Diet - Eggs or no eggs?

@drcopp unfortunately, most of the things in our environment can be carcinogenic in the right setting: amount of exposure, initiator of carcinogenesis and genetic predisposition.
As far as your ‘medical expert’ is concerned, his studies are somewhat narrow if he is selecting very small populations (Seventh Day Adventists) which are usually closed off to outsiders for his conclusions. There are regions in France where the entire diet is based on poultry - especially the fat which is used in cooking. Rates for all forms of cancer are LOWER here than in most parts of the country…but wait, doesn’t poultry contain those deadly heterocyclic amines?? Shouldn’t the men be riddled with metastatic PCa? But Again, we have a very limited, close knit genetic enclave on which natural selection may have bestowed a benefit.
As an even smaller study let’s consider a population of just one…my mother.
She started smoking at age EIGHT (no lie!) and smoked 3 packs of cigarettes every day until age 88; I took them away from her since her gradual dementia made it possible for her to accidentally light her house on fire.
For the last 20 years of her life she stopped cooking (she lived alone after all) and loved to eat a plate of cured sausage and various cheeses on salted crackers for dinner - all the while puffing away and at times sipping a highball. I wasn’t happy about any of it and she acknowledged my displeasure by blowing smoke rings in my direction😖.
She finally passed at age 98, from Covid of all things…
Now please have your medical expert - who has his own biases by the way - explain why this woman wasn’t dead by age 50; she should have been and, in fact, she buried SIX of her closest friends - all smokers dead from lung cancer.
So Mom was definitely unique - a definite outlier, a total exception. But imagine if she had married a man with similar genetics - a man whose body could take whatever abuse was thrown at it; while not definite, there’s a good chance that their offspring would have similar advantages.
Now imagine hundreds of years and many generations later with no intrusion from the outside, an entire group of people - many of them intermarried - routinely living to 100 years or more…0h, and they happen to eat a mostly vegetarian diet.
Some would say - ‘See?? They live a long time because of what they eat!’ But they would be dead wrong; they live a long time because over time their genetics protected them from the ravages of disease.
Again, not disagreeing that a ‘healthy’ diet isn’t something to be pursued, but as @northoftheborder says, a little bacon now and then won’t kill you, carcinogenic or not.
BTW, Mom obviously did NOT marry a man of similar genetics, as my presence on this forum would clearly indicate😆
Phil

Thank you, Phil for your examples. I follow the research, which are RCT's and meta-analysis in the biomedical world, these are based upon large populations or very controlled studies that are randomly assigned, with control groups. Dr. Gregor is a national expert-you may call him biased, yet then he could be correct. His record of solid reviews tells the story. He uses these advanced and highly valid methods when his team researches all of the current, available studies. Are there exceptions to some people who do all of the wrong stuff and still don't get ill, sure, but I want to see what these studies say to guide my health. Are there environmental toxins, sure, so why not give our bodies the best shot at health by eating organic foods?

For instance, in regards to the actions of cigarette smoke, it has now been confirmed that elements in the smoke actually turn off our security system called the "epi-genetic" code, that inhibits or stops cancer from starting or growing. Why not give our bodies a better chance at survival-once a person stops smoking and can go 10 years, their risk of cancer and dieing is reduced to nearly that of a non-smoker, per a confirmed, large population study.
I think that using evidence is the best route, I will end our discussion here as we seem to be digging in our heels and at logger heads with one another, which is usually not productive for any parties.

@drcopp - FWIW, I agree that there's overwhelming evidence that there's no safe level of tobacco smoke. It's a whole different situation.

That's not the same as most food+cancer studies, where they've uncovered "suggestive" correlations between extreme consumption of some foods and certain cancers or cancer progressions.

According to Dr Walsh's book, while there's no demonstrated causal link between any food and prostate cancer, the one that's getting closest is prepared meats, and he recommends going easy on them just to be on the safe side (again, a hot dog with friends on the weekend isn't going to matter, but maybe don't put a pastrami sandwich in your lunchbox every day).

We're not so far off. We agree that eating healthy is important for everyone, and especially for cancer patients. I think the only disagreement is over the all-or-nothing approach, which seems to me to be more alarmist than the science supports (for food, that is; it's entirely correct for tobacco).

@heavyphil - I'm glad your mom was lucky. My dad, another lifetime smoker, wasn't. His health was already in rapid decline by his late 50s, and we lost him at age 70, far too soon. Smoking doesn't kill everyone who does it, but it kills an awful lot of them

Late to this discussion - just saw the title of this thread and decided to open it since for many days now I feel "guilty" of not posting several studies about eggs thinking "Oh boy, people are getting upset when one mentions red meat, now I will add eggs - I better keep quiet". But than the other "voice" starts to nag "You are selfish person, Surf, so what if some people jump on you lol, some might be helped by your post" and so on , and so on. ANYHOW - without going into details and posting links, we decided to eliminate eggs from our diet (even as an ingredient).

Some people will not be helped even if they stand on their lashes the whole day, that does not prove that healthy diet for majority of people is not helpful. Special diet might not help my husband either, but we would know that we did all that was recommended and all that was HEALTHY. I tend to think that moderation is for healthy people. Once one develops any serious condition, restriction is necessary. We do not say to a liver failure patient " just drink little bit less alcohol" - right ?

On the other hand we are lucky in a sense that we did grow up on Mediterranean diet and that we are not "food oriented" people, so adjustment for us was really a non issue. My husband's latest metabolic blood work is just perfect in every way and even glucose went down even though our diet is now carb dominated. ( was 99 , 98 , now is 92). In general, our thinking is that even if he needs additional treatments his body will be in good shape to endure them with little problem, the same way that it helped him heal so fast after surgery even with so much blood loss.

The best "studies" are observations of the whole population of people that have certain diet and certain lifestyle and they show us a lot .

@surftohealth88
Have he been getting A1c tests? They have replaced the fasting blood sugar tests that I used to take.

@jeffmarc

Yes, of course. His A1C was never troubling, I mean, even 99 was not "troubling" lol , I was just fascinated by such drop. Since his pathology report was bothering me, I order monthly tests for him for ultra sensitive PSA and since he goes to lab anyways I was thinking why not do basic metabolic panel as well and also a full blood count since he lost so much blood during surgery. After surgery he had below normal levels of hemoglobin and RBC : (. His blood count was not recovering fast enough for my liking so I told him to ask for B12 shot (injection) and he got it - now RBC is mid range (same as it was before surgery). His doctors were not concerned at all BTW, the comment was "it is almost normal" - give me a break !!! First of all there is a difference between "normal" and "optimal" and second of all it was not "his" normal ! *pffft

@drcopp True, but KIFC1 proteins are produced by a GENE. You’re not gonna suppress a gene by eating a sprig of broccoli or even a bucket of the stuff. Maybe if they could truly isolate and amplify what it is that makes broccoli so magical in terms of longevity (BTW George HR Bush HATED the stuff and lived well into his 90’s) they could call it ‘chemo’ and maybe do some good.
I happen to love broccoli and I often eat it with pasta, garlic and pancetta; I figure the broccoli/garlic neutralizes the pasta/pancetta if I was keeping score on a kill me/cure me basis…😉.

@heavyphil

Actually - yes, there are multiple studies that show that certain substances in food do activate or block gene expression. (epigenetics) This means that a person's diet can change how their genes are expressed, influencing various bodily processes like metabolism, inflammation, and cell growth.

@drcopp Peace, brother! - great discussion and I hope you continue to participate on the forum. Best,
Phil

@surftohealth88 Hello Surfer, was wondering where you were! Yes, I am fully aware of the phenomenon - we’ve discussed it at length a few times during these dietary wrestling matches…
But my feeling remains the same: all broccoli (eg) isn’t equal (soil, mineral uptake); all methods of preparation aren’t equal and MOST importantly, everyone’s digestive systems/enzyme levels are different. What YOU absorb and benefit from may pass harmlessly thru me with zero impact.
Once again, I base most of this on the flax seed/flax seed oil studies done by Dr Wannafried in Minnesota. We all know the study about how taking flax seed presurgically lowered certain tumor markers in men with PCa.
However, in other studies men diagnosed with PCa who used flax seed OIL had high levels of alpha lipoic acid (ALA), a key component in flaxseed, in their prostates.
Initially it was assumed that this buildup of ALA was directly tied to the oil and it was causing PCa. But further testing (don’t ask me, she didn’t elaborate in her email to me) showed the men had a genetic flaw in processing and breaking down certain oils (flax being one of them), so they derived ZERO benefit whether they took the whole seed or the oil.
So YES, you ‘may’ be able to alter gene expression to a certain extent - “IF” you have the right DNA for the job. Some of us do, some don’t - and some have genetic mutations so profound that they have diseases and syndromes named after them! Best,
Phil