Egging on Fatal Prostate Cancer Risk?

Lifestyle and dietary factors play key roles in the cause of prostate cancer. A dozen of the nation's top oncologists teamed up to review the relationship between prostate cancer risk and today's popular foods. Not surprisingly, eggs didn't get the approving nod of these cancer experts. A surge in the risk of developing and aggravating prostate cancer was associated with frequent consumption of eggs.

Eggs are excellent sources of choline, saturated fats, cholesterol, and animal proteins. Several studies have cited the high choline content of eggs as one key culprit that promotes the development, growth, and spread of cancerous cells in the prostate gland. Egg is the most concentrated source of choline in the American diet. One egg contains about 115 mg of choline, with 99% of the choline found in the egg yolk.

Unlike healthy cells that make use of oxygen and citrate to produce energy required to power the various biochemical and physiological processes of the cells, cancerous cells and tumors in the prostate gland utilize choline to manufacture energy. Therefore, increased dietary exposure to choline supply these cancerous cells with the ingredient needed to manufacture energy that they will use to grow, develop, and metastatize. High intake of choline-rich foods appears to contribute to the aggravation of an existing prostate cancer to become a fatal one.

Ironically, the egg industry boasts of the high choline content of eggs and even uses it to promote sales of eggs. Several studies have appeared in reputable medical journals that found a correlation between high dietary intake of choline and increased risk of lethal prostate cancer. The findings of a study conducted by a team of researchers from Harvard show that high dietary exposure to choline may increase a man's risk of suffering from fatal prostate cancer by 70 percent.

About 1 in 7 men are likely to develop prostate cancer at some point in their lifetime. A 2011 study revealed that men who consumed two-and-half eggs per week had 81 percent higher chances of developing an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Avoiding eggs may help to cut down a man's risk of suffering from lethal prostate cancer, which is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among men.

Additional Information:

(1) Unscrambling the Truth About Eggs

(2) Do Eggs Raise Prostate Cancer Risk?

(3) Incredible Egg? or Incredible Marketing?

(4) Why the Egg-Cancer Link?

(5) Egg, red meat, and poultry intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer in the prostate specific antigen-era: incidence and survival

(6) Choline Intake and Risk of Lethal Prostate Cancer: Incidence and Survival