by a diagnosis of breast cancer, Dr. Plant decided to respond with what she knew best: science. Part of what the British Geological Survey does is to analyze the relationship between diseases and geographic areas to find links between the disease and what is going on with the land.

Dr. Plant knew from her work that Asians of the far east do not get breast or prostate cancer as often as westerners do. It has been noticed that until recent times Asians tended not to consume milk.

Still having a growing breast cancer tumor threatening her life after having had a mastectomy, several other surgeries, several radiation treatments and chemotherapy Dr. Plant decided to remove all dairy products from her diet.

The tumor began measurably shrinking after a few days and the cancer disappeared from her body not to return.

This story sounds like a fairly typical anecdotal account. What makes this book atypical is that being a breast cancer survivor who is also a scientist Dr. Plant’s book has ample citations from well respected sources to support her beliefs.

Dr. Plant’s strongest argument is that cows and human beings share a hormone in common: Insulin Like Growth Factor 1 ( ILGF-1). This hormone is identical in structure in both cows and humans. Cancer is basically cellular reproduction running amok and ILGF-1 stimulates cellular growth. Higher levels of this hormone in the blood stream have been associated with increased breast and prostate cancer activity. Dairy cows have been systematically bred for centuries to produce more milk, which means that their bodies also produce more ILGF-1, which finds its way into milk. Contemporary dairy production in the US also involves feeding cows a cocktail of various hormones to increase milk production.

The dairy industry has always maintained ILGF-1 in milk is not a problem because ILGF-1 doesn’t survive the human digestion process. In her book Dr. Plant quotes two contemporary studies that show that it is likely ILGF-1 does survive digestion intact and does make it into the human blood stream.

Dairy products and to a lesser extent meat are the dominant sources of ILGF-1 in the diet of most westerners.

Dr. Plant also presents citations for many studies that show possible relationships between cancer and milk. Most of them having little to do with milk fat. Dr. Plant took personal interest in this observation. Like many women she had always made it a point to eat low fat dairy products to avoid potential health issues.

Dr. Plant also gives a fascinating description of how she thinks science works and where she thinks the philosophy of contemporary cancer research has gone astray in terms of good science and has deprived people of freedom from breast cancer.

This book is not dry and maintains the tone of a personal story while being clear without sacrificing rigor with the facts.

The book also gives her personal account of what she went through emotionally and psychologically while she was being treated for cancer.

It has many useful tips for someone else who might be going through the same ordeal. For example, she is convinced that had she known about philosophical differences in the medical culture she could have delayed if not avoided her mastectomy.

Neither a vegetarian or a vegan Dr. Plant concludes her book with a dietary regime for reducing breast ( & prostate) cancer risk. It calls for a vegan diet dominated by organic produce for people who have cancer and as near vegan a diet as people are willing to tolerate to prevent breast ( & prostate) caner.

I found this book to be enjoyable as well as personally empowering. The book has a warm, personal tone. It also plays out like a fascinating detective story of science while giving the reader a lot of information to take charge of their health.