Low-Fat, Flaxseed-Supplemented Diet and Prostate Cancer
This is a very interesting article that looked at flaxseed as a potential adjunct for prostate cancer treatment in the future. Flaxseed may have several potential routes by which this occurs. First, compounds in flaxseed have been known to inhibit aromatase ,the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen in fat cells. Since altered estrogen metabolsim in males (yes, estrogen!) has been linked with prostatitis, I don’t see it as a far stretch to believe that altered estrogen breakdown could also lead to cancer (we already know this occurs in the breast). Second, flaxseed is high in lignans and has some phytoestrogenic effects. So it is possible that the lignans in flax are hogging up the estrogen receptor sites and not allowing more harmful estrogens from binding.
Urology 2001;58:47-52 A low-fat diet supplemented with flaxseed appears to reduce the growth of prostate cancer cells, according to the results of a small pilot study. Dr. Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, from Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues studied 25 patients with prostate cancer who were about to undergo a prostatectomy. The patients were placed on a diet in which only 20% of total kilocalories came from fat. In addition, patients received 30 g/day of ground flaxseed, according to the report in the July issue of Urology. Over an average of 34 days, the subjects experienced a significant decrease in mean total testosterone, free androgen index and serum cholesterol. When the investigators looked at the prostates after prostatectomy, they found that prostate cancer cells were dividing much less rapidly and were self-destructing much more quickly in the treatment subjects compared with matched controls, Dr. Demark-Wahnefried said. The researchers are unsure which part of the diet produced this cancer-fighting effect. However, Dr. Demark-Wahnefried said that in cell-culture studies in which prostate cancer cells were exposed to the lignins from flaxseed, they found significant decreases in cell growth. “It looks like these lignins may be responsible for the results we saw,” she added. “If there is a synergistic effect [with] the low-fat diet portion of the diet, it is unknown at this time.