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American Morning

The Big Question: Can Dairy Products Help Your Health?

Aired April 24, 2002 - 08:41   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: The big question this hour, can dairy products help your health? Do you remember Woody Allen's hilarious film "Sleeper?" In the future, everything doctors had said at one time was bad for you turned out to actually be good for you. Well, in the present, doctors seem to be doing the same kind of about- face.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now from Atlanta to explain what is going on.

Elizabeth, help us.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Anderson.

I'll tell you, this study surprised the heck out of me. It's in the Journal of the American Medical Association, done at Harvard Medical school. And what they found was that folks who ate five or more servings of dairy per day had a 70 percent decreased risk of getting something called IRS. Now that doesn't have anything to do with your taxes. It's insulin resistance syndrome, and it's a bad thing to have. What that does is when your body makes insulin, your -- the rest of your body doesn't know what to do with it. Your pancreas is making it. The rest of your body doesn't know how to process it.

And having insulin resistant syndrome often leads to later getting diabetes or cardiovascular disease. So how could it be that all of that dairy might lower the risk of getting insulin resistance syndrome? Well, the authors theorized that it might be the calcium, the magnesium and the potassium in the dairy. They say that other studies have shown that those things can reduce the risk of getting diabetes. So that's the theory that they have for now -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, well, it still is very confusing to me. I mean, I have a history of heart disease in my family. I have always been told, don't eat dairy, it's got a lot of fat, it's got a lot of calories. Does this mean I should be eating dairy?

COHEN: It is very confusing, and I think what it might have to do with is that heart disease and diabetes can be caused by more than one thing. So it depends why your family has heart disease, and that's a very complicated problem that I think even many doctors would have a hard time dealing with. I think one of the bottom lines that might be coming out of this study is that they need to look at this further, they need to study it more, and In the meantime, there is always the alternative of having low-fat dairy products, because those don't have the problem of clogging you up with fat, but then again they do have the magnesium, and the potassium and the calcium.

So, you know, that's one possibility that you could do. But in the meantime, you're just going to follow this, because this is really the first study that has shown that kind of a dramatic effect.

COOPER: Well, as you said, this is a very preliminary study. What do we know decreases IRS?

COHEN: Right, this is early. You can't change your diet because of this, but there are some things that you can do. To decrease your risk of getting IRS and to decrease your risk of getting diabetes, it is known that if you exercise and if you have a well-balanced diet that doesn't get you fat, those are the two things, keep your weight in check and exercise a lot, and those are sure things to reduce your risk for getting diabetes and heart disease.

COOPER: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much. We'll keep watching this.

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