Pine Pollen and Coffee to Reduce Prostate Cancer Risk?

As I mentioned last week, June sees the start of The Everyman Campaign to raise awareness and funds for research into prostate and testicular cancer. I thought these two ideas from Alex Malinsky, one of the leading experts in the field of raw food, would help men minimize their risk.

Chewing on a pine cone may not be that attractive, but don’t worry it comes in supplement form as well! Raw pine pollen is the richest seedbed of testosterone derived from plants; since it is the male sperm of pine trees, it fosters plush growth in all living creatures, from trees and plants, to animals, to humans. Some experts claim that pine pollen is an ingredient in certain pharmaceuticals designed to treat low testosterone levels in both men and women.

Low testosterone in either men or women may cause an increase in cholesterol levels, premature aging, tissue and bone loss, highs and lows in blood sugar levels, decreased levels of aerobic energy, weight gain, and sexual dysfunction. In men, low testosterone may increase their chances for developing prostate cancer due to the simultaneous increase in estradiol in the body.

The reasons for low testosterone in either sex are varied. For men, the largest contributing factors are nutritional intake and age. In their 30s and 40s, males typically experience andropause, a term coined in the late 1960s, meaning male menopause, or a decline in the synthesis of androgenic hormones, especially testosterone. Nutrition-related onset of lower testosterone levels in both men and women is typically due to an over consumption of foods with too much phyto-estrogen for the body.

Pine pollen can provide the opportunity for endocrine hormonal balance, i.e. the ratio of testosterone to estrogen, within humans, thus reversing the troubling effects associated with the imbalances that cause quality of life to decrease. This is done mainly through the phyto-androgens in pine pollen, including androstenedione, testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and androsterone. The conditions of diabetes, high cholesterol and fatigue have all been improved through the biological and nutritional mechanisms provided by routine consumption of pine pollen.

Pine pollen is easily absorbed by the body when taken in powder or tincture form. If the powder taste is not palatable, pine pollen can be mixed in drinks. The tincture form is considered more potent and uses organic grape alcohol as its liquid base. For more information on raw food and pine pollen visit Alex’s website at: www.RawGuru.com

Another cup of coffee?
Coffee is good for men, according to research released from the Harvard School of Public Health, and even better news is that it doesn’t matter whether it is regular or decaffeinated because regular consumption is now linked to having the least risk for prostate cancer.

For men this is the deadliest forms of the disease and this 12-year study of almost 48,000 male health professionals found that men who drank the most coffee, six cups or more daily, had a 60 percent lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer — and 20 percent lower risk of developing any form of the disease, according to the study published in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Not a big coffee drinker? Even lighter consumption — up to three cups daily — was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of lethal prostate cancer.

As too much caffeing is not good for the heart by switching to water (not chemical) decaffeinated coffee you get all of the benefit of the antioxidants, that reduce inflammation and regulate insulin.

If you want to know more about male cancer visit www.everyman-campaign.org

The Positive Side of Coffee

If you have forsworn the beverage as part of your New Year healthy eating plan you may want to rethink as new research is showing some benefits you won’t want to pass up on. Personally coffee, like butter, is something I have never given up on but have cut down to two cups a day because my health philosophy has always been everything you want in moderation.

Coffee is actually one of the richest sources of antioxidants there is and remains so however you drink it as its high antioxidant content of the coffee is still absorbed easily by the body. Antioxidants help to protect our cells from free radical damage caused by oxidative stress – a fact that is backed up by hundreds of intervention studies on polyphenols and polyphenol-rich foods including coffee.
According to Gary Williamson, Professor of Functional Food, School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds, “Coffee is in my top 20 lifespan essential foods.” Many people can’t start their day without it and if you want a quick and high oxidant boost then look for Nescafe have even developed a special blend that is higher in antioxidants than their standard coffees so look for their Green Blend in supermarkets.

Other Caffeine Benefits:
A new review has indicated that antioxidant supplements may benefit couples who have difficulty conceiving naturally. The review provides evidence from a small number of trials that suggest the partners of men who take antioxidants are more likely to become pregnant so coffee could well play a part in that antioxidant increase.

Another new study also shows that caffeine energizes cells, boosting virus production for gene therapy applications. Now why would that concern you? Well it helps move research forward faster because if you give caffeine to cells engineered to produce viruses used for gene therapy then those cells can generate 3- to 8-times more virus, according to a recent paper published in Human Gene Therapy.

Lentivirus vectors are commonly used for transferring genes into cells for both research applications in the laboratory and, increasingly, for gene therapy procedures in clinical testing. The addition of caffeine should significantly decrease the cost of lentiviral production for research and clinical uses and James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, and Director of the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia can certainly see the advantage. “It is ironic that the ingredient in beverages like colas and coffees that helps keep us awake and alert is also useful in jazzing up cells to produce more gene therapy vectors. An increase in vector production of 5-fold may prove critical in establishing the commercial viability of lentiviral based products.”

Another benefit for coffee?

If you really enjoy your coffee, and have a high fat diet, then despite kind friends like me warning you of potential health problems, there is some new research that might cheer you up. It was reported by Jonathan D. Geiger, Ph.D., of the University of North Dakota, in the April issue of the Journal of Neuroinf – lammation, that animal tests appeared to protect the blood-brain barrier from cholesterol-induced damage in rabbits. Why is this important? Because high levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood-brain barrier. Other experimental studies have suggested that caffeine has beneficial effects for a number of neurovascular disorders, including Alzheimers’ but it is not yet conclusive. So I sugest you go easy on the high fat cappuccino’s for a while yet.

More on the coffee debate

My piece on coffee has sparked some debate, and this week I saw an interesting post this week from Ray Collins who writes The Good Life Letter and happily for those of us who cannot start the day without a cup of coffee it’s not all doom and gloom. I did tell you about the risks pregnant women run of miscarriage through coffee drinking, but if you are not pregnant then read on.

It’s the caffeine content which is at the root of the argument and like most things it has its good and bad sides. On the pro side there is evidence that it may lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and headaches. Caffeine also has a stimulating effect on the brain and studies have shown that it can also improve your attention span, boost your brainpower and also help balance your moods.

I mentioned in the last newsletter that the optimal dose of coffee a day is no more than 200 milligrams, or two average size cups of coffee, in a day. For me, I have a small cafetiere of organic ground coffee to start my day then I switch to white or herbal tea and that seems to work for me.

Oh, and if you are up for a major purchase, then don’t take the offer of free coffee that the salesman may make. Apparently, according to Pearl Martin of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, she claims that doses of caffeine can make you more easily convinced by arguments that go against your beliefs. This comes from a paper she authored in 2005 which suggested that the brain stimulators in caffeine improves your ability to understand the reasoning behind strong arguments.

In practice, that could make you more likely to end up agreeing with something that goes against your typical views. So if you are against gas-guzzling cars and you have a couple of free java’s then beware, because it might help the salesman change your mind!