Ways to prevent, slow, or stop prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Friday, 7-13-2012

It’s not widely known yet but:  

1.  Most cancers can be prevented.  If you use all the methods that prevent cancers and don’t get any cancer, you won’t get prostate cancer.

2.  There are several specific ways now known to prevent prostate cancer specifically. You can also use those.

3.  Then too, there are two kinds of prostate cancer, the slow growing kind and the aggressive kind that will metastasize and start trying to kill you in multiple places. 

If you only get the slow growing kind and stop it from growing much and you avoid getting the aggressive kind too, you can even get prostate cancer without it being that harmful or needing treatment.  

There is a way I just found out about to stop slow growing prostate cancer from growing much.

And, there are also several known ways to prevent aggressive prostate cancer or make it far less likely.

The even better news is that almost all of these ways have abundant other health benefits too.

Since my Dad and both my Grandfathers got prostate cancer, I do my best to use all these methods and now use them all except the one I just found out about and don’t yet know for sure I need.  (That’s the method that stops prostate cancer from growing.)

This post covers those methods in reverse order.

The new information that caused me to do this post was in an article I got from Newsmax on Wednesday this week, “Ancient Remedy Stops Prostate Cancer”   by Sylvia Booth Hubbard.

I.  It seems that research done at the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology in Chicago found that taking Caffeic acid phenethyl ester from bee propolis stopped prostate cancer from growing as long as it was continued.  (It didn’t kill the cancer. It just prevented it from growing any more.  So in this research when the propolis compound was discontinued the prostate cancer resumed growing.)

It’s not yet been studied to see if taking bee propolis as a supplement would have this effect.  And some people develop allergies to propolis since it contains flower pollens collected by the bees who make it.

But the rest of the news on Caffeic acid phenethyl ester is actually even better.  So it may go into use as an anticancer drug at some point.

Wikipedia has this:  "Propolis' use in inhibiting tumorigenesis has been studied in mice in Japan.[30]In pre-clinical models of human breast cancer, propolis induces cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and reduces expression of growth and transcription factors, including NF-?B. Notably, caffeic acid phenethyl ester down-regulates mdr-1 gene, considered responsible for the resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents.”

That could be huge news. 

a) If caffeic acid phenethyl ester plus the right chemotherapy can kill prostate cancer, it may well mean that it will become possible to treat aggressive prostate cancer more successfully. 

b) And, it may also mean that aggressive prostate cancer can be effectively treated WITHOUT the radiation and surgery that often ruins the sex lives and quality of life otherwise in people who get it!

So there is new hope for both people with slow growing and with aggressive prostate cancer.

II. Also, on stopping or slowing the growth of slow growing prostate cancer, there was some research a few years ago showing that taking 30 mg a day of a lycopene supplement tended to slow existing prostate cancer and lower the PSA readings of people who took it.  That research made the cover of TIME Magazine shortly after it was announced.

(Lycopene is a carotene in tomatoes and some other red or red orange fruits and vegetables.  Research found that men who ate cooked tomato products often were far less likely to get prostate cancer. 

Since then, other research found that both eating cooked foods with carotenes and eating foods with carotenes along with an oil, ideally extra virgin olive oil, caused more of the carotenes to become absorbed and used in the body.

Does that mean that it’s protective for men to eat pasta sauce with extra virgin olive oil a few times a week?  That’s exactly what it means. 

(Since I learned all this, I’ve taken 30 mg a day of lycopene and eaten pasta sauce with extra virgin olive oil several times a week.)

The Newsmax article also had that mice fed walnuts every day at an amount equal in humans to 3 ounces a day got prostate cancer that was half as big and grew 30 percent more slowly than mice fed no walnuts.  This research was done at the University of California though the article didn’t say which campus. 

Walnuts are a superfood and eating them also helps prevent heart disease. They make a much less fattening snack than cookies or potato chips too!   The only bad news is that some people are allergic to them and can‘t eat walnuts or other tree nuts safely.

III. Wouldn’t it be nice to slash the risk that any prostate cancer you get be the dangerous and aggressive kind too?

It turns out there is a whole list of things you can do that tested out as doing that.

One study found that men who ate either raw broccoli florets or raw cauliflower florets at least once a week, cut their risk of getting aggressive prostate cancer in half. 

(I’ve eaten raw, organic broccoli florets at least 5 times every week ever since I learned that!)

What’s nice is that for people who dislike the taste or broccoli, is that raw cauliflower also works.

I’d been taking 3 mg a day of boron  for a few years ever since I read that doing so helped people be more alert when I read that Dr Al Sears had found research that had tested doing so and found that this too cut the risk of getting aggressive prostate cancer in half!  (Needless to say, I still take boron!)

The recent Newsmax article also had that researchers at UCSF found that men who eat one or two servings of fatty fish each week have a 63 percent lower risk of getting aggressive prostate cancer. 

(I eat 3 large servings of canned wild caught salmon a week and take omega 3 oil supplements every day for other reasons.  So I found that very good news indeed!) 

The Newsmax article also had that a Harvard study found that men who ate 3 servings of fish a week wound up with a 40% less chance of getting late stage and advanced prostate cancer.

But note that doing this set of things while completely avoiding oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy and eating refined grains or much fat from animals fed grains ALSO lowers chronic inflammation. 

Lowering chronic inflammation or preventing it from getting high also has been found to help prevent ALL cancers AND heart disease.

(What do you eat instead of oils high in omega 6?  Extra virgin olive oil has by far the best health promoting track record.  But small amounts of real butter from cows fed only grass are likely OK.  And some research supports using coconut oil on occasion.)

Doing all 3 of these things: eating raw broccoli or cauliflower plus taking boron plus the high omega 3 intake clearly cuts your risk of getting aggressive prostate cancer a lot. 

My guess is that it likely tests at about 80 % less and that it is well over 63%.  But if these effects are independent and these effects multiply – which is possible – doing all 3 cuts your risk of aggressive prostate cancer by 97.7 percent!

IV. There are also more things you can do that are known to make getting any prostate cancer more likely.

We’ve covered tomatoes and lycopene.

Here are some more:

The Newsmax article had that researchers at Stanford University found eating just two Brazil nuts each day decreased the odds of developing prostate cancer up to from what it would other wise be to a fifth as much.  So if the risk is normally 30 to 60%, doing this drops it to the 6 to 12% range.  That’s a truly huge difference. 

Tim Ferris, in his Four Hour Body book said that he found that eating about that many Brazil nuts was a more effective delivery system for selenium than taking the supplement and that in his case it also enhanced his libido!

(I take 200 mcg a day of selenium.  But it’s a supplement that it is unwise to overdose on by very much.  So I eat two or three Brazil nuts on some days since I read Tim Ferris’s book. But I only do it about 3 times a week.  From what I’ve read eating more would be a bit dangerous.)

The Newsmax article had that researchers in China found that men who at the most garlic and onions and similar foods cut their risk of getting prostate cancer in half. The men who ate the most scallions, green onions, cut their risk by 70%!

(Green onions are a common ingredient in Chinese cooking and foods.)

This one is even more important because eating these foods cuts your risk of getting ANY cancer AND eating these foods or taking deodorized garlic supplements also boosts your beneficial HDL and cuts your risk of heart disease!

V.  Why not also do the things that prevent ALL cancers?

Besides eating in a way that minimizes omega 6 intake and taking in ample omega 3 oils and eating onions and garlic and related foods or deodorized garlic supplements, there is a large list of these.

And several of them are dramatically effective.

The big ones are zero tobacco exposure, taking ample vitamin D3, regular exercise, and eating and/or taking turmeric with black pepper.

How big is doing all of these?

From what I’ve read, just doing those four things cuts your risk of getting ANY cancer by up top 90 percent.

a)  The biggest and worst risk of tobacco smoke is its dramatic effectiveness in producing heart disease, heart attacks, ED, and strokes.  (Hardly any smokers know this; but doctors do.)

That said the cancer risk of tobacco smoke and using other tobacco products is HUGE.

Some studies find that 30 % of ALL cancers are caused by tobacco use.  And that may be an estimate that’s too low!  One oncologist told me that half the cancer patients in his hospital were smokers.

We now know why. 

If you put tobacco in your mouth or breathe the smoke, the radioactive element, polonium, goes into your blood stream.  That can cause any kind of cancer anywhere in your body your blood goes to.  Unfortunately, it often does.  (Polonium is in tobacco because it’s in the fertilizer used to grow tobacco.) 

Does that mean you can get prostate cancer from smoking or second hand smoke or taking snuff?  That’s exactly what that means!

In addition, lighting cigarettes and cigars and pipes with a lighter produces even more carcinogenic compounds than are usually in tobacco smoke.  And few people today use matches.

b)  One study found that 60% of people who have cancer were deficient in vitamin D.  Other studies have found that taking 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 cuts the risk of many kinds of cancer.  (Taking that much D3 also helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease.) 

Vitamin D3 is critical to the optimum functioning of your immune system. That’s likely why it has such an anticancer effect. And, it makes vaccines more effective and helps stop infections too.

It also helps prevent osteoporosis.

Taking that much vitamin D3 is extremely cheap compared to the cost of treating the diseases it prevents.

I’ve not yet seen a study on the effect of taking that much vitamin D3 for 10 years on the risk of getting prostate cancer.  But I’d bet good money the effect would be quite large!

You can take that much D3 for something like $15 a month today.

c)  Besides slowing aging and protecting your heart and helping you be less fat, regular exercise also helps prevent all cancers.  Regular exercise even has been found to help people with cancer become cancer free with fewer people getting their cancer back later.

Dr Jack Farquhar of Stanford said research found regular exercise down regulates a gene, P53, that apparently acts as a cancer promoter. 

d)  Eating and/or taking turmeric with black pepper most days of every week makes getting Alzheimer’s disease less likely.  Doing this set of things also may help reverse Alzheimer’s disease in its early stages. 

(Curcumin is thought to be the active ingredient in turmeric that has these effects.)

Doing this boosts your immune system, sharply lowers chronic inflammation, and reduces your level of LDL the more potentially harmful cholesterol.

No surprise then that doing this also is a strong preventive for all cancers.

In fact, in a talk I heard him give, Dr Jack Farquhar of Stanford said research has also found taking turmeric down regulates the same gene, P53, that exercise does with the same anticancer effect.

To sum up if you follow these health protective lifestyle practices, you become much less likely to get any cancer, you become even less likely to get prostate cancer, and you become even less likely to get prostate cancer that can harm you.

The combination effect is dramatic in my opinion.

It was nice to have all these new things listed in the Newsmax article to add to what I already knew.  Now you know them too.

The really nice thing was that except for taking propolis I have already been doing them all for some time for other health benefits!