Eat Your Way to a Healthy Prostate

In terms of prostate cancer prevention and treatment, dietary intervention and influence is of utmost importance. That being said, one of your first courses of action for protecting and enhancing your prostate health should be to clean up your diet. I believe that a diet full of sugars, carbohydrates, and saturated and trans fats, with few antioxidants and plant-based nutrients, is central to the cascade of events leading to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and worse. Your diet is your foundation, and it matters more than most drugs or supplements.

If there’s one macronutrient category to focus on as the factor that causes the advancement from the initiation (the first damage to a cell’s DNA) of prostate cancer to its promotion (the formation of microscopic benign growths), it has to be the type of fat we eat.

For example, there is a definite correlation between prostate cancer mortality and intake of arachidonic acid, which is present in large quantities in meat and dairy cattle that have been raised on commercial feed. One of the breakdown products of arachidonic acid is an extremely powerful prostate cancer–promoting agent called 5-HETE. Thankfully, the cells in prostate cancer lines start to die off quickly once 5-HETE is removed from their environment. So, when you change your diet from one high in arachidonic acid to one higher in more healthy fats, such as EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) from wild fish, you curtail the 5-HETE production and help out your prostate.

Removing foods with arachidonic acid from your diet is obviously the best course of action, but Nature also provides many safe and effective compounds and foods that partially prevent arachidonic acid from being turned into 5-HETE. These include green tea, olive oil, saw palmetto, Boswellia serrata, turmeric, and especially ginger. Also, as I mentioned above, it’s incredibly important to dramatically reduce your intake of meat, dairy, prepared foods, omega-6 fatty acids, and trans fats, while boosting your intake of the prostate health-promoting omega-3s from fish and flax, omega-9s such as the oleic acid found in olives, and medium-chain fatty acids such as those in coconut oil.

In addition to making changes to the “meat” of your diet, I recommend trying to incorporate as many of these prostate-friendly foods into your diet as possible.

Brazil nuts: Selenium is one of the best supplemental nutrients for prostate health because it has the ability to kill cancer cells by activating a primary immune defense antioxidant enzyme called glutathione peroxidase. The best source is Brazil nuts. A prospective study has indicated that men with the highest selenium consumption have a better than 60 percent decreased risk of prostate cancer development over those men with the lowest intake. Tuna, shellfish, whole grains, and sunflower seeds are other good sources for this important nutrient.

Allium vegetables: A study of men in Shanghai showed that those who ate more than 10 grams a day of allium foods (garlic, onions, leeks, chives, scallions, and shallots) were about 49 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who ate less than 2.2 grams a day. The effect was more pronounced for men with localized prostate cancers than advanced cancers.

Allium foods are rich in flavonols and organosulfur compounds, both of which are known to have tumor-inhibitory properties. Garlic and scallions provided the best risk reductions in the study. Scallions were found to be the most protective at a risk reduction of 70 percent. For garlic, the reduction in risk was 53 percent. However, the researchers speculated these results might have been due to their more frequent consumption in the Shanghai population. They pointed out that similar amounts of onions, which are rarely eaten in Shanghai and more prevalent in the Western diet, could very well provide ample protection. In fact, a recent study of men of European descent showed that the strongest risk reduction for prostate cancer came from onions.

Red foods: The other major players in dietary prevention and treatment of prostate cancer are the carotenoids, particularly lycopene, which is a predominant carotenoid in blood and tissues and highly effective at suppressing human cancer cells. A four-year study of nearly 200 men found a sturdy link between lower incidence of prostate cancer and higher lycopene levels in their blood. Lycopene is naturally present in red foods, including tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, beets, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, goji berries, pomegranates, red onions, and red cabbage. So don’t underestimate the power of what you eat. You know what a good diet is. Eat that. Be sure to include at least 10 servings of lycopene-rich foods per week.

Avocadoes: When compared to the top 20 most-eaten fruits, the avocado leads the pack in its phytonutrient and nutritional profile. Particularly, it’s a rich source of monounsaturated oleic acid.

It’s recently come to light that the healthy fats in avocados increase the absorption of carotenoids and phytonutrients, acting as a natural nutrient booster. A study from Ohio State University showed that men and women who consumed a salad of lettuce, carrots, spinach, and approximately 2.5 tablespoons of avocado absorbed more than thirteen times as much beta-carotene, eight times as much alpha-carotene, and four times as much lutein compared to those who ate the same salad without avocado. Similarly, those who ate salsa with avocado absorbed more than four times as much lycopene and doubled their beta-carotene absorption compared to those who ate the same salsa without avocado. These findings are important because men with the highest levels of carotenoids in their blood have been shown to have a lower risk of prostate cancer.

Finally, avocadoes are a rich source of the antioxidant vitamin E. A recent study showed that men with the highest blood levels of two forms of vitamin E—alpha tocopherol and gamma tocopherol—reduced their risk of damage to prostate cells by half.

So, the next time you’re feasting on guacamole and salsa, thank yourself for being so good to your prostate. Eat wisely; it’s the best medicine there is.

References

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