LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

prostate cancer

PSA Testing: Is Medicine’s Idea of Prevention Falling Apart?

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IS MAINSTREAM MEDICINE’S IDEA OF “PREVENTION” FALLING APART?
While there is a clear distinction between early detection and prevention, mainstream medicine does not seem to recognize this.  Mammography, colonoscopy, PSA screening…these are all designed to catch disease in its early stage, but they are all catching the DISEASE (or at least the precursor to the disease like a polyp).
None of these actually address preventing the disease or condition in the first place.  Is it just me that seems disturbed by this?
Further confounding this issue is that we are beginning to find that mainstream medicine’s “prevention” is doing more harm than good.  Mammography’s effectiveness has come under fire (many lesions can resolve spontaneously, leading to high levels of overtreatment) and now PSA is under the same level of scrutiny.  The bottom line is that lifestyle changes NEED to be implemented instead of relying solely on early detection.

 

Alcohol Intake and Cancer–Add this to Negate the Risk

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alcohol and cancer risk
yahyaikiz / Dollar Photo Club

The link between breast cancer and alcohol intake has bounced back and forth between no risk and increased risk.

The past few years has seen this association settling in on the recommendation that alcohol intake does increase your risk for breast cancer. The mechanism relates to the fact that alcohol raises the level of sex-steroid hormones in the bloodstream. Since sex steroids like estrogen are clearly linked to breast cancer, it might make sense that alcohol would then increase breast cancer risk.

For most of you, this is not a good recommendation and one that has not been followed by most of the population. This also remains in conflict with the fact that the risk of many other chronic conditions are lowered by moderate alcohol intake like diabetes and heart disease.

But what if you other healthy lifestyle choices could counteract this increased risk seen with alcohol intake?

That’s just what researchers looked at in this particular study. Since dietary fiber has been shown to lower the impact of elevated sex-steroid hormone levels (via decreased blood concentration and increased sex hormone–binding globulin concentration), it would seem reasonable to assume that dietary fiber would be a good candidate for offsetting the risks of alcohol intake on hormone-dependent cancers like breast cancer.

The study included 3771 women and 2771 men who completed an initial intake and were followed for an average of 12.1 years. In this time, 297 incident hormone-dependent cancer cases, including 158 breast and 123 prostate cancers, were diagnosed. Here’s what they found:

  • Higher alcohol intake was directly associated with a 36% higher risk of hormone-dependent cancers (the risk specifically for breast cancer was 70% higher with no elevated risk for prostate cancer).
  • But when higher alcohol intake was combined with low fiber intake, this risk skyrocketed 76% for hormone-dependent cancer (the risk specifically for breast cancer was 253% higher and prostate cancer risk was no elevated by 37%).
  • These elevated risks were NOT seen in those with the highest dietary fiber intake.

Overall, it was clear that dietary choices were able to impact the risk of hormone-dependent cancers from increase alcohol intake. This finding could go a long way towards explaining some of the discrepancies seen in prior research studies looking at the links between alcohol intake and hormone-related cancers.

 

Prostate Cancer Survival and Exercise: How Much is Enough?

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exercise and prostate cancer
CLIPAREA.com/Dollar Photo Club

It goes without saying that preventing prostate cancer in the first place is the better idea. But there are clearly times when the cat is out of the bag and you need to do whatever you can to increase your odds of prostate cancer survival.

Increasing your odds of surviving prostate cancer as well as avoiding prostate cancer recurrence are a topics I have written about in previous blog posts.  Some simple tips can include:

  1. Checking specific hormones to tell if you are at risk of your cancer becoming aggressive.
  2. Making sure you are living an anti-diabetic lifestyle, since this greatly contributes to the likelihood of prostate cancer coming back.
  3. Cutting all dairy out of your life since it has been linked time and time again to prostate cancer.
  4. Androgen deprivation therapy has been shown to worsen your outcome.

This particular article adds another tool to your list of ways to make sure that you don’t become another prostate cancer statistic.  And, given just how important #2 is above when it comes to preventing ANY chronic disease, it should come as no surprise what tool was able to drastically increase prostate cancer survival.

Exercise.  Big shocker there.

But what this study looked into in more detail was just how much exercise was able to make a difference.  Overall, they looked at 4,623 men who had been diagnosed with localized prostate cancer and followed up with them to find out how much exercise had an impact on their overall survival.  Recreational exercise was measured in MET-h/day, or the number of exercise hours in a day.  As an example, one MET-h/day is about the equivalent of sitting on your duff.

With that in mind, here’s what they found:

  • Men who engaged in at least 5 recreational MET-h/d were 37% less likely to die of any cause.
  • Walking/bicycling more than 20 min/day led to a 30% lower risk of dying.
  • Performing household work for more than an hour/day led to a 29% lower risk.
  • Exercising for at least an hour per week led to a 26% lower risk.
  • When the cause of death was narrowed to prostate cancer related deaths, those men who walked/bicycled more than 20 min/day had a respectable 39% lower risk of dying from prostate cancer, while those who were exercising at least an hour per week had a 32% lower risk.

Either way you look at it, exercise saved the day.  But what was really surprising was just how little exercise it took.  One hour per week.

That’s like 8.57 minutes per day to greatly increase your chance of survival.

But let’s change the perspective on this.  You’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer and your life potentially hangs in the balance of the choices you make.  If you are looking at the 8.57 minutes per day thinking that you MIGHT be able to pull that off, you’ve got the wrong attitude.

If you can’t dedicate yourself to exercise (you can pull off a good strength-training routine and aerobic routine in 45 minutes 3 times per week) to save your life, and would instead rather resort to hope and the best medicine has to offer, then you should just hang it up now and go back to sitting on the couch.

 

Common “Healthy” Food Spikes Your Risk of Prostate Cancer

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dairy and prostate cancer
CLIPAREA.com/Dollar Photo Club

Before I mention the food, let me ask this question: Should a food group heavily recommended by schools and public health groups increase your risk of cancer?

Let’s look at some of the other foods that are recommended by nutritionists and public health organizations.  Broccoli.  Never in any study I have ever read has broccoli been shown to increase the risk of anything.  Even when laden with pesticides, this superfood is inherently protective enough to overcome the chemicals.

Pomegranates?  Never any bad press.  Nuts (so long as they are coated in added oils)?  Nope–all good news.  Beans?  Vegetables in general?  Apples?  No, no and none.

I feel very strongly that, if those of us with knowledge on nutrition are making recommendations, there really shouldn’t be any controversy behind it.  And yet there is one food group that has been held on a pedestal for so long that practically the entire industrialized world believes it is essential for good health.  So much so that when a patient comes in and the subject of bone health comes up, he or she is almost embarrassed to tell me that this food group is not normally on the menu.

Of course I’m talking about dairy products.

That wonderful health food that has managed to make it into every public health recommendation for the past 30 years.  The food group whose industry advocates (this or that state Dairy Council) have managed to worm their way into public health groups so they can further the agenda of dairy as a health food.  The food group that is promoted almost daily in radio and TV commercials to an unsuspecting public who believes the marketing geared towards building stronger bones, teeth and muscles.

Just in case you’re one of those people out there who have been brainwashed by the industry into believing that milk from a lactating cow is good for your health and need a little more convincing, feel free to check out my eBook on the Misconception of Dairy as a Health Food by clicking here.

For the rest of you, I’d just like to add this particular study to the list of evidence that dairy is really not a food for non-nursing non-bovine humans to partake in.  This study was a large review of 32 different studies looking specifically at the links between dairy intake and prostate cancer.  Here’s what they found:

  • Overall dairy intake increased the risk of prostate cancer by 7% for each 400 grams per day (just under 2 glasses)
  • Milk intake upped prostate cancer risk by 3% for every 200 grams per day (less than a glass)
  • Low-fat milk increased the risk more than full milk at 6% for each 200 grams per day.
  • Cheese increased the risk by 9% for every 50 grams per day (just under 2 slices).

While these numbers are not terribly high, it should absolutely raise the question about whether or not we should be recommending that our children have 3 servings a day or a food group that is very, very solidly associated with prostate cancer risk (among other concerns).  Should any public health recommendation when it comes to diet and exercise, have a downside, when there are so many other viable alternatives that help build strong bones, teeth and muscles (none of which, BTW, have been shown to be benefited by dairy intake)?

Even IF dairy were not consistently shown to increase prostate cancer risk, can we really justify feeding our children calories as a liquid?  Do the math–even 2% milk (which, you’ll note from this study, actually increased the risk MORE than low fat milk), at about 100 calories per glass, 3 glasses per day is an extra 109,500 calories PER YEAR.  And we wonder why we have a childhood obesity epidemic.

 

Aggressive Prostate Cancer; How to Tell if You’re at Risk

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It’s become clear that only a small portion of prostate cancers will ever become aggressive.  The ultimate question is, will YOUR prostate cancer become aggressive?

The same situation applies almost exactly for breast cancer.

I have always felt that the key to cancer research is to determine which cancers will progress.  We have done a poor job of spending our money in this direction, instead choosing to spend billions of research dollars on drugs that do little to extend cancer survival at an extreme cost.  These “costs” are made up of dollars for treatment as well as side effects.

And so many of the treatments given are for cancers that were never going to progress anyway.  How real is a “cure” when the condition was going to either resolve on its own or never progress?  And what about treatments like cancer surgery, which may actually promote cancer spread due to the massive stress on the body?

My position has remained strong on this matter.  It is clear that widespread cancer screenings like PSA and mammography are far more likely to identify cancers that will never progress.  However, if someone does undergo testing and finds they have breast or prostate cancer, this person should be educated as much as possibly about lifestyles that will increase survival.  At the same time would should be spending a greater portion of cancer research dollars on determining factors that will identify those cancers that are going to progress.

Luckily, the factors that increase survival are closely related to the factors that indicate a cancer will progress.  I have covered many of the protective factors for prostate cancer in a previous article that can be read by clicking here.

This particular article begins to address the other side of the equation:  what factors are associated with prostate cancer progression?

Hormones play an important role in the development of sex-specific cancers like breast, uterine and prostate, with estrogen and testosterone being on the top of the list.  In the study researchers looked at several aspects of hormones in aggressive prostate cancer (stage III or IV and/or Gleason ≥7) including:

  • Estrone
  • Estradiol
  • Thirteen breakdown products of estrogen (in the 2-, 4-, or 16-hydroxylation pathways)
  • Testosterone
  • Sex hormone-binding globulin

When it comes to the breakdown products of estrogen in the male body, the wrong metabolites can be quite toxic to the cells of the prostate.  Specifically, the “16” and “4” pathways are considered bad, while the “2” pathway is considered friendly.  The same goes for breast cancer.

With this in mind, here are the results from the study:

  • The risk of aggressive prostate cancer was 73% lower in those with the highest estradiol:testosterone ratio
  • On the other side of the coin, the risk was 244% higher with higher 2:16α-hydroxyestrone ratios.

To put this in English, having a higher ratio of estradiol to testosterone was incredibly protective against the development of aggressive prostate cancer.  Given that this is a ratio, there are two sides to the equation.  The first would be low testosterone, which should come as no surprise.  Testosterone will directly stimulate the cells of the prostate to reproduce, so higher levels are not good.  That is why testosterone therapy can be such a bad idea.

The other side of the equation is the estrogen one.  The effects of estrogens on prostate cancer are not quite as well-known and it may be, based on the results of this study, that estrogen has some type of strong protective effect against prostate cancer.

Ironically, mainstream medicine has focused on the prostate side of this equation almost exclusively, without much success (I recently reviewed this evidence in a prior blog article that can be found by clicking here).  Maybe they’ve had the right theory but the wrong approach.

The results of the 2:16α-hydroxyestrone ratio have me a wee bit more confused.  As I already mentioned, the 2:16α-hydroxyestrone ratio has been shown to be protective against hormonal cancers, included breast, uterine and prostate cancer.  Further, intake of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower increase the ratio, so the ratio goes up with lifestyle choices well-known to be good for us.

But, the results of this study find that higher ratios led to increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

I can’t say that I have a readily available answer that makes sense for this finding.  I could postulate that anything that promotes a stronger estrogenic activity (like the 16 hyroxylation product would) is going to slow prostate cancer growth.

It could be possible that an elevated 2:16α-hydroxyestrone ratio might be protective against the development of prostate cancer, but that once prostate cancer has begun, this same elevated ratio now promotes the growth of the cancer.

For now, I am not about to recommend lower intakes of things like cruciferous veggies to keep the ratio low, but I will keep my eyes peeled for more info on this topic.

The take-home message applies to men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and are unsure of what to do.  Knowing that there is a factor that can easily be checked in the blood stream that will increase or decrease the risk of conversion to an aggressive cancer can be critical in making a treatment decision.

Given that the decision to progress or forgo treatment could be one of the most critical in a man’s life, any information to help make a decision is welcome.

Stopping Prostate Cancer Recurrence: How to Completely Miss the Boat

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Having prostate cancer at all is a bad thing, but living with the constant fear of prostate cancer recurrence can be worse.

There is no shortage of controversy over our fascination with overdiagnosis of both prostate cancer and breast cancer in medicine today.  I have covered this in a previous blog article (that can be read by clicking here) so I won’t go into it the controversy in detail here.

There is also no shortage of lifestyle factors that clearly, strongly play a role in the development of prostate cancer.  Dairy intake increases the risk of prostate cancer.  Exercise decreases it.  Smoking increases risk.  A plant-based diet decreases risk.

But there is one thing that absolutely plays a role in the development of most types of cancers, with prostate cancer being no exception.

The diabetic spectrum.  Whether we are talking about full-blown diabetes or somewhere along the prediabetic pathway, this absolutely, positively increases your risk of developing prostate cancer.

One of the hallmarks of being prediabetic is abnormalities of lipids like total cholesterol, HDL and LDL cholesterol, VLDL and triglycerides.  Lipids are the first thing I like to look at on a patient’s blood work to see if prediabetes is a concern.

It would then make sense that one of the best ways to lower your risk of developing prostate cancer in the first place would be to live an anti-diabetic lifestyle (again—out of the scope of this article, but you can purchase my eBook on diabetes by clicking here).

But what about prediabetes and prostate cancer recurrence?

This is not exactly what researchers called it in this particular article, but that is essentially what they were looking at.  They looked at the relationship between lipids abnormalities and the risk of prostate cancer recurrence in 843 radical prostatectomy.

Here’s what they found:

  • Elevated triglycerides were associated with a 3% increased risk of prostate cancer recurrence FOR EVERY 10 mg/dl increase.  This can add up fast.
  • Total cholesterol, LDL and HDL did not affect prostate cancer recurrence risk.
  • However, if the men were prediabetic with lipid problems, each 10 mg/dl increase in cholesterol up recurrence risk 9% while the same increase in HDL lowered risk a respectable 39%.

Seems to be in line with expectations.  Lipid problems that indicated prediabetes clearly increased the risk of recurrence.  But it was after this point in the article abstract that I found myself smacking my forehead against the computer monitor…

The authors concluded that these findings suggest that lipid levels should be explored as a modifiable risk factor for prostate cancer recurrence.  In other words, we should use statins to lower the risk of prostate cancer recurrence.

Huh?

Rather than suggesting that an anti-diabetic lifestyle would be powerful for preventing prostate cancer recurrence, they just completely skirt the prediabetic / lifestyle issue and jump right to using medications to treat the surrogate end marker and hope for the best.

UGH!!

Common Prostate Cancer Treatment Falls Short

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Much like breast cancer, there has been much controversy with prostate cancer “prevention” and treatment in recent years.

Mainstream medicine as well as the public health gurus all put all their bets on the PSA card when it came to prostate cancer “prevention.”  (For those non-regular-readers of the Rantings, I always surrounding the word “prevention” in quotation marks because mainstream medicine does little to prevent cancers–most of what they call prevention is really early detection.)

The research over the past few years has been leading away from using PSA as an effective means of preventing prostate cancer and saving lives.  Even the discoverer of the PSA test, Dr. Richard Albin, has clearly shown his opinion about the matter, stating that the test should never have been used for the early detection of prostate cancer.

The main concern with the widespread use of the PSA test to detect prostate cancer is that there are a large number of prostate cancers detected that never would progress to anything of substance.  This large chunk of men diagnosed with non-aggressive prostate cancer is pushed towards surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for a cancer that would never create harm.

You can see the problem here.

One of the common treatments given to prostate cancer patients includes a drug to block the action of testosterone, referred to as androgen-deprivation therapy or ADT.  The idea is, if we block the action of testosterone on prostate cells (regardless of where they may be in the body) they will not divide as rapidly and these patients should have a longer survival time.

But, like so much else in medicine, we take an idea that may sound good on the surface and run with it long before the research is done to confirm that it’s a good idea.

And sometimes this research takes a LONG time.  In the case of hormone replacement therapy for women, HRT was used for almost 50 years before the research trials found out it was a bad idea.  This was, of course, after the drug companies made billions of dollars on drugs like Premarin.

As a result, ADT therapy is a common drug approach used in men with prostate cancer, despite a list of side effects like weight gain, loss of sexual libido and heart disease.  Which brings us to this particular study.

In it, researchers looked at 66,717 Medicare patients 66 years or older diagnosed with prostate cancer from 1992 through 2009.  They were followed for 15 years (average follow up was 110 months) and broken out into high use and low use of ADT.  Here’s what they found:

  • ADT was not associated with improved 15-year survival following the diagnosis of localized prostate cancer.
  • Among patients with moderately differentiated cancers (more serious types of tumors), the 15-year overall survival was 20.0% in areas with high ADT use vs 20.8% in areas with low use (in other words, it made no difference).
  • The 15-year prostate cancer survival was 90.6% in both high- and low-use areas.
  • In poorly differentiated cancers (the worst type), the 15-year cancer-specific survival was 78.6% in high-use areas vs 78.5%, in low-use areas.
  • In this same group of poorly differentiated cancer, the overall risk of dying from any cause (not just cancer) over 15 years was 8.6% in high-use areas vs 9.2% in low-use areas (in other words, the group NOT using the ADT lived slightly longer).

Keep in mind that this is a very large study.  While no single study sets anything in stone, the fact that we have been using an unproven therapy for prostate cancers that might never have progressed that have significant side effects should make you wonder just how many other commonly used treatments in medicine are creating far more harm than good.

 

Effects of ligand activation of PPAR-gamma in human prostate cancer – (10-26-00)

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Effects of ligand activation of PPAR-gamma in human prostate cancer

I’ve said many times before that I truly believe that most chronic diseases in humans stems from relatively few biochemical defects. This is yet more evidence of this. The new class of diabetic drugs have been shown to inhibit prostate cancer. Just remember that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is also a PPAR-gamma ligand without the known hepatotoxicity.

PNAS — Abstracts: Mueller et al. 97 (20): 10990

Read entire article here