Prostate healthy dietary recommendations

To maintain prostate health, the core dietary principles are actually very simple: control the intake of pro-inflammatory foods high in oil, sugar and salt, properly supplement antioxidants and nutrients that regulate hormone levels, and stabilize your weight to avoid abdominal obesity. You can already avoid 80% of diet-related risks.

I used to meet a 42-year-old technical director of an Internet company when I was doing patient education in the Department of Urology. He was 996 years old. He served iced Coke and fried chicken as standard for afternoon tea. He also liked to drink skewers and drink cold beer when working overtime at night. He had been suffering from frequent urination and urgency for almost half a year. He had to wake up three or four times at night. The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test was half a value too high. The doctor said that he was not ready to take medicine yet, so he should try to adjust his diet and rest. He went back and changed the sweet drinks to warm light tea, ate barbecue at most once a week, and added a tomato scrambled egg every day. He came back for a follow-up checkup in three months. The symptoms were basically gone and the PSA returned to the normal range.

When many people mention the prostate diet, their first reaction is to quit spicy food and alcohol. This is right or wrong. Interestingly, there has been a cross-regional epidemiological survey in China. In areas such as Sichuan, Chongqing, Hunan and Jiangxi, which like spicy food, the incidence of prostatic inflammation and hyperplasia is not higher than that in areas with a light diet. On the contrary, the risk of prostate inflammation and hyperplasia is about 30% higher in people who eat high-fat and high-sugar meals every day and cannot do without processed red meat every meal. To put it bluntly, spicy food itself is not a scourge. If you already have prostatitis and are in a state of congestion and edema, then spicy food such as hot pot and millet spicy food will indeed aggravate your discomfort. However, if you don’t have any symptoms, there is no need to kick the chili pepper off the table, and there is no need to suffer that fate.

You really need to be more careful with alcohol. It will rapidly expand blood vessels and cause congestion and swelling of the prostate. Middle-aged and elderly friends who have hyperplasia problems themselves may be unable to urinate and have to go to the emergency department to have a urinary catheter inserted. We encounter two or three such cases every month in our department. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t drink at all. If you take a sip of low-alcohol red wine or beer during the holidays, as long as you don’t drink too much, there’s no big problem, and you don’t have to act like an ascetic.

There is no need to deify the lycopene and pumpkin seeds that everyone often hears about. I have met many patients who spend hundreds of dollars to buy imported lycopene soft capsules. To be honest, it is really unnecessary. The academic community is still divided on the effectiveness of lycopene: some cohort studies have found that long-term intake of sufficient lycopene can reduce the risk of prostate cancer by about 20%. There are also double-blind experiments showing that the effect of lycopene is not significantly different from that of a placebo. Anyway, if you usually eat more cooked tomatoes, such as tomato scrambled eggs and tomato stewed beef brisket, you can supplement the same nutrients for about ten yuan. Even if the effect of protecting the glands is not achieved, it is not a waste to supplement with some vitamins, right? The same goes for pumpkin seeds. Eat a dozen or so seeds every day. Adding some zinc is indeed good for the prostate. However, I met an uncle two years ago and heard others say that pumpkin seeds can treat prostate hyperplasia. He ate one pound a day. After eating it for three months, his blood fat increased a lot and his abdominal circumference also increased by five centimeters. On the contrary, because the abdominal pressure was too high and oppressed the prostate, the symptoms of frequent urination became more severe. It was completely worth the loss.

Another controversial category is soy products. Many people say that the isoflavones in soybeans are phytoestrogens. If men eat too much, they will affect hormone levels and be bad for the prostate. But in fact, research in recent years has shown that men who consume soy products on a daily basis have a risk of prostate cancer that is about 15% lower than those who do not eat them at all. Think about it, a cup of soy milk we usually drink only contains tens of milligrams of isoflavones. To reach the amount that affects hormones, you have to drink three to four liters a day. Who in the normal world drinks like this? I usually drink a cup of soy milk for breakfast and a piece of mapo tofu for lunch, so I don’t have to worry at all.

There is a pitfall that many people ignore, which is high-sugar functional drinks and milk tea. Most of the prostatitis patients in their twenties and thirties that I have met in the past two years love to drink these. High sugar will increase the level of inflammatory factors in the body. In addition, after drinking, many people stay up late, work overtime, hold in their urine, and the prostate is repeatedly congested. It is no wonder that there is nothing wrong with them.

To be honest, the prostate is really not as delicate as everyone thinks, and you don’t need to spend a lot of money to buy so-called gland-protecting health products. Pay more attention to your daily meals, don’t eat high-fat and high-sugar meals, don’t drink to death, and keep your weight under control. It’s more effective than any supplement. If you really have symptoms of frequent urination, urgent urination, and discomfort during urination, go to the hospital to see a doctor first. Don't delay things by taking folk remedies.