Harvard: One thing drops prostate cancer risk by 68 percent

Did you know that most prostate cancers do not spread and are not life-threatening?

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the other forms of prostate cancer are aggressive, invade bones and organs, and are fatal.

In the new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, lead author Stacey Kenfield of the University of California, San Francisco, and a team of researchers at UCSF and Harvard, looked at this kind of prostate cancer to see what lifestyle habits might have life-saving benefits.

They looked at 42,701 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) that lasted from 1986 to 2010 and developed a lifestyle score to measure the risk.

Total scores ranging from 0–6 were calculated.

Men with 5–6 vs 0–1 points had a 68% decreased risk of lethal prostate cancer.

The number one factor that dropped deadly prostate cancer risk more than any other was “vigorous” exercise.

That means working up a real sweat, not just moseying along on a walk.

“It’s interesting that vigorous activity had the highest potential impact on prevention of lethal prostate cancer. We calculated the population-attributable risk for American men over 60 and estimated that 34 percent of lethal prostate cancer would be reduced if all men exercised to the point of sweating for at least three hours a week,” Kenfield said.

Just a healthy change in diet meant men with 3 vs 0 points had a 46% decreased risk of lethal prostate cancer.

More advice from the study shows us that lethal prostate cancer among American men over 60 would be:

• Cut by 15 percent if they consumed at least seven servings of tomatoes per week.
• Cut by 17 percent if they ate at least one serving of fatty fish per week.
• Cut by 12 percent if they reduced intake of processed meats.