Estrogen Connection to Prostate Problems
June 24, 2017
After many topic requests on prostate health, we’re bringing in nutrition expert, Greg Peterson to share the cutting edge research about prostate problems. He’s also sharing nutrition strategies to reduce the risk of getting prostate problems. Listen in!
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Transcript
Cassie: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. I am Cassie Weness, a Registered Dietician and co-host of today’s nutrition show. Joining me on this very important show about prostate health is JoAnn Ridout also a Registered Dietician and we are so pleased to have the nutrition expert, Greg Peterson back with us today.
Greg: You’re just too good to me. Thank you for having me back. It’s my pleasure.
JoAnn: Many of you have requested a show about prostate health and you also requested turning over the show to Greg Peterson so he can share some of the cutting edge research about prostate problems. He will also share some nutrition strategies to reduce the risk of getting prostate problems.
Cassie: So if your husband is available get him to listen in, please do. Did you know that one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime? And you may not know this but enlarged prostates is the most common problem for men over 50. Before we get into our topic, we are pleased to have Greg Peterson join us this morning. So many listeners know Greg and appreciate his vast knowledge. Let me tell you a little about Greg. First of all, he and his brother Dave own and operate Nutri Dyn, a company that provides leading edge nutrition seminars to health care professionals. In addition, they also supply professional grade vitamin supplements to doctors, chiropractors, nurses, nutritionists and dieticians. Greg and his company, Nutri Dyn has always been focused on educating and helping health care professionals like JoAnn and I understand and deliver nutritional solutions to their clients and patients.
JoAnn: Welcome Greg, so how long have you been helping people get well?
Greg: Sometimes I hate to admit to it, but we did start the company in 1973, so 40 plus years. It’s been a pleasure and we’ve always wanted to be a partner in health. That’s why we are so high and heavy on the education and bringing the latest option leaders to the area. Dar was always in the front row, taking notes, so I have a great love for her and excellent history as well.
JoAnn: So, today’s topic is all about prostate health. So Cassie said for the women listeners to bring their husbands, and the common link for men over 50, but really in the 30’s and 40’s is when you prevent prostate problems, so really men of all ages. Often, men don’t think about prostate health until they have a problem and they become aware of that tiny organ when they are up making several trips to the bathroom at night. Then they say, “What is going on?”
Greg: Well you have that little gland, the prostate can easily become inflamed and then it cuts off the urinary stream basically. And so you may feel like you have to urinate, but really it’s just dribbling out because of that inflammation and pressure that occurs. I remember being on a plane ride here recently and the poor guy with me, before we even got off the ground, he was in the restroom three times. And I thought wow, this is got to be preventable and treatable.
Cassie: Right, so that’s the upside here. So Greg, is you are saying the prostate is inflamed, that begs the question, what has caused the inflammation? For regular listeners, they’ve probably heard us say on past shows, we may have mentioned, smoking, too much alcohol. And even if you’re not a regular listeners, you have heard us say that sugar causes inflammation, so think of some of your favorite foods that might contain sugar, sweet rolls, pancakes, soda, pizza, brownies, and bags of candy from Menards or Home Depot. But, today we have some new information, some cutting edge research so let’s get into how estrogen is connected to prostate problems.
JoAnn: First of all, most men are shocked when we connect their high estrogen levels to their prostate problems. Greg, can you fill us in?
Greg: I certainty can, but I think before we do that we should get into a discussion about the connection of estrogen, not only to prostate cancer and so forth, but we should help people understand the connection of nutrition and lifestyle to both inflamed prostates and to prostate cancer. So it’s kind of a twofold thing here, where it’s an inflamed hypertrophy of the prostate or going to go into full blown prostate cancer. Because we know with males, if we live long enough, we will die of prostate cancer. But the fortunate or unfortunate part of it is that most men will die of heart disease or other complications before they would ultimately die from prostate cancer. It’s that prevalent and serious of a condition.
JoAnn: Sadly, most people just connect their nutrition or what they eat to the size of their belly, whether they are overweight or not. Most men don’t connect how many times they have to get up in the night to urinate to what they have been eating. So we want to help you connect those things.
Cassie: To do that I think maybe first maybe we should first give a brief anatomy lesson, because I think some of the listeners might be wondering, what is the prostate and where is it located? The prostate is a small walnut sized gland found in men, not in women. It’s located before the bladder and sort of surrounds the urethra. So you know urine flows through the urethra, so you think about that prostate surrounding it, so now it’s inflamed when it becomes inflamed, so it’s going to squeeze that tube. So that’s why what Greg was saying before, you might feel like you have to go to the bathroom so bad, but nothing is coming out because of that pressure.
JoAnn: For some reason, there is such a disconnect between what people eat and the inflammation they experience, so it might be aches and pains in their joints or headaches or an inflamed prostates. Often the wife may bring her husband in for a consultation and then we go through what they eat in a typical day and sometimes it’s not pretty. Because often, those foods are the root of the inflammation.
Cassie:And sometimes it’s what they’re drinking too, right? On many past shows we have talked about how soda can lead to inflammation. So, a simple solution is to switch from drinking soda to drinking purified filtered water.
JoAnn: We have talked about sugar a lot, but it’s not just sugar, it is what foods turn to sugar. Things like cereal, pancakes, pizza, French fries, sweet rolls, donuts, or it could be that beer every night, or a glass of whiskey every night or the ice cream treat every night. So maybe, it’s thinking of those things on a rare occasion instead of every night would be helpful.
Greg: As my wife says, just a little treat.
Cassie: Here’s a tip and if my kids are listening they probably know what I’m going to say. When we do ice cream, and we do a dairy-free, coconut milk ice cream, but I have little baby spoons so we take small bites and really enjoy your little treat.
So you get the idea, there are a lot of foods in our country that can cause inflammation and problems for that prostate gland. When I was in clinical practice, I found that men come in for a consultation, I find they are motivated to change their diet because, they want to sleep through the night, they were sick of all the bathroom trips in the middle of the night. They are ready to eat basics, meat, a variety of veggies and healthy fats. Fats like coconut oil is anti-inflammatory, extra virgin olive oil is anti-inflammatory, and a good organic butter can help reduce inflammation. I’m getting the signal it is time for our first break.
BREAK
JoAnn: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition and I’m in the studio today with Cassie Weness. We’re here today with Greg Peterson, nutrition expert from Nutri-Dyn. Greg is here with us today to help explain our topic, the estrogen connection to prostate issues. So keep listening, we’re even going to be talking about the topic no one wants to talk about, erectile dysfunction. So much of the inflammation causing erectile dysfunction or ED and prostate cancer, is caused by dietary and environmental factors.
Just to share what a few of those are. Each year, the average person is exposed to over 14 pounds of pesticides, herbicides, food additives and preservatives. All of us, no matter what, it’s just there. Vietnam veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, so that’s also a known cause of prostate cancer. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer causing compounds. That’s a lot of inflammation. So keep listening, Greg is going to help us reduce our prostate inflammation, along with preventing and healing erectile dysfunction.
Cassie: We did talk a bit before that break about the connection with food and inflammation but let’s switch it up a bit here and get to that connection between prostate inflammation, prostate cancer and estrogen. And I’m sure there are listeners thinking “How in the world are men getting too much estrogen?” I mean they’re not taking birth control pills, they are not taking hormone replacement therapy. So Greg, how are men getting extra estrogen?
Greg: Well, a lot of it is like we just discussed, what JoAnn was saying. We literally are swimming in a sea of estrogens. When you start looking at all the things, like JoAnn was saying. Your skincare products, your lotions, sunscreen too. Those will have these estrogenic compounds. So they’re not estrogen but they’re so similar molecularly to estrogen they act like estrogen in the body. They can literally fool the receptor sites on the estrogen receptor sites on the cell membrane that it is estrogen and gain entry into the cell.
Cassie: A lot of people just think, “Well if it’s being sold it's OK, a manufacture isn’t going to sell something that’s going to be super harmful for me?”
Greg: Well as long as they don’t get caught.
JoAnn: There’s that.
Cassie: JoAnn was mentioning too over break that even if you just look for paraben, I mean there are a lot of bad ingredients in some of these topical things we’re applying. It would be interesting if you’re listening to the radio right now and go grab some of your lotion bottles or sunscreen bottles, it there’s paraben in them anything that ends in paraben, that’s what you’re talking about Greg. It’s one of those estrogenic compounds.
JoAnn: Get rid of it, throw it away.
Greg: Totally. Or like the insecticides too. You were mentioning the Roundups, the Atrazine’s and so forth. They’re also molecularly very similar to real estrogen. And so they’ll be able to hit that estrogen receptor site on the cell, get entrance into the cell itself and do you really want to have Atrazine or Roundup in your cells? Do you think it maybe causes some problems like cancer, mutations problems, etc. We can go over and over all these different insecticides, skin care products, industrial products, flame retardants, you get into the different building materials, electronics, and furnishings. Different motor oils, on and on, the list doesn’t stop.
Cassie: And like you said so we’re swimming in these bad estrogens.
Greg: And the bottles, the PcB bottles, we’ve talked about that in the past. That’s been at least addressed now, but for every PcB that comes up, ten more are in the wings. That are causing problems already that we don’t know about. It’s crazy.
Cassie: What about if we carry extra weight. Is there a relationship there with producing too much estrogen?
Greg: Absolutely. That’s the common bane for men, we put our weight in our gut, as I suck it in right now. We know that belly fat has an enzyme called aromatase and this converts our testosterone to estrogen. So the more belly fat we have, the more we lose our testosterone and convert it to estrogen we become more estrogenic. And like we were talking about earlier, the catch-22 on that is that when we have high levels of estrogen in the system, the body really feels like we had adequate hormones so even though our testosterone can be low, if the estrogen is high that’s the way it’s viewed. So we can continue to be low testosterone leading to erectile dysfunction, lots of kinds of problems like that too. And then two, we eliminate these estrogens, or metabolize them out of our systems or detoxify them out of our system, our testosterone stays low. But as soon as that estrogen gets lowered, all of a sudden there is an awareness from our pituitary and so forth that all of a sudden we’re low on testosterone and it’ll pick up our testosterone too. So probably the best way to get estrogens and increase your testosterone is a good estrogen detox and using some different dietary nutritional supplements.
JoAnn: That’s really interesting. You know my husband is a golfer and I have cautioned him about all the chemicals that are used in golf courses. Then I sometimes get the typical eye roll but just keep going. But it really is a really hard call when that is his main form of exercise, he does walk the course rather than using a cart so that’s a good thing.
I learned when researching these chemicals that golf course superintendents are at higher risk of many forms of cancer, including Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lung, and prostate cancer. They added that a medical professor researched this information and found that Of the 30 most commonly used turf pesticides, 19 can cause cancer, 13 are linked to birth defects, 21 can affect reproduction and 15 are nervous system toxicants. The most popular and widely used lawn chemical, 2,4-D, which kills broad leaf weeds like dandelions, is an endocrine disruptor with predicted human health hazards such as changes in estrogen and testosterone levels, thyroid problems, prostate cancer and reproductive abnormalities. 2,4-D has also been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Other turf chemicals, like glyphosate (Roundup), have also been linked to serious adverse chronic effects in humans. So, exposure is occurring to golfers who spend time on pesticide-treated turf.
The relationship of these chemicals to reproductive cancers makes sense since these are fake estrogens. Some men should stop golfing if they have Prostrate Cancer.
Cassie: And doesn’t it make you start thinking about all these people you know with cancer and how many you know with fertility problems and then you think about all the chemicals we’re swimming in.
Hopefully over time, golfers, and course owners will demand more organic and environmentally friendly options for the greens. But really we all need to be concerned and do our part because a lot of these chemicals are used in treating residential lawns, so everyone is exposed to those to some degree.
BREAK
Welcome back to dishing up Nutrition. We are discussing prostate health with Greg Peterson today. Greg is the owner of Nutri Dyn, and is here today to discuss this important topic and also share some of the supplements that can support prostate health. We talked a bit before the last break about how too much estrogen in the man’s body can build up and that can be the cause of prostate inflammation and prostate cancer. Another thing that can happen is that the excess estrogen can build up in the liver and then when the liver gets all gummed up with that excess estrogen it can eventually cause inflammation in the prostate.
One of the supplements I’d like to hear Greg’s take on is a supplement called Concentrated Ultra Prostagen is a product that contains a verity of different nutrients. It has saw palmetto, zinc, amino acids, vitamin B6, and vitamin D. This special combination of nutrients can help to reduce inflammation in the prostate. We’ve seen in clinical practice that many men have found this helpful for an enlarged prostate gland, and have found relief when going to the bathroom, or fewer trips in the night because it helps increase urine flow. Certainly as nutritionists and registered dieticians we also encourage an anti-inflammatory eating plan along with this product. Stay tuned with us because if all goes as planned we want to have Greg expand on this particular supplement in just a bit.
JoAnn: So, lifestyle, diet and even the type of water you drink, we recommend filtered water certainly, any of those lifestyle things can set you up to getting prostate cancer. Greg, as nutritionists, we work with men on their diet and lifestyle. Is there actual research that supports what we are saying?
Greg: Yes, many studies indicate that carbohydrates intake, sugar intake, does influence prostate cancer biology.
JoAnn: That’s right. And what does that really mean and who did the research because if men need to give up their Saturday morning pancakes or their nightly beer, they want to know why and if there is research to support that.
Cassie: Can’t you just see them scooping up their pancakes right now before you actually give the reasons. Thinking it might be my last plate.
Greg: There’s good research from different sources and one talks about sugar is the preferred fuel of cancer cells, by reducing carbs, reducing sugar you reduce the ability of the cancer to proliferate. So if you want to have a more, low-carb maybe some of a ketogenic type of a diet that’s been shown to reduce tumors and prevent cancers from reoccurring as well. And so then if you take it a step further, eating high carbs and sugars leads to this insulin resistance as we just mentioned. And results of a recent study show that insulin resistant patients had more than a two-fold increase to prostate cancer. Two times the risk.
Cassie: Now I may be off on this a bit, don’t write down my statistic exactly, but it seems like there is a statistic out there saying that about 805 of the American population has insulin resistance and then how that increases cancer.
Greg: And that was right out of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, so it’s a real legit journal.
Cassie: As dieticians, JoAnn and I certainly understand that processed carbs such as pancakes or beer and pizza on Saturday night, these foods that are so common in our country, can often lead to inflammation anywhere in our body. But of course today we’re focusing on inflammation of the prostate. Not only that but a lot of times those processed carbohydrates, the pizza, the beer, the pancakes, they can lead men to carrying extra weight which, we talked a little bit about earlier, can produce excess estrogen for men which can then lead to a breakdown of a man's immune system, this is part of why it can predispose a man to the possibility of getting prostate cancer.
Now JoAnn, you recently spoke to a support group for men with prostate problems. I was curious when I heard that you were doing that. It made me think “I wonder if they are aware at all about this connection about processed carbohydrates and how it can lead them down that path to prostate problems?” And if they are aware, what are they willing to change. What did you find?
JoAnn: I found many of them were aware and certainly were interested in the additional information that I was presenting. Many of them spoke about cutting out their sugar, they talked about increasing vegetables. Some were confused about whether or not the organic was important. Some were confused about whether the meat. Should they be eating meat or not? Because there’s a lot of controversy when you’re looking up information on the cancer, there are so many mixed messages on the internet about what to eat and what not to eat. Many wished their doctor would have told them more. Several people thanked me for clarifying those key nutritional changes to make. Our message is simple, eat meat, good fats, and vegetables several times each day. If you have active cancer, organic foods are extremely important.
Cassie: Everything organic, that’s right. Especially if you have active cancer. Let’s remind listeners of what you stated earlier in the show JoAnn, each person in this country is exposed to 14 pounds of pesticides, herbicides, food chemicals and additives, and preservatives. Many people are still surprised the food companies are allowed to put trans fats and all this junk in the food they are selling, but it is allowed.
JoAnn: We also talk about hidden sugars, so what does that mean? As Americans we love our sweets, we love our desserts, a piece of blueberry pie may have a cup of sugar in it, we know there is sugar in desserts. But even if you’re not eating dessert, a 6” sub sandwich has 17 tsp of sugar (1/3 cup), and if you eat a 12” sub, that has 34 tsp or 2/3 cup of sugar! That’s a lot of sugar.
Cassie: Visualize spooning 34 teaspoons down your throat at lunch, that’s not good for your health.
JoAnn: And people never think about sugar when they are eating a sandwich. So that’s another change that’s really important.
Cassie: We could sit here and talk more food stuff all day, but I think another thing we need to point out is that a meal plan that’s healthy for one man, might not be the same thing that’s healthy for the next. Especially when we consider that certain people might have food sensitivities or might have an inflammation responses to certain foods can be specified differently to each person. Why should point out that if you’re struggling with prostate problems right now or want to prevent them, it would be good to make an appointment with a registered nutritionist or dietician at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, who can help you figure out the anti-inflammatory meal plan that is right for you.
JoAnn: So, some people might have to stop smoking or chewing tobacco. I have heard that chewing tobacco is on the rise, especially in the younger group. We have known for years that smoking is harmful, but whether you smoke tobacco or marijuana, or if you put in a plug of chewing tobacco, think of the chemicals and pesticides going into your body, going straight to the prostate, inflaming the tissue, and after a few years, suddenly you can’t go to the bathroom.
Cassie: As nutritionists, we also look at key nutritional supplements that can help reduce inflammation and support the immune function. So, we have asked Greg to use the rest of our show explaining each supplements that can support prostate health. One that we have seen be very helpful in clinical practice is Kaprex. You want to expand on that product?
Greg: Yes, Kaprex is a very potent natural anti-inflammatory. Herbal anti-inflammatory. It’s a proprietary hops extract. When you start looking at these different herbs you think maybe there’s a couple actives in them, but there are hundreds of actives in these different herbal, plant based, nutrients. And this Kaprex has a certain hops extract that’s a very potent anti-inflammatory. They’ve actually compared it to anti-inflammatory medication like Celebrex, which we think of as a very powerful anti-inflammatory. Unfortunately, a lot of side effects associated with it. Gut problems, kidney liver and so forth. The Kaprex product was as effective in reducing arthritic pain as Celebrex was with zero side effects. Not only did it not have the negative effect on the gut, like your Celebrex, your ibuprofen, those kinds of things have, it actually provided a healing effect on an already inflamed gut. That goes back, if we get really into the science, which maybe I’ll touch on a bit, basically when you have this prostate gland, inflammatoryprostate gland you need two, there are two forms of it, inducible form of it, which gets induced by injury, infection and so forth. Which we want to modulate, we want to reduce that. Then there is the constitutive form of that, the form of EGE2 that maintains the membrane health and integrity. So the drugs, the Celebrex and so forth, block both inducible and constitutive. So yeah, it reduced inflammation but also causes tissue breakdown whereas the Kaprex doesn’t.
Cassie: I have a couple questions for you on Kaprex when we come back from break.
BREAK
Cassie: Ok, we were talking about supplements to address prostate health. Greg had wrapped up talking about Kaprex and if we have time at the end I have a couple questions for him. But we have some other great supplements to get to.
JoAnn: We often recommend Omega-3 fatty acids for reducing pain and inflammation but it’s also very beneficial for prostate cancer. Greg, can you talk more about that?
Greg: Yeah, a couple of key things and this comes from the American Institute for Cancer Research, again a very well thought of cancer research group and they found that it does a couple of things. One it inhibits, angiogenesis and that’s the cancer cells basically sending out this capillary system to procure nutrients so it can continue to grow. It’s the cancer spreading. So it inhibits the cancer spreading, the fish oils will do that. Number two, it increases what they call apoptosis, which is the cell death of the cancer cell as well. So it will program that cancer cell for cell death. And then the third thing that’s interesting is that it modulates the immune system because you want to have a proper balance between what they call helper and suppressor cells, so you want the body to be able to respond to what it has to. But not over respond to it. When you get into auto immunities like cancer, what happens it that you have an overly reactive immune system, so it helps to balance that out.
Cassie: Wow, fish oil is powerful. Another supplement we recommend for prostate inflammation is Concentrated Ultra Prostagen. Will you talk about this supplement and what the research has shown?
Greg: Yeah, I love this product because it’s one that really works so well. I’ll hit it hard initially when a man has the hypertrophy of the prostate and is urinating frequently during the night. You can figure that out as clinicians but sometimes I’ll have him go up to two or three, twice a day, of that product. Then one or two as a maintenance. It has in it amino acids, glycine, alanine and glutamic acid which have been shown to alleviate night urination by 95% in the research that was done on it. Then they saw 93% reduction in prostate size. That’s the reason it’s so effective is because it reduces the prostate size so now you’re urinating much more freely. So it has that in there and it has some different herbs like saw palmetto which has a very high concentration of these actives. Because you can have saw palmetto that’s very inactive, but this is a very concentrated, very active saw palmetto and that’s helps reduce that conversion from your good testosterone to that hot, you know, dihydrotestosterone, the DHT which they know irritates the prostate gland. You want to have your good testosterone, the really hot and strong testosterone, you want to help reduce that angry testosterone. Then it has some other vitamins and minerals that really help support prostate health really nicely.
Cassie: Wow, that’s got some good clinical effectiveness that you’ve seen. We have talked about the effects of toxic estrogens that build up in our systems, from the chemicals we’re exposed to and from carrying excess weight. And these toxic estrogens can cause the inflammation to the prostate gland. Now, a new supplement that we’ve been recommending at Nutritional Weight & Wellness to help break down these xenoestrogens (fake estrogens), is Testralin. Can you talk more about that?
Greg: Yeah, that’s really kind of the man’s supplement. I always say to any guy, whether you are middle age, young, or older, this can support your whole hormonal system. It does a couple things, it inhibits that enzyme called aromatase that converts our testosterone to estrogen so it slows that down and maintains a more natural testosterone for the male. It also helps to eliminate those excessive estrogens by supporting the livers ability to eliminate those excess estrogens or we’ll call them sometimes hot estrogens. Because again, these xenoestrogens, these outside estrogens are sometimes more harmful to the body than the estrogens we produce. So we want to have a mechanism that will support the body’s ability to eliminate them.
Cassie: So Testralin really helps to detoxify your body of these bad estrogens.
Greg: Yes, very much so. And it has very powerful antioxidants in there to protect the prostate tissues which is important. I could go on with that, but it’s really a good overall, hormonal prostate health male formula.
Cassie: Is that one you could take on an ongoing basis or it’s very individual probably?
Greg: It’d be individual, I’ve had men that are on it long term or others that use it short term. It would be safe either way.
JoAnn: As I’m looking at the time here I don’t want to close this how without getting a question in about erectile dysfunction. So many men talk about this issue after a heart attack, or after an anti-anxiety medication. Some men say they have tried them all the solutions advertised, and they do not work. Greg how would you effect erectile dysfunction nutritionally?
Greg: That’s a lot going on there too, that’s why they need to see a nutrition counselor, but a start would be getting estrogens under control because you know that would reduce your testosterone, which reduce your ability to perform. And so that’s number one, looking at some of those things we talked about earlier. Than the product called HisSynergy I like that one too, it has a couple things in it, one of them is a tribulus puncture vine root and it’s the tribulus that has a very high concentration of actives. I can’t overemphasize the fact that you have to have herbals or plant based products that have high amounts of these actives that do the job.
Cassie: That’s why you should know where you are getting your supplements from, right?
Greg: Exactly. You don’t get high actives on the internet generally speaking, unless it’s through a health professional. But what the tribulus does is that it stimulates the pituitary, so it’s a bio feedback to the pituitary to release something they called luteinizing hormone and that is what directs these cells in the man’s testes to produce natural testosterone. So it’s reawakening that biofeedback mechanism that has been slowed down or shut down over the years. It’s a really cool ingredient. Then there’s the ashwagandha again with those high actives that’s been known to be a reducer of stress. Increases natural DHEA levels which can convert to testosterone, it’s excellent. Then you have in the product mucuna that increases your natural production of dopamine levels in your brain, your feel good neurotransmitter which is kind of your stimulatory gland.
Cassie: That sounds like a great product. That was a great explanation of it.
JoAnn: We have run out of time, but if you’re suffering with prostate cancer, or prostate inflammation, consider the following nutritional guidelines we have presented today.
Thank you for listening to Dishing up Nutrition. We hope you have a great sunny weekend!
Be sure to tune in next week to hear Dar and Brenna discuss Relief from Muscle Pain and Spasms with Dr. Robert Silverman.
