I have a question for my male readers.

What's at the top of your list when it comes to things you worry about as you age?

I'm sure diabetes is up there. Alzheimer's, too. And I'm willing to bet most of you are also thinking "prostate cancer." After all, it's the most common type of cancer out there.

I'm betting you're concerned about the mainstream's invasive and harmful treatments for it, too. After all, in their efforts to blast the cancer out of your body, they'll often do much more harm than good, leaving sexual function and urinary continence damaged, sometimes irreparably.

Enter a humble vitamin.

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia have uncovered some very good news about a vitamin that can significantly reduce the growth of prostate tumors.

Well, a certain part of that vitamin. Tocotrienol (T3), a constituent of vitamin E, was recently found to succeed where existing conventional treatments failed. The lead researcher in the QUT study noted that chemotherapy and hormone therapy don't kill off prostate cancer stem cells. Those cells are believed to be responsible for the regrowth of the cancer. In 70 percent of prostate cancer cases treated with conventional therapies, the cancer comes back.

Pretty depressing, considering how many men are put on those treatments every year, with the promise that they're the very best modern medicine has to offer.

A certain kind of T3 (gamma-tocotrienol, or y-T3), on the other hand, successfully kills those stem cells. In a study on mice, y-T3 completely inhibited tumor formation in more than 70 percent of the animals. They were fed the y-T3 in water.

Clinical trials are upcoming, so we don't have information on dosage or long-term results, but with other health benefits of vitamin E already known, I wanted to make sure you knew about this right away.

We do know one thing -- not all vitamin E preparations contain y-T3. Natural vitamin E obtained from palm oil, however, is rich in the constituent.

Printer-friendly version