I'm currently in my seventh year using food alone for controlling cancer progression. I had no net increase in PSA for the last two years. I do wonder how long this can keep going. Any thoughts on how durable diet/supplement solutions could be?
How Sustainable is a Working Prostate... - Advanced Prostate...
How Sustainable is a Working Prostate Cancer Diet?
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cashlessclay
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Its very impressive that you were able to keep PCA down for 7 years with dietary changes only. If it can go for 7 years, why it can not go for another 7 years,
You are a source of inspiration ...please educate us about what we can do to get off Lupron.
Please share more details about your diet, if you don’t mind.
This is his Testing results and the Diet he is using it was posted at the start of the thread... Hope this Helps.. 
Biopsy had me at Gleason 4 + 3, surgery Jan. 2007, and radiation (SRT) in 2011. Pathology Gleason 3 + 3, PSADT @ 7 months. PSA rising starting in March 2013. Quickly got serious about diet and exercise. Using the Labcorp Ultra-sensitive test and careful notes on my
diet.
My working hypothesis is that cancer cells need "insulin" and "iron" to grow.
Receptors for such are over-expressed on cancer cells compared to normal cells.
PSA, 0.461 in Aug 2017 and 0.424 in July 2019. This is what I'm doing:
1) Make sure supplements do not contain "sugar", "Iron" nor "Chondroitin Sulfate".
2) Minimize an insulin response. The less sugar and "fast" carbs, the better the results.
3) No red meat, no eggs, and no dairy.
4) Basic diet is (organic) vegan with seafood. But, no farmed raised fish.
5) I start lunch and dinner with a plate of raw vegetables, especially broccoli
and broccoli sprouts. I have it with hummus made with olive oil, and add
turmeric spice, ground black pepper, rosemary, and oregano to the hummus.
6) Use Olive oil when you need oil.
7) Brown over white for carbs, if you have to.
8) Have some soy product daily . . . soy beans, tofu or bean curd.
9) I have 2 cups of green tea every day.
10) Vitamin D-3 and B-12 only supplements. A brisk walk 40 to 45 minutes every day.
That is impressive can you describe your diet? Do you take any supplements or vitamins?
WOW - amazing. We would all of course love to hear what you are doing.
Any chance you are on Ben Pfeifer's protocol or some version of it? My husband was on his protocol for 5 years - all natural with the exception of an IV bisphosphonate monthly. But he did start with zoladex for the first 10 months after diagnosis - until he started seeing Dr. Pfeifer. It worked for him for about 4 years.
Biopsy had me at Gleason 4 + 3, surgery Jan. 2007, and radiation (SRT) in 2011. Pathology Gleason 3 + 3, PSADT @ 7 months. PSA rising starting in March 2013. Quickly got serious about diet and exercise. Using the Labcorp Ultrasensitive test and careful notes on my
diet. My working hypothesis is that cancer cells need "insulin" and "iron" to grow.
Receptors for such are overexpressed on cancer cells compared to normal cells.
PSA, 0.461 in Aug 2017 and 0.424 in July 2019. This is what I'm doing:
1) Make sure supplements do not contain "sugar", "Iron" nor "Chondroitin Sulfate".
2) Minimize an insulin response. The less sugar and "fast" carbs, the better the results.
3) No red meat, no eggs, and no dairy.
4) Basic diet is (organic) vegan with seafood. But, no farmed raised fish.
5) I start lunch and dinner with a plate of raw vegetables, especially broccoli
and broccoli sprouts. I have it with hummus made with olive oil, and add
turmeric spice, ground black pepper, rosemary, and oregano to the hummus.
6) Use Olive oil when you need oil.
7) Brown over white for carbs, if you have to.
8) Have some soy product daily . . . soy beans, tofu or bean curd.
9) I have 2 cups of green tea every day.
10) Vitamin D-3 and B-12 only supplements. A brisk walk 40 to 45 minutes every day.
Thank you for sharing your details. How much B12 do you take and in what form (mb12, adb/dibencozide, hydroxo, sublingual, injection)?
I found these two papers that cast a negative light on B12 and prostate cancer:
researchgate.net/publicatio...
researchgate.net/publicatio...
The fact that you are taking B12 and not seeing progression is very interesting.
I share your concern with vitamin B-12. I tried to avoid supplements for B-12,
but vegans get very little and seafood has a high B-12/iron correlation. So, any
attempt to raise B-12 from diet was met with a jump in PSA. Meanwhile, my
B-12 was dropping well below 200 and I went to a supplement at 150 pg/mL.
I'm using methyl B-12 @ 1000mcg mixed into the hummus to get me to the 500-
600 level. That works out to be about 2-3 lozenges/week, using 1/2 at a time.
No B-12 effect on PSA so far (8 months into supplements).
in reply to cashlessclay
How much fish do you eat?
cashlessclay in reply to
I have not seen a PSA dependence on (wild caught) fish. I have as little as once per week to as much as every day without seeing a change in diet performance. Shellfish can contain a lot of iron and I'm careful with clams and mussels, two of my favorites.
I believe methyl B-12 is the bioactive form without a methyl group (that sounds backward I know). I've heard methyl is the problem as it helps the cancer turn off genes by methylating them, thus driving changes that can defeat treatment. This applies to B-12, B-6, and folate. If you take the bioactive forms it wouldn't affect the cancer. At least that's my understanding.
No eggs or dairy nothing?
No eggs! Only dairy has been very small amount of Gouda from free range goats.
Perhaps, 2-3 oz per year average.
No iron supplements either
Iron supplements is my choice for the worst possible thing you can consume.
My own diet is very close to yours. I have been vegetarian for the past 27 years. I have since added fish. I drink 5 cups of green tea daily, Japanese sencha. I do believe vitamin D3 is very important, 1000 i.u.'s daily.
Soy has been controversial in the past few years. I favor soy but have reduced my intake recently.
Best of luck, keep up the good fight.
Interesting stuff. Your diet is very close to what Dr. Valter Longo recommends at USC. He wrote a book called The Longevity Diet. He also has developed a Fasting Mimicking Diet for Diabetes, Metabolic Disease, Cancer Ect. I am just finishing my third cycle of his fasting plan and it has been a game changer for me. I have lost all the weight I gained from ADT therapy and then some. BP down, sleeping and feeling much better.
I don't know if this is going to have any impact on my surviving this disease but at least I feel a lot better!
Wonderfully clear and helpful. I am following a similar diet.
Just want to add my appreciation for sharing this information. Hearing success stories from others is always helpful and encouraging. We can all take from this whatever we want.... from all to nothing..... but everyone's treatments and experiences are valuable to hear because it helps inform our decisions. I'm glad that whatever you are doing seems to be working for you and wish you continued good health!
No two people are the same. What works for you may not for others. When I first started over 13 years ago I had a prostatectomy and my PSA was 0.02 for over six years. Then it came back and I’m in stage 4 now. I have tried just about treatment there is but I still going. Best advice I can give is do your research and find what works for you.
I found exercise is very important even if it hurts, just do it. Diet is also important. Mostly vegetarian is the best diet but I do have eggs and a few types of cheese. Yogurt also. I eat fish and red meat in small portions. Along with a few supplements. I feel pretty good at 65. I also decided a while back that I want quality of life over quantity. Most important is a support group and faith. I have faith in God and believe Jesus is my savior. So I give my worries to him and have faith that however this goes I will be fine
Anyway thank you for the information. I going to use some of your diet plan and adjust it into mine. I pray that you are able to keep going for years to come.
Why no chondroitin sulfate?
Staying away from chondroitin sulfate is a Dr. Snuffy Myers recommendation. Try the link below.
fort-myers-beach-observer.c...
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Good results, it looks like a standard veggie diet. I think the keys are lowering your insulin/glucose levels and eliminating fats from meat/dairy. Everything I've read points to those as dietary factors in progression. Keep going!
You have a Gleason 6 and had surgery and salvage radiation. The PSA value has stabilized at about 0.4 which is common according to this study:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/112...
So this no recurrence, you just have to observe for the coming years. I do not object your healthy diet but I do not think this had a significant influence on your PSA value.
It's odd that you would infer that his diet has no significant effect on his PSA when he has stated that past variations of his current diet have caused his PSADT to increase.
There is no clone of cashlessclay who did no diet to serve as a control group. So we do not know how the PSA value would have developed without the diet.
The PSA value did rise to 0.4 and stabilized. This is not unusual for a low risk tumor. I would assume that the exercise cashlessclay did provided more benefit than the diet.
The study may show that PSA stabilising at about 0.4 is fairly common but anything but certain. At 5 years 76% of the patients were at 0.4 or less. At 10 years 59% of the patients were at 0.4 or less. Subsequent increases in PSA were noted in 72% of patients who had a PSA of 0.4.
Dr. Dean Ornish might disagree ..... problem here is this is not a study but an experiment of one. The idea that diet caused or did not cause a lack of progression can not be determined in this single subject ..... these are guesses. However, Ornish has some evidence to suggest diet could improve at least some P-CA progression so this lack of progression MIGHT be due to diet ..... and a good diet will not hurt.
My PSA totally follows my diet. Any iron or insulin spikes will always show up as a PSA rise.
Strict diet adherence consistently shows up as a modest PSA reduction. I have over 40 ultrasensitive PSA readings. The cancer is alive and well and contained.
in reply to GP24
GP24, thanks for pointing out the truth. It's really misleading for people to make these claims about diet controlling their PSA when there are clearly other reasons for it. Just because you do one thing and something happens doesn't mean that whatever you did caused it. Correlation is not causation.
Touting these kinds of unproven diet claims does a disservice to those who have serious disease that needs treatment. When I hear people saying things like "tell us what your diet is because I want to get off Lupron" it really concerns me and it should concern all of us.
tom67inMA in reply to
I do find these anecdotal stories about diet interesting and there does seem to be a pattern, but you make a very good point: Diet is no substitute for ADT, chemo, etc.
While I've made some diet changes, I have very aggressive cancer and have watched my PSA go from 200 to 0 while eating ice cream. I've yet to see anything close to that from diet alone.
Wow I’m worried about my PSA going from 11.2 in May to 17.7 July 1st.? Been IMRT 2005. ADHT 2008-2013. Nothing since. Yet. PSA’s climbing 2016 from 4.2 to 17.7 now. I’m scheduled for 69Ga-PSMA -11 PET/CT scan in Indy this Thursday. Decision crunch time. Hope PSMA finds HOT spots, areas, places! Total body NM bone and CT scans 2017 and 2018 found nothing evidence of metastasis. I understand those type scans are more for surveillance. Not so effective on Prostate Membrane activity.
Doug
Exactly, I've seen my PSA go from 1000+ (extensive pelvic metastasis) to <0.02, while not missing IPA pints and occasional bourbon shots. While on Lupron, Zometa and Zytiga/Prednisone and currently started Taxotere infusions.
Although, obviously mindful diet of healthy choices is paramount for overall healthy life.
The comment, "I'm currently in my seventh year using food alone for controlling cancer progression.", as others mentioned was a stretch, making the directive that "diet" alone caused your results...
Funny you should mention pints. For a while, especially during chemo, I lost most of my desire for beer. The consequences the next day really turned me off. It's only been in the past week that I've been truly able to enjoy the occasional drink again.
To keep things slightly on topic, I have been eating healthier. But sometimes, particularly on social occasions, it's a small victory to eat and drink for enjoyment. Some here have made no diet changes and have been undetectable for years on Abiraterone.
cashlessclay in reply to
Gregg, I'm not "touting", I'm "reporting" my test results. This is want I did, and here are the results. I make no claims as to efficacy for others. Its seems to me that keeping the results to myself would be "selfish". As for "correlation is not causation", I agree. But there is a difference between 1, 2 or 3 data points and 40. Forty data points has allowed me to develop a working hypothesis for using a diet to control 'my' PSA. That was my objective, I achieved it, and I choose to share it with others. I realize that there is a down side to sharing this information, that of giving false hope. That is a balance that each of us must make in this situation.
I encourage your efforts, but believe others are objecting to the lack of context. Your post only says that you are controlling your PSA with diet. There is no history in your profile, so it's not obvious that this is after surgery and radiation.
You did subsequently provide such info, which is good. It provides important context for your results.
in reply to cashlessclay
It does looks like touting to me when you make a statement like: I'm currently in my seventh year using food alone for controlling cancer progression.
To me, that makes a unproven presumption you are controlling your cancer progression with diet.
And I do agree there is danger in giving people false hope.
cashlessclay in reply to
Gregg,
I had a prostatectomy and three years later my PSA began to rise. I then had salvage radiation, and about two years later my PSA began to rise. Only after
PSA was rising did I try diet and exercise. My PSA continued to rise for another four and half years as I was developing the diet. Now the PSA is held in check, using diet alone. The diet even has a modest "roll back" capability. It reach 0.525 in Nov. 2018, and is now 0.424. If this sounds like remission to you, so be it.
paige20180 in reply to
I want to throw out my two cents worth as a wife. Hope is everything! Information is power. No one should be put on their heals for giving information they believe is helpful. I do not want any man to be concerned about posting anything that may help. If it doesn't resonate, then move on. Even if it was just a placebo effect, it's still powerful. If nothing else, diet will make you healthier.
I took information from this post and started researching a question I had. "why/how does a Choline Pet Scan and Other Pet scans light up cancer like a Christmas tree?" The cancer absorbs vitamins and minerals in order to show up so the cancer must be being fed. This thread got me thinking. I read articles on B12, Folic Acid, Glutamine, Selenium, Zinc, Iron and how they may fuel and feed cancer. Thank you so much for the information!
I for one really appreciate your report, while understanding you are a case study of one. After chemo, radiation, Lupron and Zytiga, my MO and I agreed to take me off ADT, so I am now very interested in what diets and supplements people believe have worked for them.
There is controversy about soy, B12 and red meat, but certain unmistakable and seemingly universal themes pervade these anecdotal accounts, the most obvious being the benefit of lowering blood glucose. Nalakrats is right that one size does not fit all, but we can all cherry pick the things in these anecdotal accounts that we think might work for us.
Thanks for your contribution.
Canoe, I have tried zero soy for three months, and soy every day for more than three months. Soy works well for me and no soy hardly worked at all.
cashlessclay in reply to
Talked to my grandson today (3 yrs old). Johnny, how do you like the new dog? Not at all grandpa. When I pet him, he's OK, but when I kick him, he bites me. And, the harder I kick him, the harder he bits me. Mommy says to stop kicking him. Do you agree grandpa?
No I don't Johnny. Correlation is not causation! This is totally anecdotal. There is no 'control' subject here. What should I do grandpa? Johnny, go kick the neighbors dog.
in reply to cashlessclay
Your post is more like the kid leaving out the kicking part, telling the grandfather "Whenever I eat twinkies the dog bites me."
whatsinaname in reply to
Well said, gregg57. Unfortunately, I think that the vast majority of prostate cancer (advanced) patients believe that there is a direct correlation between giving up things they like, like meat, dairy products and fish/seafood and getting better. Its a kind of deal they are striking with their God/s.....I like this (meat) but I won't eat it, in return please help me live at least another 8 years till my grand-daughter gets married
Great that we have people like you (gregg57) and GP24 on this board !!! Cheers !!
in reply to whatsinaname
Interesting thoughts. I think you hit on something there. Bargaining is the third stage of grief and this ties in with what you are saying. I'm going to be thinking about this more now. Thanks.
whatsinaname in reply to
If I have helped in any way, I am delighted. I have found your posts very, very useful indeed. Thank you very much, gregg57.
in reply to whatsinaname
Thanks!
Well done! Your results are consistent with the Ornish study. See link. Dr. Ornish's primary focus is hearth disease. His recent book is "UnDo It." ornish.com/wp-content/uploa...
This site has so many topics... I'm wondering about a section that shares food info regarding controlling cancer.
I have a couple of, I guess you could call them recipes, that have large amounts of anti-cancer factors.
Is there already a section where we can swap some of these food related ideas?
I'm not ready to defer my PC treatment to just diet. And I remain a carnivore.
But I have to eat. There must be good-better-worst to keep in mind.
BTW, I found a Sprouts grocery store that keeps broccoli sprouts. I'll buy them a few times instead of trying to sprout them myself. Besides, I'm too lazy.
I am with you. Why would anyone voluntarily try to grow the damn sprouts rather than just buy them ?? Its just effective use of time, imho. Spend the saved time reading or listening to music or just nap. Cheers !!!
Seems like there are some permanent naysayers about role of diet or herbs/supplement.
10000 dollar a month drug lobby (mafia) is truly formidable...they want to immediately block your every attempt to think alternates to their highly toxic drugs..and fear is their main weapon...scare you to death and then, make you comply.
People like cashlessclay are brave humans who do not freeze with fear and attempt to think out of the box solutions.
There are different cancer subtypes.
Not everything comes down to Big Bad Pharma.
Yeah. I can take the next Lupron shot but still eat a salad a day that has broccoli sprouts.
I can just confirm the 'no go' on egg yolk. There is a 2012 Harvard University publication on this. Any food high in choline should be avoided.
Replace animal fat with healthy plant oils.
No red meat, no milk.
My PSA for the past six months is less than 0.03. But I am still on a generic Casodex. Will have my MRI in September and then just go vegan and a little bit of fish.
That must be why the Choline 11 PET Scan at Mayo lights up tiny cancer tumors like a Christmas Tree? Why would you want to eat what binds to cancer and illuminates cancer in imaging? Am I oversimplifying this?
Allow me to add something. There is a veg tablet doing the round here in SA and Namibia. NAD treatment. Cancer patients near the brink of death are up and about. Astonishing results.
I thank you for sharing your story.
The name of the tablet is Nutripyne 90.
Thanks for sharing. My diet has been in your ballpark for a long time. I'm Gleason 9, 14 years out and have had most available treatments. I'm taking a holiday from Lupron as PSA is down to .56. Was 20 when I went back on Lupron in January. I also take BIRM and totally agree that iron supplements (which are free radicals) are bad. They took me from near zero to 4 in two months a couple years ago.
Most diet evidence is anecdotal and results will vary depending on what type of PC you have. PC is proven to be a fat / cholesterol driven cancer most of the time. That is why choline (a soluble fat) pet scans work so much better than glucose. Good veggies trump red meat and white starches.
Again thanks for sharing. I'm not coming off my diet. I learned to like green vegetables and I feel better to boot.
Chocolate chip Ice cream from free range ice cream (two scoops).
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Monday 07/29/2019 6:03 PM DST
Cashlessclay, I eat a similar die but without the hummus as hummus has a lot of protein. Early stage prostate cancer is driven primarily by fat, secondary by protein, so I don't think, it is smart to eat hummus. I eat tomato paste in place of hummus. Any opinion?
Please tell us what was your PSA before you started the diet.
My PSA was 0.067 when I started the diet on March 21, 2013. It reached a high of 0.525 in Nov. 2018, and is now 0.243.
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