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Does Drinking Coffee Increase Pancreatic Cancer Risk?
When coffee is
roasted, the carcinogen 3,4 benzopyrene is formed. There have also been
identified two other possible carcinogens found in coffee.
In 1981
I had an exchange with Professor Brian MacMahon of the Harvard School of
Public Health. He had done a study in the Boston area and had found that
the drinking of three cups of coffee a day increased the risk of
pancreatic cancer by a factor of 2.7. He felt that coffee drinking was
the
cause of 50% of all pancreatic cancers. He stopped drinking coffee and
replaced coffee with tea in his office. Yet MacMahon was not all that
certain that carcinogens in coffee were the cause of pancreatic
cancer.
In England prior to 1948 people there drank tea and very
little coffee. However, after 1948, there was a vast increase in coffee
drinking in England, Dr. Tim Spencer of the St. Bartholomew's Hospital in
London in 1981 cast much light on the MacMahon study. He plotted the
importation of coffee into England between 1948 and 1973. During that
time, the importation of coffee increased by 120%. Also during that time
the death rate from pancreatic cancer in England increased by
50%.
Dr. A.J. McMichael in Australia reviewed the MacMahon and
Spencer reports and had this to add. He gave reference that coffee
drinking increased the production of the intestinal hormone, gastrin. He
said that with minor animals, coffee stimulates the production of
gastrin,
and gastrin stimulates pancreatic hyperplasia and neoplasia.
In
1985 Ana Marie Comary Schally of Tulane University reported that
pancreatic cancer seems to be hormone induced. She gave a reference that
treatment of pancreatic cancer with tamoxifen had shown some benefit. She
and others in Mexico then treated a few far-advanced patients with
pancreatic cancer with liver metastases, with the LH-RH agonist
D-Trp-6-LH-RH. A few long lasting remissions were obtained.
Coffee
drinking in the USA has remained much the same over the past 100 years
but
during that time there has been a vast increase in deaths from pancreatic
cancer. It is suggested that the same thing is happening with pancreatic
cancer as has happened with lung cancer and that this increase in
pancreatic cancer has been the result of the combination of coffee
drinking and the three-fold increase of immuno-suppressive
polyunsaturated
fats in the diet. There is a reference to support this concept. D.F. Brik
of our National Cancer Institute had reported in 1981 that pancreatic
cancer increased when corn oil was added to the diet of golden
hamsters.
From an
article published by the Townsend Letter, "Some Real Causes of heart
Disease & Cancer", by Wayne Martin
Last updated 7 March 2007
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