U.S. Government cancer.gov link

I don't put 100% faith in the government to always have the answers but IMO they are a valuable source of into (3 decades ago I worked at a government research facility and saw firsthand that the researchers at a non-profit government entity are rarely motivated to lie unless you don't mind losing your job). If you want to know what they say about some of the natural aids, read their own info. Spoiler alert: clinical trials are frequently cherry-picked to tell a tale that someone wishes to spin. Truth is sometimes different and I'd bet the U.S. government is telling the whole tale vs. some random guy on the web.

cancer.gov/about-cancer/tre...

[ragnar2020]

Morning RSH1,

Thanks for posting this link. I read the report, and it is very informative. I recommend others read it too. I’ve continued to wonder whether diet and supplements add anything or subtract from my overall health as it relates to my PCa care and the quest to avoid BCR. The studies presented in this report are helpful so we can make our own decisions.

I do believe that my choice to follow a vegan plant based nutritional plan has reduced my risks of further cardiac events, and I attribute my weight loss, cholesterol, LDL and TriG reductions to the elimination of animal protein in all of its forms from my diet. I’ve been eating this way since 11/15. It works for me and my wife.

Does my vegan diet have any effects on my PCa progression? Who knows? There are no RCTs to validate whether this is true or a fallacy, But, I’m okay with what I’ve chosen to eat because a plant based diet helps my cardiac health, may help minimize my PCa progression, reduces the factory killing and processing of animals and reduces one of thé primary sources of carbon emissions in the world. Besides, my gastrointestinal system functions much better than it ever did when dead animal pieces were rotting in my intestines. But, this is just the unscientific option of an old man.

Enjoy your weekend, and eat some grass clippings.

Jeff

[Hidden in reply to ragnar2020]

Hi Jeff,

Lol! I'm usually vegan with some occasional forays into pescetarian. And once a month I eat a steak. I admire your ethical outlook. I've tried for years but never last more than a few months before something in me tells me to eat some fish or steak. Other than the occasional dips out of veganism I feel great for a 60-year-old and attribute it in large part to my diet and exercise.

I have a similar mindset. Helps cardiac health and I've seen my numbers change in the right direction. It might help prostate cancer. While that isn't proven, the MEAL study, while underpowered, showed an average trend to the positive side for veggies/fruits. Perhaps the government will redo it with 10 times or 100 times the number of subjects.

I really like this type of data. As far as I can see there is no bias or profit involved. BOTH good and bad is reported without an agenda. And, as you can see, there are a lot of potential positives for many natural substances. At least 95% of what I do for cancer and health comes directly from government studies and their science.

I'll have some grass clippings at lunch. This is the once a month that I take the day off and spend time with my wife. So, a glass of wine and a steak today. Then a month of vegan living.

[cashlessclay in reply to Hidden]

RSH1, as for pescetarian aspect, "wild caught" fish is important. Also, be very careful with the iron content of shellfish. Oysters, clams are not good. Be careful with mussels, while scallops are fine. I would skip the steak (arachidonic acid, heme iron, inflammation).

As for the MEAL study, the issue is not under powered or not, it's a faulty premise. Why would you add vegetables to a diet and expect results? That does not mean the vegetables don't have a role in an anti-cancer diet, I believe that they do. They're just not a silver bullet. These type of studies should be conducted with a "cancer neutral" diet, a diet that has shown to have some effect on PSA - - slowing it down, or stopping its growth. That way, improvements made to the diet should "move the needle". If you take an average diet, clean it up some, you are still far away in having an affect on cancer growth. An anti-cancer diet involves not just food selection, but also preparation and timing. If you start the day, or end the day with fruit matters. If you juice fruit or not matters. If you bake or boil sweet potatoes matters.

Cashless

[Hidden in reply to cashlessclay]

Hi Cash,

The trial results were trending but it wasn't large enough to meet significance without a dramatic impact. Also, the number of veggies/fruits added was far less than what I eat.

When I eat fish it is almost always wild-caught Atlantic salmon. I don't eat shellfish but the iron might do me a little good. I'm mostly vegan and very low on iron (B-12 is fine and I've been vegan on and off for 30 years). My doctor knows the research but wants me to supplement with iron. It's that low...

I agree that steak is certainly not the best thing for cancer or heart health. But I don't think that a few ounces of steak once a month is going to change my outcome much. So yesterday I had a steak salad.

Russ

[cashlessclay in reply to Hidden]

Russ, wild-caught salmon should be fine. As for iron supplements, my experience has been very negative. Six years ago, I took an iron supplement (18 mg) for about 10 days. It absolutely destroyed a working diet. When I removed the iron, the diet was once again working.

As for steak, I never experimented with it. Can't help you there.

Cash

[Hidden in reply to cashlessclay]

Hi Cash, do you happen to remember the type of iron supplement? (I take ferrochel since the NIH did some experiments and found that it was the only bioavailable iron supplement form that didn't excite prostate cancer).

Russ

[cashlessclay in reply to Hidden]

Russ, I think I tossed the iron supplements, but it was not the one you're taking. My best guess is Bluebonnet, chelated Iron, 18 mg

[cashlessclay in reply to ragnar2020]

Jeff, what is your typical breakfast? How are you treating "fast carbs" (high GI foods)?What spices do you have? Do you have soy and/or berries in your diet?

Thanks, Cashless

[ragnar2020 in reply to cashlessclay]

Hi Cashless,

Okay, this is an easy answer. Everyday...day in, day out..we have a bowl of regular oatmeal - half a cup - cooked for three minutes in the microwave with some apple juice on the oatmeal as a sweetener, a handful of frozen blueberries that defrost during the cooking process, a handful of raisins - which helps to clean the pipes mid-morning - a tablespoon of ground flax seed and a tablespoon of alma powder. On that bowl, after it comes outta the microwave, we pour on unsweetened organic soy milk. Believe me, this fills you up.

While that concoction is cooking I eat a couple of slices of toasted organic raisin bread with nothing on it. I have a 16 oz. tumbler of water and two or three cups of black French roast coffee. We finish off the breakfast everyday with a whole sliced orange. This has been our favorite meal of the day for six years.

For lunches we eat tempêta a few times a week in sandwiches and salads when we have access to fresh greens. We use seitan, and tofu baked and mixed in pasta dishes and in stir fried veggie dishes. We eat bowls and bowls of beans that my wife cooks in a slow cooker crock pot and then tosses in some pasta into the bean dishes. We buy the dried beans from various online sources like ranchogordo.com and nuts.com.

My wife uses scores of spices including tons of garlic, turmeric, onions, Indian curries, and Mexican spices. She has collected a notebook full of recipes from vegan websites and cookbooks and refined them with notes about which spices to add. She keeps experimenting with ethnic variations of vegan dishes. Use use a lot of organic rice, and other grains too.

We wash this stuff down every night with a bottle of red wine which we split - a couple of glasses each. Hummus, quark, and salsa with melba toast and occasionally air popcorn are our go-to appetizers.

Deserts are pitted dates, sliced melon, fruit sorbet, and some great chocolate covered raisins from nuts.com.

Making the switch from the SAD is a learning process, but we no longer miss the high fat animal protein products. It took about six months to not dream about lamb shanks, steak, omelets, and Stilton cheese.

Good luck,

Jeff

[cashlessclay in reply to ragnar2020]

Jeff, it sure looks like you are enjoying your food. I don't want to interfere with something that appears to be working for you. If it ever stops working, you might consider something closer to my diet. Just click on "cashlessclay", and the diet info is there.

Here is a cut and paste concerning breakfast . . .

"Last six PSA's are 0.415, 0.363, 0.312, 0.305, 0.243, and 0.187 on December 16.

Results come from a diet that minimizes insulin response and contains little iron. The baseline is a vegan diet that allows some wild caught seafood, and does not allow foods that promote a large insulin response. I have no sweets, potatoes nor bread. The diet contains soy. I also have about 6-7 raspberries and ample walnuts on steel cut oatmeal, cooked til dry, and served without milk.

I walk about 2-2.5 miles per day, immediately after breakfast.

Gleason scores: biopsy (4,3), pathology (3,3) . . . different labs. PSADT post surgery and post SRT of 7 months. No treatments after SRT in Jan./Feb. 2011. Note, If I let up on the diet the PSA will quickly start rising again. I have already seen a diet stop working by such things as presoaking the oatmeal, cooking the oatmeat with too much water, adding too much (almond) milk, and adding too much fruit.

This is meant to be used complementary with standard treatments for prostate cancer. It's unlikely that nutrition alone would be able to stop an aggressive form of cancer."

Cashless

[ragnar2020 in reply to cashlessclay]

Hi Cashlessclay,

It is interesting that our breakfast meal is quite similar. As I mentioned earlier, I began my vegan nutritional plan following a diagnosis of CAD following a silent heart attack and a vascular cath that discovered five coronary blockages. I was scheduled for a quintuple by-pass surgery in Western Massachusetts before I decided to get what turned out to be a second and third opinion in Boston at MGH and B&W before I found a new younger and wiser cardiologist at B&W. My present cardiologist is a vegan too.

Then, I was diagnosed with PCa.

I live on an island in the Gulf of Mexico in a historic commercial fishing village. When I became a vegan, I walked away from all seafood including shellfish. the local restaurants probably laid-off some service folks. I stopped eat out.

I’ve learned that even wild caught seafood is plagued by the presence of micro-plastic within the animals flesh that they ingest continually during their normal feeding cycles. We read about the islands of floating plastic in our oceans, but those islands are just the sad visuals we can see and not the invisible particles that people inadvertently consume when they eat fish. Autopsies confirm that those micro-plastic are in our flesh too.

Then, I made a mistake. I watched the Netflix documentary SEASPIRACY and came away weeping. The worldwide commercial fishing industry is a savage barbaric endeavor and contributes more to the mistreatment of animals, global warming and carbon pollution than do commercial animal production operations. We will never stop either of these terrible businesses. Too many people depend upon these businesses for their livelihoods and too many people like eating meat and fish.

Sadly, I’m at peace with my PCa, and I’m glad I’m an old man who has lived an enjoyable life even while I was ignorant about how we were trashing the planet and mistreating our fellow creatures. I feel that we’re doomed to eventual extinction and a painful demise that hopefully I will not be alive to witness. Pretty grim, I know, but that’s that.

Jeff

[j-o-h-n]

Chocolate chip ice cream (two scoops)...

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Sunday 05/09/2021 11:23 PM DST

[Boywonder56]

You all made me hungry.....time for burger royal.....