By Dayne Hudson
The internet is full of outrage and commentary over new research that's found a link between creatine and testosterone boosting supplements and cancer (1).
Again, just like the myths of red meat causing cancer, eggs causing heart attacks and high cholesterol, salt leading to high blood pressure, saturated fat being bad for you, too much protein being bad for your kidneys, and genetically modified foods being hazardous, some researchers and subsequent media now look like they've created another brilliant myth, all for the sake of a controversial headline.
One of the "supplements" victimised, as you'll read about, is actually illegal.
However, the headline is still so damaging regardless, and one must do more than scratch the surface to uncover this information.
A BIG STAB IN THE DARK
The authors looked at nearly 900 men from Massachusetts and Connecticut of which 356 of them had been diagnosed with testicular germ cancer.
So, like they do in all these studies, they got questioning.
They asked about smoking, drinking, exercise, family history, any injuries they might have had to their testes and of course, supplement use.
After crunching some figures, the researchers suggested that those who use supplements had a 65% greater risk of developing the testicular cancer.
They were apparently inspired by previous research linking testosterone supplements and cancer - so they've taken the ball and ran with it.
But here's one of the problems I have with the research: they classify supplement "use" as having one or more supplements once a week at least for four weeks in a row, or more.
So if you took creatine, the humble amino acid, for at least 4 weeks in a row and only once (4 times!) then it's a risk.
Well if that's enough to develop testicular cancer, I'll give it away!
The risk then aparently increased 177% more for those who had used more than one kind of supplement, and also increased for those using supplements for 3 years or longer.
Those who started using them at 25 or younger were also at large risk.
Unfortunetly however, this sort of observational stuff is nothing new.
Recently I interviewed Dr Anthony Victor D'Amico, head of Radiation Oncology from Harvard Medical school, to get further expert commentary on a poorly designed study that media around the world ate up, suggesting that fish oils cause prostate cancer.
The way this study was designed, was sheer stupidity; not one fish oil supplement was taken....listen to me chatting to Dr D'Amico here.
Testicular cancer incidence rose to 5.9 cases per 100,000 men in 2011, from 3.7 cases in 100,000 in 1975, Zheng said, and he's not sure why.
But it seems supplements are one of the scape goats until furter notice.
“Testicular cancer is a very mysterious cancer,” Tongzhang Zheng admits, which pretty much says it all.
Whilst it's mysterious, someone needs to cop the blame in the interim. I guess we need to make it look like we're making progress.
The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, The Beijing Natural Science Foundation, and the Beijing Nova Program.
THE BIG PROBLEM - ANDROSTENEDIONE
On April 11, 2004, the United States Food and Drug Administration banned this steriod hormone from sales.
It's illegal because the effects are basically the same as taking steriods - androstenedione works by increasing the amount of androstenedione which then bolsters the load of testosterone in our body; we know that we require the same amount of testosterone and androstenedione for an anabolic steriod-like effect (2).
I'm willing to bet most of you aren't taking this - so you're safe.
But this of course, this was one of the supplements to blame for the apparent rise.
It's hardly an over the counter supplement anyway - but the worldwide headlines that classifies this as a "supplement" and places it next to creatine are still very damaging.
Which leads me to my next issue: the humble and poor amino acid creatine is still not off the hook as far as this headline goes.
So should we be concerned? Throw out our tub of the world's most researched supplement (with studies not sugggesting this before) despite it's many positive and proven effects?
Let's take a look at this research (1), that involved chosing 50 popular ingredients from recipes in cookbooks and investigating the cancer "associations".
We're talking here about foods like: veal, salt, pepper spice, flour, egg, bread, pork, butter, tomato, lemon, duck, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, mace, sherry, olive, mushroom, tripe, milk, cheese, coffee, bacon, sugar, lobster, potato, beef, lamb, mustard, nuts, wine, peas, corn, cinnamon, cayenne, orange, tea, rum, and raisin - foods we're most likely consuming on a daily basis.
Here's what they concluded:
"Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses."
So there we go...the more we investigate, the more the "effect sizes shrink".
It's not a silly suggestion to think the same thing would happen with creatine if we investigated it more.
But the point of the above cited study is this - just about everything we consume is associated with cancer risk.
Thanks to the latest "research", you can now add creatine to that list.
SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
Absolutely nothing different.
There's no solid evidence to say creatine causes testicular cancer, or any other form of cancer for that matter.
It's nothing more than observational research that makes for a damn good headline.
And as far as the illegal testerone supplement of androstenedione goes, well the fact it's illegal means we shouldn't be taking it anyway, and I wouldn't expect most of you to be taking this regardless (not that I'm judging at all, your decisions are your decisions!).
If it indeed turns out down the track that it's these illegal testosterone supplements that are to blame - it's a shame that something like creatine gets caught up in it too.
Furthermore, one would suspect the effects of an illegal testosterone supplement over the long term would be far risky than creatine.
My recommendation?
Continue to take your legal supplements without any worries, and take this study with even less than a grain of salt.
"Stay Fit, Stay Flexed!"
REFERENCES
(1) N Li, R Hauser, T Holford, Y Zhu, Y Zhang, B A Bassig, S Honig, C Chen, P Boyle, M Dai, S M Schwartz, P Morey, H Sayward, Z Hu, H Shen, P Gomery and T Zheng. Muscle-building supplement use and increased risk of testicular germ cell cancer in men from Connecticut and Massachusetts. British Journal of Cancer 112, 1247-1250 (31 March 2015) | doi:10.1038/bjc.2015.26.
(2) Cole, Adam. How Does Androstenedione Work? Retrieved 14 March 2013.
(3) Schoenfeld JD, Ioannidis JP. Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review. Am J Clin Nutr. 2013 Jan;97(1):127-34. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.112.047142. Epub 2012 Nov 28.
