Some foods & supplements DO prevent prostate cancer....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-30-2008

Earlier this week a study of vitamin E and selenium as possible preventers of prostate cancer was reported to be getting bad results and was also cancelled.

This study of more than 35,000 men age 50 and older apparently was done by the National Cancer Institute.

The article doesn’t say if the vitamin E used was natural vitamin E or manmade. And vitamin E is one of the supplements where that makes a difference in the actual molecule people ingest.

However, there are two points that I think are most important.

1. I believe I saw one headline reporting this research that said something like “Study finds supplements don’t prevent prostate cancer.” The report was that these two supplements did not. But that headline could be easily misread as meaning that a study was done that tested every supplement that might prevent prostate cancer and they ALL flunked, so NO supplement would prevent it.

That study was NOT done or in the news. And, in fact there are supplements that either have been tested as preventing prostate cancer or there is better reason to suspect they might do so.

2. There is a widespread belief that all antioxidant supplements in general prevent the free radical damage that may help cause cancer. Since vitamin E and selenium are antioxidants this study may have found this belief about all antioxidants is incorrect. (Without knowing what form of vitamin E they used, how careful they were to monitor what supplements the participants took on their own, or how much of the two supplements people were given, it’s hard to be sure.)

However, the researchers who did this study may have missed the fact that it was studying two supplements that get valuable effects in other ways for something that they are not generally thought to do in the first place.

Vitamin E is better known for its cardiovascular protection; and selenium is better known for reducing the death rate in people who DO get cancer -- NOT for preventing it initially.

So this is a bit like studying antibiotics to see if they helped prevent prostate cancer. You can’t know for sure unless you test this idea to be sure. But it would seem to make better sense to me to test things that have a better track record in other studies as preventing cancer or prostate cancer.

30 to 45 mg a day of zinc (balanced by at least 3 mg a day of copper for other reasons); 3 mg a day of boron; and 30 mg a day of lycopene all would have made better sense to study than vitamin E and selenium. As we’ve reported in this blog, those things have been tested on a smaller scale & found to have some positive effect in preventing prostate cancer. In fact taking all three plus eating tomato sauce, cooked tomatoes, and raw cruciferous vegetables may prevent may prevent as many as 90 % or more of prostate cancers.

Also, since eating raw broccoli and/or cauliflower at least once a week has been found to cut the incidence of the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half; & eating cruciferous vegetables of all kinds tends to reduce the incidence of all cancers, it might also have made much better sense to study the supplements indole-3-carbinol & DIM. (3-indole-carbinol is found in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables; and, DIM, according to Wikipedia, "3,3?-Diindolylmethane or DIM is an anticarcinogen compound derived from the digestion of indole-3-carbinol."

So, since the foods these supplements are taken from seem to prevent all cancers and cut the incidence of the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half, it would seem a better bet to test those two supplements.

My guess is that such a study would show some positive effects. But cruciferous vegetables have many other cancer fighting compounds as well. So I suspect the results would be better for simply eating the vegetables which is cheaper AND has other health benefits. In fact that’s exactly what I do for cancer protection. (I do take DIM but because it boosts free testosterone. If it also prevents cancer, that’s an extra add-on benefit I don’t currently take it to receive.)

However, sometimes a concentrate of an active ingredient WILL work better than the food. So, that’s precisely why it’s good to test such things. Then if the test is well done and those two compounds turn out to be the ones that most prevent prostate cancer -- and in that concentrated form, we would have learned something of great value.

So those are the supplements I hope researchers will test in the future.

Meanwhile, you’ve just seen a list of supplements many of which have been tested albeit on a smaller scale to help prevent prostate cancer, you’ve seen a repeat of the information that eating broccoli &/or cauliflower at least once a week cuts the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half; and you’ve seen two supplements that might be effective against prostate cancer to consider.

In addition, though selenium may not, if their testing was well done, PREVENT prostate cancer, I ‘ve read that taking selenium DOES cut the death rate of people who do get cancer of any kind in half.