You may be at an age where thoughts about the health of your prostate enter your mind once every never, but like a schnauzer nuzzling your pant leg for a Milk Bone, it’ll eventually get your attention one way or another. It may start to swell up as early as your forties, at which point you’ll say goodbye to sleeping the whole night through without getting up to go to the bathroom. But regardless of whether it gives you any problems or not, your doctor will at some point start to nag you about adding a PSA test to your blood work so he or she can begin to monitor it, in case, you know, the big C. The problem with that is, as I explained in The Truth About Prostate Testing, is that the PSA test itself is problematical. One task force concluded that you’re 120-240 times more likely to be misdiagnosed as having prostate cancer from a positive PSA test and 40-80 times more likely to get unnecessary surgery or radiation than you are of having your life saved (1). Another study concluded that, “Harms associated with PSA-based screening and subsequent diagnostic evaluations are frequent, and moderate in severity… Common major harms include over-diagnosis and overtreatment, including infection, blood loss requiring transfusion, pneumonia, erectile dysfunction, and incontinence (2).” Even the guy who discovered PSA, pathologist Richard J. Ablin, called the PSA test a “profit-driven public health disaster” because it’s led to approximately 30 million American men being tested every year at a cost of at least 3 billion dollars. Of course, these false positives, if they occur, are much more likely to happen when you’re an old or semi-old coot. Even so, it’d be a good idea to at least start taking a little bit of preemptive care of the organ when you’re still young. And for those who have already reached coot or semi-coot status, it’s imperative that you start giving your prostate a little love now, and by that I mean some sensible, prostate-friendly dietary strategies. Besides, most of the following foods also strengthen erections, so if prostate health isn’t a concern of yours, let carnal self-interests guide you. Prostate (and Erection) Supporting Foods Here are five foods that you should be eating on a regular basis, all of which have been found to be helpful in freezing or lowering PSA levels: 1 – Tomatoes Tomatoes contain lycopene, a powerful polyphenol that has, like all polyphenols, powerful anti-oxidant properties, but lycopene almost surely has some other potent, yet undiscovered mechanisms through which it lowers prostate cancer risk. We know that lycopene is more absorbable through cooked tomatoes and tomato products like pastes and sauces. We also know that eating them with a little fat, like olive oil, further helps absorption. But even raw tomatoes seem to help, as does pedestrian ketchup, regardless of whether it’s green, purple, or red tomato ketchup, although the dark red variety has been shown to contain the most lycopene. Try adding some sort of tomato product to your diet at least 4 to 5 times a week. Other than using a lot of ketchup, the easiest way to do this might be to just cut up a raw tomato into bite-size pieces, douse them with salt and olive oil, and munch on them as a pre-dinner appetizer. 2 – Carrots Chinese epidemiologists, after scanning ten studies, found a stunning correlation between eating carrots and the rate of prostate cancer (3). They found that the more often men ate carrots, and the greater the amount of carrots eaten (to a point), the less likely they were to get prostate cancer. They even came up with some definitive numbers: For every 10 grams of carrots consumed each day, men reduced their risk of developing prostate cancer by 5%. That means that if men had at least 50 grams of carrots a day, their chances of developing prostate cancer could be cut in half. The researchers think it has something to do with the large amount of cancer-fighting carotenoids (including lycopene) found in carrots. Sadly, doubling the amount of carrots eaten only goes so far. Increasing your carrot intake to 100 grams doesn’t drop the chances of getting prostate cancer to zero, so don’t suddenly think you figured out a way to cheat death. Anyhow, the average carrot weighs about 72 grams, and a cup of chopped carrots weighs around 122 grams, so eating 50 grams a day is about as easy a dietary task as you’ll ever get. 3 – Pomegranate Juice While the people who make POM Wonderful pomegranate juice have made claims about its efficacy in treating prostate cancer that were a little too bold for the FDA, there is some evidence that shows it can slow the rise of PSA levels in men who’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Pomegranate may also juice up erections, so there’s that, too. Drink about 6 ounces of juice a day with or without meals. 4 – Green Tea This drink, made from the steeped leaves of camellia sinensis, allegedly benefits almost every organ system in the body. It
Origin: 5 Foods For Better Erections & A Healthy Prostate