Selenium cuts prostate cancer AND BPH....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-3-2014

Dr Al Sears is far from perfect.  But on most subjects he is right at the state of the art and clearly has the goal of helping people take control of their lives and stay healthy.

Furthermore, he must have a first rate research team finding him useful things that do this that he can email those on his email list.

Since he is a man and knows many of the men on his list want to avoid prostate issues, he does cover it from time to time.

1.  I already know a large number of things which I do that prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, prevent cancers from spreading, and prevent the aggressive kind of prostate cancer that can actually kill you.  I cover those in brief in part 3 of this post.

2.  From time to time I’ve seen coverage that getting enough – but NOT too much – of the mineral, selenium helps prevent cancers.

So I’ve taken 200 mcg a day of selenium in yeast for quite some time.

More recently, I read that getting enough selenium helped boost male libido AND that eating a brazil nut a day actually was enough more bioavailable than the supplement, if you want the beneficial effects of selenium, it’s best to eat a Brazil nut a day.

Since then I do both.

NOW I find out from Dr Sears that I may have cut back my possible prostate cancer by up to an additional 50%!

Even better, though I have BPH, I may have less and have fewer urinary problems because I’ve done that!

Here’s what research Dr Sears reported in his email about 5 weeks ago:

                                                                                                                                   

“….Today I want to tell you about one of the simplest ways you can keep your prostate healthy and protected. I’m talking about the mineral selenium.

In a study done at Harvard, where they were looking at results from the famous, Physicians' Health Study, Harvard researchers found that men who got the most selenium had the healthiest prostates.

This was true even for men with high PSA levels. If they were in the group with the most selenium, their prostate cancer risk dropped by 50%.1

The remarkable mineral selenium (Se) suppresses tumors (gold), kills cancer cells (pink), protects cells (green), and helps cells work better and stay young.

Source: Cancer Res. Apr 1, 2009; 69(7): 2699–2703.

A 50 percent lower risk shows up in many clinical trials for selenium and prostate health.

One study took 1,300 men and split them in two groups. The first took 200 mcg of selenium a day, the second got a sugar pill. The authors called the results “striking.” The overall risk of prostate cancer was almost 50 percent lower in the selenium group.2

Another eight-year clinical trial of over 5,000 men found similar results: those with normal PSA levels at the beginning of the study who took selenium saw their risk for prostate cancer drop more than fifty percent.3

Selenium is even protective if you already have prostate cancer, according to The Netherlands Cohort Study of almost 60,000 men. The data was presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

The Swedish and British researchers officially published those results last month. As I read the study, what I found most interesting was that as you get more selenium, your risk for prostate problems drops.

People with the highest selenium had the lowest risk for prostate cancer.4

Geographic studies have found that in parts of the world where soil and diet are low in selenium, rates of prostate cancer are significantly higher.5

In fact, “Keshan’s disease” is named after a province in China where people weren’t getting enough selenium.

Men should be especially careful about getting enough selenium. It’s your prostate’s best defense.

In a new animal study, selenium stopped prostate bloating and growth. Selenium prevented the animals from getting BPH,6 which is an enlargement of the prostate that makes you have to pee all the time. BPH can lead to LUTS (lower urinary tract symptoms), which can lead to prostate cancer.7

You should get at least 30 micrograms and up to 200 micrograms of selenium a day.

It’s a small amount, but that doesn’t make it easy to get. We can’t get selenium in high amounts in fruits and vegetables anymore because of soil depletion.

The best foods for selenium are organ meats from grass-fed animals, garlic, nuts or fish.

Fish is loaded with selenium. You can get all the selenium you need from a can of tuna or a serving of swordfish. If you are concerned about mercury in big fish like tuna or swordfish, you can go with cod. Three ounces of cod has 32 mcg of selenium.

Organ meats like chicken livers or turkey and chicken giblets have a lot of selenium, too. For instance, one chicken liver will give you 140 micrograms of selenium. Muscle meat has less selenium. Three ounces of cooked beef have 35 mcg.

One medium egg has 14 mcg of selenium.

If liver and eggs aren’t your speed, you can eat some nuts. An ounce of walnuts has 5 micrograms. Almonds have a little less. A cup of almonds gives you 2.5 mcg.

One variety of nut offers a full day’s worth of selenium in just one bite. It’s the Brazil nut. Brazil nuts grow in the Brazilian jungle where the soil is rich in the anti-cancer mineral. Just one single Brazil nut eaten right out of the shell will provide you with 100 mcg of selenium.”

Since I take 200 mcg of Selenium and average eating a Brazil nut a day and eat Salmon, Eggs from hens fed on pasture, and nuts, and chicken livers at times, my selenium is likely at the top of the range that is safe.

That’s why I REALLY liked this statement:  “People with the highest selenium had the lowest risk for prostate cancer.”

3.  Are there really that many more ways to prevent prostate cancer and aggressive prostate cancer in addition to selenium?

YES. 

Here’s a fast list:  I already know a large number of things which I do that prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, prevent cancers from spreading, and prevent the aggressive kind of prostate cancer that can actually kill you. 

a)  Ways to prevent cancer:

Get your exposure to second hand smoke, nicotine, and tobacco products down to as close to zero as you possibly can manage!

This stuff is remarkably potent as a cancer causing agent.  It causes about 30% of all cancers.  Worse, up to half the people in Oncology wards in hospitals with serious cancer are there because of tobacco or tobacco smoke exposure!

The tobacco itself is carcinogenic we recently found it as it contains the radioactive element Polonium.  So if you breathe its smoke or use some kind of smokeless tobacco that touches it to the mucous membranes in your mouth, nose, or throat, the radioactive Polonium in it goes everywhere in your body that your blood does.  So any kind of cancer anywhere in your body from brain to pancreas to colon to leg bone cancers can be from tobacco or tobacco smoke exposure.

Tobacco smoke has dozens of carcinogenic compounds in it.  And the hot smoke from using a cigarette lighter has about 10 times that many and they are even more carcinogenic.  (Smokers who use lighters are MUCH more likely to get lung cancer than those who use matches.)

Take curcumin from turmeric or eat curries with a high turmeric content both with black pepper.  This prevents  many cancers, lower your chronic inflammation which also has heart protective effects.  Doing this ALSO helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers your LDL cholesterol.

Take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  Doing that has a dramatic number of health benefits. 

(Taking vitamin D2 is at least a third less effective and unlike D3 taking extra may not be totally safe. 

People routinely get that much D3 from sunlight exposure and some even get four times that much during summers with no ill effects.)

That much D3 makes your immune system so much more capable of killing harmful things and so much better at recognizing what to kill it is far more likely to kill off developing or developed cancers than if you didn’t have that much.  At the same time, you are less likely to get or continue having autoimmune disease if you take that much D3.

Eat a lot of raw and lightly cooked cruciferous vegetables.  And eat a lot of onions and garlic or take deodorized garlic.

Both kinds of vegetables prevent cancer and the more often you eat them, the better they work!

Eating that many vegetables also cuts your chance of dying from any cause by 42% and 24% of that is from cutting your risk of death from heart disease.

Avoid any pesticides or herbicides in your home and yard that you can; eat animal protein foods and their fats only from animals NOT fed grains heavily sprayed with pesticides or herbicides as it bioconcentrates in their fat; and mostly buy only organic produce.  Wild caught fish, and meat and grain and eggs and dairy from animals only fed their natural diets that have NOT been sprayed avoids that problem.

Avoid industrial carcinogens and solvents and all excess radiation.

Exercise regularly most days of every week without totally overdoing the intensity.  Doing that slows aging which prevents cancer and lowers chronic inflammation which help prevent cancers.

Doing it all can be a challenge.

But taking the curcumin with black pepper, taking the D3, and eating the organic vegetables, and exercising ARE doable and have so many other benefits, please consider doing them all.

b) Ways to prevent prostate cancer.

Eat cooked tomatoes or purred tomatoes with a health OK oil or fat such as extra virgin olive oil or avocados &/or take 30 mg a day of lycopene.  Both things prevent prostate cancer and stop slow growing prostate cancer from growing.

Eat nuts and avocados and use extra virgin olive oil and take vitamin E as alpha and mixed tocopherols from natural sources.  The gamma tocopherol and other tocopherols you get by doing this prevent prostate cancer.  That DOES work and has been tested to do so.

AND, do NOT take the cheap artificial alpha tocopherol as good studies found it may slightly increase prostate cancer instead.  NOTE that the headlines saying vitamin E caused prostate cancer were totally inaccurate.  They tested the cheap and harmful substitute only!

Take 3 mg a day of boron.  Dr Sears found a study saying doing so also cut prostate cancer in half!

c)  Ways to prevent aggressive prostate cancer:

Eating raw broccoli florets or cauliflower florets at least once a week cuts your chances of getting the aggressive form of prostate cancer in half. 

(Since I read that, I have eaten raw broccoli florets an average of more than once a day!)

d) Way to prevent metastatic cancers:

On Tuesday 5-13 last month, we posted on the discovery that if you cause your HDL to be high and your LDL low, it blocks cancers from spreading out and moving to other locations.  And, we posted about a dozen ways that work to do both!

Can you prevent or slow down slow growing prostate cancer?

Yes.  True you may already have it when you start these actions or get it some way you didn’t cover.  But you can get your chances of success to over 90%.

Can you avoid aggressive prostate cancer? 

Yes.  True you may already have it when you start these actions or get it some way you didn’t cover.  But you can get your chances of success to over 90%.