Treating Prostate Cancer Naturally

Uncover what you must know about prostate cancer… and what you can do NOW to reduce your risks and stay healthier longer.

• Treating Prostate Cancer Naturally

Prostate cancer is a stop-you-dead diagnosis. Every horror story you’ve ever heard comes back to you in vivid detail. Treatments have terrible side effects, and mean trips to doctor’s offices and hospitals (not my favorite places, or yours either). Still, you’re not sure which is worse, treating the cancer that has invaded your body, or leaving it there to grow quietly, hoping it won’t get any bigger, and more dangerous. It seems like a no-win situation.

There is a CHANCE! Check “Treating Prostate Cancer Naturally” now!

Tomato-Broccoli Combo May Protect Against Prostate Cancer

Broccoli and tomato – two vegetables known to help fight cancer – are more effective against prostate cancer if they’re eaten together as part of a daily diet than if they’re eaten alone, a new study with rats suggests.

University of Illinois researchers fed a diet containing 10 percent broccoli powder and 10 percent tomato powder to a group of rats that had been implanted with prostate cancer cells. Other groups of rats received either tomato powder or broccoli powder alone; a supplemental dose of lycopene (the red pigment in tomatoes believed to be an anti-cancer agent); or finasteride, a drug prescribed for men with enlarged prostates. Another group of rats was castrated.

After 22 weeks, the researchers found that the combined tomato/broccoli diet was the most effective at prostate tumor reduction. Of the other treatments, castration was the only one that came close to being as effective.

“When tomatoes and broccoli are eaten together, we see an additive effect. We think it’s because different bioactive compounds in each food work on different anti-cancer pathways,” study co-author John Erdman, a professor of food science and human nutrition, said in a prepared statement.

“Older men with slow-growing prostate cancer who have chosen watchful waiting over chemotherapy and radiation should seriously consider altering their diets to included more tomatoes and broccoli,” added study co-author and doctoral candidate Kirstie Canene-Adams.

“To get these effects, men should consume daily 1.4 cups of raw broccoli and 2.5 cups of fresh tomato, or 1 cup of tomato sauce, or 1/2 cup of tomato paste. I think it’s very doable for a man to eat a cup and a half of broccoli per day or to put broccoli on a pizza with 1/2 cup of tomato paste,” Canene-Adams said.

No Link Between Virus in the Prostate and Risk for Prostate Cancer

According to an article recently published in the British Journal of Cancer, there does not appear to be an association between the presence of viruses in the prostate and the risk for subsequent prostate cancer among men.

Along with skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer among males in the United States. The prostate is a walnut-sized gland that is located between the bladder and the rectum. It is responsible for forming a part of semen.

Orinigal article here

Aging gene also protects against prostate cancer development

Cancer researchers have found that a gene that is involved in regulating aging also blocks prostate cancer cell growth. They have shown that the enzyme SIRT1 can block the growth of treatment-resistant prostate cancer cells that overexpress a mutation for the androgen receptor. The scientists hope the newly found connection will aid in better understanding the development of prostate cancer and lead to new drugs against the disease.

SIRT1 is a member of a family of enzymes called sirtuins that have far-reaching influence in all organisms, including roles in metabolism, gene expression and aging.

“We know that sirtuins play a role in aging, and that the risk for prostate cancer increases with aging, but no one has ever linked the two until now,” says Dr. Pestell, who is also professor and chair of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College.

“We’ve shown that by making a prostate cancer with cells overexpressing a mutation for the androgen receptor, which is resistant to current forms of therapy, we can almost completely block the growth of these cells with SIRT1,” he says. Dr. Pestell and his team report their findings in November in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology.

According to Dr. Pestell, prostate cancer cells can express a mutation that makes patients resistant to current forms of treatment such as hormonal therapy. Such therapy focuses on inactivating the androgen receptor by giving agents that shut off testosterone production.

In one experiment, the scientists took a series of mutations in androgen receptors from prostate cancer patients who are resistant to hormonal therapy and showed that SIRT1 blocks receptor activity, halting cancer growth. “We systematically tested each androgen receptor mutation,” Dr. Pestell explains. “These mutant receptors are resistant to current therapies and are all blocked by expression of SIRT1,” adding that prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels were used to confirm this. Rising PSA levels are frequently an indication of prostate cancer growth or recurrence, whereas falling levels indicate tumor shrinkage.

“This study shows that there is potentially new opportunity for these cancer patients with drugs that regulate SIRT1,” Dr. Pestell says.

“The discovery is a true breakthrough in our field,” says Chawnshang Chang, Ph.D., George Hoyt Whipple Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and professor of urology and of biochemistry at the University of Rochester.

Dr. Pestell and his co-workers also found a single amino acid within the androgen receptor that reacts with SIRT1’s enzymatic activity and proved in the laboratory that it was key to its cancer-halting effect. The work could lead to a model for drug screening, Dr. Pestell notes.

A protoxin that kills prostate cancer

Scientists have found a way of using a protein made by prostate cancer to target and kill the cancer cells themselves. In preliminary studies the new therapy affected only the prostate, without causing damage to other healthy tissues, and now it is being tested in a phase I clinical trial.

Sam Denmeade, associate professor of oncology at John Hopkins University, USA, reported to the EORTC-NCI-AACR2 Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Prague that he and his team3 had developed a protoxin, named PRX302, by modifying an inactive molecule, proaerolysin (PA). They engineered PRX302 to be activated by prostate-specific antigen (PSA) – a protein made in higher than normal levels by prostate cancer. Once activated, they hoped that it would target and kill prostate cancer cells specifically.

He explained: “This represents a different kind of ‘targeted’ therapy, in that it seeks to use a protein made by the cancer to destroy itself.”

Study Eyes PSA Tests for Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is more likely to be life-threatening if the man’s PSA level rose rapidly during the years before he was diagnosed, says a new study that may help change how PSA tests are used.

The finding could help doctors diagnose aggressive cancers earlier, when they might be easier to fight.

Perhaps more important, it suggests a more in-depth evaluation of the common blood tests could better predict who needs aggressive treatment and who has a slower-growing tumor that may be OK to monitor instead.

“This is a test that doesn’t just diagnose prostate cancer. It diagnoses prostate cancer that’s going to actually cause harm,” said Dr. H. Ballentine Carter, urology chief at Johns Hopkins University, who led the research published Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study is far from proof that making health decisions based on so-called PSA velocity can really save lives.

But Carter contends the findings suggest that men should consider getting a baseline PSA test around age 40, instead of the more usual 50, to use as a comparison for future changes.

PSA tests are used to screen men for prostate cancer, but they’re imprecise. Too much PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, in a man’s blood can indicate that he has either a benign enlarged prostate or cancer. Only a biopsy can tell the difference.

It’s not even clear when is the best time to do a biopsy. Some men have cancer despite a “normal” PSA count of 4 or below. Yet routinely biopsying men with low PSA would worsen another problem, overdiagnosis. Many specialists say too many men today are undergoing side effect-prone treatment for tumors too small and slow-growing to ever threaten their lives.

Two years ago, Boston researchers reported that men whose PSA levels jumped more than 2 points the year before diagnosis were more likely to relapse and die despite prostate surgery. But those were men whose PSA levels were already fairly high.

Hopkins’ Carter wondered if doctors could catch such men far sooner, when the cancer might be more treatable.

He turned to a study of aging that has been collecting and freezing blood samples from participants since 1958. The Hopkins team tracked PSA changes in that blood from 980 men, 20 of whom eventually died of prostate cancer and 104 of whom survived it.

How fast a man’s PSA was rising a decade before his cancer was diagnosed _ even before it reached that biopsy-triggering level of 4 _ predicted his survival 25 years later, regardless of his ultimate cancer treatment, Carter concluded.

Those with a higher PSA velocity _ the level rose more than a count of 0.35 a year _ had a 54 percent survival rate, while those whose PSA rose more slowly had a 92 percent survival rate.

What does that mean for men today? That it’s a good idea to order a biopsy for a man with a low but fast-rising PSA, Carter said. And men diagnosed with prostate cancer whose PSA is rising slowly may be ideal candidates for monitoring instead of surgery or other treatment, he added.

A study with just 20 deaths is far too small to prove the value of PSA velocity, cautioned Dr. Durado Brooks, a prostate specialist with the American Cancer Society.

Still, growing numbers of doctors are using the method already to help decide when to order a biopsy, and “I think the study does raise the question as to whether PSA velocity may at some point be a helpful factor in determining prognosis,” he said.

The work is “another step on the road to more sophisticated” prostate cancer screening and treatment, Dr. Timothy Church of the University of Minnesota wrote in an editorial accompanying the work.

Some 234,000 U.S. men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and just over 27,000 of them will die, the cancer society estimates.