So, just what is a "heart (and supposedly also prostate) healthy" diet?

Came across this the other day. It's sort of off topic for this thread, but not so much for the forum and this is the diet thread we have going right now.

Obesity surgery and risk of cancer

They found that bariatric surgery very significantly reduced the risk of hormonal cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.

It's interesting since it shows a strong linkage between diet and cancer risk without the usual confounding lifestyle variables.

On the other hand, it's not that useful in our discussion of what we ought to eat. I don't remember seeing anyone advocate the "Eat Practically Nothing and Only Things You Can Eat Through a Straw" diet. But since I fall on the low-carb side of the diet debate I will point out that all extreme caloric-restriction diets are also low-carb diets too.

There was something of a flurry of mouse studies eight to ten years ago. That was about when I was diagnosed. I decided I was fatter than I wanted to be for surgery and I looked for studies on low-carb and/or ketogenic diets and prostate cancer. I found a lot of mouse studies that were vaguely positive. Some showed a benefit from carb restriction and others didn't. But nobody found that low-carb diets were bad and so I concluded that a low-carb weight-loss diet was probably safe enough.

Here are a couple of those studies:

Carbohydrate Restriction, Prostate Cancer Growth, and the Insulin-Like Growth Factor Axis

The effects of varying dietary carbohydrate and fat content on survival in a murine LNCaP prostate cancer xenograft model.

Low ketolytic enzyme levels in tumors predict ketogenic diet responses in cancer cell lines in vitro and in vivo.

The first and second study say more or less the same thing but the second one is much longer and more sciencey. The third study is new and may shed some light on why the mouse studies on ketogenic diets for prostate cancer were so all over the map.

In their results (not the conclusion, because it is a side-result) the first study said...
Despite consuming equal calories, NCKD-fed mice lost weight (up to 15% body weight) relative to low-fat and Western diet-fed mice and required additional kcal to equalize body weight.

Evidence for a low-carb weight loss advantage ... in mice, anyway...

PeterDisAbelard. said...
Came across this the other day. It's sort of off topic for this thread, but not so much for the forum and this is the diet thread we have going right now.

Obesity surgery and risk of cancer

They found that bariatric surgery very significantly reduced the risk of hormonal cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.

It's interesting since it shows a strong linkage between diet and cancer risk without the usual confounding lifestyle variables.

On the other hand, it's not that useful in our discussion of what we ought to eat. I don't remember seeing anyone advocate the "Eat Practically Nothing and Only Things You Can Eat Through a Straw" diet. But since I fall on the low-carb side of the diet debate I will point out that all extreme caloric-restriction diets are also low-carb diets too.

Yes they are! As are vegan diets if the vegans concentrate on vegies rather than pasta.

I suspect it may indeed have something to say about what we ought to eat. I can almost guarantee that these folks in this study were both in ketosis and also ran a very low fasting blood insulin. T2D and the hyperinsulemia that goes with it are very much associated with all types of cancers and increased death rates from those cancers. By having bariactric surgery, these people probably wiped out any high blood insulin.

During the year or so before I had my RP, our DIA had bariatric surgery. She lost a ton of weight during that year and was never hungry, but even if she was she could not stand to eat much. It occurred to me that since she was eating so little of EVERYTHING, that meant she was also eating very low carb. Even more so since we had to make sure she at least got a minimal amount of essential fats and proteins. And since she was never hungry, most likely this also meant she was in Ketosis. We tested her and sure enough, she was in deep ketosis. She was in body fat burning mode, and her body fat was providing most of her calories. Just as she would be on a very low carb diet or while fasting for more than a day or 2.

Right after I was had surgery for PC, this same 40 year old DIA was diagnosed with what was probably an already existing(who knows for how long) evil and vicious Mesothelioma. First diagnosed when we could not stop any further weight loss, when that became a concern. I assume this was already starting to advance when she had her weight loss surgery. She was dead in 6 months, it was a nightmare for the family and friends. In this case, neither Ketosis nor chemo touched it. Mets were every where at diagnoses, so surgery was never considered.

However, if as some studies seem to indicate, "bariatric surgery very significantly reduced the risk of hormonal cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.", then maybe the low blood insulin- or something else related to the effectively very low carb intake, has something to do with lowering those cancer risks? Maybe, maybe not. But not unlikely. When we eat low carb(and or fast), we end up with the exact same ketosis and low blood insulin, for better or worse.

InTheShop said...
Interesting.

There is an emerging question on low carb diets as they relate to cancers. Cancer cells require glucose and don't use ketones for energy. Low carb diets tend to greatly reduce glucose and rise ketones. This isn't an ideal environment for cancer. The working theory is that switching to a low carb diet weakens cancer.ative

There haven't been a lot of studies on this, but I read one report from a team treating brain cancers/tumors who reported that in patients who went on a ketogenic diet had significant reduction in the size of the tumor (without other treatments).

Not sure this applies to PC, but it's an interesting line of research.

We have been told that PC is the opposite, that it does not feed on sugar but rather fat. That may be true, but I have still not seen any indications that the high blood insulin that results from high carb eating is not a big negative as far as risk of death from PC, in fact I have seen the opposite associations. Same as it is for all other cancers, so far as I know so far.

I'm still asking: If a heart healthy diet is also good in the fight against PC, then what exactly is a heart healthy diet? Could it possibly be the diet that is known to invariably slash TGLs, raise HDL(usually more than it raises LDL), lower BP AND lower blood insulin? I guess we don't know yet.