Men: Eat These Foods or Become a Woman

[T_Nation]

Foods and Supplements for Prostate Health

Take care of this aspect of men's health or you won't like the consequences. Unless you're into that.

The average NHL hockey game has around 18,000 people in attendance. About 13,000 are men. Of those men, 1625 will get prostate cancer, statistically, and around 40 will die from it. That's pretty eye-opening. But let's talk about those men who survive it.

Prostate cancer treatments and side effects vary:

• Surgical options often lead to erectile dysfunction and loss of the ability to ejaculate.
• Hormonal treatments (Androgen Deprivation Therapy) kill your testosterone levels.
• Other treatments include an orchiectomy: the total removal of the testicles.
• A couple of the drugs used to treat prostate cancer are the same drugs used in male-to-female transitions.

Yes, in many ways, prostate cancer treatment makes you a woman, or at least a low-T man without testicles who can't get it up. Close enough.

The time to start taking care of this troublesome gland is now. Here's how to do it nutritionally.

Eat Carrots, Beans, and Tomatoes

One meta-study revealed a stunning negative correlation between eating carrots and prostate cancer. In short, researchers looked at related studies and found that eating carrots protected prostates from cancer.

For every 10 grams of carrots eaten each day, men reduced their risk of developing prostate cancer by 5%. So, if the men in the studies ate a big enough carrot (the average carrot weighs about 70 grams), they could cut their chances of developing prostate cancer in half.

Another study reported that men who ate at least three large tablespoons of peas, pinto beans, or other legumes every day also cut their risk of prostate cancer in half.

In the carrot study, the average age was 68. Sure enough, it showed an inverse, dose-response association between the consumption of carrots (and a similar effect from eating tomatoes).

Meanwhile, another study followed 3,313 men between 1994 and 2007. All the men were cancer-free when the study began, and they were divvied up into three equally sized groups based on their intake of fruits, vegetables, and beans.

While this study found a prostate-protective effect from fruits and vegetables in general, it didn’t reach the level of statistical significance. However, a high intake of beans, peas, and other legumes did protect the prostate to a statistically significant level. Specifically, men who ate about three large tablespoons per day had a 47% lower risk of developing cancer than men who ate a smaller amount.

Where’s the Magic Come From?

The researchers theorized that the reduction in prostate cancer cases was related to higher intakes of lycopene (a red plant pigment, specifically, a carotenoid), mostly found in tomatoes. The inverse association was independent of other factors usually associated with prostate cancer, like age, family history, and body mass index.

But what about the bean study? What was it about legumes that might have prevented new cases of prostate cancer? The researchers had several theories:

1. Legumes have lots of fiber, and there seems to be an inverse relationship between fiber intake and prostate cancer because fiber downregulates inflammation through the short-chain fatty acids formed when the fiber is fermented by gut bacteria. These fermentation products have anti-inflammatory properties, and inflammation is a suspected culprit in prostate cancer.
2. Increased concentrations of sex hormones (primarily estrogens) are associated with prostate cancer, and dietary fibers soak them up. These bound-up sex hormones are then excreted.
3. Other studies show that insulin resistance and hyper-insulinemia (having a bunch of insulin trekking around your blood vessels) lead to an increase in insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) concentrations, which may promote prostate cancer. Eating fiber, though, courtesy of the beans, reduces insulin resistance, leading to smaller circulating levels of IGF-1.

Here's What to Do

Eat one medium-sized carrot and around three tablespoons of beans daily. That'll help, but you'd have to eat 10 tomatoes every day to get a protective amount of lycopene. If that's not doable, take a supplement with concentrated amounts of prostate-supportive ingredients.

P-Well (Buy at Amazon) contains 30 mg of lycopene plus other prostate and sexual health (erection) supporting ingredients, like punicalagin and cranberry concentrate.

Together, these ingredients promote healthy prostate size and function, help manage oxidative stress and inflammation, protect prostate cells, and promote healthy hormone metabolism in the prostate. Take 3 capsules daily.

There's also some evidence that frequent ejaculation reduces the risk of prostate problems. More info on that fun fact here.

References

1. Xu X et al. "Dietary carrot consumption and the risk of prostate cancer." Eur J Nutr. 2014 Dec;53(8):1615-23. PubMed: 24519559.
2. Diallo A et al. "Associations between fruit, vegetable and legume intakes and prostate cancer risk: results from the prospective Supplémentation en Vitamines et Minéraux Antioxidants (SU.VI.MAX) cohort." Br J Nutr. 2016 May;115(9):1579-85. PubMed: 26950824.
3. Van Hoang D et al. "Dietary Carotenoids Intakes and Prostate Cancer Risk: A Case-Control Study from Vietnam." Nutrients. 2018 Jan 11;10(1):70. PubMed: 29324670.

[Captain721]

I take P-Well daily. I’ll start to work in a snack of some of those baby carrots. Regarding the beans, if fiber is the key, then does my fiber supplement cover this. I use a product called Fiberwise and it contains 9 grams per scoop of fiber and the first listed ingredient is soluble corn fiber. I put one scoop in two of my Biotest MD shakes per day (so 18 grams total). Am I covered here?

[Chris_Shugart]

It does seem to be the fiber content of beans that provides the beneficial effects, so I’d say a fiber supp would do the trick too, as long as it contains both soluble and insoluble fiber, as beans do.