What men who want to avoid colon cancer eat

Colon cancer (also called colorectal cancer) typically develops from small polyps, or growths, in the colon or large intestine that become cancerous over time.

Although it’s the third most common form of cancer, it is one of the most treatable if it is found early. Currently, there are over 1.5 million colorectal cancer survivors in the United States.

Men tend to have a higher colon cancer risk than women, and that’s what brought a group of scientists to re-examine the power of diet to prevent colon cancer, focusing their research specifically on men…

The diet that cuts men’s colon cancer risk

Studies show that a plant-based diet that consists of fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and whole grains can cut your heart disease risk in half.

But that’s not all…

Dr. Saray Stancic, director of medical education for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has gathered evidence that a plant-based diet reduces the risks for diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and even COVID-19!

Now we’re finding that sticking to a plant-based diet can also dramatically lower a man’s risk for colon cancer…

“Although previous research has suggested that plant-based diets may play a role in preventing colorectal cancer, the impact of plant foods’ nutritional quality on this association has been unclear,” says study co-author Jihye Kim, from Kyung Hee University in South Korea, “our findings suggest that eating a healthy plant-based diet is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer.”

The researchers studied a population of nearly 80,000 American men and found that those who ate the highest average daily amounts of healthy plant-based foods had a 22 percent lower risk of colon cancer when compared to those who ate the lowest amounts of these foods.

While studying more than 93,000 American women, however, the researchers did not find the same association.

Foods can deter or promote colon cancer

The colon is the “last stop” in your digestive system, so it stands to reason that what you put in your mouth will affect the health of your colon. There are foods that elevate colon cancer risk, and then there are foods that actually reduce that risk.

Here are some ways to adjust your diet to lower your risk…

Lay off the red meat. Not too long ago, scientists found that red meat eaters have alkylation-induced mutations in their colon that people who primarily eat chicken, fish, or plant-based diets do not have.

Not only that — patients with colon cancer tumors showing high levels of this type of damage were almost twice as likely to die of the disease.

Stay away from ultra-processed foods. In a study of 200,000 participants, the strongest association between colorectal cancer and ultra-processed foods was in men who ate meat-, poultry-, or fish-based ready-to-eat products (think frozen burgers, chicken nuggets and fish sticks).

Add fiber and probiotics to your diet. Researchers found that by adding both fiber and probiotics to cultivated colorectal cancer cells, they could slow the growth of the cancer cells and prevent the existing cancer cells from self-renewing.

Eat more spinach. Research shows that eating more spinach prevented benign polyps in the digestive tract of mice from progressing into hereditary forms of colon cancer.

And speaking of genetic risk, it appears that the greater your hereditary risk of colon cancer, the more you can do to prevent it, starting with eating these seven foods.

Sources:

Healthy Plant-Based Diets Lower Men’s Odds for Colon Cancer — US News and World Report

Plant-based dietary patterns defined by a priori indices and colorectal cancer risk by sex and race/ethnicity: the Multiethnic Cohort Study — BMC Medicine

Colorectal cancer statistics — Cancer.net