Young Again.org

 

Chapter 1: Diet

 

 

Diet is everything! A wholesome, natural diet is the most important thing you need to do to get well and stay well. By eating a traditional whole-food diet, you can actually eliminate prostate infection, enlargement, or even cancer. If you have any doubts about this, please read Dirk Benedict’s book, Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy. Dirk was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his early thirties, and the doctors wanted to castrate him. That didn’t appeal to him much, so he decided to go on a “macrobiotic” (from the Greek “macro,” or great, and ‘bios,” or life) diet of whole grains, beans, and vegetables. He quit eating red meat, poultry, dairy products, sweeteners of all kinds, refined foods, preservatives, and the like. After only seven months, he knew he was well. He is now fifty-nine, healthy, happy, youthful, vibrant, and the father of two young sons. If he had listened to the doctors, he would have died many years ago as a sexless eunuch in diapers, without testicles.

 

Eating a natural diet of whole, unrefined foods is basic to getting well. Diet is everything. Supplements, hormones, exercise, and fasting are all secondary. When you are eating well, these additions are very powerful and make your recovery rapid. Without healthy, natural food it doesn’t matter what else you do; you’re just not going to get well.

 

We’ve all heard stories of people, like the Okinawans and others, who live very long lives and have low disease rates. Well, you don’t have to live in a remote farming village and give up all the conveniences of the modern world to do this. You just have to change your lifestyle. Such long-lived people eat a diet based on whole grains, beans, vegetables, seafood, local fruits, and very little, if any, meat or dairy products. Generally, their fat intake is only about 10 percent vegetable oils, rather than saturated animal fats.

 

Most of the current “diet” authors give terrible advice on how to eat. There are only a few who really have any idea what they’re doing, and practice what they preach. Gary Null, Robert Pritikin, Neal Barnard, Terry Shintani, Susan Powter, Dean Ornish, Michio Kushi, and others write fine books on eating well, as do any of the authors of macrobiotic books. Please read my book Zen Macrobiotics for Americans. For optimum health, your diet should be based on complex whole-carbohydrates from whole grains and beans. Most all vegetables are fine, but the Nightshade family (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant) and vegetables containing excess oxalic acid (spinach, rhubarb, red chard) should be avoided. Any bean is fine, and there are dozens of varieties. Local fruit can be eaten in moderation, as can seafood, if you are not allergic to it. Avoid red meat and poultry, eggs, and milk and dairy of all kinds. Do not eat refined foods, processed foods, sweeteners of any kind (including honey), or tropical foods such as citrus, pineapples, mangos and coconuts (all of which are meant for tropical populations in their native environment).

 

Dairy milk (including low-fat milk) contains large amounts of lactose, regardless of the fat content. Milk has repeatedly been shown to correlate with prostate disease.^{1, 2} Due to its high lactose content, yogurt actually has twice the amount of lactose, since dried-milk powder is added to thicken it. People of all races especially Blacks and Asians, lose their ability to digest lactose after the age of three, as our bodies no longer produce lactase, the enzyme necessary to digest dairy. Adding lactase tablets to your dairy foods or buying lactose-reduced milk will not solve the problem. Please visit the Internet websites www.notmilk.com or www.milksucks.com. Use soy, almond, oat, or rice milk instead, as these are now commonly available in grocery stores, refrigerated or in aseptic shelf packs.

 

Surprisingly, no studies have shown a correlation between prostate disease and sugar intake, harmful as it is when consumed in excess. Americans eat about 160 pounds of various unneeded sweeteners in their food every year, while Asians and Africans, with the lowest prostate disease rates, eat only a fraction of that amount. Sugar is sugar is sugar, whether it is honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, “raw” sugar, molasses, sorghum syrup, cane syrup, dextrose, fructose, maltose, fruit syrup, amazake, fruit juice, fruit concentrate, invert sugar, corn syrup, dried fruit, or any other form of sweetener, regardless of the name it is given. It’s always good for a laugh to see someone in a health food store paying several dollars for a small bag of “raw” sugar, thinking that this is somehow different, not really sugar, and not really bad for them.

 

Also surprisingly, no relationship with prostate disease has been shown from smoking, or drinking alcohol and coffee. Don’t misinterpret this, but alcoholics generally do have smaller prostates than non-drinkers. Alcohol, however, does cause many other disease conditions. Exercise does not seem to correlate with prostate health either, although obesity definitely does.³ Study after study shows that being overweight causes higher rates of every illness. Does anything correlate positively with prostate health? Yes, grain, fiber, cereal, and vegetable intake do, as does eating fewer calories, not being overweight, and eating a low-fat diet.

It is very important to eat less. Americans eat about twice the calories, twice the protein, and more than five times the fat they need. Calorie restriction is the most proven and effective way to extend your life span. Nothing else has been shown to make you live longer and live better than eating fewer calories. This has been demonstrated in many clinical studies with animals, including monkeys. Human studies prove that this, as well as many other heath problems, benefit from low-calorie diets. It seems that the only author on this subject is Roy Walford, who wrote The 120-Year Diet and Maximum Lifespan. Unfortunately, he went in a different direction with his Beyond the 120-Year Diet.

 

The average man needs only about 1,800 calories a day, and a woman only about 1,200 calories. You can easily eat just two meals a day, instead of three. You can also fast (fasting means only water) one day a week, by skipping breakfast and lunch on a specified day. Longer fasts may be done periodically for more powerful effects. Doctors at the University of Wisconsin improved the immunity of prostate glands in rats by merely lowering their calorie intake. Other doctors at the university showed that lowering the calorie intake of mice altered their entire genetic-aging profile and allowed them to live much longer, with greatly enhanced immunity. Researchers in Takatsuki, Japan⁵ actually reduced the prostate weights of rats by simply giving them less food. Doctors at the University of Umea in Sweden⁶ gave rats with prostate cancer less food, inhibiting the growth of their tumors. Monkeys are currently being studied for calorie restriction, with excellent preliminary results. At the Hutchison Cancer Center,⁷ men who ate the least calories had only half the prostate cancer of the control group. This, in addition to eating the right foods, is the most effective means you can use to lengthen and improve the quality of your life span.

 

The extensive use of soy-based foods has been suggested, since many Asian cultures eat quite a lot of these. This is very unrealistic and impractical, for several reasons. Soybeans per se, just don’t taste very good. Tofu is not a whole food, nor is it very nutritious. Most people have never heard of tempeh, seitan, or annatto and have little interest in eating them. Soy sauce is merely a condiment. A little miso goes a long way and, basically, is used only in soup. How much soy flour can you really add to your baked goods? Soymilk is rather high in calories (about 120 per cup) and should be limited used in cooking rather than as a beverage. Soy isoflavones, as a supplement, are really the most practical way to take soy, and are recommended in Chapter 3.