Prostate cancer continues to make many victims among the male patients who have been diagnosed with it. It was established that the carcinoma of the prostate is number two in the top most frequently diagnosed cancers and number six in the top causes of male deaths all around the world.
It was estimated that 8 out of 10 people are likely to develop prostate cancer by the time they are 80 years old. Nevertheless, due to its slow evolution in most cases, it is often harmless. It is one of the reasons why it goes unidentified in so many people.
This does not mean that this form of cancer should be neglected. Men living in Western countries are the most affected by carcinoma of the prostate. That means their lifestyle has a word in the evolution of the disease.
It was recently proved that men who do not adopt a healthy diet after the developing prostate cancer have a higher risk of death.
The Western diet has been long criticized and associated with many diseases, mainly because of the predominance of processed red meat and refined sugar and grains that can prove harmful for people who are not completely healthy and could have very bad consequences on the human body.
The new study revealed that men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer had a 67 percent higher risk of dying if they were adepts of a Western diet. Those who adopted a healthier diet in which they included whole grains, fish, fruit, vegetables and legumes faced a 36 percent lower risk of death.
In order to carry out this study, the researchers looked at the diet and health of about 930 men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. All of these men were part of Physician’s Health Study, which is an American investigation.
After they got their diagnosis, their evolution was monitored over a time span of 14 years and assigned to one of the four categories established by researchers after they evaluated up to what extent the patients were adepts of a Western diet.
The authors of the study, Dr. Jorge Chavarro, who works as a researcher for the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston stated that a healthy diet will not only improve the life quality of a prostate cancer patient, but it will also prolong his life.
Therefore, more should be done to inform such patients about the importance of a better diet, which includes less red meat and more fresh fruit and vegetables.
However, even if the findings are very useful, given the fact that not much has been written on this area until now, we should keep in mind that the participants were predominantly white and had a good educational background.
This form of cancer represented 15 percent of all the male cancers diagnosed in 2012. Numbers also show that the number of deaths related to prostate cancer is constantly increasing. It almost doubled from 1990 to 2010. North America is among the most affected regions of the world, with about 30,000 deaths in the United States just a few years ago.
The results of the study were published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
Image Source: Foodnavigator
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