Diets high in dairy may up colon cancer survival

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

A dairy-rich diet could extend the lives of patients with colon cancer and patients with other cancer types, new research suggests. The study, conducted by the American Cancer Society's epidemiology research program and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study resuts also seemed to indicate that a dairy-rich diet decreased the changes of dying from any disease by 28 percent and increased overall longevity. The researchers collected data from almost 2,300 people diagnosed between 1992 and 2009 with localized colon cancer. The individuals with higher dairy intake lived longer. The authors of the study believe that the calcium, not the vitamin D, in the dairy was the contributing factor to survival.

Lead researcher, Peter Campbell, cautioned that additional research should be conducted. Dr. Donald Abrams, an integrative oncologist at the University of California and author of an editorial that accompanied the journal research, expressed stronger doubts about drawing an early conclusion about the effect of milk intake, warning that other factors such as the patient's level of exercise or body weight could affect the results.