The Nurses' Health Study (NHS):
The original Nurses' Health Study started in 1976 and was set up to investigate risk factors for major chronic diseases in women.
Now in it's third generation, male nurses have been included along side the female participants and there are currently 275,000 participants.
The Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS):
The purpose of this study which began in 1986, is to evaluate a series of hypotheses about men's health relating nutritional factors to the incidence of serious illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and other vascular diseases. This study which only uses male participants was originally designed to compliment the NHS study. In the beginning, 51,529 male health professionals were enlisted including dentists, pharmacists, optometrists, osteopaths, podiatrists, and veterinarians, of which 531 were African-Americans and 877 were Asian-Americans.
Both studies chose health professionals as it was believed they would be more motivated and committed to participating in a long-term project. In both studies the participants received a survey every two years that asked about diseases and other health related topics such as physical activity, medications being taken and smoking. Every 4 years the participants were asked detailed questions
Normally, clinical studies work backwards. For example; a cancer trend is noticed and scientists try and work backwards in time from that point to find out why that trend has arisen.
These two long term, high participant studies have given us an insight into what happens to health over time, and is affected by different changes and fads in dietary habits.
For example; the addition of artificial sweeteners to our lives. When something "new" is introduced it can be deemed "SAFE" for human consumption, but until a significant amount of time has passed, the truth is, scientists just don't know if it really is safe or not.
We know a lot more now about aspartame than we did 20 years ago. Aspartame is the artificial sweetener that is every where... diet soda, chewing gum, lollipops and small packets that arrive with your coffee. The number of people that are constantly ingesting aspartame in the hope of reducing their sugar intake is incalculable. Diabetics, dieters or people with a sugar conscience...
a disturbing trend; just ONE dieta soda A DAY increases the risk of leukemia, non-hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
But this new information goes even further to segment this risk into male and female:
1 can of diet soda per day leads to:
42% higher risk of leukemia in men and women
31% higher risk of non-hodgkin lymphoma in MEN
102% higher risk of multiple myeloma in MEN
Why men?
They don't know. The original study authors only have a theory: "We hypothesized that the sex differences we observed may have been due to the recognized higher enzymatic activity of alcohol dehydrogenase type 1 (ADH) in men, which possibly induced higher conversion rates from methanol to the carcinogenic substrate formaldehyde." (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2012 "Consumption of artificial sweetener and sugar -containing soda and risk of lymphoma and leukemia in men and women.")
So, what will you do now? Will this help you quit your aspartame habit?
I can help you improve your health. If you would like to make an appointment with me either in person or via Skype, just send me an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com
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