Prostate Health Foods: What Diet Research Says About Tomatoes, Fat and the Prostate

Every September, when Prostate Cancer Awareness Month arrives, a familiar clip resurfaces. This year, as of September 2026, it is a video in which a confident voice tells millions of viewers that a daily spoon of tomato paste will “shrink the prostate in six weeks” and that cooking oils are the real reason prostate cancer is common. Search interest in prostate health foods spiked within days, and so did the questions landing in urology clinics: should I stop eating eggs, is my coffee a problem, do I need lycopene capsules?

Those questions deserve better than a 40-second answer. The research on food and the prostate is genuinely interesting, occasionally surprising, and far more modest than the viral version. Some of the most famous findings came from large studies that followed tens of thousands of men for decades. Some of the most confident supplement claims were tested in trials and failed.

What follows is the state of the evidence, graded honestly, with the gaps left visible.

What changed recently to make prostate health foods trend again

The short answer is that the science did not change much; the algorithm did. Awareness-month coverage, a viral tomato-paste claim and a parallel wave of posts blaming seed oils converged in late summer 2026, and that mix pushed prostate health foods back into the top tier of men’s health searches.

The underlying evidence base is older and steadier than the trend suggests. The tomato story began in 1995, when researchers running the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, a cohort of more than 47,000 US men, reported that those eating ten or more servings of tomato products a week had roughly a third lower risk of prostate cancer than men eating fewer than two. The supplement story turned in 2008, when the National Cancer Institute’s SELECT trial, which enrolled more than 35,000 men, was stopped early because vitamin E and selenium showed no benefit. A 2011 follow-up published in JAMA found that vitamin E alone had raised prostate cancer risk by 17 percent; the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements still summarizes that result in its vitamin E fact sheet today.

Saw palmetto, the most popular herbal remedy for an enlarged prostate, failed two NIH-funded randomized trials, in 2006 and 2011. A 2013 trial of soy isoflavones in men after prostate surgery found no reduction in recurrence. None of those results has been overturned.

What is newer is the consensus language. Mayo Clinic and Harvard Health both now frame prostate protection as a whole-diet, whole-lifestyle question rather than a list of superfoods, and that framing matches the trial record. The viral clip got one thing right: tomatoes are worth eating. It got the mechanism, the timescale and the certainty wrong.

What the evidence actually says about prostate health foods

Grading matters here, because the word “linked” is doing heavy lifting in most headlines. Nutrition research on the prostate comes in three strengths.

The strongest is the randomized controlled trial, a study in which men are assigned by chance to a food, supplement or placebo, so that other habits cannot explain the result. For the prostate, randomized trials exist mainly for supplements, and they have mostly been negative: vitamin E, selenium, saw palmetto and soy isoflavones all failed to beat placebo for their intended outcome.

The middle tier is observational data: large cohorts followed for years, with diets recorded by questionnaire and cancers counted as they occur. This is where tomatoes, fish, dairy and red meat live. Cohorts can show association but not cause. Men who eat ten servings of tomato sauce a week also tend to eat more vegetables generally, smoke less and see doctors more often, and statistical adjustment never fully removes those differences.

The weakest tier is mechanism and expert opinion: laboratory work showing that lycopene quenches free radicals, or that compounds in broccoli switch on detoxifying enzymes in prostate cells. These findings generate hypotheses. They do not prove that a food changes what happens in a living man over 20 years.

Read across all three tiers, the pattern is consistent. Diets rich in vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains and fish, with limited red and processed meat, are associated with lower rates of advanced and fatal prostate cancer, and with fewer urinary symptoms from benign enlargement. Individual foods show weaker, less reproducible effects. Supplements that isolate a single nutrient have not delivered. That is the frame for everything below.

Lycopene and prostate health: do tomatoes really protect the prostate?

Lycopene is the red pigment in tomatoes, watermelon and pink grapefruit, and it is a potent antioxidant, meaning it neutralizes reactive molecules that can damage cell DNA. It also happens to concentrate in prostate tissue, which is why researchers took the tomato finding seriously from the start.

The observational evidence is reasonably consistent in direction. The 1995 Health Professionals result was followed by a 2002 analysis from the same cohort and by a 2014 update suggesting the association was strongest for lethal prostate cancer rather than the slow-growing kind most men are diagnosed with. Pooled analyses of multiple cohorts generally find a modest reduction in risk among the highest tomato or lycopene consumers, on the order of 10 to 20 percent, with wide uncertainty.

The randomized evidence is thin. Small trials have given men lycopene supplements and watched prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, the blood protein used to monitor the prostate. Results were mixed and the trials were too short and too small to measure cancer itself. The National Cancer Institute’s expert summary rates lycopene as having insufficient evidence for prevention.

Two practical details survive scrutiny. Cooking breaks down tomato cell walls and converts lycopene into a form the gut absorbs more readily, so sauce, paste and soup deliver more than raw slices. Lycopene is fat-soluble, so a little olive oil in the pan improves uptake. A Mediterranean-style tomato sauce is, by accident of chemistry, close to the ideal delivery vehicle.

What tomatoes cannot do is shrink an enlarged prostate in six weeks. No trial has shown that, and benign enlargement is driven by hormones and age, not by a lycopene shortfall.

Does dietary fat raise prostate cancer risk, and which fats matter?

The fat hypothesis is older than the tomato one. In the 1970s, researchers noticed that countries with high animal-fat intake also had high prostate cancer death rates, while Japan and much of Asia had both low fat intake and low rates. That is an ecological observation, the weakest kind, and it set up decades of more careful work.

Cohort studies since then have been inconsistent on total fat. Where a signal appears, it tends to involve saturated fat, the kind concentrated in fatty red meat, butter, cheese and processed foods, and it tends to show up for advanced or fatal disease rather than for being diagnosed at all. Several analyses have found that men with prostate cancer who swapped saturated fat for plant fats such as olive oil, nuts and avocado had lower prostate-cancer mortality, though again these are observational findings.

Fish fat is its own tangle. A 2010 meta-analysis, a study that pools results from many studies, found that eating fish did not lower the chance of being diagnosed but was associated with substantially lower prostate cancer deaths. Then a 2013 analysis of blood samples from the SELECT trial found that men with the highest circulating omega-3 levels had a higher rate of high-grade cancer. Both findings are observational, they point in opposite directions, and the field has not reconciled them. Fish oil supplements for prostate protection remain unproven either way.

Harvard Health’s practical reading is sensible: choose fish, nuts, seeds and olive oil over fatty cuts of meat and processed fats, and do so for your heart as much as your prostate. The seed-oil panic circulating online has no support in prostate cancer data.

Red meat, processed meat and high-heat cooking

Processed meat, meaning bacon, ham, sausages and deli slices preserved by curing, smoking or salting, is classified by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency as a definite cause of cancer, and red meat as a probable one. That classification rests mainly on colorectal cancer. For the prostate, the evidence is weaker and more specific.

Cohort studies have repeatedly found a modest association between high intake of red and especially processed meat and advanced prostate cancer, with little or no link to early-stage disease. The magnitude is usually in the range of a 10 to 30 percent relative increase for the heaviest consumers, and not every cohort finds it.

Cooking method may matter as much as the meat. Grilling, pan-frying or barbecuing meat until charred produces heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chemical compounds that damage DNA and have caused prostate tumors in laboratory animals. Human studies of well-done meat and prostate cancer have been mixed but lean toward a small increase in risk for men who prefer their steaks blackened.

Eggs have had their moment of suspicion too. One Health Professionals analysis linked high egg consumption to a greater risk of lethal prostate cancer, prompting a wave of alarmed headlines. Later analyses were inconsistent, and the finding is best treated as a hypothesis rather than a verdict. There is no basis for cutting eggs out of a reasonable diet on prostate grounds.

The defensible position: keep processed meat occasional, treat red meat as a side rather than the centerpiece, cook at moderate temperatures, and trim the char. Those are the same habits that protect the colon and the heart, which is why guidelines from Mayo Clinic and the NHS converge on them.

Dairy, calcium and the prostate: cause for concern or just correlation?

Milk is the food most likely to generate an argument at a men’s health talk. Several large cohorts, including the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and the Physicians’ Health Study, have found that men with the highest dairy and calcium intakes had a higher risk of prostate cancer, particularly advanced disease. Meta-analyses pooling these cohorts tend to confirm a modest association, with the highest versus lowest dairy consumers showing roughly a 10 percent relative increase.

The proposed mechanism is biologically plausible. Very high calcium intake may suppress the body’s production of the active form of vitamin D, a hormone that in laboratory studies slows the growth of prostate cells. Dairy also raises blood levels of insulin-like growth factor 1, a hormone that promotes cell division and has been linked to prostate cancer in observational studies.

Two caveats keep this from becoming a recommendation to avoid dairy. First, the associations are observational and small, and some well-conducted cohorts find nothing. Second, where a signal appears, it is usually at intakes well above typical recommendations, often from heavy supplementation rather than from food. Moderate dairy, a glass of milk or a serving of yogurt a day, has not been linked to meaningful risk in most studies.

Men also need calcium for bones, and men on hormone-blocking treatment for prostate cancer are at particular risk of bone loss. Cutting calcium drastically to protect the prostate can trade a speculative benefit for a concrete harm.

The balanced reading from Harvard Health and Mayo Clinic: enjoy dairy in moderation, favor plain yogurt and lower-fat options, and do not take high-dose calcium supplements without a reason your clinician has discussed with you.

Which vegetables, soy foods and drinks have the best data?

Beyond tomatoes, a handful of plant foods have accumulated enough evidence to be worth naming, and each comes with a strength rating.

Cruciferous vegetables, the family that includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts, contain compounds that the body converts into sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol, molecules that activate enzymes which neutralize carcinogens. Observational studies have linked higher cruciferous intake to lower risk of advanced prostate cancer, with a few cohorts finding a 20 to 40 percent reduction in the highest consumers. Small human trials show that broccoli changes gene activity in prostate tissue. Grade: moderate observational, early mechanistic.

Soy foods such as tofu, edamame and soy milk contain isoflavones, plant compounds with weak estrogen-like activity. Men in Japan and China, who eat soy daily, have far lower prostate cancer rates, and cohorts within those countries show lower risk with higher intake. The randomized evidence is less encouraging: a 2013 JAMA trial giving isoflavone supplements to men after prostate surgery found no reduction in cancer recurrence. Grade: consistent observational for whole foods, negative trial for supplements.

Legumes, whole grains and nuts show modest protective associations, largely as part of overall plant-rich patterns rather than as standalone foods.

Among drinks, coffee has the most surprising record. Pooled cohort analyses have associated higher coffee intake with lower prostate cancer risk, including fatal disease, independent of caffeine. Green tea, rich in catechin antioxidants, has produced mixed results in small trials. Pomegranate juice generated excitement after a PSA study in the mid-2000s, but a larger randomized trial found no effect. Grade for all three: observational or small trials, not proven.

Prostate health foods compared: strength of evidence at a glance

A table cannot capture nuance, but it can stop a reader from mistaking a laboratory finding for a clinical fact. The grades below reflect the kind of evidence available, not a recommendation to eat or avoid anything. Observational means large cohort studies; RCT means randomized controlled trial; mechanistic means laboratory or small human physiology studies.

Food or nutrient	Direction of finding	Best evidence type	Confidence
Cooked tomatoes, lycopene from food	Modestly lower risk, strongest for lethal disease	Observational, pooled cohorts	Moderate
Lycopene supplements	No reliable effect on PSA or cancer	Small RCTs	Low, not supported
Fish	No change in diagnosis; lower prostate cancer deaths	Observational meta-analysis	Low to moderate, conflicting
Saturated fat, fatty red meat	Possibly higher risk of advanced disease	Observational	Low to moderate
Processed meat, charred meat	Modestly higher risk of advanced disease	Observational	Low to moderate
High dairy and calcium intake	Modestly higher risk at very high intakes	Observational	Low to moderate
Cruciferous vegetables	Lower risk of advanced disease	Observational, mechanistic	Moderate
Soy foods	Lower risk in high-intake populations	Observational; negative RCT for supplements	Low to moderate
Coffee	Lower risk with higher intake	Observational	Low to moderate
Vitamin E, selenium supplements	No benefit; vitamin E raised risk 17%	Large RCT (SELECT)	High, against use
Saw palmetto	No better than placebo for urinary symptoms	Two RCTs	High, against benefit
Healthy weight, regular activity	Lower risk of aggressive cancer and urinary symptoms	Observational, consistent	Moderate to high

Notice where the high-confidence rows sit. The strongest evidence in prostate nutrition is mostly evidence against something: against isolated supplements. The positive findings for whole foods are real but modest, and they travel together as a dietary pattern rather than as individual heroes. That is why the most defensible advice sounds unexciting.

Diet for enlarged prostate: can food ease urinary symptoms?

Benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH, is the non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate that affects about half of men by their 50s and the great majority by their 80s. As the gland grows it squeezes the urethra, the tube carrying urine from the bladder, producing what clinicians call lower urinary tract symptoms: a weak stream, hesitancy, frequent night-time trips and a sense of incomplete emptying.

Diet cannot reverse that growth. What it can do, with reasonable evidence, is influence how bothersome the symptoms feel day to day.

Fluids are the first lever. The NHS advises men with BPH to keep drinking normally during the day but to taper fluids in the two hours before bed, and to avoid large volumes in one sitting. Caffeine and alcohol both increase urine production and can irritate the bladder lining, so cutting back, especially in the evening, often reduces night-time waking. Fizzy drinks and artificial sweeteners bother some men and not others; a two-week trial without them is a cheap experiment.

Weight is the second lever, and the better-studied one. Observational research consistently links abdominal obesity, insulin resistance and inactivity to larger prostates and worse symptoms, probably through inflammation and hormonal effects. Men who lose weight and exercise regularly report measurable symptom improvement in several cohorts.

Vegetables and fruit appear to help modestly in observational data, while high intake of red meat and fat has been associated with more symptoms. Constipation worsens urinary symptoms by pressing on the bladder, which is one more argument for fiber.

None of this replaces medical care. BPH has effective treatments, and the choice between watchful waiting, medicines and procedures belongs with a clinician who has examined you.

Supplements for the prostate: what the randomized trials found

Supplements are where the prostate story turns cautionary, because they are the one area with large, well-run randomized trials, and the trials mostly said no.

Vitamin E and selenium were the great hope of the early 2000s, after earlier studies hinted at protection. The SELECT trial enrolled 35,533 men across the US, Canada and Puerto Rico in 2001 and was halted in 2008 for lack of benefit. By 2011, with longer follow-up, men who had taken vitamin E alone showed a 17 percent higher rate of prostate cancer than men on placebo. Selenium did nothing useful and was associated with more diabetes in some analyses. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements now states plainly that these supplements should not be taken to prevent prostate cancer.

Saw palmetto, an extract from a palm berry, has been sold for decades for urinary symptoms. The STEP trial in 2006 and the larger CAMUS trial in 2011, both funded by the NIH, found it no better than placebo, even at escalating strengths. It appears safe, but there is no good evidence it works.

Zinc is concentrated in healthy prostate tissue, which led to the assumption that more is better. A Health Professionals analysis found the opposite: men taking high-dose zinc supplements for years had a higher risk of advanced prostate cancer. Zinc from food was not implicated.

Beta-sitosterol, a plant sterol, showed modest symptom improvement in older small trials, but the studies were short and of mixed quality. Pumpkin seed, nettle root and rye pollen have weaker data still.

If you take any supplement, tell your clinician. Several interact with medicines, and some can alter PSA readings in ways that complicate monitoring.

Foods to avoid for prostate health: what actually makes the list

The internet’s list of forbidden foods for the prostate is long and includes things like eggs, dairy, bread, tomatoes themselves in one memorable post, and anything cooked in vegetable oil. The evidence-based list is shorter and gentler, and it deals in “less” rather than “never”.

Processed meat earns the top spot, not because the prostate data are overwhelming but because the colorectal and cardiovascular data are, and the prostate signal points the same way. Bacon and sausage as an occasional pleasure is a different matter from a daily habit.

Charred and heavily grilled meat follows, for the reasons described earlier: the compounds formed at high heat damage DNA, and prostate tissue is not exempt. Marinating, cooking at lower temperatures and avoiding blackened surfaces reduce exposure without giving up the barbecue.

Very high dairy and calcium intake, mostly from supplements or from several servings of cheese and milk a day, shows a modest association with advanced disease. Moderate dairy does not.

Saturated and trans fats, found in fatty cuts, butter-heavy pastries and many ultra-processed snacks, have the weakest direct prostate link but the clearest overall case against them.

For men with an enlarged prostate, the list shifts toward bladder irritants: excess caffeine, alcohol, especially in the evening, and large late-night drinks. Spicy food and carbonated drinks bother some men individually.

Conspicuously absent: eggs in normal amounts, soy, whole grains and seed oils. None has credible evidence of harm to the prostate. A diet built on fear of ordinary foods is harder to sustain and no safer than one built on the actual data.

Common myths about prostate health foods, corrected

The viral claims that drove this September’s search surge each contain a kernel of research wrapped in a layer of invention. Separating the two is the point of this section.

Myth: tomato paste shrinks the prostate in weeks. Reality: tomato intake is associated, in long-term cohorts, with modestly lower rates of lethal prostate cancer. No study has measured prostate size shrinking in response to tomatoes, and benign enlargement is hormonal and age-driven. The timescale in the claim is fiction.

Myth: seed oils cause prostate cancer. Reality: no cohort or trial links vegetable oils to prostate cancer. The fat evidence, such as it is, points at saturated fat from animal sources, and swapping toward plant oils is associated with lower prostate-cancer mortality in observational data.

Myth: more zinc means a healthier prostate. Reality: healthy prostate tissue is rich in zinc, but high-dose zinc supplements were associated with more advanced cancer in a large cohort. Food zinc is fine; mega-dosing is not supported.

Myth: soy lowers testosterone and feminizes men. Reality: meta-analyses of clinical studies find no meaningful effect of soy foods or isoflavones on testosterone or estrogen levels in men.

Myth: dairy must be eliminated. Reality: only very high intakes show a modest association, and men need calcium for bones. Moderation, not elimination.

Myth: saw palmetto is a natural alternative to prostate medicines. Reality: two NIH-funded randomized trials found it no better than placebo. Stopping or substituting a prescribed medicine for it is a decision only your prescribing clinician should make.

Myth: a perfect diet means you can skip the PSA conversation. Reality: diet shifts risk modestly. It does not replace an informed discussion about screening.

How to put the evidence on a plate without turning dinner into a project

Translated into a week of meals, the research looks a lot like the Mediterranean pattern that cardiologists have promoted for decades, which is convenient, because the same man owns both organs.

Start with tomatoes cooked in olive oil at least a few times a week: a pasta sauce, a shakshuka, a tomato-based soup or stew. Cooking plus fat is the combination that maximizes lycopene absorption, and it costs nothing extra in effort.

Make a cruciferous vegetable a default side. Roasted broccoli or cauliflower, a cabbage slaw, sautéed kale. Lightly cooked rather than boiled to mush preserves more of the active compounds.

Eat fish twice a week, favoring oily varieties such as salmon, sardines and mackerel, and let it displace a red-meat meal rather than add to one. Pulses and tofu can displace another.

Keep red meat to a couple of modest servings a week, cooked at moderate heat, and save processed meat for occasions. Choose nuts, seeds, avocado and olive oil as everyday fats.

Treat dairy as a condiment and a daily serving, not the backbone of the diet. Coffee in normal amounts is not something to give up on prostate grounds, though men with urinary symptoms may want it earlier in the day.

Then do the thing with the strongest evidence of all. Observational data consistently link abdominal obesity to aggressive prostate cancer and to worse urinary symptoms, and link regular physical activity to the reverse. The CDC’s general recommendation of at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity applies here as it does to the heart.

Harvard Health’s summary is worth keeping: eat for your heart and your prostate will come along.

When to see a doctor about prostate symptoms, supplements or screening

Food changes risk at the margins. A conversation with a clinician changes what happens when something is actually wrong, and some situations should not wait for the next routine visit.

Seek urgent care the same day if you cannot pass urine at all, if you have a fever or chills alongside urinary symptoms, or if there is visible blood in your urine or semen. Make a prompt appointment if urinary symptoms have appeared or worsened over weeks, if you have new persistent pain in the lower back, hips or pelvis, or if you are losing weight without trying. These signs have many possible causes, most of them not cancer, and the only way to know is an examination.

Screening is a separate conversation and should be had on schedule rather than prompted by symptoms. In the US, guidance reflected by the CDC recommends that men aged 55 to 69 discuss the benefits and harms of PSA testing with their clinician and decide individually; routine testing is not recommended at 70 and older. Men with a father or brother who had prostate cancer, and Black men, carry higher risk, and many clinicians begin the discussion in the 40s. In the UK, the NHS has no screening program but offers a PSA test to men aged 50 and over who request one after discussing it.

Bring your supplements to that appointment, including anything herbal. Several can interact with medicines or alter PSA readings. If you take a prescribed medicine for an enlarged prostate, do not stop or swap it for a dietary approach without talking to the prescriber; the trials are clear that saw palmetto and similar products do not substitute for treatment.

Diet is yours to shape. Diagnosis and treatment decisions belong with the clinician who knows your history.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best foods for prostate cancer prevention?

No food is proven to prevent prostate cancer, but cooked tomatoes, cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, fish, legumes, soy foods and olive oil are the ones most consistently associated with lower risk of advanced disease in large cohort studies. The evidence is observational, so it shows association rather than cause. The pattern matters more than any single item, and a healthy weight adds to it.

Is lycopene from supplements as good as lycopene from tomatoes?

The evidence does not support that assumption. Observational benefits have been seen with tomato foods, while small randomized trials of lycopene supplements found no reliable effect on PSA or cancer outcomes. Whole tomatoes supply lycopene alongside other carotenoids, fiber and vitamin C that may matter together. The National Cancer Institute rates lycopene supplements as having insufficient evidence for prevention.

Do I need to cut out dairy to protect my prostate?

No. Only very high dairy and calcium intakes, usually from several servings a day or from supplements, show a modest observational association with advanced prostate cancer. Moderate dairy has not been linked to meaningful risk in most studies. Men also need calcium for bone health, so eliminating it trades a speculative benefit for a real harm. Moderation is the evidence-based position.

Which foods should I avoid if I have an enlarged prostate?

For benign enlargement, the foods that most often worsen urinary symptoms are bladder irritants rather than cancer risks: caffeine, alcohol and large drinks late in the evening. Some men also react to carbonated drinks, artificial sweeteners or spicy food. The NHS suggests tapering fluids in the two hours before bed. Red meat and fat have been linked to more symptoms in observational studies, while vegetables and fiber appear to help.

Does eating fish lower prostate cancer risk?

The evidence is mixed. A meta-analysis found fish intake did not change the chance of being diagnosed but was associated with substantially fewer prostate cancer deaths. A later analysis of blood samples from the SELECT trial found higher omega-3 levels associated with more high-grade cancer. Both are observational and conflicting. Fish remains a sensible choice for heart health; fish oil supplements for the prostate are unproven.

Can soy foods cause problems for men's hormones?

No credible evidence suggests that. Meta-analyses of clinical studies find no meaningful effect of soy foods or isoflavones on testosterone or estrogen levels in men. Populations that eat soy daily have lower prostate cancer rates, although a randomized trial of isoflavone supplements after prostate surgery found no reduction in recurrence. Tofu, edamame and soy milk are reasonable protein sources.

Is coffee good or bad for the prostate?

Pooled cohort studies have associated higher coffee intake with modestly lower prostate cancer risk, including fatal disease, and the effect appeared independent of caffeine. This is observational evidence, so it is suggestive rather than proven. For men with an enlarged prostate, caffeine can increase urine production and bladder irritation, so timing coffee earlier in the day often helps with night-time symptoms.

Does grilling meat really matter for prostate cancer?

It may. Charring meat at high heat produces heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, compounds that damage DNA and have caused prostate tumors in laboratory animals. Human studies of well-done meat are mixed but lean toward a small increase in risk. Marinating, cooking at moderate temperatures and avoiding blackened surfaces reduce exposure without giving up grilled food entirely.

Should I take vitamin E or selenium for prostate health?

Current evidence advises against it. The SELECT trial, a large randomized study of more than 35,000 men, found vitamin E supplements increased prostate cancer risk by 17 percent and selenium provided no benefit. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements states these supplements should not be taken to prevent prostate cancer. Getting these nutrients from food such as nuts, seeds and fish is a different matter.

At what age should I talk to my doctor about prostate screening?

In the US, guidance reflected by the CDC recommends that men aged 55 to 69 discuss PSA testing with their clinician and decide individually, with no routine testing at 70 and older. Men with a family history or Black men carry higher risk, and many clinicians start the conversation in the 40s. In the UK, the NHS offers a PSA test on request to men aged 50 and over after discussion.

References

• NHS: Prostate cancer
• MedlinePlus: Prostate diseases
• CDC: Prostate cancer

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.