Learn About Prostate Health & Problems
September 7, 2020
We’re sharing common indicators of a prostate problem, along with what foods and lifestyle habits can contribute to an inflamed prostate gland , resulting in a great deal of discomfort. Help relieve the discomfort be incorporating certain foods into your diet and supplementing for added relief and support.
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Transcript:
CASSIE: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. This show is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. Now I'm very aware that each time I get the privilege of co-hosting this program, I typically start out by saying something like: we have a great show planned for you today.
DAR: And we do.
CASSIE: And we do! And I believe that every time I say it, but today I'm feeling just a little different. Today, I'm certain we have a show that's going to be better than great. I think we should call it exceptional. All of you listening are in for a real treat because we have in studio joining me today, two experts in the field of nutrition. First, I'd like to introduce Greg Peterson to all of you. Greg is a wealth of information about many different health topics, but today we've asked him to be a guest on Dishing Up Nutrition and bring his knowledge and expertise to all of you on the specific topic of prostate health. And before we get into that topic, I want to tell you a little bit more about Greg. Greg has been passionate about nutrition for at least the past 40 years now. And he really understands how nutrition can help people feel their best. And it was way back in 1973 that Greg and his brother Dave started their own nutrition based company. And I think a lot of our listeners are going to know the name of this company, but first I want to tell you, Greg and Dave started the company in the basement of their mom and dad's house.
DAR: Isn't that great?!
CASSIE: Well, I just say thank you to your mom and dad, right? That they let you take over that space because now we have NutriDyn.
GREG: Absolutely.
CASSIE: You know, thanks to mom and dad and thanks to Greg and Dave's passion and drive, NutriDyn has grown and grown and grown over the past 40 years and now they're one of the leading supplement companies in the United States. Not only that…
DAR: Just think about that for a minute, one of the leading supplement companies in the country.
CASSIE: In the country. And are we soon to expand? Is that what I could be? Over the ocean?
GREG: Yeah, we were talking about that a little bit earlier too. We have... we're into Europe quite a bit now. We have a very prolific UK distributor for us and soon we'll be moving into Asia as well. We're just kind of finalizing those things.
CASSIE: Amazing.
GREG: And, yeah, so there it's, it's been a very interesting ride, you know, and love it all. And my mom bless her heart. She earned sainthood, you know, by giving up her home to her two sons.
CASSIE: I've heard you call her your indentured servant back then. So she not only gave up the basement, but she must've helped out too.
GREG: I did write a poem for her at her memorial. It was called My Almost Perfect Mother, you know, and so it was kind of a tribute to all the things that she had done for her family.
CASSIE: That's wonderful.
DAR: We are so privileged to have you on today. Thank you.
GREG: Thank you.
CASSIE: Yes, yes. And we are privileged to have that other voice here in studio too that other voice that you hear, many of you already have recognized is Dar Kvist. As many of you know, Dar is the founder of Nutritional Weight & Wellness. She's also a certified nutrition specialist and Greg and Dar have actually been friends for over 30 years they tell me. And if you were to know both of them, like I do, that wouldn't surprise you because they both share a similar passion, which is basically teaching people the value of nutrition. For Greg and for Dar it's really all about helping people achieve long term health. And if you haven't recognized my voice yet, I'm Cassie Weness. I'm a registered and licensed dietitian. I have been for the past 22 years, so I have a couple of decades of, of knowledge and expertise that I could share, but I think mostly I'm going to let Greg and Dar lead the show today. And I'll be the moderator for the most part. And before we get into our topic, I want to let you know that prior to today, we asked listeners to send in some questions that they have regarding prostate health and prostate problems. And in that process, we also received some questions about prostate cancer. So we hope to have time to answer those questions. I know the hour goes by really fast, but hopefully we can get to all of those questions. and I know Greg has a plethora of information and research that he's brought along surrounding specific supplements when it comes to the health of the prostate gland. And of course, because we are Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we will be discussing some research around food habits and around lifestyle habits that can contribute to an inflamed prostate gland. And I'm sure there are some men out there listening that are well aware that if you have an inflamed prostate gland, it can create quite a bit of discomfort.
DAR: So Greg, thank you so much for being on with us today.
GREG: Oh, my pleasure. It's a treat.
DAR: It's going to be great fun. I understand that Deb, your wife is a fan of Dishing Up Nutrition.
GREG: Doesn't miss it.
DAR: Wow. We thank her.
GREG: She loves it. She, uh, she feels she gets such good, valuable, practical information. And you are her favorite too.
CASSIE: Mine too Dar, mine too.
DAR: Greg, I know that you are constantly reading research. In fact, you read old research and new research, but I've heard about your file cabinet that is many file cabinets probably that are full of research information.
GREG: Yes. I haven't come into the newest century yet because I still have file cabinets... Full of them. Whereas most people would put them on their computer. I still like digging through and looking at the paper copies.
DAR: I have files and files and files and files of that too. I'm not quite sure what to do with it sometimes, but…
GREG: I hear you on that.
DAR: So you started NutriDyn like 30, 40 years ago...40 years ago. And now it's just a really well known, well respected supplement company, but you also provide a lot of education for people.
GREG: Yes.
DAR: And that's, I think that's the key part is that you provide really well researched information for people. For practitioners. I mean, you're always sending all of us information and research. In fact, you know, one of the things that I really respect the most about your company is that you are so careful with ingredients that go into the supplements. And I don't think people really understand how careful people need to be. I know Kory and I, we thought, where could we find a better person to work with? And so you actually, you do all of our supplements that we have at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, basically almost all of them and you kind of formulate and make sure that the quality is great. And so we are really confident....
CASSIE: And that the potency is there. I mean, I think sometimes you can look at a supplement bottle and not really be getting the potency that you think you are, but yeah, that's a compliment, isn't it Dar that you work with him because you're very particular.
DAR: I am. And you know what, the other thing that I like about it is that it's a fair price for people. I'm always trying to save my clients money on supplements actually, but I want good quality and you provide that. So that's great. So, you know, one of the things that's happening lately and, you know, is that there seems to be a bit of fraud going on with the supplement business. And that's kind of more what is found on the internet. So what is, what are some of the well-respected companies doing these days to stop some of that fraud and maybe just explain to our listeners what really is going on because it's really eye opening. When you talked about it about a year ago with us, I was shocked. I didn't know this was even going on.
GREG: Well, there's a lot of weird stuff going on on the internet. And, you know, first of all, you want to make sure you're, you're working with a reliable company, you know, nutrition company, because you know, so many of them are not what they called GMP certified... Good Manufacturing Practices and that's where you are assured that what is going into the product as they say in the label is going into the product is actually going into the product. And so if they're not even GMP certified, they're not even... you shouldn't even be considering them at that point.
DAR: So Greg, how does a company like yours get certified? Cause I know the things that you provide for us, all the supplements, they've been certified, but how what's the process for people. So they understand what really goes on.
GREG: Well, it's a governmental type of a certification. So you have a couple of them have the NSF, which is your National Sanitary Foundation, so they have a group of auditors that they actually come out to your manufacturing facility and they do a complete overview of it, making sure everything is done right. It's sanitary. They make sure that you have what they call Certificate of Analysis on every product you make. So that if I say we have a thousand milligrams of vitamin C in that product, you're assured it's going to be a thousand milligrams of vitamin C. And without that kind of GMP certification, you don't know, you know, it could be a thousand, could even be a hundred milligrams, you know, in that product. So it's a very strict audit that you get and you do a lot of, you know, celebrated high fives when you get it because it's not easy. And we're triple GMP certified. So not only did NSF come out and GMP, Good Manufacturing Practices certify us, but also we're certified through the NPA. That's a national Natural Products Association and then also through a TGA, which is then more of a international certification for quality and also Health Canada certified. So we really have all of the different certifications that you absolutely know when you're getting that product what's on the label is in the product and there's no contaminants in the product at all.
DAR: So let me give you an example. I know that one of our products has certainly has met all that criteria and that would be our magnesium. Because we get such amazing results with our magnesium glycinate.
GREG: Yes.
DAR: But you know, and then a lot of times people go to a big box store or order it online someplace, they don't get the same results. So that's sort of proof that it works. And what they're getting is the real product in that magnesium glycinate.
GREG: Absolutely because some of them say magnesium glycinate on the label and it's not really magnesium glycinate if it's not certified, you know, too with it.
CASSIE: This is such good information, right? Because I think so many people out there don't realize that it's kind of an unregulated industry, unless you have some of these stamps, unless you know where you're getting your product and obviously get them from a reputable source, like NutriDyn or Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We're going to go to a quick commercial break here. If you're just joining us, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We're here in studio with Greg Peterson, co owner of NutriDyn, a company specializing in pharmaceutical grade vitamin and mineral supplements. And we're talking all things prostate health. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
DAR: Well, welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Our topic today is prostate health and prostate cancer. You may want to share this podcast or the today's show with your husband, your son, your dad, your brother, your nephew, your uncle, or even a friend. Although we always try our very best to use every day common language, so everyone can really understand it, to explain some of this biochemistry that we always are going through. You know, it can still be a little difficult to understand. And that's why we think men in your life could really benefit greatly from this show because it isn't very often that we get the opportunity to listen to such an expert as Greg Peterson.
CASSIE: That's the truth. That's why I have my pen and paper here. I always learn new things when Greg's in the room. So when we went to break, we were talking about how the supplement industry in large part is unregulated. And you were saying, Greg, to look for GMP or NSF on the label. I think there was some more you wanted to talk about regarding the fraud within the supplement industry, the potential fraud.
GREG: Yes. And that's, you know, one of the more disturbing aspects of it because, you know, there's, enough a demand for the products and interest in these different high quality professional lines where people actually will put counterfeit products on the market, on the internet. And all they have to do is run a label, you know, and apply to, it could be a product of almost anything. Could be a product of just placebo and so forth. And then we'll put it on the internet and selling it as a NutriDyn product or one of the professional lines.
DAR: And I heard, and I don't know if this is true, that some of the products are actually.. they actually charge more then you know, a practitioner would charge.
GREG: Yes, they call that, now they call them "pass through stores" on the internet. And literally what some people will do is they will buy those professional brands and so forth from a practitioner and then they'll turn around and they'll put it on the internet for, like you say, $10...$15 more than what it retailed for, but there's such a many times the demand for the product and sometimes, you know, the ease of getting the product and so forth, people are willing to pay that much more money for the same product. So either you could be getting a counterfeit, you could be paying way more than you should be for the product. It could be, you know, a product that is just not testing well as well. There might be contaminants in it and so on. We had that example years ago where one of the fish oil products had a pesticide contaminant in it. And ultimately they got sued legally for doing that, but that was a fish oil product that was found in the health food stores. They're like Twin Lab labeled, GNC label, Salgar labels. So labels that you would normally trust in a store still don't do the same due diligence that the professional companies do with their quality.
DAR: That's kind of amazing, isn't it?
CASSIE: Scary. You know, cause we tell people sometimes to take 6,000 milligrams depending on your condition. And if they're buying it at a store that's unregulated that those contaminants could pile up.
DAR: So one of the other things, Greg, you know, you guys are so good at educating practitioners. And the other day you sent us all a research study on vitamin D. You know, we keep talking about how important it is for vitamin D right now, especially for immunity. And then I noticed that one of the people that was... that conducted that research was Dr. Holick. And I saw Dr. Holik 15, 20 years ago. He was such a great presenter. And so I was really interested in this research. Like, could you just kind of share a little bit about it?
GREG: Yeah. And I'm a real fan of Dr. Holick's too. He is…
DAR: He makes fun. He's fun to listen to.
GREG: He has a good personality. He's funny. He makes learning fun too. But in the... it was actually just last month, July 2020 in the Journal on Nutrients Review, it was "Immunologic Effects of Vitamin D on Human Health and Disease" was the name of the article. And they're talking about low levels of serum Vitamin D had increased the risk of developing several immune related diseases and disorders such as, and they go through a whole list of them, but also respiratory infection and COVID-19 has been observed. So they actually have seen with this recent pandemic that when your vitamin D levels are low, you're much more susceptible to that infection and the severity of the infection as well, too. And then went on to say that, and these are sometimes levels...blood levels that we think are a little bit low, but they're saying that about 60% of the population that they tested were getting below 30, a level of vitamin D in their blood.
DAR: And we think that should be at least 50 don't we, or, you know…
GREG: Yeah. Up to sixties, they're saying they'd like to see. So, I mean, if you're looking at, you know, a 60% or lower than 30, how many people are, what percent is lower than 60? You might be way up there close to 80% maybe plus, you know, and so they found that with those lower levels and so forth, people were much more likely to have low immunity and be more susceptible to the infection and have a worst time of it as well, too, when they get the infection.
DAR: Greg, I remember at the one presentation Dr Holick made is they went into a nursing home where, you know, people were just kind of bent over, not able to function. And they started giving them and their vitamin D level was of course, very low. And so they started giving them vitamin D and pretty soon all their bone pain went away and they were up talking and playing cards again.
GREG: Wow. I mean, you can't put a price tag on that.
CASSIE: That's a simple solution, you know, if it is the vitamin D that's low. So I think everybody should be tested and know their number. That's great research. Thank you for sharing that. So bringing us back to the topic today of prostate health and prostate problems, I want to share some telltale signs of prostate problems from an article that you actually wrote Dar. It's called "The Prostate: Small Gland, Big Trouble". I think you wrote this about four years ago now, but the information is still very timely. You remember that article, don't you?
DAR: Yes I do.
CASSIE: So the first sentence, you start off the article by saying, "if you're a man who needs to urinate frequently, experiences decreased urine flow, and needs to get up several times every night to go to the bathroom, you are likely experiencing a prostate problem."
DAR: So Greg when we think about prostate, you know, the first sign of prostate gland is decreased urine flow. I mean, that's one of the things I think men experience. So why is this happening to so many men these days? I mean, why are they experiencing this kind of inflamed prostate and maybe go through and help people understand really what is going on with that gland?
GREG: Well, I think, one thing we know that we're very inflamed as a society and now they've correlated inflammation, increased inflammation with every degenerative disease we know of, whether it's heart disease, cancer, diabetes, whatever the case might be. And that goes back to our lifestyle. We're eating way too many inflammatory foods, the environmental pollution, the toxicities all lead to that inflammatory situation. And then I think also you have, in the environment you have different kinds of toxins, these estrogenic kinds of compounds, you know, like you, a good example of it would be like Roundup that's been sprayed, you know, on the crops and so forth. But you have all kinds of, you know, pesticides, herbicides, plasticizers, et cetera, et cetera, that act like estrogens, even though they're not estrogen.
DAR: They act like estrogen.
GREG: Cause they're molecularly so similar to estrogen. So when these toxic compounds get into our system, whether we ingest them or breathe them in and so forth, they will go to the cells and they can get entry into that cell. You know, that usually only an estrogen receptor or actual estrogen would get into because it's so molecularly similar to it, that kind of bastardized estrogen gets into the cell and creates all kinds of havoc and stimulates breakdown and a predisposition to cancers and so forth. So I think a lot of it is just our environment and what we're exposed to, what we're eating and so forth. And then they, you know, have some of the things too... could be they had a bacterial infection of the prostate, you know, at one point that could stimulate prostate types of problems. You might have a person that's had maybe like pelvic floor muscle problems, so there's some, you know, muscular imbalance in that prostate area. You can have, you know, different viruses can create prostate inflammation and ultimately lead to possibly prostate cancers. So there's just a lot of different environmental things and even structural things that we do in... excessive bicycle riding can also irritate or inflame the prostate too.
DAR: Well, I know if I'm working with someone that has prostate cancer, I say no more golf. No more golfing because they use a lot of pesticides and insecticides on golf courses. Most of them. I think they're starting to change that as far as I know. But you know, just one example of how we're getting exposed to all these chemicals these days and how we have to protect ourselves.
GREG: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's... we're pretty sloppy through for many years on the golf course. I can remember as a teenage kid while walking barefoot in the golf course and instead of, you know, taking my ball to the washer, I would just look lick it and rub it on my shorts.
CASSIE: Right. I mean, being unaware of the amount of pesticides. So don't go barefoot, huh, not on the golf.
Maybe at home.
GREG: Not on the golf course at least.
CASSIE: Yeah. So we're going to take another break and then we'll come back to our topic of prostate health. Before we go to commercial. I just want to share, as I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, you know, I have a husband, I have a dad, two brothers, many uncles, but I'm the first to say in most cases, they don't really appreciate my enthusiasm about nutrition.
DAR: Really?
CASSIE: Oh my Lord, Dar. I should bring you home to North Dakota one day. But as I sit here and look at Greg and listen to Greg, I just really think they would connect with Greg. So I'm going to share this podcast with them. And I just wanted to say that because I hope that if any of you listening have a special man or special men in your life, I hope you share this podcast with them. We'll be back on the other side of this commercial break.
DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Even though we have many women in our nutrition classes, we do have some men who are being very proactive about their health and take our classes. And I want to share a short story about Roger. He signed up for our zoom version of Nutrition 4 Weight Loss. And in the very first week he lost several pounds. In fact, I heard seven. Of course, that was great, but what was even better for him was the fact that the pain level from his gout became manageable. And in fact, it sort of went away and his blood sugar went down, got better, blood pressure got better. And one of the things that he changed is he's no longer making pasta hot dishes any longer, but he is actually making the hamburger soup, which is a little bit of work, but it is a great recipe.
CASSIE: It's a great recipe, especially this time of year if your vegetables in your garden are over-producing like mine, cause you can throw anything in that hamburger soup and it's delicious.
DAR: The recipe is on our website at weightandwellness.com. So we can go back to what we were talking about.
CASSIE: Yes, Greg was talking about some potential causes of inflammation in the prostate gland and certainly at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we've helped many men over the years establish an anti-inflammatory meal plan to help with prostate problems. And we'll talk a bit more about that as the hour goes on, but for now I would love to hear Greg talk a little bit more about supplements that could help because we've seen that a lot of men need additional help besides just the diet to help reduce that inflammation. So maybe you want to talk first about Prostate Pro Greg. I know this has been a very effective supplement for a lot of men.
DAR: But I'm going to kick in here a little bit. We always say food first.
CASSIE: Yes.
DAR: And sometimes you just can't out supplement a poor diet.
CASSIE: Isn't that the truth?
GREG: Yes.
DAR: But we do want to explain what's in that Prostate Pro. So I'll turn it over to you, Greg.
GREG: Yes, it's really a special product. It has all the nutrients that have been historically very effective and plus some of the new technology that we've come up with, you know, in the research recently that shows that to be effective as well. But saw palmetto is still kind of one of the kingpins of treating prostate problems. And I was looking at a journal here recently, The Reviews In Urology. There's not too many guys that really get into that journal, but preparing for this talk today I thought okay, I'll dig through some of the urology journals here too. And they were talking about the inflammatory aspect of prostate problems and they're looking at, they call it tumor necrosis factor alpha. That is a very inflammatory factor that can inflame the prostate, create all kinds of prostate problems, and they found that the saw palmetto had a very strong effect against this inflammatory factor in reducing chronic inflammation of the prostate and prostatitis as well too. So in that article, they talked about the importance of saw palmetto. They also got a little bit into vitamin D again too... talk about how it's been found to arrest benign prostate hypertrophy very nicely. And one of the reasons why is that, you know, vitamin D besides having a good effect on the immune system, in the bone and the structure and so forth, it's a very, also strong antioxidant. And lot of these prostate inflammatory conditions and so forth are oxidative damage. So we're exposed to too many oxygen creating situations and not enough antioxidants to keep that buffer because we know we need oxidation, but you need then the buffering antioxidants so that you don't kind of over oxidize. And we know that of aging basically.
DAR: Also if you're a runner or someone that really exercises excessively, you really need your vitamin D don't you?
GREG: Oh absolutely. Yeah. That's a huge, huge factor with that too, so in the product, we also have the things like L-lycopene, which is important as an antioxidant, along with the vitamin D for that reason in there too, we have... we're looking at the nettles in the product, the stinging nettles, and that has been shown in the... one of the professional journals again too, was talking about the efficacy of stinging nettles in prostate hyperplasia, or hypertrophy of the prostate. And what they found in there was interesting is that the nettles have an anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, antiviral effect, modulates the immune system and releases the symptoms of benign prostate hyperplasia due to these different antioxidants and they call them phytosterols in there and lignins and all kinds of cool things that are natural plant nutrients that help to reduce that inflammation of the prostate. And they found that it had a very good effect on reducing the certain PSA, which, you know, the Prostate Specific Antigen, that is indication of prostate inflammation, prostate health. So it has a good effect on that. And they also went on to talk about there's three clinical trials on benign prostate hypertrophy that showed that nettles had a better impact on reducing the patient's symptoms than the placebo. And so it really is one of those things that synergizes nicely with all the other nutrients, the saw palmetto, the lycopene, and so forth in the product. And then the lycopene I had mentioned that was out of a journal of nutrition here not too long ago that was talking about reducing... reduces the BPH, the benign prostate hypertrophy, and also the risk of cancer. So that's again, in that the prostate formula that I think makes it so cool and I recommend that to everybody who has even a family risk of prostate.
CASSIE: That's what I was going to ask. Could it be sort of taken as a preventative if you are at risk?
GREG: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I probably would take one a day, just to, you know, take a lower dosage of it. Then if I started seeing any kind of the symptoms we talked about before the frequent urination. And by the way, when I was kind of putting this together, I found that I was frequently urinating too. I don't know if it was the thought process or the power of suggestion or what.
CASSIE: Just thinking about it all the time!
GREG: But if they add those kinds of symptoms, then they should definitely be on that product and probably more in like maybe the two, you know, maybe three range, depending on the severity. And then if it goes into something more than that, then there's a whole array of things that we might want to add to that to really treat that person.
DAR: So would, um, you know, for someone that has really a seriously inflamed prostate right now, would, you know, four, you know, four to six a day, would that be appropriate or do you think that would be too much for someone?
GREG: No. When you look at the dosages too, in what Cassie was talking about earlier about the raw materials, I just wrote myself a little note too, is that in our formulas that we make together, we want to make sure that the materials that they used in the studies that were successful. So, the actual raw material source that was used successfully in the study is the raw material that we use in our products. So it's not a facsimile. It's like, well, that's kind of similar to what was in research. It's the actual raw material. And we also we give the right potency because sometimes you'll see, let's just pick out like curcumin. You know, they say... they put curcumin in the product and they have 25 milligrams of it. And somebody says, "oh, look, there's curcumin in the product. Cool." And when you look at the literature, it talks about needing 500 milligrams a day of curcumin to be effective. Well, there's no way they're going to get that therapeutic amount that the studies support in that product. So we make sure that we have the levels of those actives in the product as well, too. It's so it's just the real deal. You have no concerns, but to answer your question Dar, yeah, I feel you could go to six a day if the person was really starting to feel that they had the different symptoms and the painful urination and frequent urination and some of those things like that. Yeah. That would be a good dose.
DAR: Well, you know, I think a lot of men just put it off. They kind of pretend that it isn't really happening to them until they get into more of a critical state.
CASSIE: Gee, I know some men like that.
DAR: So Cassie, you know, as a nutritionist, this is a way when Greg was talking about lycopene…
CASSIE: Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!
DAR: Tomatoes!
GREG: Yeah.
DAR: And you brought me some morning.
CASSIE: Oh, I brought Greg some too. And I tell you, there is nothing...I, first time I took a bite of that garden tomato this year, I was immediately sad. Cause I thought this winter, I won't have these and I'll be needing store bought and it's not the same. So yeah, lycopene in the tomatoes and I'm getting a signal for another commercial break. So if you've just tuned in, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we break, as I often do, I'd like to leave you with a little food for thought. Over the years in clinical practice, I have personally found that most men prefer to work individually with a dietitian or a nutritionist rather than attend a large group class. So if that sounds like you, if you'd prefer an individual consult and if you feel like you're ready to give up your processed food diet and switch to an anti-inflammation plan, give our office a call. The number is (651) 699-3438. During this pandemic, we're not seeing clients in person, but we are meeting with clients regularly, either by phone or via a Zoom appointment, whatever you prefer, whatever works best for you. And I would also say, if you personally are not the cook in your house, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's somebody else in your household that does most of the cooking, have them join you on the consultation as well, if they can. That can be really helpful. Again, call (651) 699-3438. You can ask any questions you might have about our nutrition counseling services or you can set up a phone or a Zoom appointment immediately when you call that number. And just know that at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we all understand that making lifestyle and nutrition changes takes time. And we're here to take the time to help you figure out how to do that. Stay with us. We'll be back after this break.
DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. You know, we realize that prostate health is a major concern for many, many men and we also know that a one hour show, we cannot cover all the information about prostate health. If you want more information or help prepare a prevention plan, give us a call at (651) 699-3438 to set up an individual meeting with a nutritionist or a dietitian. Greg, once again, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. You have so much of that. And also you've got this caring and you're passionate about nutrition and about everything that you're doing. That's why you stay so young! You know even after 40 years, you're just... are you a little over 40?
CASSIE: He's aging backwards.
GREG: Right. Yeah. I'm not. Now, what do you want from me, Dar? Haha!
DAR: haha! You and Dave and your entire family has created just a really life changing company. I bet you guys are all proud of it. And you know, we at Nutritional Weight & Wellness really thank you so much for all your hard work, for your quality of supplements, for your education, for your dedication, and we love having you on the show and we're going to have you out as often as we can get you.
GREG: Anytime. I could do it every week. So I love it. So please do that. And you're so much appreciated. And everybody at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. My grandson said the other day, cause we're a third generation family business now, and he's in his mid twenties. You know, he says after he would go to on a call with me, he'd say, "why Grandpa. Those are such nice people." And I said, "well, think about it, Graham." I said, these are first of all, they're healers. And they're also the ones that have kind of gone beyond just the conventional things. But they really dug into learning about lifestyle and diet and supplementation and so forth. And so they're even a more rare breed of practitioner. And I said, "we are working with the creme de la creme." That people don't get any better than the natural healthcare practitioners who work with. So, and you're a focal of that... a focus point. So.
DAR: Thank you.
GREG: I appreciate that as well, too, being able to come over here and bend your ear a little bit, you know.
CASSIE: Very kind words. Thank you. And you know, certainly at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we know that the right diet can decrease inflammation. Let me just say vegetables, vegetables, vegetables, but because we have Greg here, I want to pick his brain some more. Greg, what would be some supplements that come to the top of your mind when you think of supplements that can decrease inflammation?
GREG: Well, you have to consider the Omega-3s.
DAR: Yes.
GREG: The fish oils that's on the top of I think everybody's list for that purpose and a lot of good information. I was reading a journal called Transitional Cancer Risk is the name of the journal. And they were talking about the study that was getting to showing that Omega-3s intake decreases prostate cancer immortality and it does it by reducing inflammation. And when you think of how it is able to reduce inflammation is that around the cell membrane, every cell, the membrane of that cell is lined with a lipid. With an oil or a fat. And if you have a high concentration of Omega-3 intake, the fish oil intake and so forth, that cell membrane is primarily made up of those Omega-3 fatty acids that are anti-inflammatory. So, when that cell gets stimulated somehow, or even, you know, maybe, uh, injured a little bit and so forth, it's releasing anti-inflammatory fatty acids instead of eating a lot of inflammatory fats and things of that nature. When you get traumatized that cell all of a sudden it's producing inflammatory factors, that just kind of continues the whole problem the person has as well. So, you kind of are what... your cell membranes are made up of what your intake is.
DAR: So, you know, if you're eating fast food, that cell membrane is made up of bad fats.
GREG: Yes.
DAR: Fats that inflame you actually. So, the other thing that I found working with people is, you say, do you take a Omega-3s or do you take fish oil? And they'll say, "oh yeah". And then I'll say, "well, how many do you take?" Cause you think you just said, it affects all your cells in your body. We have trillions of cells, I think.
GREG: Oh yeah.
DAR: And so, maybe one omega-3 is not enough for most people.
CASSIE: No.
GREG: Not even close. I think everybody... I think you start with a minimum of probably 2000. One to 2000 milligrams a day, depending what your diet is like and your health status and so forth. When they start talking about inflammation, anti-inflammatory effects that starts at about three grams or 3000 milligrams a day and up. Then you start talking about neurologic inflammation, they're talking as high as 10,000 milligrams or more.
DAR: Right. Like for concussions.
GREG: Yes. Yeah. And then you also want to make sure you're getting quality. Cause that's a whole other thing too, is there's such a discrepancy in quality. Our product is made at... there's like two pharmaceutically certified facilities in the world that produce fish oils and ours is in Norway is where we get it. And so, they produce the highest quality fish oils and it goes to Germany to get tested at a lab called a Eurofins and they test for over 450 possible contaminants: heavy metals, pesticides in there, you know, microbial things and so on. It's so pure and clean. We have a liquid form of it. At seminars, I'll have doctors and practitioners have like a little shot glass. We'll give them, they'll drink it. They go, "man, this is actually tastes good." Fish oil. It tastes good because it's so clean. It's so pure.
DAR: So that tells you something that if it doesn't taste good, then they should question that.
GREG: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
DAR: Yeah. You know, we hear that a lot. So. Hmm. Interesting. So, Greg, another supplement is, and you talked about a little bit before, curcumin. Talk about that as far as an anti-inflammatory.
GREG: Well, exactly and it's one of the strongest anti-inflammatories, plant-based anti-inflammatories, and you read about it all the time, but in that same journal on transitional cancer risk, they're talking about the ability to downregulate that androgen receptor, which has been correlated, you know, the high androgens that are correlated to prostate cancer as well too. That's why sometimes they give medications to these guys that destroy their ability to produce testosterone. I'm not necessarily in agreement with that, but we do know there's a connection with high androgens or testosterone in prostate risk. So, basically the curcumin actually down-regulates the androgen receptor to the cell, reducing the amount of the androgen or testosterone that gets into the cell that can cause it to proliferate into possibly cancer.
DAR: Oh, okay.
GREG: So that's pretty interesting what it does. And it's just, you know, it's such a good overall anti-flammatory as well.
DAR: And how much…
CASSIE: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. What's a dosage on that?
GREG: Dosage on a curcumin when you start looking at it, it's going to be in that four to 500 milligrams a day range, if you want to start getting a pretty good therapeutic amount of it. And that's when I said earlier, a lot of times we'll see these products that have like 25 or 50 milligrams and it's just it's window dressing at that point. It does not have any therapeutic…
DAR: It's just to sell the product.
GREG: Precisely. Yeah.
DAR: So any other favorite anti-inflammatories that you, you really recommend?
GREG: Well, I mean, I like the product Estro I-C-3 you have too is good because that is the product that will actually inhibit the growth of the prostate cancers as well, increases they call the apoptosis, which is cell death of the cancer cell and it works a little bit also to actually help chemotherapy. So if you get them on the I-C-3 and the DIM that's in that product, it actually enhances if they're on chemotherapy, it enhances the effects of the chemotherapy. So not only is it effective on its own, but also is assisting other kinds of therapies, they might be going to taking at that point too.
DAR: That's interesting, Greg, on our nutrition conference call the other day, someone asked that question, if it was safe for women to take that we're having chemotherapy for breast cancer or one of the hormonal cancers. So it's actually beneficial.
GREG: Yeah.
DAR: I got my answer!
CASSIE: Isn't that interesting? And it's also interesting to me because I always think of Estro I-3-C as being more for women, but it can be for men too.
GREG: Absolutely. Because it reduces like we were talking a little bit earlier, it reduces those they call them hot estrogens. And a hot estrogen example would be like, again, your Roundup or other pesticides and herbicides and, and so forth. And they're the ones that are very aggressive estrogens. And if they get into your system and they get into your cell basically, cause they're so molecularly similar to regular estrogens that we make it just raises....
CASSIE: Heck.
GREG: Heck, yeah, I was thinking the exact same word.... I couldn't think of a synonym of that. But, and so yeah, so really it does work so well and men to reduce that hot estrogen that stimulates that estrogen receptor alpha that stimulates cancer proliferation. So you do have to be careful of these man made estrogens or these very toxic estrogens that are being produced as well.
DAR: So it's kind of interesting... oh wow. We have so much more to talk about.
CASSIE: I know, I think we need part two, but yeah, as the show wraps up here, as we come to a close, I just want to remind our listeners that our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. Yes. It's a simple message, but it's a powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you Greg, for being our special guest today and a big thanks to all of our listeners for joining us this morning, be safe and be well.
