Prostate cancer: Vitamin E a vital tool in the fight against prostate cancer

Q: What do Roger Moore, Sir David Steele, Major Ronald Ferguson, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu all have in common?

A: They have all had prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among UK men, and the second leading cause of annual cancer deaths, following lung cancer. In 2002, there were around 10,000 deaths from prostate cancer in the UK and unfortunately those figures have been steadily on the rise for the past decade.

And now a number of large research efforts are now underway to reverse the upward trend of prostate cancer fatalities. If you're a man over the age of 40, this cause needs to be your cause. The good news is that you can easily begin to lower your risk today just by adding a single vitamin supplement to your diet.

Prostate and PSA level
Researchers have known for some time that vitamin E can help lower the risk of the development and spread of prostate cancer. But until now, it was not known exactly why vitamin E helped while other antioxidant vitamins proved to be ineffective against this disease.

First, some background. Let's start with PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, a protein that is the primary marker of the cancer. Men over age 40 are encouraged to have their PSA level checked annually through a simple blood test to assess their risk of prostate cancer. A 'normal' PSA level is below 4.0 ng/l (nanograms per litre); anything above 10.0 ng/l is considered a cause for concern. That's because higher PSA levels indicate the presence of androgen receptor (AR), a testosterone receptor that must be present in the cell for cancer to grow. When AR is present and active, PSA levels climb.

A team of American researchers from the University of Rochester reported that their laboratory research of human prostate cancer cell cultures demonstrated a prostate cancer vulnerability that was previously unknown.

The researchers discovered that vitamin E inhibits AR activity in prostate cancer cells, which in turn decreases the PSA. More important, however, is the ability of vitamin E to regulate or completely halt the genes responsible for the cancer's ability to grow - because many of those genes grow only when activated by AR.

In fact, the research demonstrated that the PSA levels can drop by as much as 80 to 90 percent when prostate cancer cells are exposed to vitamin E, an indication that the cell growth is slowed considerably. Further, vitamin E decreases the number of cancer cells as well, typically by 25 to 50 percent and sometimes even as high as 90 percent.

No excuses! E is easy to get
Two other important notes from the University of Rochester team focus on vitamin supplements.

First, the researchers found that the effects of vitamin E on prostate cancer may be improved when used with other natural treatments such as selenium and vitamin D. And second - and perhaps more important - the type of vitamin E known as vitamin E succinate (or alpha-tocopheryl succinate) was shown to be the most effective in halting prostate cancer cells. In other words, if you drop by your health food store and pick a bottle of E at random off the shelf, you may be getting a less effective synthetic variety of the vitamin. So read your labels before you buy, and look for the natural vitamin E succinate.

There are also a number of good food sources of vitamin E, including dark green leafy vegetables, avocados, whole grains, nuts, dried beans, vegetable oils, seafood, eggs, and organ meats such as liver and kidney.

When it comes to fighting cancer, every little bit helps, so you should be aware that there are several other natural supplements that help control diseases of the prostate, including milk thistle and curcumin (a spice that's also known as turmeric). Saw palmetto has also shown great promise in the fight against prostate cancer. All of these are relatively inexpensive supplements available at most health food shops.

If you're a male 40 or older, I hope you'll make prostate awareness and cancer prevention a part of your everyday routine. It's easy to do, pretty inexpensive and, for a lot of us, the only way we'll end up on a list with the greats like Nelson Mandela (the list of survivors, that is).