Prostate cancer prevention is still a pipe dream in most people's mind. For that matter the prospect of conquering all cancers seems eons a way. I refer to all 200 or more different types of cancers of which prostate cancer is only one.
A urologist who recently joined me on a Maine radio show, "Prostate Cancer Health Talk" (see The Designer Health Net Talk Show), expressed his doubts that we would see an end to prostate cancer at any point in our lifetimes. I disagreed, saying I believe this disease will indeed end in our lifetimes ... if we live long enough!
The new science of angiogenesis - the growth of blood vessels - bolsters my optimism. According to Dr. William Li, one of angiogenesis' key researchers, many of society’s most devastating diseases -- cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, to name a few -- share a common denominator: faulty angiogenesis, - the body’s growth of new capillary blood vessels. Given excessive or insufficient blood vessel growth, serious health issues arise
Dr. Li applied his angiogenesis studies with his mentor, Harvard professor and surgeon, Dr. Judah Folkman, to develop methods for prompting blood vessel growth, when useful, and restricting such growth when it's dangerous. By retarding blood vessel growth, in a process he calls anti-angiogenesis, he has demonstrated that it's possible to starve prostate cancer and other tumors when they are still at the cellular level.
You can learn more by seeing his video presentation. In that video Dr. Li presents his insights in down-to-earth terms. After years of study, he has developed anti-angiogensis by preventing veins from growing and feeding tumors in rats, dogs, horses and other animals.
Dr. Li notes that certain medicines like Avastin use the process of anti-angiogenesis to lower breast cancer risk. While he emphasizes that there are dozens of antiangiogenic drugs, Dr. Li emphasizes how patients need to do their part to control their health by eating proper foods.
To his credit he underscores how proper nutrition is critical to conquering cancer and other diseases. As he has indicated certain foods have the same anti-angiogenesis effect as selected prescribed drugs.
He implicitly views tomatoes as an antiangiogenic food. For that reason he singles out a well-known 20-year study of 79,000 men, including those who regularly ate large portions of cooked tomatoes and those who didn't. Among the findings was men who ate cooked tomato-products such as sauce three times a week lowered their prostate cancer risk by up to 50% compared to men who don't. He claims tomatoes are rich in lycopene and are antiangiogenic as well as antioxidants, as they retard the growth of blood vessels and, in turn, tumors.
According to Dr. Li human protocols have already begun to verify the importance of diet in preventing cancer. He mentioned in passing that he is working with other leading doctors like Dean Ornish to verify that food products associated with anti-angiogenesis have a beneficial effect in preventing disease. And some 40,000 doctors have been trained by Dr. Li's Angiogenesis Foundation in California to treat all kinds of medical conditions.
Further studies will likely confirm the optimism of Dr. Li. Given his clinical studies thus far, he implores us to believe that through angiogenesis and anti-angiogenesis some of the great scourges affecting humanity may yet get resolved.
In his words: "Imagine that one medical advancement held the promise to conquer cancer, perhaps within your lifetime … the potential to also end more than 70 of life's most threatening conditions, affecting one billion people worldwide. This is the promise of angiogenesis, the first medical revolution of the 21st century."
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