NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men who want to avoid developing the benign but bothersome prostate enlargement that typically accompanies aging should cut their intake of fat and red meat, eat more vegetables, and have a couple of drinks a day, a new study suggests.
As many as half of 50-year-old men have benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), which causes frequent and sometimes painful urination, while up to 80% of 70 year olds have the condition, Dr. Alan R. Kristal of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and colleagues note in their report.
The only established risk factor for BPH that people can do something about is obesity, particularly in the abdominal region. To investigate whether dietary changes could be beneficial as well, Kristal and his team followed 4,770 initially BPH-free men for seven years, during which time 876 developed the condition.
Men who had two or more alcoholic beverages daily were 33% less likely to develop BPH than teetotalers, the researchers found, while those who consumed at least four servings of vegetables daily were at 32% lower risk than those who ate fewer than one serving per day.
Red meat increased the likelihood of BPH, but only in men who ate it every day. Men who ate the most fat were 31% more likely to develop BPH, while the highest consumers of protein actually cut their risk by 15%.
The protein finding "doesn't mean go out and eat lean meat, it means go out and find lean sources of protein, which can be quite diverse," Kristal told Reuters Health, pointing to beans and vegetable proteins as two possibilities.
Also, he and his colleagues found, taking antioxidant supplements had no effect on BPH risk. "Dietary supplements didn't matter, no matter how you looked at it. It was the dietary pattern, not the use of supplements."
Eating to avoid BPH can help prevent obesity and heart disease as well, Kristal noted. "It's almost saying that here's a diet that seems to be associated generally with less aging. It's uncanny to me that you do more and more research and discover that these aging-related diseases seem to be consistently lower with the same type of dietary pattern."
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, online February 7, 2008.
