How Excessive Red Meat Consumption Increases Colorectal Cancer Risk
32 comments
·October 25, 2024fyt2024
I remember a paper long time ago that claimed that one reason why women have higher life spans than men is lower iron content in their blood due to menstruation.
homarano
Women have a consistently lower mortality rate than men at all ages 20-80 with no notable change around menopause.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mortality-rate-for-men-a...
DiscourseFan
Men tend to be in higher risk situations more often than women.
Beijinger
"..that one reason why.."
Reading competence
QuercusMax
Here's an interesting article that talks about sexual differences in life span, which seems to be correlated with the size of the sex chromosome: https://www.science.org/content/article/secret-long-life-mat...
Basically, for whatever reason, a larger sex chromosome (X is much bigger than Y) confers a better chance of survival.
DiscourseFan
>This unevenness hints that factors other than the presence of certain sex chromosomes might also strongly influence longevity, the team says. One of these factors could be sexual selection. Exaggerated physical traits and elaborate behaviors make males of some species more attractive to females but require large amounts of energy and take a toll on overall health.
Perhaps the riskiness of male behavior in humans is built in at the chromosonal level...
tuatoru
I thought it was because females have two copies of the X, so defects in a region of one copy can be compensated for by the other. RAID-1 ftw.
henning
OK. How much red meat do you need to eat to have the excessive high iron levels likely to trigger the behavior under consideration in the study? How much higher is the risk?
Also, spinach has iron. So excessive spinach consumption at levels that most people couldn't tolerate could also increase colorectal cancer risk? Or no?
stackghost
Vegans, especially vegan women of menstruating age, are well known to be almost universally iron-deficient, because our bodies absorb iron from meats much more readily than other (such as vegan) sources.
Interestingly, Vitamin C increases the rate at which you can get iron from greens such as spinach. So maybe a glass or orange juice and a bowl of salad a day keeps the doctor away.
david-gpu
If you want vitamin C without the sugar load of drinking orange juice, you may be interested to learn that bell peppers have a much higher content of vitamin C than oranges, either per gram or per calorie.
DiscourseFan
Yeah but Vegans consume a lot of vitamin C so that makes a lot of sense.
Also explains why I crave red meat and vitamin C after a workout. Can't get enough of the stuff.
ygouzerh
That's a good question, spinach have the same type of iron than in red meat, iron-(Fe3+), so it seems that it could a culprit as well.
It looks like however the absorption of iron in red meat is quite high (15%-35%) compared to spinach (2-5%), so maybe not enough to really be a risk factor.
pessimizer
Spinach doesn't have a lot of iron. The reputation is due to a late-19th century study that was mistaken, and found that spinach had 10x the iron that it actually does.
https://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2015/08/on-spinach-i...
bell-cot
Summary: In the lab, using selected "standard lines" of cancer cells, it looked fairly plausible that iron encourages the growth of colorectal cancer cells.
Eating "excessive" red meat seems very likely cause high iron concentrations in your lower intestines. Beyond that - YMMV.
photonthug
> Beyond that - YMMV.
Looking at Inuit and Mongolian populations for stuff like this would likely be a good approach to actually learn stuff. Almost a strictly meat diet, but without all the confounding variables of sedentary office workers, industrial chemicals, and highly processed foods with tons of sugar.
stackghost
There's more to it than diet. Genetics also plays a large role. I'd be leery of generalizing dietary advice across ethnicities.
inglor_cz
... and microbiota, too. Colorectal cancer is located at the end of a very densely "populated" tube.
In all likelihood, Inuit microbiota is very far from Western one, at least as long as they don't adapt Western diet.
null
null
tcdent
The correlation with Iron makes me wonder if the polymerization of cooking oils is related.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/cleaning-and-care/cast-iron/sc...
jollyllama
I wonder if tea, coffee, wine, phytate containing foods (beans, nuts) and calcium rich foods (dairy, etc) would counter the risk by blocking iron absorption.
fyt2024
Just getting celiac disease would counter iron intake :-)
cynicalpeace
So it's a junk headline? Also, telomerase activation is heavily correlated with longevity and less risk of disease.
riku_iki
Per dietaryguidelines.gov cereal contains 8 times more iron per calory than beef: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/resources/2020-2025-dietar...
Bluescreenbuddy
Is this why millennials and early genx are seeing higher rates
cynicalpeace
So the answer is yes, lol
m0llusk
Iron supplements are often used, so it would be interesting to know if they also might be significant risk factors.
samatman
Headline stripped of bullshit: "Fe(3+) reactivates telomerase of in vitro colorectal cancer cells".
eshack94
It took me way too long to find that (I didn't notice your comment til after).
Sigh at the clickbait headlines.
smm11
Everything in excess might be a problem. I guess the Standard American Diet is better, right?
It pays to be careful with studies like this because even if the statement given is proven to be true, that does not logically imply that it is optimal to reduce red meat consumption.
As a thought experiment (I'm completely making up these claims, but they do at least seem plausible), imagine a world in which regular coffee consumption resulted in some small increase in cancer risk, but then also regular coffee consumption was correlated with say, academic success, success at work, had some appetite suppressing effects, etc.
If the latter outweighs the former then the cancer risk is probably worth it even just longevity wise. Like how we know that going out in the sun increases cancer risk but also is just, well, good for us, to a degree.
But of course the media will just run with a headline, which is why it sometimes feels as if the science is constantly "changing".