Health

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The Pancreatic Cancer/Soda Pop Link

Posted 1 month ago|18 comments|3,590 views
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Chris D
 Moderator
Seattle, WA
Put that Coke down!

Sorry, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But if you’re a daily soda drinker – like some 60 percent of Americans – you need to cut back. That daily soda could help give you pancreatic cancer.

A long-term study in Singapore showed that people who consumed two or more soda pops a week had a 87 percent increased risk of getting pancreatic cancer as compared to people who did not drink soda. Pancreatic cancer begins in the pancreas, an organ that creates digestive enzymes and hormones. Then it kills you. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancers is only around five percent.

In a nutshell, there’s a definite link between pancreatic cancer and soda consumption. Studies are never 100 percent conclusive, of course. A lot of people will choose to ignore this study and keep drinking too much soda. Pancreatic cancer is a possible result, but it is somewhat unlikely.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of anti-intellectual folks who will tear apart the soda/pancreatic cancer study, saying that it’s irrelevant, false, or even un-American. Never mind that the researchers carefully controlled for age, smoking, diabetes, and BMI, or the fact that they followed over 60,000 people for 14 years.

It’s hard for me to understand how people will deny that drinking a great deal of soda pop can hurt your body. I’ve linked to an example on the left. It’s interesting to me that the reporter makes mockery of “alarmist headlines” that link soda and weight gain.

I agree with the statement “body weight results from complex interactions between metabolism and lifestyle.” But I think it’s dangerous and unethical to tell your readers to ignore the soda/obesity link. Thankfully, I haven’t found any pancreatic cancer/soda consumption deniers. Yet.


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COMMENTS
1 month ago: A long-term study in Singapore?
Chris D
Chris D
 Moderator
Seattle, WA
1 month ago: A long-term study in Singapore.
1 month ago: Who (are the doctors and researchers), what (I'm guessing sodas), when (was the testing period), where (name the hospitals and / or reasearch labs). Lots of holes to fill.

A long-term study in Singapore.
Chris D
Chris D
 Moderator
Seattle, WA
1 month ago: Here's the abstract: http://tinyurl.com/yg545dt

It's 35 bucks for the full text. Sorry I couldn't help you out more.
1 month ago: Chris,

When you call anybody who might criticize the findings as anti-intellectual, you're resorting to using a rather obvious logical fallacy to prop up your point. So you piqued my interest to take a look and here's the numbers from the article:

The study evaluated 60,524 people and a total of 140 came down with pancreatic cancer. So regardless of whether you drink soda or not, your chance of getting pancreatic cancer in this group was 0.2313%.

110 of the 140 didn't drink soda yet still came down pancreatic cancer. So if you drank no soda at all, your chance of getting pancreatic cancer was 0.1817%

12 had less than 2 servings a week. Your chance of getting pancreatic cancer was .01983%

18 had two or more servings a week. Your chance of getting pancreatic cancer was 0.02974%

So in reality, using this tiny number of cancer cases as your proof and assuming it was 'carefully controlled', you're far better of off having at least 2 or more servings per week of soda than having no soda at all, and your best off to have at least least 1 serving but less than 2 per week.

Of course the study is comparing the soda drinkers and indeed, the heavy soda drinkers had 6 more cancer victims than the moderate soda drinkers but it's statistically infinitesimal when you actually look at the percentages and to say you have an 87 percent increased risk ( 0.02974% vice .01983%) of getting pancreatic cancer, you're being misleading at best, and perhaps deserving of your own anti-intellectual tag.
1 month ago: I certainly won't argue against too much soda being bad for you. BUT...this, like other health related "discoveries" will circulate for about three months then die off to make way for the next one. This stuff runs in cycles.

Thanks for the abstract link. It gives my curiosity a starting point.
Chris D
Chris D
 Moderator
Seattle, WA
1 month ago: @markbyrn -- Now that's the kind of criticism I can respect!

You're right. I did exaggerate a bit. I'm looking at these findings through my lens of "HFCS is making our society a bunch of fatties." -- http://tinyurl.com/5t5yuc

I agree that the percentage of people who eventually get pancreatic cancer is very small. But I'd argue that if these findings are true -- and we have no real reason to believe that they're not -- soda consumption is a significant risk factor for pancreatic cancer.

Finally, I think that these kinds of findings are going to be magnified when applied to American society. Here, people with a "sweet tooth" will drink gallons of soda a day. I've seen it.
1 month ago: How do you magnify non-peer reviewed data to fit any society. Did we all not learn a lesson from the EU and their global warming studies and IPPC reports?

I'll crawl into my anti-intellectual hole now.

High Fives, Mark. Slam Dunk.
1 month ago: I wonder how this hurts polar bears too?!?
1 month ago: Red,

This might answer your question...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIk7Q_DJIgQ
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
1 month ago: Love them Cola Bears. I would like to see them narrow down the study and find out exactly what it is in the pop that is doing this. Did they differentiate between the regular sugar or high fructose corn syrup drinks, or diet drinks that have sweeteners that turn into formaldehyde in your system? What exactly was it? Since it eats up the enamel of your teeth could it be the acid or the excess CO2 of the carbonation? Could it be the caffeine or just something in the cola nut?

By the way how much more CO2 would there be in the atmosphere if we weren't sequestering millions of tons of carbonated drinks in our pancreas?
Siempre Solo
Siempre Solo
Auburn, NY
1 month ago: How much of an intellectual does a person have to be to realize that guzzling 250 plus calories per 20 oz beverage in the form of highly absorbable liquid sugar and enough acid to pickle a jar of cukes is a bad thing especially if the drinker does it several times a day. Did I mention they are empty calories? Oh yeah, notice that all the so called conservatives are dismissing this study! Bite me!
1 month ago: Bite me? Talk about empty calories.
1 month ago: Cypress.

Very funny.
1 month ago: SS, if you don't want the Rebiblicans to regulate sex lives, than the retrograde progressives need to stop regulating people's intake of soda.

On a macro scale, whereas as the religious right eschews any Science that conflicts with their literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, the religious left has a propensity for shoe-horning Science to fit their utopian visions of an all-naturalistic Dr. Doolittle Earth in the style of James Cameron's fantasy Pandora planet. Ironically, Pandora is nothing more than an anti-Darwinist wet dream.
1 month ago: Mark.

You are provocative.

While I'm one of those "religious rights", your descriptions are not of my neighborhood.
Siempre Solo
Siempre Solo
Auburn, NY
1 month ago: The religious left Mark? Who could that be?
Siempre Solo
Siempre Solo
Auburn, NY
1 month ago: Don’t kid yourself Mark, I could careless what sex the right wants to regulate and I could careless what vice the left wants to tax. Vice taxes are one of the few places where the government can find a crowd of supporters big enough to justify a new revenue source. That means nothing to me. I’m not naïve. I don’t believe that a tax will curb a persons propensity for liquid solid are gaseous vices. People will ingest, inhale an impale themselves on all kinds of things no matter the personal cost. But that little fact is not going to stop me from declaring it an absolute travesty to the human condition. If it is stupid I will declare it so. What? Would you rather that I not say a thing? Silly bird, I will speak up for good every chance I get!

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