The ability of supplementation to provide potent effects against disease with a minimum of side effects has increased their popularity with the public.  Even though very effective for benign prostatic hyperplasia,¹ saw palmetto has also been given attention for prostate cancer² while lycopene has been heavily-researched and shown mostly positive results against prostate cancer.³  A third supplement may also provide protection against prostate cancer: flaxseed.

 

Researchers took 25 men who had been diagnosed with localized prostate cancer and who elected to have a radical prostatectomy.  The subjects were given 30g of flaxseed per day while restricting their dietary fat intake to 20% of their total calories.

 

The authors made an important decision in allowing the patient to not count the fat grams from high omega-3 sources (i.e., flax and fish) as part of their fat gram allowance.  This allowed the subjects to increase their omega-3 fatty acid intake while closely monitoring their omega-6 fatty acid intake that has been implicated in causing the inflammation and contributing to the chronic diseases so prevalent in our society.⁴

 

The authors found that the flaxseed combined with the fat-restriction resulted in “significant decreases” in total serum testosterone and total cholesterol while having more cell death of prostate cells versus controls.  For the authors, “these data strongly support a need to investigate the potential benefit of the flaxseed-supplemented, fat-restricted diet further as either a preventive or complementary therapy for prostate cancer.”

 

Supplements that are heavily researched usually have conflicting results between studies.  In this study, however, the authors provided a sound rebuttal to a previous study showing no effect on flaxseed in lowering testosterone levels.⁵  The authors cited different methods used in the current study that included supplementing three times more flaxseed coupled with fat restriction.

 

References:

 

¹       Gordon AE.  Saw Palmetto for Prostate Disorders.  American Academy of Family Physicians 2003; 67: 1281-1283

 

²       Goldmann WH.  Saw palmetto berry extract inhibits cell growth and Cox-2 expression in prostatic cancer cells.  Cell Biology International 2001; 25(11): 1117-24

 

³       Barber NJ.  Lycopene and prostate cancer.  Prostate Cancer Prostatic Diseases 2002; 5(1): 6-12

 

⁴       Cordain L.  Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2002; 56(3): 181-91

 

⁵       Schulz TD.  Effect of short-term flaxseed consumption on lignan and sex hormone metabolism in men.  Nutrition Research 1991; 11: 1089-1100