Fresh Lettuce (photo by César Porto Vence, courtesy of moreguefile.com)

If we’ve got it right, the conventional wisdom on prostate cancer offers older American men some bad news and some not-so-bad news. The bad news is that you’re very likely to develop prostate cancer in your senior years. The not-so-bad news is that it develops very slowly and early detection makes complete recovery a near certainty.

New research results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) suggest that preventing it altogether is more likely if your diet contains a healthy amount of leafy green vegetables such as lettuce, broccoli, and spinach because they are especially rich in vitamin K2.

An article in Food Production Daily says the findings are based on data from 11,319 men taking part in the EPIC. One highlight of the study perfomed by Katharina Nimptsch, Sabine Rohrmann and Jakob Linseisen of the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg is that the beneficial effect occurs at nutritional doses.

The article quotes Cees Vermeer, PhD as commenting, "The anti-tumor effect of K2 vitamins has been suggested in several other (mainly Japanese) papers; in most cases these papers were based on smaller numbers, however.”

The new study adds to a growing body of science supporting the potential health benefits of vitamin K, most notably for bone and blood health, but also linked to improved skin health.

If you’d like to read the article in Food Production Daily cited above go to: Vitamin K2 linked to lower prostate cancer risk