Hi, I'm a 57 year old with unconfirmed prostate cancer. My psa has been elevated for 14 years and recently jumped from 6 to 14 in a 6 month time frame.
Since it was over 10, I thought it was time for a biopsy. My DRE was negative so I wasn't too surprised when it came back as negative. From what I read, if the DRE is negative and the psa is below 20, odds are that the biopsy will be negative. It doesn't mean I don't have cancer, just that it didn't find it.
Last couple years I've been floundering about with diet and am now on a Vegan diet. I'm very interested in how diet and nutrients effects prostate cancer. I'm also very interested if any others have had success with diet?
As far as nutrients, I'm taking 4000 IU vitamin D and eating broccoli sprouts, and not consuming meat or dairy. I'm wondering why some countries have higher prostate mortality rates than others. I'm reading about the effects of cholesterol on prostate cancer. Apparently prostate cancer doesn't feed directly off glucose, rather it feeds off lipids and is why statins have been shown to be effective.
My total cholesterol is low but my HDL is very high, around 60. My non-HDL cholesterols are very low. A recent study is saying elevated HDL is now a risk for advance prostate cancer. Can't win! HA.
Prostate cancer runs in my family. My brother, father and his brother all have had prostate cancer and have all had prostatectomies.
Being a retired web developer, I've created a blog of my thoughts at nutrition.mossycity.com . I'll warn you ahead of time, writing was never my strength. Several of the published articles on the blog are a work in progress because I don't have all the answers.
--Mike
You should consider monitoring using the Prostate health Index (PHI) instead of just PSA (which comes with it). It may spare you a biopsy.
My Free PSA dropped from 30 to around 15 during that same time period. I will look at getting the PHI and study up on it as well.
Just now looking at what the PHI is it looks like it uses ProPSA and is suppose to be more cancer specific than either the total or free PSA. I have BPH too (around 60 cc) so that would be a good thing!
Definitely don't wish another biopsy!, probably will elect for a MRI next time if my PSA continues to rise. My insurance will pay for it now that I have a negative biopsy. If the MRI doesn't show any nodules, I may ignore the PSA ; but will think about the PHI.
Insurance covers it (it's cheap anyway). You can also have Confirm MDx done on your biopsy tissue - it confirms that your negative was a true negative, and has a negative predictive value of about 90%. you will have to see if your insurance covers it.
Now that is interesting!!! I'm going to read up on Confirm MDx and talk to my insurance and doctor about it. Really appreciate your help!
My husband had two negative biopsies and the MRI showed Gleason 9 prostate cancer. Twelve samples taken each time. Did not get to the cancerous area.
I’d his elevated HDL really a risk for prostate cancer TA ?
Schwah
As far as I know, it has never been studied clinically. All I have is this one lab study:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
This is a very interesting result. If I'm reading this correctly, it says HDL increase proliferation and migration of prostate cancer cells for androgen-independent PCa but not for androgen-dependent PCa. To be honest, I've only read the abstract so far.
I think its possible some of the benefit that is being reported with nutrition/diet like broccoli sprouts is due to their effects on cholesterol. I've read that eating broccoli sprouts reduces your non-HDL cholesterol while increasing your HDL. Now I'm wondering if broccoli sprouts may even be harmful to the ADT group. The article claimed benefit was due to down regulating the androgen receptor. That wouldn't help the ADT group, cancerpreventionresearch.aa...
Seems other nutrients may possibly effect the ADT PCa group differently too. For example, high doses of vitamin D in mice "neither vitamin D analog had any effect on castration resistant prostate cancer in mice treated pre- or post-castration. Interestingly, although vitamin D showed inhibitory activity against primary tumors in hormone-intact mice, distant organ metastases seemed to be enhanced following treatment". The metastases part was scary above but I'm still going to take 4000 IU D.
journals.plos.org/plosone/a...
Here is the recent study concluding HDL increases prostate risk:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
I feel they did a really poor job of documenting their HDL results. I didn't see what range of levels they looked at HDL. They excluded men with very high HDLs for some reason "129 men with HDL or cholesterol values ≥ three standard deviations outside the mean were excluded".
Other studies I've read said just the opposite, higher HDL decrease risk of advance prostate cancer.