Older Icelandic men who remember chugging a lot of milk in their teens are three times as likely to be diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer as more-moderate milk drinkers, researchers have found.
"We believe that our data are indeed solid and provide important evidence for the role of adolescence as a 'sensitive period' for prostate cancer development," Johanna Torfadottir, a nutrition scientist and a graduate student at the University of Iceland, told Reuters Health by email.
How much milk men drank had no connection to their risk of early-stage tumors, however. And intake in midlife -- the age group most other studies have focused on -- didn't seem to matter either.
"From these data alone we cannot recommend that teenage boys should chance their dietary habits," she said. "We are only looking at the risk of one disease, prostate cancer, and obviously risks of other conditions, e.g. bone health, need to be considered." "It would be premature to say that drinking milk causes prostate cancer," he told Reuters Health. "You can talk about association, but it is hard to prove causality."
Dr. Matthew Cooperberg, a urologist at the University of California, San Francisco, agreed. He added that people shouldn't be wary of drinking milk.
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