"Best Supplements for Prostate Cancer" In my video on pomegranates
and prostate cancer, pomegranate pills appeared useless
in the treatment for prostate cancer, and the same disappointing results
with a pomegranate beverage, but that was just a
pomegranate extract as well. So maybe the pomegranate itself
cannot be blamed for the ineffectiveness seen in the study, but
rather the low dose of the pomegranate active
principles in the extract. But what is the active principle? Extracts will boast about
the level of ellagic acid, definitely one of the more potent of the
phytochemicals found in pomegranate. However, it's not as strong
as the pomegranate itself. What they mean is that the
components may act synergistically; the whole may be greater
than the sum of its parts.
Here's human prostate cancer cells in a
Petri dish churning away at 100% growth, but drip on this pomegranate fraction
and the cancer growth rate is cut 30%, but this other fraction
appeared useless. So what if you add them both together,
what do you think would happen? 30% suppression plus zero suppression
equals 70% suppression. That's synergy, where 1 + 1
is greater than 2. Here they are under a microscope; that's
what prostate cancer cells look like. Here's with the 30% compound. Here's with the useless
one, and here's with both. So any attempt to characterize
the "power of a medicinal food by standardizing
a single chemical is missing the entire point"
of plant based medicine. So the standardized extracts represent
a cynical, money-driven attempt to replace the power of the pomegranate
with the power of ellagic acid.
But the pomegranate needs
no such tricks or enhancements. It's powerful as is. So why don't they just try the
fruit out on cancer patients? Because you can't stuff a pomegranate
in a pill, so you can't compare it to an indistinguishable
sugar pill placebo. Drugs are easy to study. People don't know if they're taking
the active drug or the placebo, but they tend to notice if they're
eating a pomegranate or not. So if you gave a bunch of cancer
patients some pomegranates to eat and the cancer slowed down, you wouldn't know if it was the
pomegranates or just the placebo effect. Of course, the patients wouldn't care;
they got better, who cares? But to change medical practice, we want to know if the fruit is
actually something special. I suppose you could create some
kind of pomegranate smoothie versus some fake smoothie, but
that sounds logistically difficult, so researchers tried powdering it. 199 men with prostate cancer either got
a placebo, or a tablet three times a day containing 100 mg of whole
powdered pomegranate.
Now, this was the whole fruit,
just with the water taken out, but, you know, even so, how
much can you fit in a tablet? Comes out to be about six
pomegranate seeds worth a day. That's about 1/100 of
a pomegranate a day. Since they could fit
so little in a pill, they tried to maximize their chances
of beating back the cancer using diversity. If you have two groups of people eating
approximately the same amount of fruits and vegetables, but one group ate
a relatively low biological diversity diet, where they ate tons of really
healthy foods, but just less variety than smaller servings
of a high diversity diet, which group would win in terms of protecting their
DNA from free radical damage? The high diversity group.
This suggests that smaller amounts of
many phytochemicals may have a greater potential to exert beneficial effects than
larger amounts of fewer phytochemicals. Same result for inflammation. Greater variety in fruit and vegetable intake
is associated with lower inflammation, even if you eat the same
number of servings. Same with improving
cognitive function. Greater variety in fruit and
vegetable intake was associated with a better mental status,
executive function, attention, and memory function in some cases,
even after adjustment for total quantity. So if you have two people eating the same
number of servings of healthy foods, the one eating a greater
variety may do better. So the researchers didn't just put
in some pomegranate powder. They added some
powdered broccoli, too, and some powdered turmeric, and
some powdered green tea concentrate. So a fruit, a vegetable, spice,
and leaf, but tiny amounts. That's like one floret
of broccoli a day, less than an eighth
teaspoon a day of turmeric, and about one sixth of a
tea bag worth of green tea. All great plants, but could such tiny amounts
actually affect the progression of cancer? Yes. In the group of men with early stage
prostate cancer trying to avoid surgery, the PSA levels rose in the
placebo group, rose nearly 50%, indicating the cancer
continued to flourish; whereas in the pomegranate,
broccoli, turmeric, and green tea Food Supplement
group, the PSAs didn't rise at all.
And in those with
more advanced disease— already had surgery or radiation
and trying to avoid chemo— a 70% greater rise
in the placebo group. This was enough to significantly delay
some of the more toxic treatments. So significant short-term,
favorable effects. See, they only had enough money
to run the study for six months because it was a non-commercial
endeavor funded by charity. This wasn't some
supplement company. In fact, there was no supplement until the
investigators dreamed it up from scratch. Of course, now there's a supplement,
given the study's extraordinary results, but the only reason the researchers
put the foods in pill form was to match it
with a placebo. In my mind, what this study
should tell cancer patients is to eat curried broccoli, with fruit
for dessert, and sip some green tea. A completely plant based diet may even
shrink the tumor, not just slow it down, but there's no reason
we can't do both: a plant based diet chock full
of especially powerful plants.
