'Little we can do to prevent prostate cancer'

Cartoon by Russ

Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for the UK, in this video (see 39.42) says 'for example prostate cancer, there really isn't very much you can do to prevent it but you can identify the aggressive forms earlier.' 

This was a 'Distinguished Lecture Series' talk out two weeks ago looking at 'Health in an ageing society'. It is certainly true that unlike some cancers (eg breast and cervical), research into how to prevent prostate cancer remains poor. However we do know that there is strong evidence that being overweight increases the risk of being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. There is also growing evidence of other factors.

Whitty mentioned healthy lifestyles earlier in the talk but seems to ignore their role in prostate cancer? Cancer Research UK say 'Prostate cancer is not linked to any preventable causes. Your risk of developing it depends on many things. These include age and ethnicity.' Other factors they note are family history, faulty genes, obesity, being taller, hormone levels and pesticides.

It seems to me that some of the factors they identify are preventable and will reduce chances of getting cancer - indeed even the World Health Organisation note that 30-50% of all cancers are preventable. What we need is more concerted efforts to improve lifestyle factors like diet and exercise. We already know that even 20 mins of exercise a day can prevent the return of some localised prostate cancers.

Prostate cancers like many others are on the rise - indeed cancer rates have doubled in the last thirty years in the UK. Some cancers, for example, some child cancers, have more than trebled.

It is long overdue time to take this issue more seriously. Clearly one factor alone does not cause all cancers - it is way more complicated but we do know that many things do increase or may increase the risk of cancers. We urgently need more information available for people. Just for starters there is more than enough expert research to attach ’Precautionary labels’ to Phones, Masts, WiFi, certain chemicals, pesticides, many drugs, HRT, the contraceptive pill, and even dairy. 

Nutrition is another key area - I like this approach from the Alliance for Natural Health - see here. See also Canceractive's 15 simple steps to cancer prevention here. 

It seems to me we could do with a manifesto for cancer prevention - checking online I found Cancer Research UK had issued one this year - see here. Sadly it seems to be more of the same from them with, as far as I can see, no mention of exercise or nutrition, no mention of cutting chemicals, ultra-processed foods etc etc. 

Locally I still sit on the Cancer Patient Reference Group for NHS Glos that meets monthly or bi-monthly - we are making slow progress on introducing more info to patients re lifestyle changes they can make - plus some basic support with prehab and rehab exercise, nutrition and mental health support. This of course is to those already diagnosed - wouldn't it be great if we could reach people before they got cancer - of course we wouldn't stop all cancers but I think we could stop and turn back the ever increasing rates of cancer which will mean that soon one in two people will get cancer.

Of course this blog post shouldn't be read without reading my post from September about banning the word 'prevention'. See that here: https://myunexpectedguide.blogspot.com/2023/09/time-to-ban-word-prevention.html