Cancer cells love high fructose corn syrup

Thursday, August 05, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: cancer, high fructose corn syrup, health news

(NaturalNews) Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently conducted a study revealing that cancer cells have a particular liking for refined fructose. In tests, pancreatic cancer cells quickly fed on refined fructose and used it to divide and proliferate rapidly within the body.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," explained Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, one of the authors of the study.

Published in the journal Cancer Research, the findings also reveal that not all sugars are the same, a widely held belief in mainstream medicine. Tumor cells love both glucose sugar and fructose sugar, but fructose directly causes cancer cells to reproduce and spread in a way that glucose does not.

"Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," wrote the team in the study paper.

So the study solidifies the fact that there is a major difference between high fructose corn syrup, a highly-refined sugar commonly used in processed American foods and beverages, and refined sugar cane. Both can lead to health problems, but high fructose corn syrup is worse in terms of cancer growth.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," said Dr. Heaney in a statement.

It is already known that the pancreas has to work much harder to metabolize fructose than it does glucose and other sugars, so it makes sense that fructose consumption is implicated more seriously in contributing to pancreatic cancer growth.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38528161/ns/heal...