Article Advise

submitted: Aug 17th 2008 | by: DonaldSaunders | Total views: 1 | Word Count: 552 | |

For several years now there has been considerable argument about prostate cancer and the subject of preventing prostate cancer specifically remains to some extent controversial. Although, as with the majority of cancers, men do not themselves cause their own prostate cancer, there are clearly a number of risk factors for developing the disease and there is much which can be done, if not to actually prevent it, then without doubt to reduce your risk of developing it.

The first step in prostate cancer prevention is simply to understand that you are at risk of getting the disease and to understand precisely why you are at risk.

There is no doubt that men who have a family history of prostate cancer are at higher risk and that the risk for a man with a close relative having the disease is about twice that of a man without any family history. With two close relatives the risk rises to about five times that of someone with no family history and if you have three close relatives the risk reaches a staggering ninety-seven percent.

The difficulties here is that many men do not know their family history, frequently because many grandfathers, fathers or brothers have died as a result of other illnesses without ever knowing they had prostate cancer. This occurs because prostate cancer will frequently develop late in life and can be a very slow growing cancer. As a result there is a fair chance that individuals will develop other conditions at the same time as their prostate cancer and it is these other conditions which ultimately result in their death.

Accordingly, if you are uncertain of your family history, then a good point at which to start is to check things out if you can. If this is not possible to do so, then it is probably a good idea to err on the side of caution and believe that the risk might be there rather than assume that you are in the clear.

Another important factor is race. African American men for example are at greater risk than Hispanic men who, in turn, are at higher risk than Caucasian men. The risk for an African American man is roughly sixty percent higher than that of a Caucasian man.

Yet another risk factor is diet and men living in Western countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom are at higher risk as a result of the high fat levels in many Western diets. Here for the first time we have a risk factor that you can actually do something about and reducing the fat in your diet and eating things like more vegetables and fresh fruit can lower your risk quite considerably.

Now, at this point we start to run into difficulty because, beyond the principle of lowering levels of fat in your diet, views start to differ when it comes to looking at other aspects of the diet that might be helpful in prostate cancer prevention.

There is little doubt that levels of things like vitamins and minerals in your diet can have a significant affect on your health generally and will without question have a part to play in your prostate health. However, working out precisely which vitamins and minerals play a part is a difficult matter and is certainly a subject all of its own.

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Visit ProstateProblemCenter.com for information on a range of prostate problems including details about the therapeutic effects of milking the prostate

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