The prostate is a little gland that can cause a lot of problems for men as they age. However, with the proper nutrition and lifestyle changes, you can have a happy and healthy prostate regardless of age.
Prostatitis - inflammation of the prostate that is sometimes the result of a bacterial infection
Benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) - an enlarged prostate
Prostate cancer
As men age, the prostate tends to grow larger, which can squeeze the urethra, leading to issues with urination.
Lifestyle changes to support prostate health
Thankfully, there are lifestyle changes that can support a happy and healthy prostate.
One of the most important things to do to help keep your prostate healthy is to get the recommended screening and checkups done to check for prostate cancer and other prostate problems. It’s important to discuss any symptoms or issues you may be having with your doctor. Don’t be stubborn; get that prostate checked!
Stress and prostate health
Chronically high levels of uncontrolled stress can lead to a worsening of prostate symptoms. It depletes zinc, an essential mineral for prostate health, increases cortisol levels, and reduces testosterone levels, which can increase estrogen levels, and this leads to an increase in prostate size. It also increases the conversion of testosterone to DHT. One of the best things you can do to keep your prostate healthy is to work on stress reduction. Check out our blog for tips on how you can manage stress.
Sleep and Prostate health
Getting proper sleep has a significant impact on prostate health.
Click the button below to download our free guide to healthy sleep.
Exercise and prostate health
Getting the right type and amount of exercise can significantly support prostate health.
Vitamin D and prostate health
There is some correlation, not proven causation, between low vitamin D levels and more aggressive forms of prostate cancer. It can’t hurt to have your doctor check your vitamin D level; if it is low, address it.
Sunshine and prostate health
Exposing your eyes to sunlight at the correct times during the day is simple and has fantastic benefits for prostate health. At sunrise and sunset, try to get outside and get at least fifteen minutes of sunlight, and you get bonus points for walking barefoot in the grass. Get the morning sunshine before you look at your phone or a screen. Not only will your prostate benefit, but it also helps reset your sleep cycle, improve immune health, and boost your mood.
Hydration and prostate health
Many men with prostate problems avoid drinking fluids because they feel it makes them have to go to the bathroom. The problem is that this creates a vicious cycle, which creates more urination problems.
However, avoiding caffeinated beverages is a good idea, as caffeine can irritate the prostate and urinary tract. Caffeine also increases cortisol levels, which can create problems for those with prostate issues.
Try swapping your morning coffee for a cup of Amaru Cacao; your prostate will thank you, and you will still have a great morning pick-me-up!
Foods To Eat for prostate health
The foods you eat or don’t eat can make a big difference in the health of the prostate.
First up is reducing the amount of omega-six in the diet. While we need small amounts of omega-six, nearly everyone gets far too much. This leads to lots of inflammation. Check out our blog to learn how to reduce levels of omega-six and improve your omega-6/3 ratio. The ratio should be between 3-5:1. Unfortunately, most of the population has a ratio way out of proportion. You can do this at home test to see your ratio. Correcting this ratio will improve the health of your prostate and the rest of your body. The way out-of-whack omega 6/3 ratio that nearly everyone has is one of the least talked about, biggest health problems we face. It is a massive contributor to so many health issues. Dramatically reducing omega-six consumption is more important than simply increasing the omega-three in our diet.
Next, cut back on junk food. You don’t have to be perfect, but we all know that eating less junk food is good. Replacing ultra-processed foods with nourishing whole foods is essential to building good health.
Many foods can support a healthy prostate. However, it’s not just eating the right foods; timing is also essential.
Try to eat a protein-rich breakfast within an hour of waking up. This helps prevent large spikes in cortisol levels. You should avoid having coffee before breakfast.
Zinc is essential for prostate health; many people do not get enough bioavailable zinc. Much of the zinc consumed comes fortified in ultra-processed foods, such as cereal, which contains a form of zinc that is very poorly absorbed, zinc oxide. Zinc in most plant foods is poorly absorbed because phytates reduce the absorption.
Foods rich in bioavailable zinc include:
Grass-fed red meat
Wild-caught shellfish, especially oysters
Organ meats
Especially liver, kidneys, and heart
Dry roasted or sprouted pumpkin seeds
Dry roasting and sprouting the pumpkin seeds makes the zinc easier to absorb.
Remember that pumpkin seeds have quite a bit of omega-six, so if your ratio of omega 6:3 is off, it is best to choose other zinc-rich foods.
Lycopene is a carotenoid that has many benefits for prostate health. Lycopene-rich foods include:
Tomatoes
Cook them for maximum benefit.
Watermelons
Papaya
Apricots
Peaches
Cranberries
Red Grapes
Lycopene is best absorbed with fat, so eat these foods with high polyphenol olive oil or grass-fed dairy products.
Berries and pomegranates (eat the actual pomegranates or frozen seeds, not the bottled juice at the store) are colorful fruits with significant prostate health benefits. Eat a cup of these a day for a happy prostate.
Probiotic-rich foods like grass-fed kefir, yogurt, and lacto-fermented veggies (especially sauerkraut and kimchi) are a great way to support your urinary system microbiome, which plays a significant role in prostate health. Eat these daily to get the benefits, as it takes time to alter the microbiome.
Avocados and eggs are rich in vitamin E, an important prostate health nutrient. Avoid synthetic vitamin E supplements, as they may have some unwanted effects in people with prostate issues.
Wild-caught fatty fish are a great way to increase your omega-three levels. Avoid farm-raised fish. Don’t sleep on tinned (buy these in water, not oil) and frozen fish; they are a great way to get the benefits of fish and spend far less.
Fresh broccoli sprouts are one of the best foods for supporting prostate health.
Avoid the ones at the store because they are often old, grown improperly, and contaminated with bacteria.
Grow your own and harvest them on day six when levels of important constituents are at their highest. This company sells an excellent kit for growing them at home.
Eat an ounce per day.
While broccoli and broccoli seeds have some of the beneficial compounds, broccoli sprouts, grown and harvested correctly, have much higher levels of valuable compounds.
Matcha tea is rich in several beneficial compounds, including EGCG, which helps support a healthy prostate. Unfortunately, many matcha teas are adulterated with rice (and other things) or are improperly made. Choose matcha tea that comes directly from the farm, not from a middleman, and has a bright, vibrant green color. Matcha should not be brown or dull in color. Good matcha tea is not cheap. You won’t find a big tub of it for twenty dollars. It will come in small containers.
The above product retails at $34.99 for eleven ounces, which seems a great deal and is much less expensive than other ceremonial-grade matcha powders. So what’s going on here? Well, if you look at the supplement facts panel, each serving is five grams, which is five thousand milligrams. If you look further down the supplement facts panel, each serving contains one thousand milligrams of matcha green tea. The other four thousand milligrams are brown rice solids. At least they were honest and listed the brown rice solids in the ingredients. This means that eighty percent of the product is brown rice solids, and only twenty percent is matcha. Only 2.2 ounces of the eleven ounces of this product is matcha. It's not as great a deal as it first appears. Many matcha products might appear to be a good deal, but there is usually a reason why they are so inexpensive!
Supplements For Prostate Health
The right supplements can help to support and nourish your prostate. The key to getting the most benefits from your prostate health supplements (and all other supplements) is to take them daily, at the full dosage, for at least three months. Taking them for just a short period of time, taking too low of a dosage, or skipping lots of days will make them ineffective.
The first is a good prostate complex. One issue with many prostate health products is the adulteration of saw palmetto. Due to poor harvests and disease in the plants because of our changing climate, finding properly made saw palmetto extract is difficult, to say the least. Saw palmetto is often adulterated with palm oil, lecithin, fatty acids, carotenoids, and more.
Another very common adulterant is spent saw palmetto berries. How can saw palmetto be adulterating saw palmetto, you ask? What a great question; I’m so glad you asked. Spent material adulteration is a huge problem in the supplement industry; unfortunately, it is rarely discussed.
What is spent herb adulteration?
When companies make herbal extracts, they extract the beneficial compounds from the raw material and sell that extract. After making the extract, there is leftover plant material called spent herb. This spent herb has had its beneficial compounds removed, so it will not have any benefits, but it can still be labeled as that herb. So, companies can claim to be selling saw palmetto or other herbs, but they will be useless. Many saw palmetto and other herbal products are on the market like this. That’s how you can see huge bottles of herbal supplements on Amazon for only a few dollars when a correctly made product would cost much, much more, even though the labels look the same.
This product claims to contain a 10:1 extract (ten pounds of herb are used to make one pound of extract) of saw palmetto, 300 capsules, for only $8.96 on Amazon. It is impossible to sell what is being stated on the label and that number of capsules for that price, as that is less than what the saw palmetto extract raw material itself would cost, let alone manufacturing, testing, and shipping. Check out our blog to learn why buying supplements (or other ingestible products) on Amazon and other third-party marketplaces is very risky.
Click the button below to read more about saw palmetto adulteration and download a report on it from our friends at the American Botanical Council.
We spent a long time trying to find a saw palmetto supplement that was not adulterated and contained the full dosage needed in the right ratio.
Triquetra Health Saw Palmetto Extract With Pumpkin Seed Oil exceeds US Pharmacopeia Pharmaceutical grade standards, with 320 mg per softgel, 90% fatty acid content, and is a 100% oil extract. Pumpkin Seed Oil is a rich source of essential fatty acids and phytosterols that complement saw palmetto by supporting healthy prostate and urinary function. Their saw palmetto is grown and extracted in central Florida using a clean CO2 extraction process, ensuring it is 100% free of contaminants, additives, irradiation, and unwanted solvents like hexane and acetone. Their saw palmetto extract is the highest quality, with over a 95% composition of active nutrients, and the Pumpkin Seed Oil contributes to potent beta-sitosterol levels. The berries are transferred from the local farmers to the extraction facility, which is only a few miles away. Most saw palmetto products are now made from saw palmetto grown in southeast Asia, but this is a different species of saw palmetto and does not have the same benefits as the real thing. It is much cheaper to produce. The product was developed in partnership with Valensa in Florida, the leading producer of the world's highest-quality saw palmetto extract. Due to the increased cost of saw palmetto, adulteration problems are widespread and affecting a huge number of products. It's essential to know exactly where your saw palmetto is coming from and who makes it. Just one softgel per day provides the full dosage!
Next is concentrated red maca. It contains beneficial compounds not found in other plants. Red maca is higher in these prostate-supportive compounds than other colors of maca. These macamides (and other valuable compounds) help to support healthy prostate function. It is crucial to avoid eating raw maca products, as they can cause significant health problems. Check out our blog to learn more about the dangers of raw maca and this article to learn how to choose a good maca.
Third is unrefined cod liver oil. It is rich in omega-3 fatty acids in their naturally occurring state, as well as natural vitamins A and D.
Unrefined fish oil is very different from the traditional, heavily refined (molecularly distilled) fish oils, which have had beneficial nutrients stripped from them during the refining process and alter their fatty-acid structures. Check out our blog to learn more about this.
Fourth is broccoli sprout capsules. These Australian organically grown broccoli sprout capsules are made from sprouts harvested on day six of their growth. They are then immediately taken to the manufacturing facility and gently freeze-dried to retain the active myrosinase enzyme and glucoraphanin. They are retained intact by the freeze-drying process, which removes all water from the sprouts using cold drying technology under a vacuum. After being freeze-dried, they are cold-milled into a powder using a cryo mill to prevent heat and friction degradation. Then, the powder is encapsulated. That’s it; nothing is added or removed except the water. When the capsule enters the gut, stomach acids break down the cellulose capsules, creating a reaction between the myrosinase enzyme and the glucoraphanin molecule, producing sulforaphane. Three capsules supply the equivalent of one ounce of fresh broccoli sprouts. These compounds provide antioxidants and support the body’s detoxification pathways.
Fifth is a whole food probiotic complex. There is a big difference between a whole food probiotic containing proper amounts of prebiotics and postbiotics and a traditional probiotic containing just a few isolated bacteria and a tiny pinch of prebiotics. Check out our blog to learn the difference between conventional probiotics and whole-food probiotic supplements. A whole food synbiotic (prebiotic, probiotic, and postbiotic in one) helps to support a healthy microbiome in the urinary tract.
Check out our Prostate Health Pack for complete support of all aspects of prostate health!
Prostate Health Support
We know this is a lot of information, so if you have questions, don’t know where to start, or need support, we are always available to help. Drop us an email anytime at info@rooted-nutrition.com, or book a free call, and we will be happy to help you on your health journey!
Nourishing your prostate right will help keep it happy and healthy for your whole life!