Major changes in diet, lifestyle may stem prostate cancer’s spread

The question: Men diagnosed with prostate cancer often vow to change their diet and lifestyle in hopes of keeping the disease in check. For those who follow through, do the changes make a difference?

This study involved 93 men with prostate cancer that had been detected at an early stage and not considered likely to spread. The men chose not to have surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. They were randomly assigned to dramatically change their diet and lifestyle or to make no changes. The group that changed ate a vegan diet (mostly fruit, vegetables, legumes and whole grains) supplemented with soy, fish oil and vitamins E and C; walked 30 minutes a day, six days a week; practiced an hour a day of yoga-based stress management (stretching, breathing and relaxation exercises); and participated in a support group one hour a week.

After a year, levels of prostate-specific antigen, a blood component that indicates the presence of cancer, had decreased 4 percent in those who had made the diet/lifestyle changes and increased 6 percent in the others. The greater the change, the lower the PSA level. In that year, six men in the group that had made no changes underwent traditional prostate cancer treatment because their PSA levels had increased or their cancer had spread, compared with no one in the group that had changed diet and lifestyle.

Who may be affected by these findings? Men with early stage prostate cancer. This disease is the most common cancer affecting men and is diagnosed in more than 230,000 Americans each year.

Caveats: Three men in the change group withdrew early in the study, saying the regimen was too difficult to follow. The study did not determine whether particular diet and lifestyle changes were more effective than others. Some experts have described the relative change in PSA levels as modest; the authors contend that the differences would have been more substantial had the six men in the no-change group not received treatment before the study ended. They also emphasized that an increasing PSA predicts spread of the disease, regardless of the relative differences. A longer study would be required to tell if the changes would affect life expectancy.

Find this study: September issue of the Journal of Urology; abstract available online at www.jurology.com.

Learn more about prostate cancer at http://familydoctor.org and www.prostatecancerfoundation.org.