Thu, Feb-20-03, 12:07
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Registered Member
Posts: 66
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Plan: Insulin Resistant diet
Stats: 320/240/138
BF:44%/33%/19%
Progress: 44%
Location: Michigan
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I studied this in my anatomy and physiology courses. Vegetarians were shown in a study that 90.5% of them were colon cancer free and which is far from that for the meat eaters population. However, there are also a couple of variables that come with that. One is there are many more meat eaters compared to vegetarians in the united states so by looking at numbers that way of course vegetarians are not going to have it as much when you compare person to person.
Secondly, meat goes through your system more slowly. Our intestines are very different compared to typical animals that eat only meats, ours are much much longer which takes longer to process through ( they resemble vegetarian animals). Being that it stays in our system longer means more chance of bacteria turning carcinogenic.
Meat when in decomposition has the tendency to create bacteria that would create an ideal enviroment for cells to turn cancerous(red meat decomposes a bit faster). Vegetables take much longer to turn carcinogenic so usually by the time it goes through your digestive system the odds are not as good that it would be as likely to create cancerous cells. Genetics and obesity are a major play in this also. Except for people following high protein diets, meat eaters when eaten with all other foods are typically overweight so it would be hard to make a conclusive study.
I myself am a lacto-vegetarian, but I feel that the strongest issues would be to be at a healthy body weight regardless of your diet. Also, I strongly encourage to get your colonscopys every five years after the age of 40, if you have a problem (at any age), and with each yearly physical to have a feces smear test, it is not as effective for detecting colon cancer but it will give you a bit of a heads up and not near as troublesome as a colonoscopy.
The one thing about the insulin link is that most people with high insulin are usually overweight (not always) but that could be part of the obesity factor.It is hard to get a proper study, I usually dont follow studies until there has been at least 10 done in controlled situations because there can be too many variances.
Last edited by *April S* : Thu, Feb-20-03 at 12:15.
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