Protect your prostate AND your heart....

Today's post: Friday, 10-31-2008
Yesterday we did a post on foods and supplements that DO very likely prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, and/or prevent the most aggressive and dangerous form of prostate cancer.

So today, when the Total Health Breakthroughs email I got had an article with some similar information on a way to prevent prostate cancer as well as a couple of ways to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH, Benign Prostate Hypertrophy or enlargement, I immediately decided to use this THB article as a starting point for my post today. (The benign in the name doesn’t literally mean that BPH causes no health problems. Far from it. It refers to the fact that the enlargement is caused by processes OTHER THAN cancer.)

Even better, the two supplements mentioned in the article to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH also have been found to lower LDL cholesterol which tends to help protect your heart. I discuss that in my comments after the Total Health Breakthroughs article.

Here’s the article:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Friday, October 31, 2008

"Don't Gamble When It Comes To Your Prostate!

By Dr. Mark Rosenberg

By the time you are 60 -- if you're a man -- there's a fifty-fifty chance that you'll be suffering from an enlarged prostate. If you live long enough, your chances climb to 90%.

An enlarged prostate -- a condition called benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), is a non-cancerous swelling of the prostate. As your prostate begins to swell, you'll find that you need to make more frequent trips to the bathroom, your urine stream will be weak, and you'll have a hard time finishing what you started... if you know what I mean.

Of course, annoying bathroom urges are only part of the problem. An enlarged prostate can also interfere with your sex life and your overall quality of life. Often an enlarged prostate is a symptom of a hormone imbalance that could be having a more significant impact on your health than you realize.

Most doctors take a wait-and-see approach to an enlarged prostate. They figure if it doesn't grow too fast and the symptoms don't become too severe, then it's something you can live with. If the symptoms become unmanageable, then the next option is surgery.

This approach ignores several middle-ground options. In fact, you can begin treating your enlarged prostate right away. Many of the same steps you take now can also protect you from prostate cancer in the future -- an unrelated condition. You'll also relieve a lot of the symptoms that come with an enlarged prostate -- it's a win-win strategy.

Caring for an Enlarged Prostate...
How to Slow Its Growth and Keep it From Becoming a BIG Problem

Most doctors chalk up prostate growth to a natural part of the aging process. And that's why they feel comfortable taking a hands-off approach until things get real bad!

I'd much rather see my patients take action to slow their prostate growth and to attempt to prevent the need for surgery from ever arising. This strategy improves the quality of your life and has the added bonus of cutting your risks of cancer.

So, just how do you keep your prostate from growing out-of-control?

Your first step is to start eating the foods that can most help your prostate. I suggest that you include a quality protein with every meal and then have cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage four to five times a week. Snacks that are high in zinc and magnesium are also beneficial to your prostate.

But there's more you can do.

It's important that you be physically active. I'm not saying you have to kill yourself working out for 90 minutes at a time, but anything you can do to increase your daily physical activity will help. Research shows that men who get the most exercise reduce their risks of an enlarged prostate by 40%.1

You can also help reduce your risks of an enlarged prostate or slow the growth of your prostate by taking a supplement that contains saw palmetto. Saw palmetto contains compounds that help slow prostate growth. It can help prevent your prostate from becoming enlarged, or if you already have an enlarged prostate, it can help reduce your symptoms.

I recommend that you choose a supplement that's been standardized to at least 85% active fatty acids and sterols. Take between 300 and 350 mg each day.

Of course, you've probably already heard of saw palmetto and know that it can help your prostate, but it isn't the only supplement that can ease prostate problems. A lesser known supplement called beta sitosterol can also be of help... especially when it comes to preventing cancer. In laboratory tests, beta sitosterol slowed the growth of prostate cancer cells.2

Another good supplement to help prevent prostate cancer is cranberry extract. Cranberries contain several natural compounds that stop cancer cells from multiplying. In lab tests, cranberry extract effectively slowed all types of prostate cancer by an impressive 50%.3

When it comes to an enlarged prostate, it's important to take action and to take control of your health. You can slow down or even stop your prostate from continuing to grow, and while you're at it, you'll be giving yourself some extra protection against prostate cancer. All told, these steps can make a big, big difference in your quality of life later on.

Stay well,

Mark Rosenberg, MD

References

1. Dal Maso L, et al. Int J Cancer. 2006; 118(10):2632-35.
2. Jourdain C, et al. Eur J Cancer Prev. 2006; 15(4):353-61.
3. Seeram NP, et al. J Agric Food Chem. 2004; 52(9):2512-17.

[Ed. Note: Mark Rosenberg, M.D. is director of the "Institute for Anti-Aging in South Florida. He is a highly sought-after speaker for lectures on topics such as integrative cancer therapy and anti-aging medicine. Dr. Rosenberg is avidly involved in supplement research and is nutritional consultant for Vitalmax Vitamins.]”

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1. I’ll put my most important comment first. Beta sitosterol, saw palmetto, and the sterols found in many nuts and vegetables all are sterols. And, it’s been found that sterols tend to reduce LDL cholesterol. So taking them, as the doctor who wrote this article recommends, can help reduce your total cholesterol by lowering your undesirable LDL cholesterol. And that effect very likely helps protect your heart and blood vessels because it probably also helps reduce the amount of the small sized, small particle, LDL that actually has been found to produce damage to your artery wells.

It’s very interesting to find that the same two supplements you take to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH, also are likely to protect your heart.

I wonder if the other things that protect your heart might also be useful to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH?

(By the way, for those who haven’t read our previous posts, getting regular exercise each week; NOT ingesting any transfats or high fructose corn syrup; taking the B vitamin niacin, eating foods such as Oatmeal, apples, and beans that are high in soluble fiber; eating wild caught fish, lean poultry, nonfat and very low fat dairy, and/or beef fed only grass instead of beef or pork that’s been penned up and fed grain; and eating onions and garlic -- all either increase your HDL or lower your LDL and triglycerides or both. And, by doing those three things, these actions have been shown to drive down the amount of the small sized LDL that actually has been found to produce damage to your artery wells and harm your heart.)

I noticed that Dr Rosenberg does quote research showing that regular exercise IS useful to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH. So, for sure taking these two sterol supplements and doing regular exercise both tends to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH AND helps protect your heart!

Personally, I’m very grateful to Kenneth Cooper, MD who wrote the book Aerobics and studied the health and performance benefits of regular exercise. In a later book, he relates that taking sterol supplements lowers your LDL cholesterol. (You do NOT have to eat the margarine that sterols have been added to get them either! Beta sitosterol and saw palmetto are available directly as supplements online or in health food stores. Eating nuts regularly and eating vegetables every day also supplies you with sterols.)

I’ve found that a company called Natrol makes a product that was once labeled as Beta Sitosterol; but once they discovered that many of their buyers were taking it to lower their cholesterol they renamed the same supplement exactly to “Cholesterol Balance.” It only costs about $6 for a bottle. So it’s less expensive than many kinds of supplements AND less expensive that many other sterol supplements.

When my blood test showed I had a 130 LDL reading, I begin taking 160 mg of saw palmetto twice a day. And I began taking two of the Natrol beta sitosterol tablets at lunch and one for dinner each day. I also began taking 300 mg of niacin twice a day instead of once a day as I had been doing.

Much to my great delight, my LDL went down from 130 to below 100 and has continued to test out as about 100.

(Note that I was already doing the other things I list above that lower LDL and the dangerous form of LDL. Had I NOT been doing those things and began them AND began taking the supplements as I did, I might well have started with LDL cholesterol of over 160 and brought it down to 100 as well.)

2. His points about cranberry extract are not as strong as they would be if he reported that cranberry extract positively affected prostate cancer in whole people in a study. The fact that this happened in the lab IS promising. And it may mean that taking cranberry extract is protective against prostate cancer. But some things that kill cancer in the lab test out far less well in real people.

Meanwhile, however, cranberry extract has been shown to help prevent and treat urinary infections. And similar foods and supplements such as bilberry extract and blueberries have spectacular health benefits of several kinds. So taking cranberry extract may well be valuable enough to make it worthwhile to take for other reasons. Then if it turns out it DOES protect you from prostate cancer also, that would be a very nice added benefit.

By the way, eating dried cranberries is very much like eating raisins. Instead of being overly sour as whole cranberries are, by concentrating the natural sugars, dried cranberries tend to taste sweet.

So, if you want to add some extra flavor to your oatmeal without adding sugar, adding some dried cranberries instead might be a good idea.

3. There are also other supplements that may help with BPH. I’ve read that DIM, nettle root, pygeum, bee pollen extract, and pumpkin seed extract also can also help to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH.