Walnuts good for men - claim

Tuesday March 23rd, 2010

Walnuts may help protect men from cancer, researchers reported last night.

Men who wish to keep their prostates healthy should include walnuts in their diet, according to researcher Dr Paul Davis.

The conclusions come from a study of laboratory mice.

Scientists compared a diet including walnuts with one including soya bean oil.

The mice had been genetically bred to develop prostate cancer - but those who were fed walnuts developed cancers half as small and growing more slowly than the others.

The findings were reported to the conference of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, California, USA. The research was funded by the California Walnuts Board.

Dr Davis said he wanted to test walnuts because they include a range of supposedly healthy substances, including omega-3 oils, vitamin E, polyphenols and anti-oxidants.

Dr Davis, of the University of California-Davis, USA, said: "Walnuts should be part of a prostate-healthy diet. They should be part of a balanced diet that includes lots of fruits and vegetables."

Dr Davis said efforts to extract supplements from "healthy" foods such as walnut had often proved unsuccessful - so he decided to test the whole nut, shelled.

He said: "We decided to use whole walnuts in the diet because when a single component of a food linked to cancer prevention has been tested as a supplement, that food's cancer-preventative effects disappear in most cases."

* A second study has linked male infertility to prostate cancer.

Men who cannot have children are more than twice as likely as others to develop dangerous forms of the disease, according to researchers in Seattle, Washington, USA.

The findings come from a study of more than 22,000 men tested for infertility in clinics in California, USA, over a 30-year period.

Although the rate of cancer among all the men was not unexpectedly high, the researchers found high rates among those who doctors concluded were totally infertile.

Writing in the journal Cancer, researcher Dr Thomas Walsh says the findings suggest infertile men could be screened early for prostate cancer.

And he calls for research on any biological links between infertility and prostate cancer.

Cancer Online: March 22, 2010 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.25075).

Tags: Cancer | Diet & Food | Men’s Health | UK News

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