Arachidonic Acid and Cancer - a brief synopsis

Jiigzz

Jiigzz

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Recently there has been a little talk about the potential for one of our products to cause cancer and this talk has also lead to a few accusations that we care more about making a few dollars than we do about the health of our customers. I would like to state outright that customer satisfaction and health are PRIORITIES of ours and we take any accusation seriously.

The first point is that cancer is a very complex topic and it far extends my knowledge to comment on it fully , however what I can point out is when taken in isolation (or Googled out of context) then the correlation between Cancer risk and Arachidonic Acid supplementation does appear, at least on the surface, to be rather disconcerting. So let's look at the evidence:

Analysis of the information in the Multiethnic Cohort Study found that intake of different types of fat indicated no association with overall prostate cancer risk or with non-localised or high-grade prostate cancer [6]. A prospective cohort study and a clinical trial failed to find evidence for an association between fat intake and colorectal cancer [7,8]. A dietary intervention study demonstrated that a reduction in fat intake reduces the risk of skin cancer [9,10], but the evidence from observational studies [11,12] has been controversial. Japan is a high-risk area for stomach and lung cancer, but no association with fat intake and these types of cancer has been suggested [2].
The issue is that Cancer progression and development is reliant on MANY different factors, not just one and so stating "X causes cancer" fails to take into account other conditions that may have played a far more vital role. If we observe the data in its entirety we note that, rather than being causative, Arachidonic Acid has played only a speculative role in the development of Cancer (I will use the term broadly).
It has also been suggested that other ARA mediators are actually inhibit tumour growth - but this doesn't mean we can lay claim it protects against cancer, so it doesn't seem fair that the opposite can be used against us. It depends entirely on the context.

As prostate cancer was specifically mentioned, lets look into the data behind that:

Prostate cancer
Major characteristics are shown in Table 4[46,67-81]. Four articles did not provide sufficient information about the methodology of outcome measurement. As well as well-known confounding factors, specific factors for prostate cancer, for instance BMI, physical activity, and total energy, were considered in some articles; however, no confounding factors were adjusted for in seven articles.

Table 4. Summary of observational studies on the association between ARA and risk of prostate cancer
One cohort study and three case-control studies examined dietary ARA intake. They showed no significant change in prostate cancer risk according to increased ARA intake.

Blood ARA levels were estimated in nine case-control studies and three cross-sectional studies. The precision of blood analysis was mentioned in only five articles, and masking of disease status was conducted in only four. Ukori et al. (2010) reported that prostate cancer risk of African-Americans decreased in the fourth quartile of blood ARA level, and that the overall trend was significant (P for trend < 0.05). A significant change in prostate cancer risk or a significant difference in blood ARA levels was not found in the other 11 articles.
The findings from articles for colorectal cancer differ depending on the methodology of ARA exposure assessment. A positive dose-response relationship between dietary ARA intake and colorectal cancer was indicated in two reports [30,31], whereas four articles [38,40,43,46] indicated a negative association or significant ARA decrease with blood ARA levels, and no article reported a positive relationship between colorectal cancer risk and tissue ARA level. These inconsistent results seem to indicate that there is little firm evidence that ARA correlates with the risk of cancer.
And further:

Among studies for breast and prostate cancer, a strong positive association and a clear dose-response relationship between increased cancer risk and ARA exposure were not observed, although the results were replicated in different settings using different methods. This suggests that ARA exposure is not associated with increased breast and prostate cancer risk.
It must be made clear that correlation does not equal causation. If X does not equal Y ALL THE TIME, then we must consider the possibilities surrounding that fact. Much like the fear of fat propaganda that took over the 80's, 90's and 00's when people took correlation and implied causation, they failed to take into account that may of these "higher fat eaters" lead vastly unhealthy lifestyles that contributed to their conditions. They simply looked at their high dietary fat levels, saw they were ill and implied the two were connected.

If I was to do the same with protein, I would note that mTOR activation increases proliferation of cancerous cells (as it also causes proliferation of non cancerous cells) and therefore tell everyone that any supplement purported to increases mTOR, would also cause cancer. However as always, it is not this simple and overlooks confounding variables that play vital roles.
 
schizm

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Awesome to see a separate thread addressing that, great work Jiigzz!
 

slimsaw00

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Man I saw this posted by another companies Facebook page.... I'm done with them. Thanks for the post... Maybe some other smart people can elaborate more.

Thanks again Jiiggz!
 
booneman77

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As always, great info
 
Jiigzz

Jiigzz

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Man I saw this posted by another companies Facebook page.... I'm done with them. Thanks for the post... Maybe some other smart people can elaborate more.

Thanks again Jiiggz!
I had to address it because it does seem disconcerting. However supplemental Ara has safety data showing it is safe for our directed usage, further supplementation is only for a short period, further, a lot of these observational studies are done over prolonged periods and it fails to take into account the full body of data showing that either this person was negligent in their research (directly C&P from examine.com) or they were purposefully misinterpretimg data to sell their own product.

We appreciate the support!!!!
 

slimsaw00

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I had to address it because it does seem disconcerting. However supplemental Ara has safety data showing it is safe for our directed usage, further supplementation is only for a short period, further, a lot of these observational studies are done over prolonged periods and it fails to take into account the full body of data showing that either this person was negligent in their research (directly C&P from examine.com) or they were purposefully misinterpretimg data to sell their own product.

We appreciate the support!!!!
Absolutely brother.... It's funny he talks about how these companies are looking to make money, yet he pimps his epicatechin product. My (uneducated) initial thought on this was that since ArA has been out for so long it would seem that the body of research would indicate negative side effects. Maybe I'm off base since cancer is such a difficult thing to trace back to root causes. Wasn't there an article last year that said fish oil promoted prostate cancer? Lots of smart people said that "X" did not lead to "Y", and it seems like this is also one of those cases.

Got rambling there, and maybe I'm way of base in my point.

Keep doing your thing SNS!

-Matt
 

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