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Tag: cranberries

  • Do Cranberries and Pumpkin Seeds Help an Enlarged Prostate?

    Do Cranberries and Pumpkin Seeds Help an Enlarged Prostate?

    Cranberries and pumpkin seeds are put to the test for benign prostatic hypertrophy.

    More than 50% of men in their 50s and at least 70% of men over age 60 suffer from benign prostatic hypertrophy, or BPH, otherwise known as enlarged prostate. This can result in burdensome lower urinary tract symptoms, such as having to get up frequently at night to pee. While current medical treatments are clinically effective, side effects and low compliance rates compromise their efficacy. Symptoms include sexual dysfunction, high-grade prostate cancer, and depression. No wonder there’s poor compliance. And when medication treatment fails, surgical procedures—such as transurethral resection of the prostate—are considered. There has got to be a better way.

    Population studies suggest that low intake of animal protein and high intake of fruits and vegetables may be protective, but this is not just about cutting down on any animal protein. Eggs and poultry seem to be the worst, along with refined grains, but no association was found for red meat or dairy. Population studies aside, are there any foods that have been put to the test? In fact, there have been more than 30 randomized controlled trials on the herb saw palmetto. And it’s been found to be…totally useless.

    Evidently, cranberries were used by Native Americans to treat urinary ailments. Were they effective? You don’t know until you put them to the test. Study participants consuming about a teaspoon a day (around 3 g) of powdered whole cranberries—not those sugary, oily “craisins”—experienced significant improvements in BPH symptoms, quality of life, and all urination parameters.

    So, we know a teaspoon works, but what about a third of a teaspoon or a sixth of a teaspoon? They also helped, as you can see below and at 2:05 in my video Natural Dietary Treatments for Enlarged Prostate BPH. (The results from the one teaspoon of powdered cranberries in the previous study are represented by the bottom green line.)

    Now, this study (with the graph) used a supplement, because it was funded by the supplement company, but the supplement is just straight cranberry powder. So, you might as well buy it in bulk for much cheaper and just add it to a smoothie or something.

    What about a tastier option, like drinking purple grape juice? No benefit whatsoever.

    Previously, I’ve talked about the use of flaxseeds, which may have a therapeutic efficacy comparable to that of commonly used drugs—and only good side effects. So, what about other seeds? Pumpkin seeds have evidently been used for centuries in folk medicine as a remedy for prostate disorders, and in a petri dish, they can cut the growth of BPH prostate cells in half, as you can see below and at 2:48 in my video.

    Scientists have also injected pumpkin seed extracts into rabbits, but what about people?

    Pumpkin seed oil appears to help with prostate issues. When pitted head-to-head against the drug Prazosin, it seemed to work as well as the pill. The same thing happened when it went head-to-head against the drug Terazosin. But what the study didn’t have was a placebo group. It would have been nice to see how well the pumpkin seed oil supplement did against placebo. Or better yet—whole pumpkin seeds. In fact, there is such a study! More than a thousand men were randomized to take either pumpkin seed extract, a placebo, or just about a tablespoon a day (about 7.5 g) of plain pumpkin seeds.

    The study was funded by the drug company that made the supplement, but the supplement flopped; it was no better than placebo. The pumpkin seeds themselves, however, did work. The supplement appeared to reduce symptoms, but not better than placebo. However, just the plain old seeds did. So, it wasn’t just some compound extracted from the oil. In fact, we’ve since learned that even an oil-free extract seemed to work. The bottom line, the researchers concluded, is that pumpkin seeds could be recommended for patients with mild-to-moderate BPH symptoms. This conclusion was echoed by the European equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Pumpkin seeds can be used to relieve lower urinary tract symptoms related to an enlarged prostate after more serious conditions have been ruled out by a medical doctor.

    Doctor’s Note

    The flaxseed video I mentioned is Flaxseeds vs. Prostate Cancer.

    What about cranberries and prostate cancer? See Cranberries vs. Cancer.

    Can Cranberry Juice Treat Bladder Infections? Watch the video to find out.



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  • What About Elderberry, Echinacea, and Cranberries for Colds and the Flu? 

    What About Elderberry, Echinacea, and Cranberries for Colds and the Flu? 

    How effective are flu shots, elderberries, echinacea, and cranberries?

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone over the age of six months get a routine flu shot every year, unless you have some sort of contraindication, such as an allergy to any of the vaccine’s components. CDC recommends getting vaccinated by the end of October, but it may even be beneficial when received in December or later. How effective are flu vaccines? It depends on the year, but, as you can see below and at 0:33 in my video Friday Favorites: Elderberry Benefits and Side Effects: Does It Help with Colds and the Flu?, the flu vaccine typically reduces the risk of getting the flu by about 40 to 50 percent.

    So, in healthy adults, we can say with moderate certainty that we can decrease our risk of influenza from about 2 percent each year down to just under 1 percent. Older adults may get a similar relative risk reduction, but the baseline risk is higher and the consequences greater, so the absolute benefits are greater, too. In kids, flu vaccines shine; there’s a high certainty of evidence of a substantial drop in risk. But even in this kind of best-case scenario, there’s still a risk with vaccination, so what else can we do?

    In the United States alone, each year, Americans experience millions of cases of influenza and hundreds of millions of colds. What about elderberry supplements? In a test tube, elderberry extracts can inhibit pathogens, including the flu virus. In a petri dish, it can rev up the production of flu-fighting molecules from human immune system cells, like tumor necrosis factor, as much as nearly 45-fold. Elderberry juice can help mice fight off the flu. But what about actual people?

    The first clinical trial was published back in the 1990s: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to treat flu-like symptoms. Researchers found that the odds for improvement before the fifth day in those in the treated group were more than 20 times the odds of the participants in the control group (p showed similar accelerated healing in the elderberry groups, as you can see here and at 1:54 in my video. 

    I was excited to see this study—“Elderberry Supplementation Reduces Cold Duration and Symptoms in Air-Travelers”—given a 200-city book tour I was embarking on. It was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 312 economy class passengers. While taking elderberry didn’t seem to prevent people from coming down with cold symptoms, the duration and severity of symptoms in those who did get a cold seemed to have been lessened, and they suffered an average of about five days instead of seven.

    A similar study using the herb echinacea found a lessening of symptom scores, but it was of only borderline statistical significance. Nevertheless, even though most of the individual trials didn’t find statistically significant improvements, when all such studies were compiled, it seems there may be about a 20 percent decrease incidence of colds, as seen below and at 2:50 in my video.

    Note, though, that there is a concern about publication bias and selective reporting. A number of findings and some entire studies seem to be MIA, suggesting that negative studies may have been quietly shelved. So, we aren’t really sure about echinacea, but all the elderberry studies seem to have positive results, suggesting elderberry supplementation “provides an effective treatment option when advanced or more invasive care [more serious treatment] is not warranted.” This conclusion came from someone with apparent conflicts of interest, though. In fact, each of the four elderberry studies was funded by the elderberry product companies themselves.

    Any other berries that might be helpful? A randomized, placebo-controlled, interventional study—funded, predictably, by Ocean Spray—found that the gamma-delta-T-cells of those drinking a low-calorie cranberry juice beverage for ten weeks appeared to be proliferating at nearly fivefold the rate. These immune cells “serve as a first line of defense.” Though the study participants didn’t get fewer colds, they did seem to suffer less, but not enough to prevent days missed from work or an impairment of their activities, as shown here and at 3:56 in my video. 

    At least cranberries have never been reported to cause pancreatitis. A man taking an elderberry extract not only suffered an attack of acute pancreatitis, a sudden painful inflammation of the pancreas, but it went away when he stopped it, then reappeared again years later when he tried taking it again, which suggests cause-and-effect. Why take elderberry extracts when you can just eat the elderberries themselves? Well, cooked are fine, but “consuming uncooked blue or black elderberries can cause nausea and vomiting.”

    I found out the hard way, as I explained in an answer to the question, “What was the worst day of your life?” in my London Real interview on my How Not to Die book tour. It turns out elderberry fruits form cyanide, such that eight people had to be medevacked out after someone brought freshly squeezed elderberry juice to a gathering.

    Doctor’s Note:

    Here’s the London Real interview I mentioned.

    What else can we do for the common cold? See the related posts below.

    And, speaking of cranberries, Can Cranberry Juice Treat Bladder Infections?. Watch the video to find out. 



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