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%.

Ways to prevent breast and prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 10-01-2013

A.  Why this post and why today:

I.  October, this month, is breast cancer awareness month.

2.  I just got new information to go with what I already know works to prevent breast and prostate cancer.

3.  I have a massive family history of prostate cancer—both grandfathers, my Dad, and one of my brothers.  Worse, I did some things when younger I wish now I’d known not to do! that increased my chances of getting it.  I ate some bad foods, did not eat some protective foods, and was exposed to WAY too much second hand tobacco smoke.

B.  Ways to prevent breast and prostate cancer.

1.  If you get no kind of cancer you won’t get either one.  There are proven ways to do that.

2.  Almost every way that prevents either breast or prostate cancer prevents both.  So if a method  prevents one and can be done by the other sex, it’s worth doing by both sexes. And, there are methods that do not involve drugs or radiation that have been tested to work to do this.

3.  Men get breast cancer too!   It is dramatically less common; but it DOES happen.

4.  The newer information:

a)  The email I got from my new medical group that in part prompted this post had this:

(My comments are in parentheses.)

“Healthy eating and regular exercise contribute to your general health and reduce your risk of all types of cancer, as well as heart disease and other serious medical conditions,” observes David Shiba, M.D. opens new window, medical oncologist at Sutter Gould Medical Foundation and medical director for Memorial Medical Center’s Cancer Services. “It’s especially important to maintain a healthy weight, because obesity and breast cancer are clearly linked, especially after menopause.”….

(Both in these posts and in our soon to come service FatLossSupportThatWorks.com we write and will write on the effective ways that do exist to improve your health and lose excess fat that DO work and are sustainable.)

Avoid hormone therapy. “Long-term hormone therapy with certain estrogen-progestin combinations for the treatment of menopause symptoms was found to increase the risk of breast cancer for women in a trial study,” Dr. Shiba explains. Ask your doctor about managing the symptoms of menopause with exercise, dietary changes or other non-hormonal therapies, or if you must use hormone therapy, do it on a temporary basis at the lowest dose possible.

Make an informed decision before using birth control pills. The use of birth control pills may be linked to about 4.7 out of 10,000 cases of premenopausal breast cancer a year.

(Using bio-identical hormones also is thought to be protective while using the synthetic ones has been shown to cause cancers.

In addition, even the synthetic ones seem to cause cancer and heart disease by boosting inflammation a lot. 

So if you do the things that sharply reduce chronic inflammation you will be much less likely to be harmed. 

Here’s how:  use no corn or soy or canola or safflower that are all very high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils; use extra virgin olive oil instead; and consume as little animal fats from animals and fish fed grains instead of their natural diet.  Then for you the hormone use will be far safer.

If and only if you limit these sources of omega 6 eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils and taking them as supplements will lower your inflammation even more.  That’s because if you eat 10 times too much omega 6 it overwhelms an increase in omega 3 oils.

Tobacco and its smoke are quite carcinogenic and on our list to avoid.  Avoiding them is even more critical for women on hormone replacement or birth control pills because they apparently do more harm together than either does separately.)

Use pesticides with caution. “Although research isn’t conclusive, pesticide exposure may be linked to breast cancer,” Dr. Shiba says. Researchers have found that women with higher levels of pesticides in their breast tissues have a greater risk of breast cancer.

(Never use pesticides or herbicides in your home or yard if you can possibly avoid it.  People who use them often are at dramatically higher risk.  If they must be used, have as little used as possible and have them applied by someone who knows how to use them as safely as possible instead of doing it yourself.  And,  if you have the money, for things like termites and bedbugs, consider having your house tented and have the short term dangerous but super quickly dispersing chemicals used instead.)

These things are less new but many people do not yet know them.

b)  New research finds that drinking coffee helps prevent prostate cancer and the aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer. 

(And, it also very likely helps prevent breast cancer too.  Plus note that this is only true for nonsmokers.  It isn’t a strong enough effect to overcome smoking with drinking coffee at the same time.)

Regular coffee is something that worsens reflux and many people overdose on it.  (Once you drink two or three cups a day, drinking more tends to keep you partly awake at night and you sleep less well. And, drinking too much regular coffee can cause anxiety or an uncomfortable feeling of being wired.)

But there are three ways around these limitations! 

Although caffeine has some real value, it’s the COFFEE that creates this effect. 

So you can drink low acid Kona coffee from Hawaii or decaf or take green coffee bean supplements and get this effect.

(Green coffee bean supplements seem ineffective for fat loss but will work for this use and may cut excess blood sugar a bit.  They do have coffee and its antioxidants.)

5.  Also recently I got a medical news article listing 6 things that were tested to cut the likelihood of getting prostate cancer and the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

Here are those 6 things with my comments and 8 more things that work they did NOT list but which also work:

My upgrades of the 6 listed as testing in cutting aggressive prostate cancer rates

AND my list of 8 more things they did NOT include that each individually tested to help do the job!

A study was announce that tested a set of six healthy habits, including eating more tomatoes and less processed red meat, helped men reduce their risk of dying from prostate cancer

“….almost 46,000 men for 25 years and found that those who adopted five or six of the habits had a 39 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer than those who adopted one or none of the habits, according to the results presented at the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam Saturday. In another study involving more than 21,000 men, the risk reduction was 47 percent.

Each of the six habits, which also included not smoking, exercising, eating fatty fish and having a body-mass index of less than 30, has been linked with lowering prostate cancer risk, but their joint effect hasn’t been studied before, said Stacey Kenfield, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who presented the results.”

1.  Eat fresh tomatoes and tomato sauce or pasta sauce.  (Tomato juice and tomato sauce or pasta sauce has been cooked and concentrated with makes the carotene, lycopene, and other carotenoids in tomatoes more bioavailable.  So does eating them with extra virgin olive oil which also makes them more bioavailable.  AND, lycopene supplement of 30 mg a day have been shown to be protective also.  With my family history, I do all of the above!)

2.  Eat hardly any or very little processed meat.  (Once in two weeks or once a month or less is best. Such meats have three huge harmful counts against them.  Most of them are from animals fed grains with their excessive omega 6 oil content that is pro-inflammatory; they use high amounts of preservatives that are harmful to your health; and they usually are too highly salted which harms circulation.)

3.  Get regular exercise. (All or most days of every week -- at least 5 days of vigorous or intense even if brief is best for heart and fat loss and blood sugar.  Surprisingly it also reduces inflammation and slows aging!)

4.  Have a BMI of less than 30…. (or have a Height to waist ratio of 2 to one or more. 

Both in these posts and in our soon to come service FatLossSupportThatWorks.com we write and will write on the effective ways that do exist to improve your health and lose excess fat that DO work and are sustainable.) 

5.  Totally avoid tobacco use and tobacco smoke…(!! Tobacco is radioactive and every use that touches your mucous membranes from chewing it to smoking it to second hand smoke causes the cancer causing polonium in the tobacco to go EVERYWHERE in your body, breasts and ovaries and prostate alike. 

Worse, the smoke from people who light their smokes with lighters has LOTS of short lived but very carcinogenic agents from the high temperatures in the lighter flame.  You do NOT want to be that smoker or anywhere nearby!)

6.  Eat fatty fish (Eating wild caught low mercury fish and taking omega 3 & DHA supplements AND removing virtually all hydrogenated and omega 6 oil sources.  We note above that this one is just barely effective if you don’t limit omega 6 oils too.  But if you do both it makes a big difference!)

6^th section here:  8 more ways NOT listed in their list of 6 that also work!:

1.  Take 4,000 to 5,000 (or up to 10,000 a day if blood tests below 50 until it tests over that)  of vitamin D3

2.  Eat curried foods that contain turmeric in the curry and add or include black pepper once a week or more.

3.  Take curcumin or turmeric at least once a day with black pepper or a supplement with both at least once a day.

(The coffee and the exercise and those 3 practices ALSO strongly prevent Alzheimer’s disease.)

4.  Eat raw organic broccoli &/or cauliflower florets at least 5 times a week.  (In men, a study found this cut the incidence of the aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer IN HALF!

5.  Avoid any x-rays you can.

6.  Eat other cruciferous vegetables a few times a week that are raw with extra virgin olive oil or raw tree nuts or that are lightly  cooked at low temperatures or steamed

7.  Eat green onions, onions, and/or fresh minced garlic once a week or more.  Besides virtually all the other cruciferous vegetables including cabbage and kale and  Brussels sprouts and water cress, these have anti-cancer effects.

8.  Eat organic fruits such as blueberries and organic vegetables and other spices and drink coffee, decaf or tea or green tea AND take the antioxidant supplements real A, lots of C, real E and foods containing it such as avocados and raw tree nuts, and take selenium &/or eat Brazil nuts AND take R or alpha lipoic acid and NAC.

(Some of the DNA damage that causes many cancers is from oxidants that you are not protected from without this step.  And those foods and supplements protect your health in many other ways!  Plus the organic vegetables and low glycemic fruits like organic blueberries help remove excess fat and keep it off.)

New ways to get extra cancer protection from cruciferous vegetables....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 8-13-2013

Raw cruciferous vegetables such as raw broccoli florets and raw cauliflower florets and kale or water cress in salads and the diced cabbage in coleslaw are all unusually effective cancer preventers.  Men who eat raw broccoli florets and raw cauliflower florets have cut their chances of getting the aggressive form of prostate cancer in half for example.

But I just learned two other ways to get extra cancer protection from cruciferous vegetables.

1.    It may well work as well or better for lightly steamed broccoli or cauliflower.  It seems that doing so helps release an anticancer ingredient, myrosinase.

2.  BUT frozen and more fully cooked broccoli or cauliflower tend to lose some of this cancer protective ability.   (The processors flash heat frozen vegetables a lot just before they freeze it)

However, if you eat frozen or cooked broccoli or cauliflower, or other cruciferous vegetable it may restore its ability to prevent cancer and add more.

It seems if you add even a little of another raw cruciferous vegetable to the cooked or heated frozen broccoli or cauliflower, or other cruciferous vegetable not only do you get its cancer protection, it interacts with what the cooked or frozen one has left to partially or fully restore its cancer preventive qualities too.

That means you can add a raw cruciferous vegetable and even get creative with it such as diced Daikon radish or even mustard to cooked broccoli or cauliflower to restore the anticancer effect!

The raw one has some cancer prevention by itself AND it may link with the remaining phytonutrient in the cooked or frozen broccoli to even restore the anticancer effect there too!

Here’s the Medical News Today story I saw on that:

Scientists put cancer-fighting power back into frozen broccoli

http://mnt.to/a/4gb4

There was bad news, then good news from University of Illinois broccoli 

researchers this month. In the first study, they learned that frozen broccoli 

lacks the ability to form sulforaphane, the cancer-fighting phytochemical in 

fresh broccoli.

They say that “consumers can spice up their frozen, cooked broccoli with another food that contains myrosinase to bring the frozen cancer-fighting super-food up to nutritional speed.”

"Try teaming frozen broccoli with raw radishes, cabbage, arugula, watercress, horseradish, spicy mustard, or wasabi to give those bioactive compounds a boost," one woman expert advised.   

Enough vitamin D3 lessens prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-25-2012

The Vitamin D Council News email for today had a reminder that September is national prostate cancer awareness month.

We’ll list a summary of many of the ways to prevent ALL cancers at the end of this post from a recent post so it’s also here in this email.

Those actions by preventing all cancers also help prevent prostate cancer.  Some of them such as eating raw broccoli florets or raw cauliflower florets also cut the risk of aggressive prostate cancer in half.  (Doing this at least once a week cut the risk in half.  Eating these vegetables 5 to 7 days a week may be more effective.  I’ve done exactly that since I discovered this fact.)

But many men in their sixties or seventies get what seems to be slow growing prostate cancer.  Since the treatments most used for removing prostate cancer tend to ruin your sex life and cost a lot of money and have other obnoxious side effects, the new protocol is to leave these alone until or unless the slow growing prostate cancer shows signs of the aggressive kind that is actually life threatening.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra way to ensure the slow growing prostate cancer stays that way or even turns off somewhat?

It’s here.  You can go to the store and buy it.  And, it’s even relatively inexpensive!

Today’s email from the Vitamin D Council had this:

“Researchers from the Medical University at South Carolina administered 4,000 IU/day of vitamin D for one year to 44 men with low risk prostate cancer.

After 12 months, 60% of the men showed a decrease in the number of positive core biopsies or a decrease in their Gleason scores (cancers with high Gleason scores are more aggressive), or both.

34% of the men no longer had any positive biopsy cores.”  <<< A very nice result! 

The same email had separate information in a different article showing that people who took only 1,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 were still relatively deficient in vitamin D in their blood stream.

This is consistent with the new information that about 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is the real minimum intake of vitamin D3 to achieve good health results.

One of the better supplement makers, Carlson, sells 1,000 iu capsules of vitamin D3 in bottles of 100 for less than $10.  So 4 a day comes to something like $12 a month to take or less.

(Taking 30 mg a day of lycopene has similar effects.  But it costs closer to $30 a month and unlike vitamin D3, it has fewer other health benefits.)

With a family history of prostate cancer, I take both the 30 mg of lycopene and more vitamin D3 than 4,000 iu a day and curcumin with black pepper each day and more.

But those other things we’ve known for a while.  Adding the large effects of taking at least  4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 to those may make an essential difference for many men and the information is still less well known.

Also, last Thursday, 9-20-2012, we did this post: “Three ways to beat aggressive and metastatic cancers.”

You can stop here and go there and read the whole post. Or you can read the section from it on some of the key ways to prevent all cancers here that I took from it.:

(I did know when I wrote it to include taking 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 based on what I’ve read from other research.  But the news today that is has such protective effects on slow growing prostate cancer found in a specific study is new to me.)

Here’s the list of preventing all cancers.  Most of these have significant other health benefits as well which literally makes each one worth doing.

1. Prevent all cancers.  (Here’s a brief summary.)

a) Tobacco smoke exposure or putting tobacco products into your blood stream by nose or mouth without smoke together causes 30 % of all cancers and something like 25% of all cancer deaths.

The smoke has many kinds of carcinogens and the tobacco itself has a radioactive element it puts into the blood so tobacco causes cancers everywhere in the body not just the lungs.

Don’t use tobacco products and be very focused and make a  very strong effort to avoid all tobacco smoke.  (See our post last week about quitting if you smoke.)

b)  Take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 since this has many other health benefits and helps prevent many cancers.

c)  Take curcumin or turmeric supplements daily with black pepper.  Eat some curried foods that use turmeric in the curry.  Doing this not only helps prevent all cancers, it helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers LDL cholesterol.  And it lowers inflammation more safely than OTC drugs.

d)  Get regular exercise.  I found out in a talk recently that turmeric and exercise make the same genetic adjustment that helps prevent cancer in addition to their other benefits.

Aging increases the risk of all cancers.  But regular exercise slows aging by quite a bit!

e)  Eat as little animal fats from grain fed animals and poultry as you can.  Eat beans or wild caught fish, eat nonfat or lowfat dairy, eat only the leanest most fat trimmed meat and poultry.  Eat butter or cheese from cows fed only grass or use extra virgin olive oil instead.

Animal fats from grain fed animals have so much excessive omega 6 oils the inflammation caused helps cause cancers and heart disease.  AND, the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the grain are bioconcentrated into the fat of  such animals.

f)  Use little or no herbicide or pesticides around your house.

g) To the extent you can find it to buy and afford it, stick to organic produce.

h) Eat virtually no packaged snacks or desserts or commercial baked goods or other foods made from refined grains and eat very little sugar.  Excess sugar and high blood sugar from eating these foods tends to help cause cancers.  So does the high omega 6 content in the grains.

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!  

Exercise helps prevent cancer & helps people recover from cancer treatment....

Today's Post: Thursday, 2-2-2012

Research on those two subjects came out this week.

1. The one on preventing prostate cancer with exercise was good to know since in my family there is a family history of it.

I found it very nice to know that the exercise I’ve already been getting has given me the extra benefit of adding to the many things I’m doing to prevent cancer, prostate cancer, and aggressive prostate cancer.

But the information on HOW they discovered it works means that exercise also likely helps prevent ALL cancers! That’s huge. It’s front page news important!

2. People who get chemo or radiation treatment for cancer quite often feel impaired, less mentally sharp, and have a reduced quality of life. (That’s in addition to the stress of worrying about the cancer!)

The second study found that exercise can and did reverse a good bit of all that!

That too is huge. It’s front page news important!

1. The first study was in this story: “Science Shows How Exercise Might Help in Prostate Cancer By Steven Reinberg TUESDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News)

Apparently the research was done by a team led by June Chan, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, and urology at the University of California, San Francisco.

They found that vigorous exercise caused changes to the expression of 180 genes.

(In case you haven’t yet heard, it seems we don’t inherit genes that have only one setting. We mostly inherit genes that either have several settings or can be switched on or off, “expressed” or not “expressed.”)

Apparently the exercisers switched ON genes known to suppress tumor growth. And they switched ON genes that repair DNA.

The researchers were careful and said exercise could help prevent or delay progression of the disease.

Clearly exercise did cause the desirable things to happen! In a given person that might or might not be enough just like putting water on a fire.

The men who got the good effects did a total of at least three hours a week of exercise or activity than is or often is vigorous. The men in the study did running, swimming, and played tennis but that much vigorous exercise every week was the key.

The researchers found direct evidence that exercise likely also helps prevent breast cancer in women.

That’s because two of the genes more expressed in the men who exercised are two of the best known to suppress breast cancer, BRCA1 & BRCA2.

The men who exercised had increased expression of genes involved in DNA repair. That means that small cancers might get fixed before they get larger.

And they also expressed genes that tended to turn off or stop or slow the growth of cancers.

To me that means that if you want to not get cancer or have it be slow growing enough you have a shot at surviving it, exercise averaging about half an hour a day can be a huge help.

Note that if you don’t now exercise, the sooner you begin and the sooner you build up to the 3 hours a week – as long as you don’t rush it and overdo – the sooner you begin, the sooner you get this protection!

2. What if you get cancer and then get it treated with chemo or radiation?

Wouldn’t it be nice if your recovery and quality of life and mental ability went well or at least better than it now often does?

Apparently doing both cardio and strength training each week even if you just begin exercising after the treatment does exactly that!

The second study was in this story: “WEDNESDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Exercise can improve the health, energy and well-being of cancer patients after they've completed their main cancer treatment, a new review finds.”

Women just treated for breast cancer who then went on an exercise program -- "....showed improvements in” things that exercise normally does such as better blood sugar control & getting less fat & their legs got stronger

But the front page news is that they also got better in vitally important ways to recover from the treatment. They had less fatigue and depression, and their quality of life improved.

Patients with other types of cancer who exercised got similar improvements. They got stronger as measured by hand-grip strength, and they became more fit.

But the key thing is that they too improved with less depression and better quality of life.

Also breast cancer patients found that aerobic exercise AND doing some kind of strength training was much more effective.

Breast cancer patients who did both got better results “on physical fitness, emotional fitness, overall well-being and fears about breast cancer….” They got better results than the women who did only cardio.

(Doing some strength training too was a huge help in other words.)

Other research on exercise and its benefits also show that doing some cardio AND some strength training each week provides better results than just doing cardio. So that part might have been expected. The results were the same.

There was some variation in the results. Younger people tended to do better for example. The researchers speculated that might have been because the younger patients were able to do more exercise.

Similarly, I suspect that people who were doing such exercise before their treatment and resumed after the treatment or began doing closer to their prior routine would also do better. (They too would be able to do more exercise after the treatments.)

The bottom line is that that doing regular and vigorous exercise doing both cardio and strength training each week gives you two huge benefits.

It makes getting cancer or bad cancer less likely AND it can help your recovery go MUCH better if you do wind up getting chemo or radiation treatment for cancer.

Why avoid baldness and BPH drugs....

Today's Post: Friday, 6-10-2011

1. Those drugs for hair loss and BPH, benign prostate enlargement, that work by reducing testosterone levels have always been drugs that have more side effects than desired effects.

Testosterone improves mood and improves concentration. Testosterone is a growth hormone that helps you keep your muscles or build more if you exercise and helps keep your bones strong. And, that’s IN ADDITION to helping you want and enjoy sex that is testosterone’s best known effect.

There is even some information that low testosterone can contribute to heart disease. That means that testosterone helps prevent heart disease if you have a normal amount.

So, drugs to reverse testosterone and lower its levels reverse these benefits.

To me that means drugs for hair loss and BPH, benign prostate enlargement, that work by reducing testosterone levels started out being truly BAD drugs.

And, it turns out they are far worse than that!

They also increase your risk of dying from aggressive prostate cancer. Oops!

*(See the news a bit later in this post.)

(We also did a post recently, on Thursday, 5-19 this year, 2011, on ways to prevent aggressive prostate cancer. Clearly avoiding these drugs belongs on that list!)

2. If you are balder than you’d like, there are several alternatives to these drugs that work. You can build the rest of you and your self-esteem enough that baldness becomes a minor issue. You can wear a stylish hat as Dallas coach Tom Landry once did. Or, if you are truly determined not to be bald, you can literally have hair implants much like re-seeding a lawn.

And, urine flow reductions that are onerous or medically harmful from BPH can be corrected with surgery or laser surgery.

There are also a number of supplements that can turn off the process that causes BPH or which increase urine flow.

Saw Palmetto has a good track record of improving or keeping good urine flow. So does the sterol supplement beta sitosterol. (Since saw palmetto also has sterols and sterols are a safe and effective way to lower LDL cholesterol, I have been taking both of those for quite some time. I did some other things too; but in dropping my LDL from 130 to 73, these two supplements did part of the job.)

In addition, testosterone does NOT directly cause your prostate to grow to too large a size. If and only if it is converted into a substance called DHT is it problematic. DHT does cause your prostate to grow to too large a size.

But if instead of lowering testosterone, you prevent it from being converted to DHT, you prevent or stop the prostate growth.

Several supplements exist that prevent or reduce this conversion. They include bee pollen, nettle root, and pumpkin seeds.

Since saw palmetto, beta sitosterol, and pygeum improve urinary flow and pygeum reduces extra nighttime trips to the bathroom, they may also have this effect.

3. *Here’s the two headlines I saw in the news:

a) “Prostate drugs raise risk of prostate cancer: FDA Thurs, 6-9-2011 WASHINGTON (Reuters)

A class of drugs meant to improve symptoms of an enlarged prostate gland actually increase the chance of getting a more serious form of prostate cancer, health officials said on Thursday.”

b) “Drugs for Enlarged Prostate May Raise Risk of Aggressive Cancer THURSDAY, June 9, 2011 (HealthDay News)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is calling for new warning labels on a class of drugs used primarily to treat enlarged prostates, because the medications may raise the risk of developing an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

In a statement released Thursday, the agency said the drugs involved include popular medications sold under the brand names Proscar and Propecia (sold by Merck & Co.) and Avodart and Jalyn (sold by GlaxoSmithKline).”

Millions of men have taken these drugs according these news articles.

With their already known side effects, hopefully this news will make them as unpopular and unused as they already deserved to be.

Prevent aggressive prostate cancer....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-19-2011

To do that, you need to do three things.

Do the things that prevent all cancers.

Do the things that prevent prostate cancer.

Do the things that prevent aggressive prostate cancer.

This post reviews some of the more effective ways to do the first two of these.

Then, for those of you who don’t know yet, we’ll review a way to cut aggressive prostate cancer in half that we’ve already posted on.

But what’s new is that there is a now a second way known to prevent aggressive prostate cancer. So, we’ll cover that last.

1. Do the things that prevent all cancers.

a) Stay as close to completely away from tobacco smoke as you possibly can!

Cancer is the LITTLE problem from tobacco smoke! -- because all exposure whether from smoking or second hand smoke adds to your level of cardiovascular disease. Plus tobacco smoke also triggers heart attacks that people might have otherwise escaped. And, every exposure damages you at least some every time! Ouch !! (Even first time smokers and very light smokers are harmed. No exceptions, unfortunately.)

That said, tobacco smoke exposure causes about 30% of ALL cancers. So, if you’d rather not get prostate cancer, always avoid tobacco smoke!

(There is also some evidence because of its effect on causing aggressive breast cancer in women at above average risk for it, that tobacco smoke might cause aggressive prostate cancer too.)

b) Few people today work as lifeguards in sunny weather every week. But our bodies will use at least 3,000 iu a day or more of vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 is necessary to arm your immune system’s killer cells. And, most people with functioning immune systems kill off potential cancers before they grow into actual cancer.

To make sure this works for you, we now know you need to take 4,000 iu to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. (More than 25,000 iu a day on a sustained basis may be too much; and Wikipedia says 100,000 a day definitely is. But your body can make over 20,000 iu a day in sunny weather, so taking 10,000 iu a day or a bit less of vitamin D3 is safe.)

People who do this are less likely to get most cancers.

c) Eat an abundance of protective foods such as minced raw garlic and both cooked and raw onions; many kinds of orange or dark green vegetables for a mixed carotene intake; and many kinds of cruciferous vegetables. Eating each of these three kinds tends to cut your chances of getting cancers.

(Except for also eating cooked tomatoes, which we cover later, eating these foods raw tends to prevent cancer better.)

Also, when you can, eat the orange and dark green vegetables with nuts or extra virgin olive oil as your body gets more access to the carotenes in them.

(As a side benefit, you will be less fat and less likely to die from ANY cause by doing this! That’s a great extra!)

d) Do the 3 things that prevent chronic inflammation. The average person today eats more than 10 times as much omega 6 oil as omega 3. But your body is harmed by doing this. The amounts of those should be about equal. When the omega 6 is so high, it directly causes high levels of chronic inflammation.

But high levels of chronic inflammation increase your level of aches and pains, directly cause heart disease, and also help cause cancer.

So, avoid virtually all the junky foods people eat that give them the excessive omega 6 oils. Avoid, corn oil, soy oil, safflower oil, and to the extent you can, canola oil. Extra virgin olive oil is neutral as it is an omega 9 plus it has multiple other health benefits. So almost always use that instead. Refined grains are also high in omega 6 and tend to make you fat. So virtually eliminate eating foods made from them.

Unfortunately, meat from grain fed animals produces meat with very high levels of omega 6 in its fat. So eat meat less. Eat most of it from animals fed only grass. And, when you do eat meat from grain fed animals, make it as lean and fat trimmed as you can.

Also boost the levels of omega 3 oils you take in. Eating wild caught fish with high levels works. Sardines, herring, small mackerel, and salmon that have been wild caught all work. And/or take omega 3 or DHA supplements from purified fish oil.

This step also has extra health benefits as it also helps prevent heart disease.

And, a way to reduce chronic inflammation even more and to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease in addition to cancer is to eat curried foods that contain turmeric a few times each week and take curcumin supplements derived from turmeric each day.

In Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition by Dr David Servan-Schreiber he says that eating curried foods or taking curcumin supplements may cut inflammation and prevent cancer as much as 200 times better by combining them with some black pepper.

2. Do the things that prevent prostate cancer.

I’ve read that taking a bit of extra zinc each day helps do this. But avoid taking more than 45 mg a day of it and unless you are unable to do so take at least 2 or 3 mg a day of copper to balance it.

Dr Al Sears says that taking boron cuts your risk of prostate cancer in half. The boron supplement I take and started since it also enhances alertness has 3 mg a day. So it was very good to hear it also helps prevent prostate cancer.

Taking 30 mg a day of lycopene as a supplement was once in Time magazine as cutting the risk of prostate cancer and lowering PSA levels.

Eating cooked tomato sauce with extra virgin olive oil several times a week has a similar track record of preventing prostate cancer. And it may work better than the supplement because of other carotenes in the tomatoes. Plus this goes well with minced raw garlic which also helps prevent cancer.

3. Do the things that prevent aggressive prostate cancer.

We just posted this today in this post.: (There is also some evidence because of its effect on causing aggressive breast cancer in women at above average risk for it, that tobacco smoke might cause aggressive prostate cancer too.)

But a way that cuts the risk of aggressive prostate cancer in half is also known!

The research has not yet been done to show that eating these two vegetables more often increases the effect. But men who eat either raw broccoli florets or raw cauliflower at least once each week, cut their risk of getting aggressive prostate cancers in half! That’s very good to know. And, for those who dislike broccoli or overtaste its bitter flavors, it’s great news that cauliflower also works!

(Since I read this one, I’ve eaten raw broccoli florets each weekday for lunch!)

Here’s what’s new. Drinking coffee, drinking decaf coffee, or taking a coffee bean supplement also cuts your risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

Since decaf works, it’s apparently the antioxidants or other phytonutrients in coffee that do the job—not the caffeine.

NPR online news and others reported earlier this week on a study done at Harvard

This study found a 60 percent reduction in risk of aggressive prostate cancer in people who drink six cups a day or more. And, men who drank one to three cups a day had a 30 percent lower chance of getting aggressive prostate cancer also.

A woman quote in the NPR story said, "Whether they drank regular coffee or only decaffeinated coffee, there was the same lower risk of lethal prostate cancer," she says. "It's really the coffee; it's not the caffeine."

(I was very pleased to read that because my reflux acts up if I drink regular coffee every day.)

They also found that it didn't take 20 years to get this effect, the research found what was important was how much coffee the men drank in the previous eight years.

The Harvard researcher also said the this coffee effect persisted even after the researchers allowed for the effect of exercise, obesity, smoking & other factors that either raise or lower the risk of prostate cancer.

What happens if you take all three of these steps?

You’ll be likely not to get any kind of cancer and will also likely not get aggressive prostate cancer.

Important new cancer prevention discovery....

Today's Post: Friday, 3-24-2011

A new cancer prevention discovery for prostate cancers may well help prevent many other kinds of cancer. In addition, it might be effective as a treatment of existing cancer.

I. First, here’s a short list of how to prevent most cancers.

1. Completely avoid tobacco smoke. Unfortunately, it is still so prevalent it causes 30% of ALL cancers – NOT just lung cancer.

2. Take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 – or up to 10,000 iu. A recent study found doing this prevents about half of all cancers and autoimmune diseases. Lower amounts are too low to reliably get this effect.

3. Avoid unnecessary X-rays and other sources of radiation & avoid sources of unnecessary chemicals such as chemical room fresheners, artificial colors, and sources of chemicals known to be harmful such as farmed fish and avoidable use of pesticides and herbicides.

4. Do the things we discussed in yesterday’s post to keep your chronic inflammation down.

Eating curried foods often with the spice turmeric and taking the supplement curcumin daily that is derived from turmeric is a way to do this that has heart benefits and is also strongly protective against cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition, in the book, Anticancer a new way of life by DR David Servan-Schreiber, he reports that eating curried foods with turmeric or taking curcumin becomes many times more effective at preventing cancer if you eat it or take it with black pepper.

5. Eat abundant amounts of raw cruciferous vegetables, some cooked cruciferous vegetables; other nonstarchy vegetables; vegetables high in carotenes – particularly cooked in this case and eaten with extra virgin olive oil; and onions and garlic every week.

II. In two emails this week from Natural Health Dossier I got information on a new and related discovery.

The new information is that combining substances in raw cruciferous vegetables with turmeric or curcumin multiplies their anticancer effect also.


Dr. Ah-Ng Tony Kong, a professor at Rutgers University Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy has dedicated his work to studying cancer prevention and treatment. He's published over 25 peer reviewed studies.

His new work was published in Cancer Research.

The prostate cancer rate in the U.S. is much higher than in India and nearby countries.

Dr. Kong states that turmeric "significantly retarded" growth of cancerous tumors.

In a recent study, he used turmeric on human prostate cancer cells to evaluate how effective it is "to prevent and possibly treat prostate cancer."

Similarly, the article said that a source at the University of Maryland Medical Center stated that turmeric "may help prevent, control, or kill several types of cancers, including prostate, breast, skin, and colon."

Yet another study, this one by Dr. Dorah Deeb and published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics agrees found turmeric "has been shown to exhibit chemopreventive and growth inhibitory activities against multiple tumor cell lines."

Dr. Bharat Aggarwal, a professor at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, also said "Extensive research over the last 50 years has indicated this polyphenol can both prevent and treat cancer," says Dr. Aggarwal.

The author of the email also said that some research shows that turmeric “stops the growth of blood vessels that supply cancerous tumors.”

Dr. Kong combined turmeric with PEITC, which is found in broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, turnips, and watercress. He used turmeric and PEITC together on human prostate cancer cells in his study.

“"The bottom line is that PEITC and curcumin, alone or in combination, demonstrate significant cancer-preventive qualities," says Dr. Kong.
He discovered that using PEITC and turmeric together produced even stronger effects. “

We already know that eating raw broccoli or cauliflower florets at least once a week cuts the risk in half for men to get the aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer.

It already makes sense that eating them several times a week is likely to be even more effective.

Now it seems that taking curcumin when you do that or dipping them in a dip with a curry with turmeric and black pepper will likely multiply that effect!

Similarly, since cruciferous vegetables in general and these two in particular, help prevent other sex related cancers such as ovarian and breast cancers and prevent other cancers too, I strongly suspect this combination will improve the cancer protection from most cancers.

That’s unusually good news!