Healthy Diet, Healthy Prostate

Generally speaking, the healthier your diet, the healthier your body will be overall. The same logic applies if you want to address a specific part of your body — you need to concentrate on specific parts of your diet. With prostate cancer on the rise, many men are focusing more on their health. And men, if you think a plant-based diet is something just for the ladies, you're about to change your mind... Especially if you're worried about your prostate. On a basic level, dietary research from Spain reveals that prostate cancer risk is reduced in persons on a Mediterranean style diet, which recommends more veggies than meat, compared with those on western diet. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that though the vegetable advice of the Mediterranean diet is great, accumulating evidence shows that consuming milk or dairy products (also on a Mediterranean diet) may contribute to the risk of prostate cancer. Now you have a clearer direction for prostate health, which seems to lead to a plant-based diet. But are there certain aspects of a plant-based diet that benefit the prostate more than others? Beets and beet juice seem to offer such a benefit. In fact, an extract of red beets has been found to effectively suppress the development of both prostate and breast cancer. And if you want to pinpoint the benefit even further, it appears that betanin, the red pigment in beets, is the source of beets' power to inhibit the growth of certain prostate cancer cells. One study showed that the bentanin in beet extract had similar prostate cancer killing properties as a popular anticancer drug (adriamycin). Of course, beets alone cannot turn one's health around, but as part of a plant-based diet containing countless compounds that work in a synergistic manner to improve overall health, beets are a good place to start — especially for men!