Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Does Milk Increase Risk of Parkinson's?

Looking for another reason to consider reducing your milk and dairy consumption?

I've blogged before about how diets higher in dairy seem to be associated with increased risk of ovarian cancer and fatal and aggressive prostate cancer while not demonstrating themselves to be protective versus osteoporotic fractures.

Well now research has linked diets higher in dairy, especially in men, with increased risk of Parkinson's disease.

The study, published a week or so ago in the American Journal of Epidemiology, looked at 57,689 men and 73,175 women from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. 250 men and 138 women with Parkinson's disease were identified during the ten years of follow-up. Diets higher in dairy were associated with increased risks of Parkinson's development with men having an 80% increased risk and women 30% in the highest dairy intake grouping.

While by no means a slam dunk that ties dairy forever to Parkinson's, it's just another thing to ponder when watching the does a body good and think about your drink messages paid for by the enormously deep pockets of Big Milk.

In an reflex quobesity, Big Milk in the UK (the UK Dairy Council) had this to say regarding the study,

"In reality there is no definitive link between dairy/milk, or any other food group, and any chronic disease."
Um, doesn't that also mean there's no definitive link between dairy consumption and osteoporosis prevention (a chronic disease)?

Of course if pressed this Big Milk spokesperson certainly would point out that....no no, milk does decrease risk of osteoporosis (even though it doesn't), it's just that nothing bad could ever be linked to dairy.