New hope in the upstream battle against prostate cancer
There’s an 80 percent chance that a man will develop prostate cancer at some point in his life. Fortunately, most forms of the disease are so slow-growing that a man is likely to die from something else before the prostate cancer can kill him.
And now there’s new research indicating that prostate cancer may be slowed even more, just by eating salmon or tuna.
The research, involving dietary omega-3s, has so far been tested only in mice but with very promising results.
Mice were genetically modified so that they would lack a prostate-cancer tumor-suppressor gene—called Pten—that would leave them highly vulnerable to prostate tumors. This genetic modification mimics a causative factor in humans that is responsible for one-third of human prostate cancers.
Of the mice that developed prostate tumors, some were put on a diet high in omega-3 fats, others a diet low in omega-3 fats, and still others a diet that was high in just omega-6 fats. Sixty percent of the mice on the high omega-3 diet survived, only 10 percent of those on the low omega-3 diet managed to survive, and there was a zero survival rate for those mice that were eating a high omega-6 diet.
Beyond just omega-3 fatty acids, it was the type of omega-3s that was used. Specifically, the research team looked at long-chain omega-3s, one of the two varieties of omega-3s, the other being short-chain.
The difference between long-chain omega-3s and short-chain ones is the way your body processes them. The long-chain variety, found in oily fish like salmon, mackerel, tuna, and herring, is the more effective of the two, because it contains both EPA and DHA—the actual fatty acids. The short-chain variety, found in plant sources, has alpha linolenic acid (ALA)—some of which can be converted into EPA, but only miniscule amounts of which can be converted into DHA. Having to go through this process—an extra step, basically—is what makes it the less-efficient variety. Plus, ALA actually gets burned up as energy—which also makes it a less-efficient source of EPA and DHA.
The research team believes that these long-chain omega-3s can interact with a molecule, called “BAD,” that causes cancer cells to self-destruct in a process known as apoptosis. The researchers plan to continue their study to see if there is a difference between the two varieties of omega-3 and their abilities in slowing prostate cancer and promoting apoptosis.
I recommend you get omega-3 fats from fish oil (1,000 to 2,000 total EPA plus DHA per day).
