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Ornish Plan May Help Battle Prostate Cancer A New Study Indicates That a Very Low-Fat Diet and Lifestyle Changes Might Keep the Disease From Getting Worse.

Posted on: Friday, 16 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A radical ultra-low-fat diet and other lifestyle changes may help keep early-stage prostate cancer from worsening, according to the first attempt to test the theory.

The small study tracked men whose tumors weren't aggressive. Still, the research, published in the September issue of the Journal of Urology, promises to increase interest in whether diet might help battle cancer.

The study was led by hearthealth guru Dr. Dean Ornish. It used his famously strict regimen, whose adherents become vegetarians, limit dietary fat to 10 percent of total calories, exercise regularly and learn stress management techniques such as yoga.

Ornish and fellow researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, recruited 93 men who had decided against treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, a route known as "watchful waiting.''

Half were randomly assigned to the Ornish diet and lifestyle regimen; the others weren't asked to vary their usual routines. The researchers sent participants' blood samples to Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center in New York to measure PSA, or prostate specific antigen, a marker used to track prostate cancer growth.

After one year, PSA levels had decreased 4 percent in the diet group -- unusual for untreated patients -- while PSA levels rose 6 percent in the control group. The difference wasn't big, but it was statistically significant. Researchers plan to continue tracking the men.

Also, six of the nondieters underwent cancer treatment that year after all, because their disease was progressing. No dieters were treated.

"This report undoubtedly will excite the aficionados and devotees of lifestyle changes for cancer, but it should also give pause to the skeptics,'' wrote Dr. Paul Lange of the University of Washington in an editorial accompanying the journal article.

Indeed, the research comes just months after another study suggested that low-fat diets might help women avoid a recurrence of breast cancer.

Ornish said his study doesn't mean that men should opt for diet over conventional therapy.

The men studied weren't getting conventional treatment anyway, allowing a clearer test of dietary effects, he said. The diet may help men undergoing therapy, too, he said.

"I always find it amusing'' that people call the diet hard, Ornish said. "Compared to having your prostate removed? . . . The only side effects are you feel better, and it helps prevent heart disease.''

Source: Omaha World - Herald

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