Health effects of homogenized milk
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Atherosclerosis begins with a small wound or lesion in the wall of the artery. Oster reasoned that the initial lesion was caused by the loss of plasmalogen from the cells lining the artery, leading to the development of plaque. He believed that the enzyme xanthine oxidase (XO) has the capacity to oxidize, or change, plasmalogen into a different substance, making it appear that the plasmalogen had disappeared.
Oster and partner Ross investigated cow's milk, "…presently under investigation in this laboratory since it has been shown that milk antibodies are significantly elevated in the blood of male patients with heart disease." Homogenization became widespread in the United States in the 1930s and nearly universal in the 1940s - which is when atherosclerotic heart disease began to skyrocket. Oster theorized that the homogenization of milk somehow increased the biological availability of xanthine oxidase.
Oster asserted that XO is found on the membrane of the fat globules in milk. Homogenization, on the other hand, would encapsulate the XO, so that it would not be digested in the stomach and intestines, but enter the bloodstream, where it caused its damage.
Auguste Gaulin's 1899 patent on homogenization forced milk through fine holes to reduce the size of fat globules. At 15 MPa, homogenisation multiplies the fat globules 600-fold in number, while reducing mean size from 3.3 to 0.4 micrometres.
Neither opponents nor proponents of the xanthine oxidase/plasmalogen hypothesis have presented convincing evidence in all of their writings, but the debate is hardly over. Research by RJ Hajjar and JA Leopold resulted in the 2006 study, "Xanthine oxidase inhibition and heart failure: novel therapeutic strategy for ventricular dysfunction", published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation Research
[edit] References
- Oster, K., and Ross, D. "The Presence of Ectopic Xanthine Oxidase in Atherosclerotic Plaques and Myocardial Tissues." Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, 1973.
