Quirky Pre PSA Test Dieting ..?

My next 3 month PSA will be coming up next week (It'll be one yr since my surgery- so far at .04 )-

Just curious--Don't know if it's a superstition .. a "wishful thinking" quirk...or....something that really might work...but...have any of you guys here..in the days/weeks...preceding the ultra PSA blood test resort to eating a diet that you ..'feel'...might help the ultra PSA...be lower??

I know there is no scientific evidence behind it- but- we all know how stressful thus time can be...& might try anything--(I recall one guy who drank lots of water--- hoping that might help-)-

So-if it's lots of vegetables- garlic...vitamins...or...water --Any guys here ever try anything- in the days or weeks--leading up to that dreaded blood draw--?

I really would like to know- feel free to write it- no matter how strange it may seem...Who knows..maybe there is something that really DOES 'work'...--

Waiting to hear-
Rob

Well, I doubt there is much you can do 1 week ahead. On top of that, if there actually was something you could do to help your body kill off some cancer cells, I have read that when a PC cell dies it dumps PSA into the blood stream. Thus, if that is true, some effective treatments can actually result in a temporary rise in PSA.

But there are quite a number of threads here regarding any potential help against PC(and other health issues kike diabetes and heart disease) from diet or vitamins, with plenty of arguments against any possibility of such to go with them. I'd suggest just typing in "diet" or "sugar" or "diabetes" or "insulin" or "intermittent fasting" or "vitamin D" or "vitamins", all along with "PC" or "prostate cancer" into the custom search bar at the top right, and see what all comes up. Or, just type those with "PC" or "cancer" into your favorite search engines. You will find a lot to keep you busy. But there are a ton of linked studies on this board. But be warned, it is a contentious subject.

No special pre-psa diet for me. I eat what I can taste and enjoy.

Bourbon, bacon and steak.

I always have it a week before my PSA blood draw. I have had about 32 of them in the last eight years and all have been undetectable. What more proof do you need?

Plus I feel very good.

Yeah.....we’ll just trick the cancer away by foiling the test. Very scientific and effective, I’m sure.

If my PSA is going up because cancer is growing I sure want to know so I can determine a scientific adult oriented plan to deal with it. Why would I want to artificially suppress the only reliable marker we have and allow the cancer time to grow?

I’m sure it is laughing at our discussion and potential worthless actions.

Wotan,

This is from the LabCorp writeup for its 140731 ultrasensitive psa test:

"This test may exhibit interference when sample is collected from a person who is consuming a supplement with a high dose of biotin (also termed as vitamin B7 or B8, vitamin H, or coenzyme R). It is recommended to ask all patients who may be indicated for this test about biotin supplementation. Patients should be cautioned to stop biotin consumption at least 72 hours prior to the collection of a sample."

https://www.labcorp.com/test-menu/33776/prostate-specific-antigen-psa-ultrasensitive

Biotin is found in many vit/mineral pills. I avoid them for three days before a blood draw.

Please understand that there are probably other things, foods, meds, etc., that can affect the test, but the key thing is they are probably jacking around with the test machinery itself, not the actual psa level in your blood. If there are any foods, meds, etc. that actually affect psa level in blood, they are not well documented, afaik. I'm talking about documented in medical journals and written by doctors who have followed "proper" techniques and statistical analysis.

Now, there are lots of anecdotal, maybe individual, reports of certain food regimes affecting psa. I myself am trying such in conjunction with going off TRT. But don't know how valid this approach is.

I *can* see how radically jacking with your hydration level right before the blood draw could definitely affect the results, but not sure by how much.

You should always strive to do what you can to make the conditions of each blood draw as similar as you can. Try to hydrate to similar levels. Avoid the biotin that LabCorp documents as interfering. The whole reason you are doing the blood draw/psa test is to keep an eye on psa velocity, at least for lower psa levels. If you have a reading of .04, but it's not moving up over long time periods, many docs would consider it indolent and not clinically threatening, so why treat it further right now and cause new SEs? But docs differ on this.

Robert

Tricking the ol psa test. This sounds like something I tried a year ago because I didn't know squat and was convinced my psa was high because my prostate was jacked. Now, don't go thinking that this is what I'm saying about you because its not. In other words, no way I had cancer. So I read like crazy about psa decreasing concoctions and being the supplement freak that I am, I bought a good 150 bucks worth and starting downing them like crazy. And here I am. Ugh, so much for that.
Then I starting eating super healthy, took it to an extreme and lost way to much weight.
I say, keep on keeping on since you are so close to the test.
Dude, your psa is almost zero. Live life my friend and be happy.

Same time of day, same lab, same techs, same breakfast & coffee etc. Sometimes consistency is a virtue.

Side note: my increasing PSA stalled/plateaued last summer for 3 months and the doubling rate has just nosedived again from 6.5 months last read to 26 months this read. I asked my doc how out of the ordinary this is and why. He said that this is extremely uncommon, but that they have had several guys come through clinic that also experienced this. I asked if there was anything that we all had in common.

He said yes, there is. We are all extraordinarily health conscious and in very good shape. He said that this appears to help fight the cancer in several ways, though the specifics have not all been pinned down. I figure anecdotal evidence is a satisfying enough explanation for me.

Wotan said...
My next 3 month PSA will be coming up next week (It'll be one yr since my surgery- so far at .04 )-

Just curious--Don't know if it's a superstition .. a "wishful thinking" quirk...or....something that really might work...but...have any of you guys here..in the days/weeks...preceding the ultra PSA blood test resort to eating a diet that you ..'feel'...might help the ultra PSA...be lower??

I know there is no scientific evidence behind it- but- we all know how stressful thus time can be...& might try anything--(I recall one guy who drank lots of water--- hoping that might help-)-

So-if it's lots of vegetables- garlic...vitamins...or...water --Any guys here ever try anything- in the days or weeks--leading up to that dreaded blood draw--?

I really would like to know- feel free to write it- no matter how strange it may seem...Who knows..maybe there is something that really DOES 'work'...--

Waiting to hear-
Rob

I noticed the subject somewhat veered off into whether it is smart to try to trick the PSA test, which would really just amount to tricking yourself. And that is true in a way. But I don't think you are really interested in tricking your PSA. I suspect you are more interested in lowering that PSA by way of killing off some of those PC cells by way of DIY chemo and/or DIY immune therapy. And you can indeed do such, though some here are loath to admit it and might even ridicule the concept.

I am always amazed at the cynicism over a well known, daily process. People get various cancers throughout their life time. Heck, sometimes we might be coming down with undiagnosed, microscopic cancers daily. Our healthy immune systems murder those little bastids. This is routine. Sometimes, for whatever reasons, the immune system fails to get the job done, although there is a lot of modern research- and a bit of spectacular success(Jimmy Carter) in how to boost the immune system back up to do the job it failed to do. All of us have probably seen the commercial on TV showing the immune system killing a cancer cell. But even if it does not always work, or our immune system gets weakened for some reason, the norm is: our immune system kills cancer cells as well as viruses and bacteria. It is supposed to kill them before they become troublesome. That is the norm.
https://www.webmd.com/cancer/multiple-myeloma/news/20010430/giving-immune-system-second-chance-to-kill-cancers#1

Somebody said...

A bold new treatment for an incurable cancer will give the immune system a second chance to fight the disease.

The immune system is supposed to get rid of cancer cells before they grow into large tumors..............

So why wouldn't every one be interested or at least hopeful about any possible ways to boost the immune system? Why wouldn't every one who has knocked their cancer cell count way down with whatever treatment be interested in finding some more natural way to help the fight along, and maybe even boost their immune system's ability to fight off these little buggers?

Of course, the trouble is the lack of studies to confirm exactly how to do this(unless maybe for a 100K drug). A certain diet? Foods to eat or avoid? Certain vitamins or nutrients? Cannabis? The studies will just naturally be concentrated in how to patent a 100K/year drug to boost the immune system, leaving us mostly on our own to figure out if there is anything we can do via diet or supplements to help this system out. And quite often, we will not get any encouragement from the medical authorities on how to find out.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system

Somebody said...

Diet and your immune system

Like any fighting force, the immune system army marches on its stomach. Healthy immune system warriors need good, regular nourishment. Scientists have long recognized that people who live in poverty and are malnourished are more vulnerable to infectious diseases. Whether the increased rate of disease is caused ......by malnutrition's effect on the immune system, however, is not certain. There are still relatively few studies of the effects of nutrition on the immune system of humans, and even fewer studies that tie the effects of nutrition directly to the development (versus the treatment) of diseases.
.........................

Notice: not studies proving something one way or another, but a lack of studies.

For myself, if there seems to be some evidence(even anecdotal) that some substance or diet is helpful, and virtually no evidence that it is harmful in any significant way(wish I could say that about a lot of our treatments), and doesn't cost much, I lean towards looking into it. Or, when it comes to the dietary approach, as I always say, got to eat something. Might as well eat something that is rumored to be helpful, if I don't hate it. Or, perhaps on occasion, not eating anything, as in intermittent fasting, or eating less of something like sugar. But the trick is: what is actually helpful, what is actually harmful? There is maybe plenty of anecdotal evidence or just theory, but the RCTs are lacking. And probably will remain so.

Some of this discussion reminds me of this:

When I told my doctor I couldn’t afford an operation, he offered to touch-up my X-rays. -Henny Youngman