Blog

Why Saving the Planet may Save Your Prostate!

The link between vegan diets and prostate cancer

(Image from National Cancer Institute via Unsplash)

Prostate cancer has affected celebrities like Rod Stewart and Robert De Niro, both of whom made complete recoveries. Prostate cancer is somewhat unusual because these tumours do not rapidly invade other parts of the body as in many other cancers.

In medicine, we know that because it is a very common affliction of older men, most men will die withprostate cancer rather than from prostate cancer. Recently, King Charles was admitted to hospital for treatment for an enlarged prostate. It turned out to be benign. However, while getting his prostate checked, Charles was incidentally diagnosed with a different form of cancer and the King is now undergoing treatment.

But in the King admitting to having a prostate problem, it drove scores of British men to get their prostates checked. The Telegraph newspaper in the UK reported on what Prostate Cancer UK has called the “Charles Effect”. As soon as the monarch’s diagnosis was made public, Prostate Cancer UK’s risk checker received 2,754 visits, compared with 1,703 on the same day the previous week. So over 1,000 more checks, at an increase of over 61 per cent!

In New Zealand, with a population of 5 million people, approximately 4,000 men are diagnosed annually with prostate cancer and around 700 men die from the disease. This is greater than twice the road toll in New Zealand i.e., prostate cancer causes more deaths than motor vehicle accidents every year. According to the Cancer Society in America, prostate cancer is found in almost 300,000 people per year in the USA with an estimated 35,000 men succumbing to the scourge.

This month, the journal Cancer published a study of diets and prostate cancer led by Stacy Loeb, a urologist at NYU Langone Health. Their study concluded that eating a plant-based diet improved the quality of life for people with prostate cancer. Let’s look at the specifics in more detail.

This study from Harvard, sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analysed 3500 men—health professionals defined rather broadly in the group included male dentists, pharmacists, optometrists, osteopaths, podiatrists, and veterinarians—who had been treated for prostate cancer. In this cohort, half had been treated by having their prostates surgically removed, and a third had been treated by radiation as the primary treatment. None of them had metastases.

The researchers looked at three measures following treatment—sexual function (difficulty in maintaining or getting erections), hormone health (mood changes and depression) and urinary symptoms (incontinence or obstruction)—and compared the men’s diets. It turned out that eating a plant-based diet improved sexual function by 11%, mood changes by 13% and urinary symptoms by 14%. They concluded that plant-based diets, improved the quality of life after prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment for men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer.

There are a few limitations in studies such as this. Could it be that a plant-based diet is generally good for cardiovascular and general wellbeing that indirectly influenced the study results? In any case, the results were significant enough to attract attention from the medical community.

A few months ago, I met Suzi Cameron along with her husband, the film director James Cameron of Avatarfame. Suzi was telling me about her book which details the “OMD plan”. OMD is an acronym for one-meal-a-day. Suzi passionately recounted that one person giving up animal products in just one meal a day can save around 750,000 litres of water, or the carbon equivalent of 4800 driving kilometres over a year! For example, you could eat bacon and eggs for breakfast if you wished, but that would be your only meat intake for the day. Essentially, she was saying that eating less meat was better for the planet. Maybe what’s good for the planet could be good for prostates too!

Vincent Van Gogh was supposed to have had a yellow bias in his vision. There is a medical term for this: xanthopsia. Monet was supposed to have had this too, and this is reflected in their paintings. Overdosing on drugs such as santonin, digitalis, phenacetin, and ether can cause this condition. Or even snake venom can. While xanthopsia is known, chloropsia, the green-tinged equivalent is extremely uncommon and an unstudied clinical finding in physical health. But philosophically speaking, people and companies now like to claim some corporate chloropsia. Everyone wants to appear greener than they really are, but who am I to say? However, I will put it like this: When I travel to the USA, “life extension” clinics are everywhere. Maybe when personal longevity is at stake, people might do something for the planet, even if we are among the last generations that will know that we didn’t do enough.

THE END

Prostate cancer has affected celebrities like Rod Stewart and Robert De Niro, both of whom made complete recoveries. Prostate cancer is somewhat unusual because these tumours do not rapidly invade other parts of the body as in many other cancers.

In medicine, we know that because it is a very common affliction of older men, most men will die withprostate cancer rather than from prostate cancer. Recently, King Charles was admitted to hospital for treatment for an enlarged prostate. It turned out to be benign. However, while getting his prostate checked, Charles was incidentally diagnosed with a different form of cancer and the King is now undergoing treatment.

But in the King admitting to having a prostate problem, it drove scores of British men to get their prostates checked. The Telegraph newspaper in the UK reported on what Prostate Cancer UK has called the “Charles Effect”. As soon as the monarch’s diagnosis was made public, Prostate Cancer UK’s risk checker received 2,754 visits, compared with 1,703 on the same day the previous week. So over 1,000 more checks, at an increase of over 61 per cent!

In New Zealand, with a population of 5 million people, approximately 4,000 men are diagnosed annually with prostate cancer and around 700 men die from the disease. This is greater than twice the road toll in New Zealand i.e., prostate cancer causes more deaths than motor vehicle accidents every year. According to the Cancer Society in America, prostate cancer is found in almost 300,000 people per year in the USA with an estimated 35,000 men succumbing to the scourge.

This month, the journal Cancer published a study of diets and prostate cancer led by Stacy Loeb, a urologist at NYU Langone Health. Their study concluded that eating a plant-based diet improved the quality of life for people with prostate cancer. Let’s look at the specifics in more detail.

This study from Harvard, sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analysed 3500 men—health professionals defined rather broadly in the group included male dentists, pharmacists, optometrists, osteopaths, podiatrists, and veterinarians—who had been treated for prostate cancer. In this cohort, half had been treated by having their prostates surgically removed, and a third had been treated by radiation as the primary treatment. None of them had metastases.

The researchers looked at three measures following treatment—sexual function (difficulty in maintaining or getting erections), hormone health (mood changes and depression) and urinary symptoms (incontinence or obstruction)—and compared the men’s diets. It turned out that eating a plant-based diet improved sexual function by 11%, mood changes by 13% and urinary symptoms by 14%. They concluded that plant-based diets, improved the quality of life after prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment for men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer.

There are a few limitations in studies such as this. Could it be that a plant-based diet is generally good for cardiovascular and general wellbeing that indirectly influenced the study results? In any case, the results were significant enough to attract attention from the medical community.

A few months ago, I met Suzi Cameron along with her husband, the film director James Cameron of Avatarfame. Suzi was telling me about her book which details the “OMD plan”. OMD is an acronym for one-meal-a-day. Suzi passionately recounted that one person giving up animal products in just one meal a day can save around 750,000 litres of water, or the carbon equivalent of 4800 driving kilometres over a year! For example, you could eat bacon and eggs for breakfast if you wished, but that would be your only meat intake for the day. Essentially, she was saying that eating less meat was better for the planet. Maybe what’s good for the planet could be good for prostates too!

Vincent Van Gogh was supposed to have had a yellow bias in his vision. There is a medical term for this: xanthopsia. Monet was supposed to have had this too, and this is reflected in their paintings. Overdosing on drugs such as santonin, digitalis, phenacetin, and ether can cause this condition. Or even snake venom can. While xanthopsia is known, chloropsia, the green-tinged equivalent is extremely uncommon and an unstudied clinical finding in physical health. But philosophically speaking, many people and companies are claiming “corporate chloropsia.” Everyone wants to appear greener than they really are, but who am I to say? However, I will put it like this: When I travel to the USA on lecture or book tours, “life extension” clinics are everywhere. Maybe when personal longevity is at stake, people might do something for the planet, even if we are among the last generations that will know that we didn’t do enough.

THE END