What to Do to Prevent Prostate Cancer
To truly prevent prostate cancer, you have to know what causes it, and unfortunately this is not known. However, possible risk factors and protective factors for prostate cancer have been identified. Risk factors are anything that may increase the chance of developing the disease, and protective factors are anything that may reduce the chance of developing the disease. Prevention means avoiding or reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors.
The most powerful risk factors, age, family history, and race cannot be avoided. But others can be modified. It is important to realize, however, that avoiding risk factors or increasing protective factors does not guarantee not getting the disease, just as having risk factors does not guarantee developing the disease.
With prostate cancer, there are three approaches that can be used to try to prevent getting the disease.
1. Diet and lifestyle changes:
- Eat more tomato-based products, especially those cooked with some fat. (Monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil and canola oil, are best.)
- Eat less fat, especially from animal sources, such as meat, dairy, and butter.
- Eat 3 to 5 vegetables and two to four fruits every day.
- Add soy protein to your diet (e.g., tofu, soy milk, soy beans, and vegetarian burgers).
- Get some moderate exercise on most days of the week.
2. Hormonal prevention (using drugs to reduce male hormones that stimulate cell growth in the prostate):
- The drug finasteride (Proscar®) is being investigated, but results are several years away.
Some findings suggest a beneficial effect, but others do not. It is difficult to prove that any of these approaches really do reduce the development of prostate cancer, as opposed to simply being associated with lower rates of prostate cancer for other reasons. Conclusive proof requires prospective, randomized, controlled studies that continue over a long period of time because prostate cancer tends to be very slow growing. These are difficult studies to perform. Some research is in progress that will help clarify possible preventive roles, but we may never know for sure. Some of these diet and lifestyle habits may be healthy for other reasons, however, even if they do not reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
RESOURCE: National Cancer Institute website:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/prostate
