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Can You Have A "Sweet Tooth" With Prostate Cancer?

Posted by thanks4sharing @thanks4sharing, Dec 19 5:24am

I read a post on Facebook of a someone who claimed they arrested their cancer, maybe prostate, by drinking lots of carrot juice. But since the stuff's loaded with sugar, how can that be when cancer cells, due to overly-expressed GLUT receptors, gobble up perhaps ten times as much of it as normal cells.

Further, mainstream dietitians and medical information for cancer still advice and emphasize "fruits and vegetables" for the condition right in the face of understanding that the glucose from fruit is going to be more readily available for the cancer cells than the normal ones.

Has anyone eaten a fruit-rich diet with prostate or any type cancer and either maintained their key lab indicators or improved them?

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Prostate Cancer Support Group.

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northoftheborder | @northoftheborder | Dec 20 6:28am
In reply to @brianjarvis "Without being specific to carrot juice……. Many types of cancers gobble up sugar - lymphoma, lung,..." + (show)
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Without being specific to carrot juice……. Many types of cancers gobble up sugar - lymphoma, lung, and brain cancers (just to name a few) are very avid for sugar (glucose).

With this in mind, years ago (in 1999) a glucose-based PET scan - F18-FDG (Fluoro-2-Deoxyglucose) PET CT - was developed. It worked great for detecting lymphoma, lung, and brain cancers; it didn’t work so well for detecting low-grade prostate cancer (but, it did work well for detecting advanced prostate cancers).

Here’s a short PCRI presentation from 2019 that discusses this topic: https://youtu.be/-PyqazlkpCE

Jusf as with most things in life, all cancers are not created equal. What you’ll often read is that a heart-healthy diet is a prostate-healthy diet.

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@brianjarvis Thanks! It's interesting from a diagnostic PoV that various cancers react differently to sugar in scans.

That doesn't necessarily indicate anything about a diet:cancer link, of course, but perhaps there will be enough research someday to establish a connection (not necessarily the one we'd expect).

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brianjarvis | @brianjarvis | Dec 20 7:15am
In reply to @northoftheborder "@brianjarvis Thanks! It's interesting from a diagnostic PoV that various cancers react differently to sugar in..." + (show)
Profile picture for northoftheborder @northoftheborder

@brianjarvis Thanks! It's interesting from a diagnostic PoV that various cancers react differently to sugar in scans.

That doesn't necessarily indicate anything about a diet:cancer link, of course, but perhaps there will be enough research someday to establish a connection (not necessarily the one we'd expect).

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@northoftheborder Cancers - not unlike cockroaches - are very adaptable to their environment. Over time they’ve evolved to avoid or survive detection and threats,

Prostate cancer has been around for awhile.
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kjacko | @kjacko | Dec 20 8:05am

Between recommendations from specialists and reading there is a difference between eating fruits and veggies and eating processed sugars. Berries have been known to be an excellent source of nutrition. I have been eating them for years. Since my RP two years ago I have had 6 PSA tests; all < 0.01. Is my diet having an effect? IDK, but I’m not fixing it if it’s not broken. I also have a sweet tooth. I satisfy it by eating JoJo’s chocolate. It was developed by a lady who had cancer and wanted her “fix” of chocolate. I only have some on weekends. I May break down on special occasions, like my birthday and have a small piece of cake. I try and balance that by lots of exercise. I also minimize carbohydrates, because they convert to sugar. As has been stated, everybody’s system works differently, so there is no perfect answer. Some still resort to the eating in moderation, and some men say they are eating whatever they want, they want to be happy. I hope this is of some help. Good luck🤞

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northoftheborder | @northoftheborder | Dec 20 8:38am
In reply to @kjacko "Between recommendations from specialists and reading there is a difference between eating fruits and veggies and..." + (show)
Profile picture for kjacko @kjacko

Between recommendations from specialists and reading there is a difference between eating fruits and veggies and eating processed sugars. Berries have been known to be an excellent source of nutrition. I have been eating them for years. Since my RP two years ago I have had 6 PSA tests; all < 0.01. Is my diet having an effect? IDK, but I’m not fixing it if it’s not broken. I also have a sweet tooth. I satisfy it by eating JoJo’s chocolate. It was developed by a lady who had cancer and wanted her “fix” of chocolate. I only have some on weekends. I May break down on special occasions, like my birthday and have a small piece of cake. I try and balance that by lots of exercise. I also minimize carbohydrates, because they convert to sugar. As has been stated, everybody’s system works differently, so there is no perfect answer. Some still resort to the eating in moderation, and some men say they are eating whatever they want, they want to be happy. I hope this is of some help. Good luck🤞

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@kjacko Just so. Routines and rituals are an important part of regaining a feeling of agency and control during something frightening and unexpected like prostate cancer. Whether you believe in direct health benefits or not, if they improve your mood and lower anxiety, they'll probably put your body into a better position to fight cancer and other illnesses, and will improve the quality of your life while you're fighting them.

For me, it was tea and peanut-butter toast. I preach no magic health benefits for anyone else, and won't go hunting for the random study (that no doubt exists in some dusty archive) suggesting that tea fights cancer 😉, but my tea and toast in the morning are precious to me, and have helped me enormously over the past few years.

After a prolonged post-surgical ileus and 3 months paralysed in a hospital bed forced to stare at nauseating food trays until someone came to remove them, I had lost 40 lb and was struggling to make it up to 800 cal/day. As soon as I got that precious card on the wall behind my bed saying the the physiotherapist authorised me to transfer from bed to wheelchair on my own, I started wheeling from my room to the patient lounge and making myself (good, loose-leaf) tea and whole-grain peanut butter toast every morning. *That's* the day I started to recover. I ate more. I got stronger. I felt in control again.

4 years later, a small cup of orange juice, a piece of toast, and some tea (usually Assam or English Breakfast) with milk in the morning remain the anchor of every day. There's nothing special about them, except that they started me on the path to regaining mobility and 4 years of deep remission for stage-4 prostate cancer, so they're precious to me.

I'm sure your berries and JoJo's chocolate ritual is the same to you. They might not not make any direct biochemical difference, but because they make you *feel* better and more in control, your body fights harder. I'd NEVER try to convince you to change it. ❤️

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