In this series, learn about the groundbreaking research on the relationship between food, exercise, and prostate cancer from PCF-funded researchers Lorelei Mucci and June Chan
![](https://i0.wp.com/stlargusnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/vinicius-amnx-amano-OnsaUYoFMtA-unsplash.jpg?resize=1024%2C684&ssl=1)
Image by Unsplash
Your Pro-Active Fight Against Prostate Cancer – Part 1
What does it mean to live your best life? You might say, quite reasonably, that your best life does not include prostate cancer. That’s a goal that we share at PCF – for you to live your best life free of prostate cancer. Regardless of where you are in your journey – prevention, treatment, recovery, or survivorship – there are things you can do to be pro-active toward this goal.
What can you do to maximize the good, to help your physical and mental wellbeing? There’s actually quite a lot. For example: Exercise not only helps you lose weight; it helps fight depression, and it even can help slow down prostate cancer! And eating the right diet – as opposed to eating a lot of junk and chemicals – can boost your spirits, your energy level, and just generally make you feel better. Most importantly for prostate cancer, certain foods can help lower chronic inflammation and insulin that fuel prostate cancer growth, and, in addition, can help your body fight or prevent any number of chronic diseases that are also driven by chronic inflammation. The good news is that it goes both ways: there is growing evidence that the lifestyle choices that keep you safe from other diseases – such as eating low sugar for diabetes, or exercising for your heart – can also help prevent or curtail prostate cancer.
First, Why Studying Diet is Hard
Research on food as medicine is one of the toughest areas in which to do controlled, rigorous research in all of medical science. PCF-funded epidemiologists June Chan, Sc.D., of UCSF and Lorelei Mucci, M.P.H., Sc.D., of Harvard both study lifestyle factors and their effect on prostate cancer. Even though many late-night TV ads might try to tell you otherwise, there are no single magic bullet diet prescriptions for disease. None.
Both of these experts will tell you right off the bat that studying food is hard. In many studies over the years, scientists have tried to isolate specific foods to see if they promote or prevent cancer; they do that by asking people to recall what they ate over certain periods of time or keep a food journal. Such studies take a long time, and are not without their share of problems. For example, even if you isolate certain foods that seem promising, there is still a lot of variation! Let’s say you notice a trend in those who didn’t get cancer: they eat apples (hypothetically!). What kind of apples? Is it all apples, or just Granny Smiths? Were they all grown in the same type of soil? Were they cooked, or eaten raw? Peeled or not? Organic or not? How many did people eat a day?
But wait! Did these people even have an actual benefit from eating the apple – say, one they brought to work from home – or did they benefit from not eating a bag of cheese puffs or Twinkies from the vending machine instead? And wait some more! Do the people who benefited have genetic or molecular differences that make them more likely to be helped by apples? Or… are people who eat apples also more likely to exercise and take better care of their health in general – so maybe it’s not even the apples but their whole lifestyle that made the difference, and we’re back to the drawing board! This is why you might notice that science around nutrition takes time; or you might see it evolve over time as scientists “factor out” more variables. Remember back in 2010 when coffee was bad? And now, more than a decade later, and coffee is good? It doesn’t mean that scientists were wrong in 2010: it just means that now we know more, many years and many studies later.
Broad Strokes are Better
There are a confusing number of variables in food science, so researchers don’t yet have a Paint-by-Number approach, with every single food accounted for. Instead, today’s food science is painting with some broad – but definitive – strokes.
Chan and Mucci both cite work led by Harvard scientists Fred Tabung, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., and Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., that look at the relationship between diet and inflammation. In the study, the scientists tracked inflammatory markers in the blood and whether inflammation was raised or lowered by what people ate, based on data from thousands of participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The key lies in the foods they found that significantly reduce chronic inflammation: dark yellow vegetables (carrots, winter squash, sweet potatoes, etc.); leafy green vegetables (like spinach, broccoli, kale, etc.), coffee, and wine. Beer (one bottle, glass, or can) was in this category, too. So was tea, but its effect was not very strong.
The pro-inflammatory (aka bad) category included processed meats (hot dogs, bacon, pepperoni, lunch meat, etc.), red meat, refined grains, high-energy beverages (with additives and sweeteners), and “other vegetables,” like potatoes and corn. Interestingly, not all fish is equal: canned tuna, shrimp, lobster, scallops, and “other” fish were more inflammatory than “dark-meat” fish like salmon or red snapper.
But if you love canned tuna, and if you love a baked potato or corn on the cob, don’t freak out: remember, broad strokes! The key seems to be to make sure you DO eat the anti-inflammatory foods. For example, the anti-inflammatory effects of leafy green vegetables, dark yellow vegetables, wine and coffee are more powerful than the very mild, pro-inflammatory effect of “other fish” or “other vegetables.” If you feel like you just can’t give up meat entirely, that’s okay too: just aim for small portions of meat, surrounded by a rainbow of anti-inflammatory vegetables.
In Part 2 of this series, Janet Farrar Worthington talks with PCF-funded researcher Lorelei Mucci, Sc.D., M.P.H., about sugar, the Mediterranean Diet, and how a heart-healthy diet helps fight cancer. Check out Part 1 to learn about the nuts-and-bolts of nutrition studies and anti-inflammatory foods.
What’s Good for Your Prostate is Good For All of You
Here’s some good news: In your pro-active fight against prostate cancer, you’re not just helping your prostate (or helping to keep cancer from coming back, if your prostate is long gone)! You’re helping your heart, and you’re also helping to lower the risk of diabetes and insulin resistance. Go, you!
What about foods that are bad for diabetes and insulin resistance? Harvard scientists Fred Tabung, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., and Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., led a study, using data from thousands of participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, to assess the “insulinemic potential” of diet and lifestyle – basically, how foods and exercise affect blood sugar and insulin resistance, as measured by certain biomarkers in the blood. Foods that did not raise blood sugar or insulin resistance included wine, coffee, whole fruit, high-fat dairy (whole milk, sour cream, a half-cup of ice cream, a slice of cheese, etc.), nuts, and leafy green vegetables. Physical activity was also good for lowering insulin resistance and blood sugar.
What do the experts make of this? Benjamin Fu, M.P.H.,Ph.D. then a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard lab of Lorelei Mucci, M.P.H., Sc.D., looked at these two different dietary patterns: “a diet associated with hyperinsulinemia, and a hyper-inflammation diet.” The two diets have some overlaps, but are not identical. Neither is good for men worried about prostate cancer, Mucci says, “particularly the hyper-insulinemia (blood sugar-raising) diet, which is associated with a 60-percent risk of more advanced or fatal prostate cancers. The hyper-inflammatory diet also is associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer,” particularly in men who develop cancer at a younger age, in their forties and fifties. “It may be that earlier-onset cancers are more susceptible to the effect of diet and lifestyle.”
What does heart health have to do with it? Everything. It is surprising that two organ systems that are so different anatomically share so much at the biochemical level. The link, again, comes down to chronic inflammation and whether it’s prevented or accelerated as a human being ages. It turns out, says Mucci, that “cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases are the major cause of death in many men who have prostate cancer. If you look at men with localized prostate cancer and survival outcomes over 10 years, three-fourths of the deaths in those men will be due either to cardiovascular disease or another chronic disease. Only one-fourth of the mortality is due to prostate cancer.” Now, you may be thinking, we all have to die of something, right? This is true, but “these men are dying sooner than they should, and eating a plant-based diet rich in cruciferous vegetables will help lower that risk of cardiovascular disease.”
Which brings us to the Mediterranean Diet: Not only do people in Mediterranean countries, as compared to Americans, eat more vegetables and fruits. They also eat fewer fatty foods, less processed junk, and less red meat – “which increases insulin resistance, increases inflammation, raises cardiovascular risk and also is part of a dietary pattern that may increase obesity, as well,” as Mucci notes. You know what else they eat a lot of? Olive oil. Greater than 30 ml a day, which is a little over two tablespoons. “There’s really good evidence that extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), either on its own or as part of the Mediterranean diet, substantially lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and lowers the risk of overall mortality. The evidence specifically for men with prostate cancer is much more limited, but given the strong benefits for overall death and cardiovascular death in particular, not only using EVOO, but using it to replace butter or margarine, is something that is worth doing.”
#prostatecancer #prevention #research #diet #exercise #health
Part 3 coming soon!