It would be nice to think that there was some simple routine that you could follow, or diet that you could adopt, or pill that you could take to give you a one hundred percent guarantee that you would not develop prostate cancer. Unfortunately no such routine, diet or pill exists today and, despite our best efforts, some of us will inevitable contract prostate cancer. There are, however, many things that you can do by way of prevention and it is certainly possible to lower your risk of developing the disease.
The first thing that you must do is to simply recognize that there is indeed a risk of contracting prostate cancer and that this risk will vary from person to person.
For example, if you have a family history of prostate cancer with perhaps a grandfather, father or brother dying from the disease then you are twice as likely to contract the disease as somebody without any family history. One difficulty here is that, because prostate cancer often strikes quite late in life and can sometimes be very slow to develop, many men die as a result of some other condition before their prostate cancer has developed to any great extent. So, if a member of your family has always been assumed to have died from a heart attack, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t suffer from prostate cancer and it’s worth checking your family history closely to see if you are at higher than average risk.
Other risk factors include such things as race with African Americans, for example, at higher risk than Hispanic men who, in turn, are at higher risk than Caucasian men. People living in Western society are also at greater risk because of the nature of the diet followed by many in the West.
Whatever your level of risk, all men are at some risk of developing the disease and it is most likely to strike once you pass the age of 40. So what can be done to reduce the risk?
The two main areas to consider are your diet and the use of dietary supplements.
When it comes to diet the main culprit within the normal western diet would appear to be animal fat which, with the high level of meat in many western diets, is understandable. The solution here is simply to reduce the amount of meat in your diet and, when using meat, to stick to meats containing low levels of fat or to choose leaner cuts of high-fat meat.
When it comes to dietary supplements we enter something of a minefield, as opinions vary widely and are also often driven more by profit in this highly lucrative market than by any real medical evidence.
The list of possible dietary supplements for consideration in preventing prostate cancer is far too long for this short article and ranges from vitamins, such as vitamin E, and minerals, such as Selenium, to estrogen and green tea extract. It is also necessary, when looking at dietary supplements, to view the wider picture of your overall health and to consider these not simply in terms of preventing prostate cancer.
It is also an excellent idea when considering supplements to look first at your diet itself and the need for virtually all supplements can be eliminated if you simply ensure that the required vitamins and minerals are included within a properly balanced diet including a wide variety of such things as fresh fruit and vegetables.
Although many thousands of men will die this year from prostate cancer, a large proportion of these deaths will have been unnecessary and a combination of early prostate cancer screening and some simple preventative measures could have prevented thousands of unnecessary deaths.
