Dr. Robert Turesky
Appearances
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
It actually gets entrapped in the hair follicle, a very small dose. And so as the hair staff grows out, you can snip your hair, or I can snip somebody's hair, and I can break that or digest that hair, and I can analyze and see whether someone has been exposed to this chemical in cooked meats that we think are the cause of aging. We've done this actually in individuals who are meat eaters.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
We've done it to analyze for people who are vegetarians. Vegetarians don't have this carcinogen. only people that eat meat. And we've seen, we've done controlled feeding studies and we've shown that the more that people eat well done cooked meats, the more this carcinogen they have in their hair.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So what I had wanted to do, and this is where I had the opportunity to meet a network of clients, is we want to ask the question, very simple question, do African-American men who frequently eat well done cooked meats do they have more of this carcinogen in their hair than, say, do white men who also eat frequently eats?
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And so we established a study with Clarence last year where we have given some flyers to African-American men to explain the study, what we're trying to do. And so our goal right now, this past summer, we did the study, we recruited the men over the summer season, because that's essentially when most people frequently, at least in the North, are doing barbecuing. My wife is actually watching.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
She won't let me use the barbecue in the middle of the winter. So we think the barbecue season, the summer season, is the most prevalent. So what we've done is we've recruited African-American men at the end of August, early September. We've also done the same with white men,
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And we're currently analyzing the carcinogen in hair to see whether, in fact, African-American men have more of it in their hair than white men. If they do, that is a first line of exposure data showing that, well, showing that African-American men eat more well-done cooked meats containing this potential, manuscript potential, human prostate, carcinogen, then do whites.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And perhaps that is contributing to the elevated risk. And again, I want to emphasize prostate cancer is multifactorial. Okay. It's not just one thing, but you know, this chemical, we know it damages DNA. We know it damages DNA, experimental laboratory animals. We know it damages DNA in human prostate cells in the test tube. And this is our first line of data. It's going that it may,
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
be more prevalent. This intake of the carcinogen may be more prevalent in African-Americans than whites. It may help to explain some of the increases in susceptibility to prostate cancer in African-American men. We've actually done a study here at the University of Minnesota. We published this about two years ago where we actually had a cohort
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
of 300 men who had prostate disease or other neurological diseases. And unfortunately, the study was predominantly white. We had more than 90% of the men who were treated here at the university were white. So we don't have a large enough sub-cohort of black men to draw conclusions. But what we had seen is that in that cohort of white men,
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
those men who had an elevated PSA score, prostate-specific antigen, the protein that's produced in the prostate, that's generally not always, and there's some controversy with the PSA test, but there's a trend where those men who have higher PSA levels have a more aggressive prostate cancer form than men with a lower PSA level. So we had seen that in the men who had higher PSA levels,
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
they had higher level of this chemical in cooked meat called FIP, which we think is a prostate carcinogen. And then those men who had a low PSA score. We also had men who had inflammation, benign prostatic hyperplasia, that's non-cancerous. And those men also had lower levels of FIP in their hair than men with an elevated PSA score. And so That shows that there's an association.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
It doesn't prove causality. I mean, it could be something else in cooked meat that is contributing to this aggressive, higher aggressive form that we have observed in this cohort here in Minnesota. Or it may be that, you know, there's another lifestyle factor that we don't know what it is that's being picked up with men that like to eat well-done cooked meats and have high levels of carcinogens.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But we're excited about this data because it's the first chemical marker for a lifestyle factor that we can link with prostate cancer pathology. So for me, it was a natural thing to hook up with Clarence and try to recruit more African-American men to get more extensive data. Now, these are healthy men that we're working with. Ideally, what we'd really like to do longer term is to work
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
in a cohort of, again, patients with urological diseases, whether it be prostate cancer, bladder cancer, or benign prosthetic hyperplasia, not only with white men, but also with blacks, and see if we can see whether there's a difference between the African-American cohort and the white cohort with levels of PIP in prostate cancer patients. That would strengthen our data.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
and allow us to provide more specific advice to both, well, men in general about the health, potential health risk of eating well done cooked meat.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Maybe going a little bit too far because we don't understand enough of what's going on in our bodies.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I will eat it. Listen, I still love barbecued ribs. That's my wife, Nicole. Yeah. You know, what I tell the layperson is, you know, if you drink too much water, it's going to make you sick too.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So, I mean, everything in dose and moderation. But some of these chemicals that we think may be contributing to prostate cancer, they themselves are not hazardous. They're not toxic. They're not carcinogenic. But once you eat them and they're in your body and they go through your liver or different other organs like the prostate, there are enzymes that convert or change these compounds.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Our body wants to eliminate all this stuff. Enzymes called cytochrome P450s, that make these things more water soluble so we can excrete them in our urine, for example. But unfortunately, these enzymes, they don't, you know, they're kind of indiscriminate.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Depending where they convert or transform these carcinogens or the procarcinogens, they can either convert them to non-hazardous detoxified metabolites, or they can convert them to reactive intermediates that latch onto DNA. And so Clarence's profile of enzymes their levels may be different than yours.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And so it's that balance of these different enzymes in our body that either bioactivate or detoxify these chemicals. which is one important risk factor. And so there are multiple enzymes.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Well, that's a great question. So one of the challenges that we have, not only for the work that I'm doing, but for anybody who, like me, who's looking at different chemicals in the diet and the environment and their relative risk for developing cancer, the challenges that we have is that
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
the way that we do these risks assessments up to now are by using experimental laboratory animals, like bats, mice, and they're given very, very high doses of these chemicals, like a hundred thousand, a million times more than you and I would each day. Right. Yeah. So how do you do that extrapolation? Right. So the reason why they do these high doses in animals is, is to have a security margin.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But, you know, if I'm getting this number on top of my head, if, say, one out of 100,000 men develops prostate cancer, I mean, does that mean I need to study 100,000 rats? Right, yeah. So they do, we do, not me personally, but people that study this animal carcinogens pathology, I mean, they'll dose animals at very high levels. And they'll do a couple of different doses to do a dose response.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But still, they're thousands of times more higher than what you and I would eat. So how do we do this extrapolation? So some of the things that I do is we look at the damage of DNA in our cells. We look at the frequency. We look at the levels. or we use surrogate biomarkers. So some of these chemicals will latch on and modify blood proteins.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
The same reactive intermediate that damages DNA can modify hemoglobin and albumin. And we try to see what kind of levels of these reactive intermediates are in our bodies versus, you know, a high dose rat or mouse or, or a cell system. Right. So, um, Other things that we can do is we can look at people's urine after somebody eats a well-done hamburger.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And I told you, I can measure, I can determine, I could tell whether someone is a meat eater or vegetarian because vegetarians won't have this carcinogen. We could look at a meat eater. These chemicals I told you get changed to get metabolized. And we can look at the urine of different individuals because there's going to be a different pattern of metabolism that
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Some people will detoxify the carcinogen more efficiently than others. And so we have these chemical biomarkers in urine. We can say, yeah, well, person A is more efficiently in converting this to a hazardous metabolite than person B. And so that's some of our long-term goals.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I mean, we have an understanding of how these chemicals that I'm interested in, how they're metabolized in, we've done studies which were dominantly with Caucasians because we didn't have an African-American cohort.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But for instance, the studies that we're doing with Clarence now, if our data holds up and we do see that, yeah, African-American men have higher levels of this potential cancer-causing agent in their hair, we don't understand whether there's a difference in how African-American men or white men process carcinogens. One way we could do it is we can identify
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
men who have high levels of this in their hair. We could measure the amounts of this carcinogen in the cooked meat. We can collect urine over the 24 hour period after they ate the meat. And we can see how they transform this chemical by looking at the metabolites in urine.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And we can compare those to say white men and understand that there's a difference in how the two different races metabolize this compound. And that could also perhaps help to explain elevated risk in one cohort versus the other. This is all stuff that we would like to do. We just need to get funded to do it.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I'm sorry. Clarence, is he being cut off? Were you able to hear him? Yep, yep, we got him. I just, I... I'm being cut off with some of the audio.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Right. Well, again, so the end point that we're looking at, we're very excited about because it suggests a lifestyle factor. meaning eating well-done cooked meat, and I underscore may, may be contributing to prostate cancer risk and may, underscore, contribute to an elevated risk for African-American men.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So what I try to convey, you know, when I have to give talks, and most of the time I give to a scientific audience, okay, so I can use a lot of technical jargon, but when I'm speaking to the public, I tell them, if you don't understand anything that I'm talking about, if there's one message or two messages to take home is one, don't burn your meat, right?
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
It's when you really char your meats that you're increasing the levels of this cancer causing agent. All right. So, you know, I don't eat my meats well done anymore. I try to eat the medium to medium rare. Uh, and, um, first of all, it's a lot healthier for you. A lot of the nutrients and the essential amino acids are present in a higher amount of meat than the non-food well done.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And you form a lot less of this cancer-causing agent. So already, if you can just do that, minimize the charring in eating meat well done, you've already done something that's positive, right? And as I said earlier, It's all about the dose. So, I mean, it's not healthy to eat well-done cooked meats or grilled bacon, crispy grilled bacon every day. I mean, moderate your diet.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I mean, instead of having grilled burgers five days a week, I mean, do some roast, do some stewed meat, have some fish, other things that are not charred meats. And already you will lower your levels of exposure. We advocate for people to eat a lot of green leafy vegetables because there are things in these vegetables which are anti-carcinogenic. They're protective.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
They stimulate enzymes in our body that detoxify carcinogens or antioxidants. And so I've conveyed this to Clarence and to the African community. And also when I have to give other talks to laypeople, moderation is most important. Vary diets and just don't burn the meat. I'm not telling people to be vegans. There are some people that advocate no red meat.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Life is to enjoy and part of things in life that are enjoyable is what we eat. If you can modify your diet and you can lower your exposure to these potential hazardous chemicals by Simply changing the temperature or how you cook the meat, that's already a beneficial thing. And so that's the take home message.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Well, it's communication, ultimately it's the communication to the public, right?
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So, I mean, I certainly have a role in that, as does any other research investigator who's studying risk factors for disease. And also regulatory agencies are important. The American Institute of Cancer Research advocates minimizing red meat consumption, International Agency for Research in Cancer, National Institutes of Health.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
These agencies are the official organizations that provide recommended guidelines. And so as we do more research and we publish more data, these organizations continuously reviewing health benefits and risk factors for diseases. And it has to come from different sources. And clearly what I need to do is to publish data to show these things.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And when I have opportunities to speak to the public, like this event today, and hopefully, you know, if someone is listening to me and says, oh, wow, yeah, I didn't realize that. I'm going to stop charring my burgers and eat the medium. I mean, I'm helping some.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Well, thank you for the kind words, Clarence. And if I might add, I didn't know what the UMEN organization was two years ago, two and a half years ago. Clarence and I've been involved in a number of meetings with the UMEN organization now and the health advocacy. And what Clarence does, I find is So inspiring for the African-American community in particular.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Well, the prostate is a small organ, walnut-sized organ, contributes to various biological functions, sexual development in men. It's critical for hormone development, influences various biological functions, bone development, growth. And fortunately, since it is associated with hormone cancer, men are susceptible to this disease.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So particularly after the age of 50, when men become most susceptible because cancer prostate cancer, like many other cancers, is an age-related disease. Men have to get, like women with breast cancer, need to be screened annually for early signs of prostate cancer.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Yeah, it's a very prevalent cancer throughout the world. It occurs in the Countries more prominently, for instance, in Western Europe, United States, the Caribbean, than other parts of the world.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Again, whether this is due to genetic factors or environmental or dietary is still an area of research that's being extensively investigated by epidemiologists and people as myself who do a lot of exposure assessments on potential cancer-causing agents in the diet environment.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I don't have those statistics. in front of me. Most cancers have plateaued off. I believe that there's more prevalence of some of the lethal prostate cancers, particularly in African-American men, because there is a hesitancy to either get tested annually, screened annually, or for biological susceptibilities that they're at higher incidences.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
I don't know that that number has increased or not globally for all types of prostate cancers.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
It's a very common cancer, yes. I mean, it should be screened annually.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Well, yes and no. Again, I want to emphasize that I'm a PhD. I'm not a clinical physician. Fortunately, many prostate cancers are slow growing. You're correct when you do state that they are more or less contained through either irradiation or surgical treatments. many men who have been identified with prostate cancer can live a long, fulfilled life.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But prostate cancer, like many other cancers, there can be metastasis to other organs. And that's when additional treatment or hormonal therapy, reducing testosterone, which is kind of like the driver, the gasoline that moves the car, that can They can fuel growth.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And so there are many treatments and new medicines that are coming or are on the market that also are impacting or trying to kill these cancer cells by inhibition of DNA repair or damage. And so there are people that do have a higher prostate cancer risk or aggressiveness. And so these treatments come in line, but I'd say probably, I think my, my memory is correct.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
70, 80% of these cancers would not be considered aggressive and metastatic, but they're clearly a subset that is.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Okay. Uh, so as Clarence mentioned, uh, African-American men do have, uh, amongst the highest risk for developing prostate cancer, certainly in the United States and Northern America. And there are a number of potential reasons for this. First of all, again, prostate cancer, it's multifactorial. There are many things that contribute to the risk of disease. One is genetic.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And so clearly there are African-Americans and whites that we have differences in our genetic makeup. It's thought that African Americans may have a higher prevalence for faulty genes that are involved in DNA repair or protective mechanisms. We're exposed to chemicals in the diet, the environment, or even in our bodies that could damage DNA. And we have different enzymes in our bodies that are
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
like policemen, they surveyed the cells, they surveyed the chromosomes and the genes, and they see an alteration of something that's not right, they repair the DNA, they repair the genes and mitigate mutations. But unfortunately, some different ethnicities have different levels of expression of these enzymes or faulty enzymes.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And so those that have faulty enzymes are at higher risk for cancer, okay? Most, many cancers are thought to be attributed to some sort of chemical exposure, or those chemicals are contributing to the risk. So I work, I study a lot of different chemicals that are produced, for instance, in tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoking causes lung cancer, okay?
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
And also several other cancers, but most of the carcinogens in tobacco don't form until you combust or burn the tobacco other than some nitrosamines. And so this is not a perfect analogy, but this is how I explain it to the layperson. When you cook meat at high temperature, you're producing these nice flavors and aromas that we like, whether they be in barbecued or roasted
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
Actually, less the roasted meat, but the barbecued high temperature flames meats. You're charring the surface of the meats the same way as you kind of produce chemicals in the tobacco. We're producing these flavors and aromas that we like in the cooked meats.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
But unfortunately, there are a series of different compounds that are produced at high temperatures in meat that we know are cancer causing agents. at high doses, at high doses, an experimental laboratory animal, but they could be contributing to human cancers.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So African-Americans, at least based upon some of the data in the literature from behavioral scientists, have reported that African-Americans have more frequently eat well-done cooked meats, barbecued meats, than, say, do white men. So some of the chemicals that I work on in cooked meats actually cause prostate cancer in laboratory animals, rats and mice at high doses.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
We have seen that they cause DNA damage. If you take a biopsy specimen from prostate patients and you treat the cell with some of these cooked meat agents, They damage the DNA in these cells in the test tube. So what we had developed many years ago is a way to measure some of these cancer-causing agents in our hair.
Health Chatter
Prostate Cancer
So when we eat foods, not only foods, but smoke, cigarettes, drink beverages, most of the chemicals get absorbed in our bodies and go through the entire body. circulatory system via the blood. And even some of these chemicals will reach the hair follicle. So one of the specific chemicals that we work on that is in cooked meats, it's a cancer-causing agent. We think it's a prostate carcinogen.