Showing posts with label prostate cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prostate cancer. Show all posts

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Walking And Tylenol Can Cut Prostate Cancer Risk

Open bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol and Ext...Image via Wikipedia
In the first study, published Monday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, scientists found that men who took a daily dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) for five years had a 38% lower risk of developing prostate cancer, compared with other men. Additionally, daily acetaminophen was associated with a 51% reduced risk of developing an aggressive form of the disease. Men who took acetaminophen for less than five years saw no protective benefit.

Previous research has shown that taking aspirin or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) every day may help reduce prostate cancer risk. The authors theorize that the same may be true of acetaminophen; while not an NSAID, it does have anti-inflammatory properties.

For the study, the researchers looked at data from 78,485 men who participated in the longitudinal Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort, answering questions about diet and drug use every two years starting in 1992. During the follow-up, there were 8,092 cases of prostate cancer — significantly fewer in the group who took acetaminophen daily for five years.

The second study, published online Tuesday by Cancer Research, involved 1,455 men who had already been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Harvard School of Public Health followed the men from 2004 to 2009 and found that those who engaged in regular brisk walking after diagnosis were significantly less likely to see their disease progress.

Men who walked briskly — at a pace of about 3 miles per hour or faster — at least three hours per week were 57% less likely to experience disease progression (including elevated PSA levels, secondary treatment, bone metastasis or prostate cancer-related death), compared with men who walked less and more slowly.

"The important point was the intensity of the activity," Erin Richman, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, said in a statement. "The walking had to be brisk for men to experience a benefit."
The researchers said the effect of brisk walking persisted independent of age, diagnosis, type of treatment and characteristics of disease. The patients' average age at diagnosis was 65. The findings are in line with previous research suggesting that physical activity may help reduce the risk of disease-related death in certain cases of prostate cancer.

Why the association? MedPage Today reports:
Richman and colleagues noted that the brisk walks may reduce insulin resistance, which decreases bioavailable insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1) and increases adiponectin levels, which are all associated with decreased risk of advanced or fatal prostate cancer in vitro and in vivo.
Another potential source of the associated reduction was reduced inflammation due to a lower circulation of interleukin-6, high levels of which "predicted a 73% increased risk of dying from prostate cancer among normal-weight men," the researchers wrote.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. According to the National Cancer Institute, about 32,050 men died from prostate cancer in 2010 and 217,000 new cases were diagnosed. More than 2.2 million men in the U.S. are living with prostate cancer.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Drinking Coffee Can Reduce Prostate Cancer Risk

Roasted coffee beans, the world's primary sour...Image via Wikipedia
(NaturalNews) Imagine this scenario: drug company researchers make an amazing discovery. It's a remarkable therapy that's easy to take, has few serious side effects and reduces the risk of a man developing any kind of prostate cancer. Most importantly, it dramatically lowers the odds a man will ever have the most serious, deadly form of the disease.

Can you fathom the enormous money-making possibilities of such a discovery for Big Pharma? Can anyone even predict how many millions of prescriptions would quickly be written for men who would be willing to pay any price to prevent prostate cancer?

In breaking research news, it turns out that scientists actually have found a substance that appears to prevent prostate cancer, especially the most lethal variety, by a whopping 60 percent. But fortunately for men -- and unfortunately for Big Pharma -- the cancer preventative isn't a drug. It's a natural plant-based drink: plain old coffee.

That's right. The results of a large, new study show that men who regularly drank coffee had a lower risk of developing any prostate cancer, especially the kind most likely to kill. The new research, conducted by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) scientists, was just published in the online edition of the Journal of of the National Cancer Institute.

Of course, if you drink too much caffeinated coffee, you can feel anxious, jittery, have difficulty falling asleep at night and even have heart palpitations. And should you abuse java by gulping down cup after cup of the stuff to keep working or playing when your body needs a rest, you might end up exhausting your adrenal glands, too.

But in moderation, coffee is not only safe for most people but may be beneficial. For example, scientists have found there is something in this ancient and natural drink that may protect against a host of ills, including Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, liver cancer and cirrhosis. As NaturalNews recently reported, research shows drinking coffee may also help protect women from breast cancer.

The Harvard scientists decided to study coffee because it contains natural compounds that are known to act as antioxidants, reduce inflammation, and regulate insulin --- and all of these health benefits are believed to play a role in reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Earlier research has already provided evidence coffee could play a role in prostate cancer prevention. However, only a few studies have specifically looked at the association between coffee intake and the risk of lethal prostate cancer, the form of the disease that is the most critical to prevent because it spreads to the bones and causes death.

"Our study is the largest to date to examine whether coffee could lower the risk of lethal prostate cancer," said senior author Lorelei Mucci, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH, in a statement to the media.

The research team investigated the association between regularly drinking coffee and the risk of prostate cancer, especially the risk for aggressive, lethal prostate cancer, in 47,911 U.S. men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The research volunteers reported their coffee consumption every four years from 1986 to 2008. During that time, 5,035 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer, including 642 fatal or metastatic cases.

The HSPH study concluded that the men who drank the most java (six or more cups each day) had a 20 percent lower risk of developing any form of prostate cancer when compared to non-coffee drinkers. What's more, it didn't appear to matter if the coffee was decaffeinated or regular.

Just drinking one to three cups of coffee daily lowered the risk of the deadly form of disease by 30 percent. And men who drank the most coffee saw their risk of lethal prostate cancer plummet by 60 percent.

The Harvard researchers are currently planning additional studies to understand more about the health benefits of coffee. They want to zero in on the specific mechanisms by which coffee provides such a huge reduction in the risk of the deadliest form of metastatic prostate cancer.

For more information:
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cont...
http://www.naturalnews.com/025737_c...

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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Diabetics At Risk For Cancer Death

Insulin vial.Image via Wikipedia

Diabetes has long been associated with a host of serious health problems, including increased risk of vision loss, kidney problems, heart attack and stroke. Now a growing body of research shows that diabetes also increases risk for deadly cancers.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute collected diet, lifestyle and health data from 500,000 people ages 50 to 71 and followed the patients for 11 years. They found that having diabetes was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of dying from cancer among women and a 17 percent increased risk of cancer death among men.

Having diabetes not only increased risk for dying from cancer, but people with diabetes were, over all, more likely to be given a cancer diagnosis as well.

“It’s well known that there are a lot of benefits from avoiding diabetes,’’ said Dr. Neal D. Freedman, investigator in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute. “Our study, along with others, suggests that there may be additional benefit in terms of reduced morbidity and mortality from cancer.”

The researchers found diabetes was associated with a higher overall risk for colon, rectal and liver cancers among both men and women. In women, diabetes was most strongly associated with a higher risk of stomach, anal and endometrial cancers. In men, diabetes was most likely to raise risk for pancreatic and bladder cancers, according to the report, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Over all, women with diabetes were 8 percent more likely to develop cancer. The findings were more complicated for men. Men with diabetes were 4 percent less likely to get a cancer diagnosis, but that number was skewed by the finding that diabetes lessened the risk of prostate cancer.

Research has suggested men with diabetes are less likely to develop prostate cancer as a result of having lower testosterone levels. However, most prostate cancers aren’t fatal, so the negatives of having diabetes far outweigh any protective effect the disease might have on prostate cancer. When prostate cancer was excluded from the data, the research showed that for men, having diabetes was associated with a 9 percent increased risk of a cancer diagnosis.

Although earlier research has also suggested that diabetes increases cancer risk, the new study is important because of its large size and years of follow-up. The study did not distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, so it’s not clear if the heightened cancer risk is the same for the different forms of diabetes.
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Friday, January 21, 2011

Prostate Cancer - 3 Tips To Prevent It

In the United States alone tens of thousands of men die from prostrate cancer yearly.  I feel that it's completely unnecessary for anyone to die of cancer since there are many natural cancer cures, but let's take a look at how to prevent prostate cancer.


It's extremely rare for men under the age of 50 to have prostate cancer, though when it happens this is usually due to abnormal genes inherited from your family. For reasons we aren't sure of at this time, DNA can be abnormal at birth or become abnormal, resulting in various types of cancer, though this isn't common. 

Tips To Prevent Prostate Cancer

1. Stop Smoking - One of the most important steps you can take to help prevent cancer, prostrate or otherwise, is to do your best to have a healthy lifestyle. If you smoke, one of the best lifestyle changes you can make is to stop. Recent studies have not found a direct link from smoking to prostrate cancer; but it is believed that it can have adverse affects on DNA and could cause malignant cancer growths causing it to spread more rapidly through the prostrate and into other parts of the body. (Journal of Urology (Vol. 169: 512-516).

Not only can smoking speed up the spread of cancer cells throughout your body, but it also causes major damage to your entire respiratory system. This can lead to problems with your immune system, which is a huge contributor for preventing any disease.  If your immune system is compromised you're more vulnerable to disease and cancer.

2. Eat Healthy - Other studies have shown that a healthy diet can also decrease the odds of the early onset of prostate cancer. Diets which are high in fiber and organic fruits and vegetables provide your body with the vitamins it needs to remain strong and healthy. It keeps your immune system up, which is your first defense to disease. Following a raw food diet can increase your healthy and vitality while helping to prevent cancer. Even if you've already been diagnosed with cancer, a raw food diet can help!

3. Get Exercise - A sedentary lifestyle not only leads to weight gain, muscle atrophy, and heart problems, but it lowers your immune system. You don't have to get crazy about exercise, but get some each and every day so that your body is taking in and processing oxygen. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to stay strong and healthy (along with proper nutrition) and it's one of the fastest ways to boost your immune system. So not only will you help your prostrate, but you'll lower the odds of contracting other life-threatening diseases.

Although prostrate cancer can be a life threatening disease it doesn't have to be. With positive lifestyle changes the chances of you getting or dying of prostrate cancer are small.