The study looked at data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study which has been tracking the health habits of 47,299 men over a 26 year period. Researchers found that of the 6810 men in the group who received a diagnosis of prostate cancer, those who consumed nuts five or more times per week had a 34 per cent lower rate of overall mortality compared with those who consumed nuts less than once per month.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest cohort study to prospectively assess the association of nut consumption with being diagnosed with prostate cancer, including subtypes of aggressive prostate cancer,” say the study’s authors.
The Canadian Cancer Society states that prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer for Canadian men excluding non-melanoma skin cancers and is the third leading cause of death from cancer in men. More than 95 per cent of prostate cancers are adenocarcinomas, the majority of which are slow growing and respond well to treatment. Estimates for the year 2015 hold that 24,000 Canadian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 4,100 will die from it, representing 10 per cent of all cancer deaths in men. On average, about 11 Canadian men die from prostate cancer every day.
While the study did not find a correlation between diagnosis with prostate cancer and consumption of nuts, it did see a 34 per cent lower rate of overall mortality from prostate cancer in the participant cohort who consumed a weekly average of at least five or more servings of 28 grams of peanuts or other nuts.
