Word: colonizes
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...enough to make you reach for a bowl of ice cream. For years researchers have said that maintaining a diet that's high in fiber--found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains--should lower your risk of developing colon cancer. Now comes word that a study of nearly 89,000 women, published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, has found that fiber makes no difference. A smaller study of men in 1997 arrived at a similar conclusion. This is the sort of neck-snapping nutritional news that drives consumers crazy. First something is good for you; then...
...There are lots of other reasons, backed by solid research, to eat plenty of fiber. Study after study shows that fiber lowers blood pressure and cholesterol level, as well as your chances of developing adult-onset diabetes. And even if it turns out that fiber doesn't prevent colon cancer, it does help maintain your intestinal health in other ways. Folks who eat lots of fruit and vegetables don't usually develop diverticulitis, an often painful inflammation of the intestinal wall...
What made anyone think fiber could prevent colon cancer in the first place? It all started 30 years ago, when a British medical missionary named Denis Burkitt suggested that the reason colon cancer is rare in Africa is that Africans consume much more fiber than North Americans and Europeans. Perhaps, later researchers argued, the extra fiber sweeps the bowel clean of potential carcinogens or somehow alters the intestinal chemistry to retard tumor growth. A few small studies supported the link, while others didn...
Dosing up on calcium may help your colon. A study out last week says calcium supplements (1,200 mg daily) may reduce the odds of developing new polyps. The polyps, called adenomas, may be a precursor to colon cancer. How does calcium work? Researchers theorize that it binds with compounds that would otherwise irritate the lining of the bowel...
Finding a likely target, of course, doesn't guarantee success. Consider colon cancer: scientists believe at least three things have to go wrong for colon cancers to form. They liken the situation to a car accident. One of the genes that tells cells to divide (the accelerator) must get stuck in the "on" position. Another gene that tells cells to slow down (the brake) must be disabled. And the molecules that fix any mistakes in the DNA code (the repair crew) have to go on strike. In half of all colon cancers, the accelerator is a gene called ras, which...