Thoughts on Prostate Cancer and its Prevention

Even though specific initiating factors in the diet are poorly understood, at this point in time and due to increasing evidence from epidemiologic surveys and case-control studies, we can feel confident in accepting the notion that diet and lifestyle plays a crucial role in prostate cancer physiology and its pathogenesis.
This is accentuated by other research that implicates obesity and body mass index as increasing one’s risk factor of developing prostate cancer. In other words, lifestyle choices could increase overall disease and in this case prostate cancer.
Conversely, while nutritional interventions can complement conventional treatment and help to improve therapeutic response and quality of life, natural chemopreventive agents have been shown to possess additional health benefits that go beyond specific disease treatment.
Prostate cancer, like all cancers in general, comprises a very complex series of physiological responses, pathways, and signaling molecules during the disease process. Therefore, the wide variety of natural compounds that, through research, have shown efficacy in this condition, have done so through a multiplicity of different mechanisms of action.
Quercetin
The bioflavonoid quercetin has shown promise here as it inhibits certain signaling proteins responsible for regulating cell growth and immune response. β-Catenin for instance  is part of a complex of proteins that regulates cell growth and may be responsible for transmitting the contact inhibition signal that causes cells to stop dividing once the epithelial layer of the cells’ exoskeleton has been completely formed. Quercetin was also found to modulate NF-kB, an immune regulatory protein. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21308698
In a separate study using the same prostate cancer cell lines, quercetin modulated insulin-like growth factor, a signaling pathway that appears to play a crucial role in cancer. Several studies have shown that increased levels of IGF lead to an increased risk of cancer. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20658310
Zinc
The mineral zinc, long known to be essential to prostate health, was also shown to regulate IGF-1 in prostate cancer cells as well.
Pomegranate
For various reasons, pomegranate and its extract, has become one of my favorite chemopreventative agents. In prostate cancer, pomegranate has been shown to demonstrate very impressive therapeutic potential. Pomegranate has been shown to upregulate Bax and Bak, two genes responsible for promoting cell apoptosis, while downregulating Bcl-X_L and Bcl-2, two anti-apoptotic proteins implicated in the survival of cancer cells.
While research on the role inflammation plays in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer appears inconsistent, many of the natural compounds that have demonstrated some efficacy in prostate cancer research appear to partially work through a variety of inflammatory pathways. Pomegranate also significantly slowed PSA formation in vivo human trials.
Good ole’ vitamin C
Because of the work of Linus Pauling, one of my favorite vitamins, vitamin C, has been the center of controversy for many years regarding its use as a chemoprotective, cancer preventative and therapeutic agent.
Vitamin C is primarily known as an antioxidant but in pharmacological doses it demonstrates pro-oxidative properties. It is this pro-oxidative mechanism that has shown vitamin C to be a possible therapeutic agent in the treatment of cancers, including prostate. Vitamin C is also a generator of hydrogen peroxide which itself is a potent oxidative molecule.
While many of the above studies were performed in vitro, this should not diminish the therapeutic potential and future promise of these and other prospective chemo- and cancer-preventative compounds.
by Michael Fuhrman D.C.