A couple of notes on diet and cancer

Thank you...other than following a healthy diet that everyone should follow and a few indulgences here and there, there isn't any one food that's responsible for prostate cancer, as far as we know. There are pleasures in life that mean more about quality of life than being concerned about everything you do, affects our prostate cancer. Even down to the medical side of this disease and all the medications that take the quality of life from us. Quality of life itself, has some benefits to solving this cancer or at least making it bearable.

@harvey44 Exactly!

And even the strong correlations are suggestive only of the idea that certain foods in excess might be a problem. Dr Walsh writes that there's no problem having a hot dog once in a while, as long as processed, preserved meats aren't a daily staple of your diet (I don't, but only because I've been vegetarian for nearly 30 years 🤷).

Analogies with tobacco and alcohol are spurious, because alcohol goes straight to your liver, and smoke goes straight to your lungs. That's why there's no safe level of tobacco use, for example.

Nothing you eat, drink, or inhale goes straight to your prostate: it has to pass through your body's filtration and regulation systems first.

agree 100%- however, I will say this: about 1 yr ago I got into a kick of eating the fatty cottage cheese late at night when I couldnt sleep..I would put honey on the cottage cheese and I could easily eat 1/3 container . Loved the stuff...high protein and with honey- had to be a good thing, right ?

then in late May, I was diagnosed with PC..and in my research, I read that high fat cheese, like the cottage cheese I was hooked on, was not good for prostate health. So I immediately stopped..but cows had left the barn.

I am also an avid cyclist and I believe once you have a breach in prostate wall, cycling will push lots of PSA out in bloodstream ( along with cancer cells)..even tho I read that there is no conclusive study that cycling causes prostate cancer. I do believe cycling can exacerbate the situation once you have a breach in prostate wall...

lastly, I also believe there is an absolute epidemic of late stage PC right now due to the policy of 10 yrs ago ( or so) of not checking prostate/ PSA in older men during physicals.

I know my correlations may be incorrect..just my casual observations

Beautifully and clearly stated, North! And let’s not forget our very own DNA - composed of hundreds of thousands of nucleic acids.
And sometimes one or more will be miscoded and you will be ‘genetically’ more prone to any given number of ailments.
I use the term ‘genetic’ not in the inherited sense but in the sense of Mutations. They happen all the time and sometimes they produce cancer!
Phil

@xahnegrey40 I am sorry to hear that, but I wouldn't blame yourself for your cancer: while some prostate cancer (like mine) is fast moving and aggressive, most is not.

You probably had prostate cancer cells dividing for years or (more likely, decades) before the cancer finally reached the point that it was detectable. A few months of eating fatty cottage cheese right before your diagnosis couldn't have had an impact, even if scientists do some day find a meaningful correlation.

Question @northoftheborder -- what are your scientific sources to make these assumptions on diet?

Here are my sources that tell me that diet and prostate cancer are linked. As a point of clarification -- I had prostate cancer, had a RP and been clean two years.

From the Prostate Cancer Foundation: https://www.pcf.org/patient-support/physical-mental-wellness/nutrition/

From the Cancer Research UK: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/prostate-cancer/practical-emotional-support/diet

Plant-Based Diets and Reduced Progression: A May 2024 study published by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in JAMA Network Open, involving over 2,000 men with localized prostate cancer, found that those following a primarily plant-based diet had a 47% lower risk of cancer progression compared to those consuming the most animal products.

Healthy Diet Score and Grade Reclassification: An October 2024 study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers, published in JAMA Oncology, provided significant evidence that a high-quality diet (measured by the Healthy Eating Index score) was associated with a lower risk of low-grade prostate cancer progressing to a more aggressive state requiring active treatment.

One point that needs to be made is each of us has our own cancer survival journey. What I chose may not work for you. I hated giving up ice cream and cheese. I chose not to eat it. My choice.

I am interested to know your sources.

D

@dmccarthy104 These are correlation studies, and, as I mentioned, often unreproduceable, as was the case with the 2011/12 Richman study on eggs and prostate cancer.

Dr Walsh addresses correlation studies in his prostate cancer book (where he does advise limiting process meats, because that correlation has been consistently reproduced under many different circumstances). If you want to dive into the weeds on how difficult it is to interpret correlation studies, this might help:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6130913/
It's not that they're all wrong or unimportant; it's just that even when a correlation is reproduceable, it's not clear exactly what it means without a lot of additional research. They're correct within the very narrow scope of the study, but it's a huge leap of faith (not science) to jump straight from that to "if I eat less of X, I'm less likely to get cancer" (like concluding if you don't eat ice cream, you're immune from shark attacks 😉).

p.s. I hope my point that the prostate is not directly exposed to possible carcinogens your eat, like the liver is, but only sees them indirectly in the bloodstream after regulation and filtering is uncontroversial, but I can dig up sources for that too.

@northoftheborder I doubt the JAMA would accept and print a non-producible result.

Dr. Walsh's book, 5th edition, was the first I have read after being diagnosed. He's a urologist of acclaim, no question. But the field of integrative care and prostate cancer has moved beyond him; one patient's point of view.

Two more sources that have been helpful to me and perhaps might be helpful to others are:

a) Dr Geo Espinosa: https://www.youtube.com/watch

b) NCBI: on integrative treatment of prostate cancer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12185962/.

Now if you have JAMA or NCBI approved research on diet, exercise and prostate cancer happy to read. Always hoping to learn something new. I am but a patient trying to find the path to healthy living.

As I wrote, each of us has their own journey. You have yours and I have mine.

@xahnegrey40

Prostate cancer deaths are up 90% due to the government guideline urging no PSA's after age 69.

@dmccarthy104 That's fair. I'm just suggesting not reading too much into correlation studies, at least not until they've been reproduced frequently in different contexts. Otherwise, you'll end up chasing mainly noise rather than signal.

That said, if you want to cut something out of your diet anyway, and a correlation study makes you feel a bit better about that, go for it! As you say, we all have our own journeys.

But before people get carried away with enthusiasm and overhype a few isolated studies here in the forum, please consider how they might affect the silent, vulnerable, newly-diagnosed patients. They'll see exaggerated posts about eggs, sugar, dairy, or what-have-you and maybe start blaming themselves for their cancer, which a) is the last thing they need right now, and b) is going to be wrong the majority of the time anyway. We have to make sure our own journeys don't make other people's harder.

Cheers!