Polyamines Produced By Rotten Meat But Not Dairy?

EndAllDisease

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In Ray's article Meat physiology, stress, and degenerative physiology he informs us that there are carcinogenic breakdown products produced by meat "ageing" (also known as rotting), called polyamines.

This got me thinking about dairy and how I've never heard him mention that deliberate ageing or fermentation of dairy to make yogurt or cheese causes the production of these breakdown products.

My question is this:
Why is it that aged meat produces toxic biproducts but aged dairy like cheese and yogurt don't?
 

InChristAlone

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Fermented dairy has amines as well. I think it is just about how much you can tolerate. Some cannot tolerate aged beef but can tolerate aged cheese or yogurt.
 
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EndAllDisease

EndAllDisease

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So are you saying rotten beef has more polyamines than rotten cheese?
If so, what makes you think that?

If aged beef causes cancer, why wouldn't aged cheese?
 

brandonk

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I had long wondered why I sometimes responded badly to dairy if all dairy and cheese are the same? Turns out, maybe they are not all the same when it comes to amines, which result from any spoiling of milk. Almost any kind of commercial milk or cheese could have high levels of amines depending on how the product is made:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3390585/

Based on this, if you make your own cheese, and want to reduce the amines, you might try certain preventative measures:
  • Start with milk from a reliable source (if you can find one) and heat the milk to about 120 degrees (though some might say 145 degrees) for thirty minutes before starting.
  • Use a starter culture that can ripen the cheese quickly, in a day or two.
  • Keep the cheese cool while it is ripening
  • Add a good concentration of salt (2% is considered hypertonic or "salty")
  • Stop the ripening after a day or two by moving it to refrigeration.
  • (Here, Ray Peat suggest draining off the whey and lactic acid liquid.)
  • Keep the ripened cheese cold and airtight.
  • (Traditional cheese-making might submerge the ripened cheese in olive oil.)
In theory, it could be that the people here who have trouble digesting dairy are reacting to amines. Also, in theory, it could be that everybody is reacting to amines in dairy, but not realizing it, since there really is no testing of dairy for amines.

Yes, there could also be amines (and endotoxins and god knows what) in meat. If these things are bad for people, then it's a real shame that there's not any testing. Since hearing Ray Peat's views, the only meat I eat (if I can) is what comes from a farm I know, and a meat processor I know, frozen on the day of slaughter.

Flatearth, and Janelle, thanks for contributing, and moving me to search for this topic. You made my day!
 
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EndAllDisease

EndAllDisease

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Flatearth, and Janelle, thanks for contributing, and moving me to search for this topic. You made my day!
My pleasure, thanks for looking into it and sharing your findings. That's a win-win.

Question:
- Where did you get the list of 'preventative measures' to reduce the polyamine content?

Based on those recommendations, it seems that the key is to ferment the dairy as little as possible.
Does this mean that the most highly aged cheese would have the highest content of polyamines, and that the safest choice of cheese would be something like mild cheddar?
 

michael94

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Every food should be weighed in its costs:benefits to the organism, not just the costs. Polyamines have been associated with a lot of bad stuff but to avoid all "aged" meat/fermented dairy as a rule depends on the person. Ray even mentions in on of his KMUD interviews that fermented dairy will generally be a net benefit to most people even though there is an increase in lactic acid, something that should be avoided.

Case study ( not real ): Jim

Jim is 28, slightly overweight, and just coming to terms with the idea that a decade of beer drinking and football watching has caught up with him. He has accumulated a large store of pufa as well as excess of iron and various other harmful heavy metals ( aluminum, cadmium are quite common ). PUFA and heavy metals react to create nasty stuff in addition to doing bad things on their own, a toxic combo as you well know. Now Jim is wondering if it's ok to have some beef...let's be generous and assume he's getting it from a butcher rather than in plastic wrap ( disgusting lol ). This beef has polyamines in it. It is also has a lot of zinc. Jim is probably very deficient in zinc like most people on a SAD are. Zinc is vital for proper functioning and has some important protective effects ( see link below). Is the damage of polyamines worth the protective effects of zinc in someone with a large accumulation of heavy metals/pufa? I don't know. My bias is to say it's not just based on the instincts I observe in others and myself. Is the right choice just to go for oysters? Maybe. You might be wary of those too given how we've made the sea so toxic. People like to buy the south korean oysters, I would say the sea over there has not been treated particularly well. Not everyone has access to only fresh meat and milk from properly raised cows, so we have to operate in that context. I think beef from your butcher when you're craving it is net-protective in most people.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ge/article/295181/+&cd=61&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=mv
 

tara

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I think histamine might be one of the bioactive amines some people have trouble with in fermented milk and aged cheeses. I seem to have trouble with most forms of milk and cheese if I have too much, but aged cheeses seem to be the riskiest for me. I speculate that histamine or other amines could be part of it. I haven't done too well with yogurt (incl greek) or keffir either, and don't know whether to put that down to the amines or the lactic acid or both. Possibly meat/broth that isn't fresh enough might bother me too, but I haven't been tracking this closely, so not sure.

and that the safest choice of cheese would be something like mild cheddar?
Fresh home made farmers cheese, curdled with calf rennet? All cheddar is aged, isn't it?
 

tara

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Every food should be weighed in its costs:benefits to the organism, not just the costs. Polyamines have been associated with a lot of bad stuff but to avoid all "aged" meat/fermented dairy as a rule depends on the person. Ray even mentions in on of his KMUD interviews that fermented dairy will generally be a net benefit to most people even though there is an increase in lactic acid, something that should be avoided.
This makes sense to me.
 
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EndAllDisease

EndAllDisease

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All cheddar is aged, isn't it?
All cheese is aged, but some more than others.

From a practical standpoint it seems logical to go for the least aged cheeses to ingest the least amount of polyamines.
 

jyb

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All cheese is aged, but some more than others.

From a practical standpoint it seems logical to go for the least aged cheeses to ingest the least amount of polyamines.

Maybe, though you can't exclude more ageing = more bacteria degradation of amines. Bacterial degradation does occur for other bad things in a good way, making some fermented product a lot better than average milk in my opinion. I haven't looked at studies in the case of amines.
 
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All cheese is aged, but some more than others.

From a practical standpoint it seems logical to go for the least aged cheeses to ingest the least amount of polyamines.

some cheese is fresh

cottage, ricotta, mozarella can be fresh...
 
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Maybe, though you can't exclude more ageing = more bacteria degradation of amines. Bacterial degradation does occur for other bad things in a good way, making some fermented product a lot better than average milk in my opinion. I haven't looked at studies in the case of amines.

Erm, who is causing the rotting in the first place...
 

Travis

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Polyamines are powerful, and this links to methionine's influence on longevity.

This is relatively new biochemistry. Methionine was first shown to reduce longevity in 1992:
Low Methionine Ingestion by Rats Extends Life Span
Nutrient Requirements and Interactions
NORMAN ORENTREICH


This was 57 years after dietary restriction was first shown to increase longevity, and Orentreich showed that it was only methionine that reduced longevity. The low-methionine and longer-lived rats actually ate more (per body weight), so you can completely throw out "caloric restriction" as an explanation.

A follow-up by different researchers showed an even greater increase in longevity (42%).

Methionine restriction increases blood glutathione and longevity in F344 rats
The FASEB Journal
JOHN P. RICHIE


And this was from a small reduction in methionine, from .86% to .17%. These are the same concentrations as the Orentreich Study.

In both studies, the high methionine rats weighted quite a bit more than the low-methionine rats. Richie makes a big deal about glutathione, as if he was thinking about a free radical mechanism to explain this. Blood glutathione levels were increased about 250% in the low-methione group but concomitantly decreased 25% in the kidneys and 50% in the liver.

You would expect the high-methionine group to have more glutathione, since methionine can be used to make glutathione (via transsulfuration). I makes you wonder why anyone took this idea seriously, because glutathione is usually decreased with aging and disease. So the high-methionine groups should live longer.

But this is a red herring. Methionine does other things as well. It is a necessary component of S-adnenosyl methionine, or SAM. This molecule does two things: it methylates DNA and it creates polyamines. The geneticists waste a lot of time speculating about how DNA methylation could increase the accelerated aging seen in the high-methionine groups.

But DNA methylation, like glutathione, is generally seen as a positive thing. Another red herring. And studies that actually extracted the DNA from mice fed differing methionine concentrations came-up empty handed. Folate has a much larger influence on DNA methylation than methionine does, and folate restriction has never been shown to increase longevity.

Noticing the rats weight gain in all of the methionine rat studies, on a hunch I searched for "PPAR and polyamines" and found this:

Spermidine is indispensable in differentiation of 3T3-L1 fibroblasts to adipocytes
Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Susanna Vuohelainen

In vitro, these researchers were able to cause stem cells to basically become adipocytes. They even had a polyamine inhibitor called α-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), an irreversible inhibitor of ornithine decarboxylase: the rate-limiting enzyme for polyamine synthesis.

By adding a polyamine (spermidine) and measuring mRNA, they found that the cell produced such notable fattening enzymes such as fatty acid synthesase and hormone sensitive lipase. It also upregulated PPARγ, the same nuclear receptor that responds to eicosanoids and turns on the cell's "hibernation mode".
methionine.png

This was published in 2009, and I don't think anyone knows exactly how polyamines work on a molecular level.

But they certainly influence cells at concentrations of only 100μM, and upregulate the sort of enzymes seen in adipocytes.

(The weight gain seen in the early methionine rat studies was not from extra protein. They compensated the low-methionine group with a little extra glutamate.)

And polyamines are often found in radically-high concentrations in cancer cells, along with upregulated PPARγ.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma and spermidine/spermine N1-acetyltransferase gene expressions are significantly correlated in human colorectal cancer
BMC Cancer
Michele Linsalata

Here are some Ray Peat quotes that tie into this:
The polyamines are increased in cancers, and therapies to block their formation are able to stop the growth of various cancers, including prostate, bowel, and breast cancer. Metabolites of the polyamines in the urine appear to be useful as indicators of cancer and other diseases. (In pancreatic cancer, Yamaguchi, et al., 2004; in cervical cancer, Lee, et al., 2003; in adult respiratory stress syndrome, Heffner, et al., 1995.) The quantity of polyamines in the urine of cancer patients has been reported to be 20 times higher than normal (Jiang, 1990). Polyamines in the red blood cells appear to indicate prognosis in prostate cancer (Cipolla, et al., 1990).
Meat physiology, stress, and degenerative physiology

Methionine and choline are the main dietary sources of methyl donors. Restriction of methionine has many protective effects, including increased average (42%) and maximum (44%) longevity in rats (Richie, et al., 1994). Restriction of methyl donors causes demethylation of DNA (Epner, 2001). The age accelerating effect of methionine might be related to disturbing the methylation balance, inappropriately suppressing cellular activity. Besides its effect on the methyl pool, methionine inhibits thyroid function and damages mitochondria.
Protective CO2 and aging

And here's and article I just gleaned from Ray Peat's references that might explain how polyamines work on the molecular level:
Polyamines preferentially interact with bent adenine tracts in double-stranded DNA
Nucleic Acids Research

Søren Lindemose
 
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