I would like some input on what you people think is a good PC diet. I have heard no sugar, small amounts of sugar, no carbs because that turns to sugar, no lipids, meat and veggies only and no meat, only veggies. Appreciate ideas.
PC and diet: I would like some input on... - Advanced Prostate...
PC and diet
Written by
gsun
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I have terminal prostate cancer, I eat what I like in moderation. So far it has been working for 20 years since diagnosis.
I limit red meat and try to have it once a month. I mostly eat fish and chicken along with veggies. Don't normally snack on chips or candy. I do intermittent fasting usually eating once every 24 or 36 hours
I was drinking today 7 cups of hot chocolate from the Nestle machine.
I always eat whatever I can.
Now I will eat some avocado and white bread, rice etc.
On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I was eating 660g of row yellowfin tuna what I bought in Chinatown from Indonesians from west Borneo for 10 A $ with Kikkoman soya sauce made in Japan and made in Japan wasabi.
I microwave babi potatoes and eat them with olive oil.
I also eat some green salad with organic apple cider vinegar for Italy plus olive oil and water.
I actually eat everything as I said.
I love croissants and arabica coffee.
I drink water or hot chocolate.
I don't drink fruit juice.
I was diagnosed in 2018 with lots of bone mets in my spine. Had early chemotherapy 6 cycles and Degarelix ADT. My PSA dropped from 100 to a nadir of 0.12.
Started to rise a year ago from 0.2 and my last PSA was 1.4.
Today I started SBRT to my prostate only 38 Gym should be delivered in 5 times every 2nd or 3rd day.
I will continue with Degarelix only and will see what will happen.
At the moment I don't have any visible mets by any scan.
On the recent PSMA PET scan the SUV max value of my prostate was 14.
As the PSA is rising with a doubling time of 2 to 3 months (therefore CRPC in a prostate) we made a decision to radiate the prostate to prevent a local spread of the CRPC to the soraunding tissue and hopefully stay on Firmagon injections.
I decided to go vegan after DXed, more precisely I follow a whole food plant based diet, as good as possible without sugar, oil and alcohol. Couple of supplements, always based on proper blood tests. I keep Calcium and B12 low, but not under the recommended lower limit. Besides diet I exercise daily, CV training and weight lifting as well as some gymnastics for my lower back. And I reduced my stress.
I think all together supports by therapy best. I’m not doing this to fight PC only but also any other side effect illnesses which can arise due to therapy and or age. I can only say, that I rarely felt so fit in my life. That motivates me to continue. And I found so many good recipes that I really enjoy my meals without animal products.
100% Vegan diet since diagnosis (57, 3a, 3+4, RALP 2021, so far PSA undetectable, told to expect recurrence). Dinner was taco salad with tofu, black beans, green salsa, lots of peppers and onions and no rice. Beverage was pomegranate juice. Diet was recommended by my pathologist who became vegan 5 years ago because “the evidence was overwhelming”. Don’t know if the diet has impacted progression but the labs on my annual physical were better than any in the previous 10 years. Off statins for the first time in nearly 30 years.
I follow Dr. Greger (Nutritionfacts.org). He is a huge proponent of whole plant food based diets. Puts up slews of videos. A lot about prostate cancer.
I was diagnosed circa February 2022, stage 4, oligometastatic, advanced. Got the full LATITUDE + STAMPEDE plan: Firmagon 2 months, Lupron + local EBRT radiation for 1 month, and since then with Abiraterone and prednisone. We went modified vegan months ago -- no red meat, minimal fat-containing cow milk products, fish and chicken sometimes.
I am exercising my arse off (literally -- having trouble keeping my pants up.) 20+ miles per week of hilly woods trail walking, Bowflex for upper body, stair laps at home and crunches-stretches every other day. I interleave Bowflex days with stair lap + crunch/stretch days. On Bowflex I am going with higher resistance times fewer reps to build muscle. I picked up the Bowflex used via Craigslist. There were many listings.
We need to take in about 90-120 grams/day of protein above age 60 or so. I'm paying more attention to that as of late -- a bit challenging with a primarily vegan diet. Supplementing otherwise protein-light meals with protein bars and protein powder shakes. My goal overall is to turn remaining flab into lean muscle.
My latest PSA is undetectable. Oligometastatic bone mets are said to be of less aggressive type than soft tissue mets, so not directly treated in my case. Also oligometastatic seems to correlate to not having floating PC cell clusters in the blood. PC runs in my family.
Everyone with PC should get a bone density (DEXX) scan. Mine shows osteopenia. GLTA
Red meat once a week, chicken, seafood and turkey for protein. 1 cup of coffee a day and water the rest of the day. Fruit with my oatmeal with blueberries or some frozen fruit, I add ground flax/chia seeds to the cereal, one egg a day, cottage cheese a few times a week, snack at night grapes with very strong cheese, tonight we had popcorn. Limit cane sugar to coffee and oatmeal unless I use agave on my cereal, 1 yogurt a day with breakfast. I take supplements to keep my calcium and potassium up, I do not drink milk just in my coffee. I might have a cup or two of green tea in the winter time while watching TV. I try moderation in my diet unless I am bad once in awhile, alcohol is off the menu due to the chemo but do not miss it.
There are no studies showing that any certain diet will provide a higher probability of surviving PCa for a longer length of time. If there were such scientific studies, diet would be part of SOC.
I agree. I am getting very irritated when someone wants to sell dieting to me. Especially as a cancer cure.
Of course it would be great if we could have a well balanced healthy diet.
Look into what Nutritionfacts.org has to say about diet and prostate cancer. All of their work is based on surveys of trials, studies and papers. As for diet becoming SOC, I was offered nutritional counselling which I have so far not taken advantage of. SOC is 99% based on industry-funded studies, so what else would you expect WRT nutrition?
which study convinced you that a certain diet would improve your chances of successfully battling PCa? nutrition.org obviously may have its own biases.
Nutritionfacts.org provides full references for their summaries so one can go and read them for themself.
The subject of PCa is chock full of uncertainties -- _every_ bit of data is delivered with probabilities and odds. So too is the subject of nutrition and health. With that said, without a doubt on my part, PCa is opportunistic. Fighting it (aka controlling what one can control) helps some patients more than others. Weight, quality of intake, and exercise help with a galaxy of disorders -- that shouldn't need more proof to anyone.
I suggest looking at PCa and its putting us into the awareness-of-mortality zone as an opportunity to do the hard things we all knew all along are "good for us" and get on with them. Now.
then again, we may live long enuf that PCa does kill us?
My husband went vegan, low sugar and fat whole foods diet at Dx. His overall health has been good. Old arthritic issues resolved. Pca has marched on but at least he does not have co-morbidities. He loves his food.
I’ve noticed that alcohol sends my hot flashes into overdrive. I try to limit my alcohol consumption to about 1 glass of wine a week. Also, trying to stay thin on ADT is a full time job. I practice intermittent fasting and exercise as much as my creaky joints will allow. My diet is mostly plant based with some fish and chicken. My biggest sin is carbs.
We are all more psychologically more vulnerable when hungry. That was the lesson what was given to us during the class from the Catholic church before our marriage.
Don't hassel your partner when hungry.
Believe me that is the last thing what we need during the chemo.
when I was going through chemo , the nutritionist told me to eat anything that I could stand to eat. That the cancer would make its own sugar no matter what. Before chemo I rarely ate sweets, now I love them. Ice cream, pie, candy. Sugarofmost kinds. PSA is 0.05 and hasn’t changed.
I'm going to go over that with my MC
Maybe a better thing to ask is, what is a good ADT diet. Many men tend to gain weight/fat and develop some degree of metabolic syndrome after a long time on ADT. With that in mind, I would think a diet lower in simple carbs/starches might be beneficial, as it would for anyone who was pre-diabetic.
I was in contact a few years back with a man who was treating his PC with a low-protein and low-carb keto diet. His docs were amazed at how stable his disease stayed with no medical intervention. I did that diet myself before starting any treatment, and in four months my PSA went from 20 to 13. Four months later, after I resumed eating like a pig (pizza, BBQ, beer, etc) my PSA was back up to 27.
So the problem with such a severe diet is it is hard to maintain for one like myself, who is literally addicted to food (and drink!). But another benefit, when I was on it, was that I felt physically and mentally healthier than I had since my 20s. So even if going into nutritional ketosis does not directly benefit one in terms of PC (although I tend to believe it does) it could improve one's QoL. But it means giving up LOTS of foods and beverages that bring immediate gratification.
Probably more important than diet is exercise: weight-bearing resistance training to counter muscle loss and bone loss that come with ADT. So the chosen diet should support the energy levels required to do that!
I agree with the exercise but I have bone mets in my hip and I need a hip replacement. Can't get one as my hip could explode and that would not be good. Going to make an appointment with the Prostate Support group at the clinic to see what I can do. I'm just finishing building a small house so that exercise is going to end.
Low protein and low carbs? What does that diet consist of day to day? Types of foods?
It would be mostly veggies that are high-fiber but low in net carbs: salad greens, cukes, celery, broc, cabbage, cauli, zuke, asparagus, peppers, eggplant, etc. Added to those for calories from fat would be avocado, olives and EV olive oil (lots!) as well as high-fat nuts like pecans, brazils and macadamia.
Lesser additions would be coconut (and its oil), 90-100% dark chocolate, and very small portions of high-fat animal products (salmon, ribeye, cream/butter/cheese, etc.), low-carb berries (raspberries and blackberries) and red wine.
Daily calories could be between 1000-2000, depending on whether you are trying to lose fat or maintain current body weight.
NO grains! NO beans or legumes! NO fruit (other than berries)! NO beer, pizza, potatoes, pasta, bread or other simple carbs and sweets! That's why it is a hard diet to adhere to.
[I found that adding red wine was my downfall a few months in, because 1) a "little" red wine is hard to do, if the wine is good, and 2) a "little" red wine leads to a hunger for many things on the "NO!" list.]
Very good items but very limited! If I thought it did something, I'd be that strict. Hard to tell what works being on Lupron. Thanks for the details.
How such a diet might be of benefit strictly in terms of PC is entirely unknown, but I do know I did FEEL better on it... younger, more energetic, more alert, less depressed, etc.
This is probably the case because I am an "emotional eater" that uses comfort food to mediate negative emotions. For those not as addicted to food, the QoL benefits might not be as great.
never going to give up bread(not talking Wonder Bread crap) , beans, potatoes and fruit. occasional pasta is also fine. And give up pizza? Nope. And I'm not talking crap like Dominos. Talking good pizza.
I built my own pizza oven, plus we have an indoor beehive oven by the fireplace that we will be firing up tomorrow night for pizza... and yeah, talking GOOD pizza!
Right now, the thought of carbless keto for me is impossible to even consider. Maybe this summer, if I live that long.
I had my six month appointment with Dr. Sartor yesterday and mentioned that I’ve gone back to eating red meat, dairy products etc. in moderation and asked if that’s ok. He said yes, diet doesn’t really make much of any difference when it comes to cancer.
Ed
He's pretty big himself, isn't he?
What does that have to do with diet and cancer?
I've just noticed that heavyset doctors rarely, if ever, talk about diet or consumption habits, even downplay their importance, whereas fit doctors tend to. That's all I meant.
Of course everyone has their own opinion. If you were vegan before you got cancer of course you're gonna be vegan now. I've made modest changes to my diet and have no idea if they helped or not. My advice is, IMHO, don't go overboard; the bigger the changes the make the less likely you are to follow through with them.
One thing MD Anderson told me is no alcohol because alcohol is a known carcinogen. To which I thought "TOO LATE" and I still drink as much as I want. You can also consider foods like cauliflower, radish, and berries.
Good luck.
I’m ok with no alcohol. Haven’t had a drink in 12 years anyway.
about 6 yrs ago Gleason score9 3 bone Mets psa about 8 I think . Treated with firmagon and still the drug is working well . Also had exgiva for 2 years which stopped after dead jaw syndrome. Jaw is great and no lingering problems. Just had green light laser surgery ableration last Thursday to open my urethra. Not a bad procedure was home same day feel great and pissing like a race horse.
Now for the diet, I eat and drink anything I want steak,chicken,turkey.fish rice potatoes all washed down with a nice red 🍷or🍺. My only precautions are driving ,crossing the street ( look both ways,don’t want to get hit by a truck) .
BTW psa is at 2.22 and I keep on pushing myself , bone Mets disappeared. I don’t sit around worrying I could get hit by the truck tomorrow and all that worrying would be wasted .
Ride on brothers,
Dannyboy 48
I eat and drink pretty much anything I want in moderation. My wife makes sure I eat pretty healthy most of the time because she is on a restrictive diet. My weakness is sweets at night after dinner. I do exercise, a LOT! I am told I am about 5 lbs under my ideal weight. Just turned 70. What?.... How did that happen??
RALP 4 years ago, GL9. 6 week PSA .9. Had SRT followed by 2 years of Zytiga. Been off all drugs for 18 months. Still undetectable. (knock on wood). If I went vegan, I would be miserable. Just sayin.
In general, heart-healthy is prostate healthy. No specific food restrictions but everything in moderation. It's a good idea to keep calories/day under 2000 because ADT slows your metabolism , which already slows as you get older. It's been proven that increasing vegetables has no impact.
How about sugar?
Like everything else - in moderation.
There is an indirect link between sugar and cancer insomuch as high sugar intake can lead to obesity and there are links to obesity with certain cancers.
There is, however no direct link with sugar and cancer and it's a myth that sugar feeds cancer. Cancer will eat anything it can get it's dirty paws on, including feeding on your body if you were to completely stop eating.
I try not to eat any refined or processed products. However, the definitions of those terms can be debated. I do a whole food plant based diet, with the exception of 1-4 cans of sardines (3.5-4.5 oz) weekly.
What's your average daily caloric intake?
I went from 200 to 165 in about 3 mos. on keto in 2019. But I was also fasting a lot, too, so lost a bit more than needed, probably a little too quickly. It is certainly easier to cut LOTS of calories when you eliminate simple carbs!
Right now, my problem is I'm losing weight without trying, 'cause of mets causing nerve pain/damage... so sticking with pizza for now.
Good luck with the keto... first few weeks can be very tough, getiing hanngry and fatigued. Make sure to watch the electrolytes... I did extra salt, potassium and magnesium to help.
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