Low Fat and Fish Oil: Men Get a Boost to Eat Healthier

I’d like to welcome guest blogger Allison Brooks. Allison’s interest in healthy eating stems from her study of biomedical anthropology.

Everybody knows the saying, “You are what you eat” and now there is more scientific truth proving that statement. In today’s society, most understand that the fat and grease in a burger are not as good for the body as fruits and vegetables; but try getting your man to practice that on Football Sunday. I’m sure more would choose hot dogs, chips, and chicken wings before they nibbled off a veggie platter. But now researchers and doctors are coming down hard on men to clean up their diet to improve prostate health.

A recent study at the UCLA’S Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center evaluated blood samples before and after the low-fat diet began and examined tissue from removed prostates of the study-group. Researchers noticed a slowed cancer-cell growth in men that ate a low-fat diet coupled with fish oil supplements. They also saw a change in the composition of cell membranes in both healthy and cancerous cells in the prostates of men who ate a healthier diet. The membranes contained higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids from the fish oil, and less omega-6 from corn oil. Researchers suspect that this could be the reasoning for the change in cell biology.

The finding of the hindered cancer-growth due to diet is important because the rate of cell division can be predictive for future cancer progression. Now since doctors and scientists can help slow cell-division, they can reduce the rate of the cancer spreading outside the prostate.

Since it is hard to evaluate the findings of diet-controlled studies, the UCLA research had chefs prepare the meals so the diets were controlled precisely. This made them confident to say that the diet was the deciding factor in the experiment. The change in the cell membrane omega-3 composition determined that the change in diet not only affected the biology of the body but also of the cancer tissue.

The findings of this study are more proof that diet and natural therapies can aid in healing and cancer treatment. Many diet-studies have been conducted on aggressive cancers, like non-Hodgkin lymphoma and mesothelioma, to see if there is an effective way to reverse the growth of cancerous cells. Though this new information is proof that a healthier diet aids the body in a multitude of different scenarios, more studies are being conducted to make the thesis a theory.

Allison Brooks holds a degree in biomedical anthropology from the University of Mississippi.  She is currently finishing an ethnography on the effects of bio medicalization on Bolivian cultures.