Table of Contents

Chapter 4: Why Nutrition Matters

In the majority of cases, prostate cancer tends to take its time, growing slowly but persistently over the years. This means that, even if you’ve only recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, it’s likely been growing and developing for many years or even decades. It also means that you might be living with this disease for many more years to come.

Learning how to stay ahead of how the disease progresses and how to address its major symptoms over the long haul is key. But you’ll also need to learn how to live with it from day to day, and how to ensure that your diet and lifestyle are in synch with what your body needs to do to fight the disease.

The negative effects of a poor diet and poor exercise habits are all around us. A whopping 65% of adults in the United States are classified as overweight or obese, with a body mass index (BMI) over the accepted norm of 25. Even more disturbing is that 31% of children are classified as overweight or obese, placing them well above the 95th percentile for normal growth for their age. Unfortunately, this increase in weight seems unlikely to be offset by an increase in physical activity, as approximately 40% of adults and teenagers do not exercise regularly.

Where has this over-eating and under-exercising gotten us? The rates for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases are climbing steadily, doing more and more damage to our bodies and claiming the lives of more and more people each year. In men with prostate cancer, obesity can have a negative effect on disease outcomes. Research has shown that PSA test results in obese men can be lower despite the presence of disease, potentially leading to a delay in diagnosis and treatment; recovery from surgery tends to be longer and more difficult; and the risk of dying from prostate cancer can be higher. This means that dietary and lifestyle changes should be an important part of every man’s battle with this disease, complementing any drug therapy, surgery, and/or radiation treatment that you might undergo.

In this Chapter, we’ll review some of the key findings in nutrition and prostate cancer research, and see how best to incorporate these changes into your life. For an in-depth look at how nutritional elements can affect the development and progression of prostate cancer, see the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Nutrition and Prostate Cancer guide.