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American Morning

Newly Released Study Finds Calcium-Rich Diet Can Have Benefits for Men

Aired March 20, 2002 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: We turn now to health news. A newly released study finds a calcium rich diet is not only important for women looking to prevent the onset of osteoporosis, it can also have great benefits for men. The report found both men and women who have a lot of calcium in their diets have significantly fewer occurrences of colon cancer.

CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is in Atlanta, has more on the study and some other health news as well - good morning, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson.

Anderson, yes, this study looked at approximately 100,000 men and women, and looked at a very common type of colon cancer and found that those people who got about 700 milligrams of calcium in their diet had about a 40 to 50 percent lower risk of this kind of colon cancer. And about half of all Americans get that amount. About half of Americans don't. So, as you said, it's another reason to get calcium, because, again, it also helps prevent osteoporosis -- Anderson.

COOPER: What do you have to eat to get that amount of calcium?

COHEN: Well, there's -- of course, there's calcium in all sorts of foods. And we sort of came up with a little menu that you can have. If you drink two glasses of milk plus an orange plus an egg, that would give you about 700 milligrams of calcium. There's also calcium in things like certain kinds of fish, like sardines and salmon and leafy greens. That, as we showed you, is just one way that you can get it. But it's really not as hard as you might think. And, again, half of all Americans do get it ordinarily in their diet.

COOPER: As I like neither milk nor eggs, I've got a little bit of a problem. Can I take calcium supplements?

COHEN: Well how do you feel about sardines? Would those be OK? Yes, you can take supplements. Supplements actually seem to work just fine. Supplements have anywhere between, let's say, three and 500 milligrams, you'd have to read the label to know how much you should get. But the authors said, yes, that seemed to work just fine.

COOPER: OK. Now I also heard some news this morning about a link between the diet drug Meridia and heart disease. Is that right?

COHEN: Right, absolutely. There's a group called Public Citizen, which is a consumer activist group. And they wrote a letter yesterday to the FDA asking the FDA to take this drug off the market. Public Citizen said, you know, Italy has suspended it -- suspended the use of Meridia pending the investigation of two deaths -- and Meridia has been used by about two million Americans. And Public Citizen says that FDA documents show that there have been about 400 reports of quote, unquote, "serious adverse reactions," including 19 deaths due to cardiovascular disease. And so that's why Public Citizen says they think it should be taken off the market.

Now Abbott (ph) Labs, which makes Meridia, says it is known that the drug can increase blood pressure, and they warn doctors about that. But they say that these reports to the FDA don't necessarily mean that Meridia caused these problems. They say many of the people who take Meridia are obese to begin with and have heart problems to begin with. So they said, yes, they might have had heart attacks, but you can't say that it's the Meridia that caused the heart attacks -- Anderson.

COOPER: You know, this is certainly not the first time we've heard about diet drugs causing problems with hearts. There was -- was it Fen-Phen, was that the one that was doing that?

COHEN: Right, Fen-Phen was taken off the market because it was a very, very popular drug, much more popular than Meridia. And they found that people were having heart problems, and so they took it off the market. The same for the diet drug Redux. So every time we come up with these new diet drugs and people think, "OK, here's the answer," often times they find problems down the road that caused them to be taken off the market.

COOPER: All right. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

COHEN: That's right.

COOPER: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks a lot -- Jack

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