In this podcast:
02:21 – the biggest killer of men and women – the Big C
04:25 – top 10 causes of prostate cancer
06:05 – Your go-to-thing for health, vegetables and fruits
09:05 – No. 7 is Cadmium
13:04 – eat more tomato-based foods, hi-lycopene foods
16:05 – overdoing processed foods
18:32 – green leafy vegetables are humans’ natural medicines
19:45 – all of those foods are 100% natural
20:24 – don’t smoke
22:37 – you have to expose your skin to get the right amount of vit. D3
25:04 – men are stupid and won’t educate themselves
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to another new episode of the TheDVCC.com podcast. I am Mark Gray and sitting next to me is my co-presenter Stephen.
Stephen: Co-presenter? Hello.
Mark: How are you? I hope you’re well. It’s maybe summer right now, and it’s windy and it looks like it’s going to rain. But let’s not look at things negatively. I hope it’s going to be sunny tomorrow. A way of looking at things, isn’t it?
Stephen: I mean it’s warm.
Mark: Tomorrow is another day.
Stephen: Tomorrow is another day.
Mark: So we’ve been very busy, we’ve been doing the usual, lots of learning, lots of trying to help people lose weight and that’s what we do, I guess.
Stephen: And get healthier.
Mark: Yeah. That’s one of the main things. So when you look at it Stephen, generally, if you had to choose weight loss or health, you go to health, right? It just so happens that…
Stephen: Well weight loss follows anyway.
Mark: Weight loss follows anyway so. If you generally do focus on the health, weight loss will…
Stephen: I don’t believe you should try and lose weight and doing something that makes you less healthy because it will catch up with you in the end. Be that by making you put on weight or get disease or whatever it may be. But now more than ever, before I think in the human history, how you eat affects our health enormously and how you live your life affects our health enormously. There’s more disease, more illness than there ever has been in the past. Do we live longer? Yes. But do we live healthier and longer? The answer is no, we don’t. Sure we don’t have the saber-toothed tiger running after us and lions and things that can kill us and drop our lifespan down but we have these other sorts of things that are far actually worse than that in my eyes.
Mark: Yeah, agreed.
Stephen: And actually we’re going to talk about one of those today, aren’t we?
Mark: So a little segway there, but basically what we’re going to be talking about, this is…it may seem like it’s for men but obviously most women know a man and actually there’s a big advertising drive at the moment using quite a few celebrities doing TV adverts and we’re talking about prostate cancer and that’s because they estimate – I’m coming up with the year they said…I think it’s 2030 or something, very soon – that it’s going to be the biggest killer of people, like men or women. It’s going to be the most prevalent cancer, which is obviously not a good thing and something that we’ve done a little researching too and we’re going to try and get some actionable steps.
Stephen: Or actually it’s the second most type of cancer that men get besides skin cancer.
Mark: And that’s pretty serious. Realistically it’s not being well-known in terms of the general population knowing about it for that long, has it, really?
Stephen: Now one of the good things about it, there is one of the best success rate treatment‑wise.
Mark: Right, exactly. That’s what they’re saying actually that it could become one of the biggest killers but it’s so easily treatable, not easily, but it’s relatively high percentage treatment. Just the simple things that you can do. But obviously the best thing to do is to never…
Stephen: Preventative.
Mark: Yeah, be preventative, and that’s one thing that we really focus on is preventative health. Unfortunately when you go to doctors and things, you tend to go when you’re ill or something is wrong. But I think if you can actually stop yourself getting any of these things as much as you can, stop them. Now I’m not saying that the things that we’re going to talk about, if every single one in place would mean that there is no risk, that’s not unfortunately the case with…It’s just the way lifestyle and environment is, but it will mean that you’re doing as much as you can and you’re lessening the risks by a lot.
Stephen: Exactly.
Mark: So don’t switch off if you’re a woman because you are going to be able to forward this onto male friends. You are going to be able to educate your sons, your husbands, your brothers on things that they should be doing and things that they can do to…
Stephen: Plus a lot of these things obviously whilst we’re talking specifically prostate cancer, actually all of things if a woman were to do or anyone were to do would actually make you healthier anyway.
Mark: So without further ado, I think we should just go through the top 10 causes of prostate cancer as they know there are today as what they have been identified today and then we can give actionable steps.
So first one is age. Actually your risk of prostate cancer increases with age particularly men over 65 years of age. I think it’s important to know that. Obviously if you’re 40 or 40-plus then if you’re start thinking about it now and doing everything in your power now, then you’re going a long way, because you got 20 years until you’re actually 60, no, sorry, 25 years until you’re 65, so you can have real, real impact on your risk of developing it later on. Like we always say it’s just the habits. The habits you generate now and integrate will keep you well into the future being healthy and fit.
So No. 2 is family history for close relatives, e.g., like your father or brother had prostate cancer, it’s going to increase your risk.
No. 3 is diet. Men that eat a lot of processed meats. Bad fats – as in hydrogenated types of fats, the type of fat you get when you have a McDonald’s burger. Refined grains – so processed type of sugary carbohydrates. They have an increased risk of prostate cancer. Now particularly if they don’t eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Now we’ll talk about fruits and vegetables, but I know we mentioned them a lot. But your No. 1 go-to-thing to minimize your risk of cancer particularly, and in fact all diseases and in fact weight loss, so basically the biggest bang for your butt thing would be vegetables and some fruits.
So No. 4 on the risk is exercise. So people that generally exercise less have a higher risk of cancer. But men who are over 65 and vigorously exercise have actually been found to have a much lower risk of prostate cancer specifically.
Stephen: That’s due to the fact that most people eat healthier when they exercise or is it the actual physical…?
Mark: I think it’s combination of everything. So the fact that people exercise vigorously tend to eat better – better nutrition – but also the act of exercising has obviously make you leaner, less body fat and your body functions better, immune system is better, things like that.
No. 5 is ethnicity. Now I didn’t realize this until I was doing my reading. African-American men actually have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world, that’s actually according to the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention. Obviously you need to bear that in mind and look at your risk factors. It’s probably quite useful, as we go through these, to kind of think, ‘I tick that box, I tick that box or I don’t’ and also then you’re kind of taking an audit of yourself really.
No. 6 is environmental chemicals. Basically the more exposed you are to pesticides, plastic chemicals – the stuff you get from thinking too much from bottled water, heating plastics up in the microwave, things like that, that all, the thing with BPA. So we’ve spoken about BPA before but BPA is very, very bad for you. They recognize that now, so you want to make sure that if you’re drinking from the same bottle continuously, you want it to be BPA-free.
Stephen: You’ll notice that there’s a lot more BPA-free bottles around…
Mark: Which is much easier to get hold of and that has only been in the last few years, isn’t it? But make sure you’re not heating anything in plastic. You’re not allowing a plastic bottle to sit in the sun because that increases the risk of basically getting hormone-mimicking environmental contaminants in your water, in the food. Basically these things mimic hormones in your body and they mimic the bad hormones, the bad types of estrogens and things like that. So they’ll decrease you’re testosterone, increase the amount of poor estrogen you have in your body and increase your risk of prostate cancer.
No. 7 is cadmium. Cadmium is something that you can take in everyday in foods, water as well, but you can also take it…So actually I’ll just mention those foods, shellfish, liver, and kidney meat have the highest level of cadmium. They actually have been shown to increase your risk of prostate cancer. Also cigarette smoke. So most people I don’t think overdo shellfish, liver and kidney meats from people I know and I don’t know if many people eat liver and kidney particularly very often, but cigarette smoke is a main source of cadmium for a lot of people. So if you’re a smoker beware that one of the things you’re taking is cadmium which is going to increase your risk of prostate cancer. Also taking in through the air as well. So you could work near somewhere that produces something that involves cadmium in some way. So just being in environment, obviously cleaner air is a lot better.
Stephen: Just being aware of it really.
Mark: Being aware of your environment is important.
No. 8 one of the causes, cigarette smoke, I actually mentioned. But people who smoke and are men are much more likely to die of prostate cancer or at least experience a recurrent of prostate cancer if they have had it before. That’s important. Obviously if you’ve ever been diagnosed with it, then you want to quit but you’re also increasing your risk of getting it massively by actually being a smoker.
No. 9 is too little vitamin D. So people who had too little vitamin D, so D3 deficiency actually have an increase of prostate cancer. But they also found that people that had excess of vitamin D actually have an increased risk of prostate cancer. But to put that in perspective, very, very, very few people have too much vitamin D3 in their body because you get that from the sun and obviously we don’t get much sun and you can get it in supplement form as well but as long as you’re not overdoing it for years and years. So putting it in perspective, we obviously had our D3 tested and we were deficient. This was a couple of years ago. A years worth pretty much of how much…
Stephen: It was 100,000?
Mark: It was more than that wasn’t it, probably.
Stephen: Probably more than…
Mark: Or is it at least 50,000 IUs a day probably, which is a lot, for a year. And then you actually tested and you were slightly higher…
Stephen: I was slightly higher.
Mark: And then you came off it, six months later and you’re actually deficient. So it’s kind of getting a balance. So about 10,000 IUs a day for most people. It’s good if you are able to get tested then, that’s very useful. It’s not hard to do but you have to make an effort to do it. A normal doctor wouldn’t just do it for you generally, unless they think there’s a reason.
No. 10 would be vasectomy. Actually I don’t know this until, again, I was doing more reading. But several studies have actually suggested that men who had a vasectomy have a highly higher risk of prostate cancer.
So I think now we should go through the points on what we recommend to do and what the studies have shown, and what is knowledge for what you should do to minimize your risk of prostate cancer.
So obviously with age thing, you can’t help that, you can’t turn back the clock. But let’s go with the actionable steps that you can do. One, and probably the first one, is eat more tomato-based foods. Now, when I saw tomato-based foods, I mean the cooked varieties kind of tomato sources and obviously made, homemade basically.
Stephen: You’re not talking high in tomato ketchup.
Mark: No, not of the highest tomato ketchup, but ones that are naturally occurring tomatoes. They’re high in lycopene and that’s known to fight prostate cancer. A little bit more technically about it, it prevents the damage to the DNA and that helps fight prostate cancer. Just the takeaways have a lot more lycopene-containing tomatoes and if you have naturally occurring organic tomatoes, you will be getting that. Other things that have the same effect are grapefruit and watermelon because they’re very good sources of lycopene. So they’re quick easily actionable steps there. Increase your tomato-based foods.
Stephen: The thing with tomato is you can literally, if you’re making a sauce, you can just chop up, blend a billion, gazillion tomatoes and you can’t really overeat the tomatoes. Just throw them in. If you’re having a salad, make sure you got a couple of tomatoes in there. If you’re doing a sauce for any reason, you can make it into a tomato-based sauce. Just actively think about how you can increase the amount of tomatoes in your everyday diet every week.
Mark: Okay, next one.
Stephen: Yeah next point.
Mark: Would be to limit the amount of processed meat and bad fats. So basically with meat, the cheaper you get, the more processed it is.
Stephen: That is a good point I think because a lot of people obviously doesn’t want to spend more than they have to spend generally. However, if you’re getting meat for, and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is really cheap.’ Often the reason is for a lot of time, unless you’re going straight to a farmer, you’re missing out all the middle men…
Mark: And even then, it’s not cheap when you get the good stuff.
Stephen: Well no, it’s not. But you’re going to get processed meat. I mean you only have to look at the horsemeat scandal to understand that companies, all these big supermarkets, are constantly trying to drive down the price and it’s just not possible to actually sustain that. So what happens is that by feeding the animal what they need for one, by making the meat pure so not processing it and putting it with other stuff or two, and there is no real way nowadays that you can get good quality, really, really good quality grass-fed, naturally-fed meat, and naturally prepared, not processed and put with a bazillion different other things mix in with some goat and some horse and some dog maybe, there is really no way you can do that at very, very cheap price. So be aware of what types of processed foods you’re eating. So you can’t overdo meats like bacon, sausage, and you can’t eat five sausages a day and not think that is having too much processed meat, same for bacon. Luncheon meats are also another good example. Salamis and things like that, they are processed. It is important that you realized they are processed because they’re not coming naturally in their natural form and they are mixed with a lot of other things and they also put in a lot of poor quality fat in there as well, things like trans fat and hydrogenated fats, which is another word for the same thing. But one of the most important thing is audit how much natural meat you’re actually having and that’s very, very important.
Mark: So good one. The next one would be…I’m afraid this is going to be counted as inferior to people is what your calcium intake. Because everyone knows it is kind of hard to get calcium and actually too much calcium beyond what they say as recommended is 12000 mg per day, which probably won’t mean too much to you but if you’re taking a supplement of calcium and taking a large dose, you could perhaps be potentially having too much. But they say that’s basically, the latest research says and that’s from Harvard which obviously has pretty good reputation, but it can increase the risk of prostate cancer, having too much calcium.
Stephen: So how would you say if someone would know that they’re having the right amount?
Mark: Get it from lots of broccoli. Lots of green leafy vegetables. If you’re eating a whole load of those, that’s obviously going to help in other respect and you’ll hear the points coming up. You’ll get lots of calcium if you have those types of foods and then you’re not going to be over. You’re not going to be having too much because it’s naturally-occurring with the broccoli and you’ll struggle to overeat it basically.
Stephen: I mean eating as much broccoli as you can is a great, great way of really minimizing your risk of all cancer actually – alkalizing you, helping you with weight loss and everything. Green leafy vegetables, if you’ll ever go to, they’re all your go-to. They have such enormous…they’re so natural and they are effectively human medicine aren’t they? Natural medicines.
Mark: Which probably we’ll do a little check, I think. Green leafy vegetables have been named in every single podcast because they have such wide benefits.
Stephen: Right.
Mark: So the next one is actually an interesting one, which is consuming and eating more and taking in more selenium, which is actually thought to prevent cancer through its antioxidant content. So a lot of people heard of antioxidant but we know that they’re good and also can enhance the immune system as well and suppress any blood source that there are to tumor cells. If a tumor or a cancer has some blood supply, you want to try and limit that amount of blood to it. Try to cut off it’s living effectively. So how to do that, what food actually contain more selenium? That would be things like Brazil nuts, tuna, chicken, turkey, beef, eggs and sunflower seeds. They’re just a known few, but they contain larger amounts of selenium. So if you can incorporate them into diet, then you’re going to be helping yourself by having antioxidant-rich selenium. Now if you notice all of those foods I just mentioned are 100% natural, aren’t they? And I think that’s the key to really big take-homers. That if you are eating naturally occurring food, then you can’t go wrong. You can’t go wrong really. I mean by having things like Brazil nuts, chicken and turkey, they are more selenium-rich but they’re naturally occurring. They’re not mixed with anything. They pretty much, besides they’re butchering, they look the same. There’s not much involved with making them ready to eat because they are naturally occurring, that’s when they’re made to eat.
So another point would be don’t smoke because this will increase your amount of cadmium as we talked about earlier. Cadmium is one of the things that can increase your risk of prostate cancer.
Stephen: Everyone knows that they shouldn’t smoke, don’t they? I mean we talked about it a lot but they don’t stick all those warnings on the packets for no reason.
Mark: It’s pretty silly exactly. So just don’t.
Stephen: I’m not saying it’s easy to quit, but you need be…there are not many bigger reason to quit other than the fact that your own health will suffer and actually the health of those around will suffer.
Mark: The new advert with the chap smoking in the car and then putting the cigarette out before the child comes into the car, basically saying it makes no difference. The child is going to be inhaling cancerous smoke whether you put the cigarettes out a minute or 20 minutes before and it actually goes on to your hands and things and you can transfer it that way.
Second to the last point, you came up with, you pretty much said it in the first 10 things of how you actually increase your risk of prostate cancer and that is being exposed to environmental chemicals. So obviously the way to avoid is to literally try and limit the exposure to pesticides and BPA and that’s like we said before, we probably said it in other podcast, is in plastic containers and bottles and when you microwave plastics, that makes it even worse. So you want to be limiting your exposure to all those types of plastics and chemicals and pesticides and that’s by buying organic foods, that’s by not microwaving in plastics, using glass, glass is much better, and trying to look around your environment and see that you’re not being exposed to too many of these cancer-causing things, pesticides.
Stephen: Correct.
Mark: So Stephen I’ll let you finish off the last one.
Stephen: Well, we spoke about it in years of course but vitamin D3. Like we said, having too little, having too much can be bad. Now you’re far, far, far more likely to have too little. Experts say 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight a day is an ideal amount for light-skinned person to produce the right amount of vitamin D. But know this, you have exposed your skin, a large amount of your skin to be able to get the right amount and not be wearing sunglasses and it needs to be good sunlight. And if you think, when they have done a lot of the studies, places like California and all these very sun-rich places, they do the test and about like 80% people are deficient in vitamin D3. So if they’re deficient, then being realistic, we’re going to be deficient in this country here. So certainly, throughout the winter month, you need to be ideally taking a vitamin D3 supplement. I recommend about 10,000 IUs for most people. Ideally, if you can get yourself tested that would be the best. Then when you’re getting more sun in the summer and perhaps you don’t need to take any, but certainly as soon as the sun goes away, I mean, I’m sitting here and there’s no sun for me to get D3 today and it’s supposed to be summer, then certainly throughout the winter months in this country for about 10 months of the year, you should be looking to take a vitamin D3 supplement. The lighter skin you are actually the more D3 you take in in the same amount of sunlight. So the darkest skin someone is the less D3 they produce. So actually people with darkest skin actually needs to be out in the sun more to get the same amount of D3. So vitamin D3, I mean, supplementing with it has been shown to be so beneficial for all different types of cancer, for weight loss, for brain function, literally everything. Because it has receptor site in every single cell in the body, right. So literally when we talk about wonder supplement, it is a wonder supplement. So I would more than recommend you to take that.
Mark: So I think we have given you some good actionable steps. Now I want to give you one more actionable step and that is to forward this around to any males, any friends and husbands, children, sons, brothers whatever. Send it around, educate as many, many as you can because as you know prostate cancer is one of the least talked about cancer, but like we said it is becoming more prevalent and that’s because men are stupid and won’t check themselves, they won’t talk about it, they won’t go to doctors and they won’t educate themselves. So it’s up to you ladies to educate us and send this around to as many men. Share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter and let as many as people know, so we can help as many people as we can.
Alright, until next week. Bye-bye.
Stephen: Bye-bye.
