First U. S. Clinical Trial To Treat Prostate Cancer With Diet Begins

Greetings,

Its great to see that someone is finally looking at something natural to treat disease.  When universities are starting investigating how a healthy diet can heal naturally, I can hardly believe it.  How did this one get past the FDA and big pharma?

All the best,

Lou & Debbie

First U. S. Clinical Trial To Treat Prostate Cancer With Diet Begins

Some of the very healthy foods -- such as cauliflower, brussels sprouts and broccoli -- that many boys desperately sought to shun from their diets in childhood just may be the key to staving off prostate cancer in adulthood. That hypothesis is the impetus of a new clinical trial underway at University of California (UC) San Diego Moores Cancer Center.

The study will evaluate the effect that comes from a change in diet, supported with telephone counseling and exercise, in stopping or delaying the start or progression of prostate cancer. It is the first clinical trial in the U.S. that is a non-supplement study on prostate cancer/diet.

"Ours is the first study to focus on changing the entire lifestyle rather than just giving the participants a supplement pill," said J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, MHS, urologic oncologist at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. "We focus on more vegetables, less meat, and comprehensive counseling which encourages a more active lifestyle."

Participants in the Men's Eating and Living (MEAL) Study will be eating at least seven servings of colorful, robust-flavored produce per day, particularly cruciferous vegetables and tomato products, fruit, as well as whole grains, beans or other legumes.

"Evidence in previous studies suggests that a diet high in vegetable intake and low in meat and fat intake may decrease the risk of prostate cancer progressing or even beginning," said Parsons.

Although approximately 100,000 men are diagnosed annually with early stage, low-risk prostate cancer in the United States, low-risk prostate cancer is a slow-growing disease and many of those afflicted may not require immediate treatment. Unnecessary aggressive surgical or radiation treatment diminishes quality of life for thousands of men each year, but the UC San Diego study researchers see an opportunity to hone, and even re-define, treatment options and patient susceptibility within this particular patient demographic.

"Diet provides the participant/patient with a way to take control and fight what can be a distressing diagnosis," explained Parsons. "If diet is related to the risk of prostate cancer, it may well exert an impact on the earliest phases of the disease. One of the implicit messages that participants will take from this study is that low-risk prostate cancer can often be a condition to monitor: it is not a death sentence, nor is it a condition that necessarily requires radical, immediate, life-changing intervention."

Eligible participants are males up to 80 years of age who have been diagnosed with non-aggressive   within the last two years, are in the early stages, and have not yet received treatment of any kind.