Obesity and Prostate Cancer
In this interview, Dr Samadi joins the Fox News team to discuss a new study that links obesity to a higher risk of prostate cancer.
Scientists have always tried to understand the link between obesity and prostate cancer and how the two correlate with each other. A startling study tells about the link between overweight men and prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer is the leading diagnosed cancer in men. It is the second leading cancer killer of men behind lung cancer, killing about 30,000 men every year. It is a serious disease, the more threatening considering it has no symptoms in the early stages. Men have to get screened in order to catch it early on.
The major risk factor for prostate cancer has been always aging. As men get older, the risk goes up. Being of an African-american descent places men at a higher incidence rate for the disease. Family history is also a huge risk factor – the more first grade relatives have had prostate cancer or breast cancer in your family, the higher your chances are for developing the disease.
Scientists have tried to understand the risk factors that men can control in the development of prostate cancer and it appears that diet and weight have a key role. Obesity has been linked over the years to the chances of men developing aggressive forms of prostate cancer.
A recent study looking at over 6,000 patients followed them for about 14 years and what they found is that obesity alone can increase the risk of prostate cancer by 57%, making it a considerable risk factor.
The big question is, exactly, what is it about obesity that can cause it? There are a lot of conflicting theories out there. What we know is that the fat around our stomach can convert testosterone to estrogen – something called aromatization, and estrogen alone can cause cell proliferation and prostate cancer. That is one theory. The other one is the insulin growth factors (such as red meat and other high fat products) that included in the diet can increase the insulin and can cause cell proliferation. The big message out there is to try to stay fit. If you have family history and you’re obese, you need to be regularly screened by your urologist and check your PSA.
Another aspect that poses issues for obese patients can be the diagnosis. For some physicians, it may be more difficult to do a digital rectal exam in obese patients. As is the case for regular weight patients, using ultrasounds for biopsies can be quite difficult, because doctors can’t know for sure how many cores to take. Ultrasounds can miss precancerous lesions that are found mostly among obese patients. This is why more MRI guided biopsies are used, because it makes it easier to locate where the cancer is, instead of just shooting in the dark.
Diet plays an important role in preventing prostate cancer. The Western diet, comprised of red meat, sugar and fat, as opposed to fruits and vegetables, may be a reason why Americans have more cases of prostate cancer as opposed to the Japanese. Studies have shown that when Japanese people migrated to the US, the rate of prostate cancer went up. Men should be more careful with what they include in their diet, especially if their genetic inheritance places them at odds for prostate cancer.