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Not a day goes by without me hearing a "super mega beta prostate" (or some other similar product) commercial.

Super Beta Prostate is a natural prostate supplement made with beta-sitosterol designed to provide you with support for the following:
Healthy Urinary Flow
Healthy Urinary Function
Healthy Prostate Function

While the idea of taking 1000 times the dosage seems unlikely to be beneficial, is there any dosage for which plant sterols have been shown to reduce prostate cancer risk?

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    Russell, can you please add a link to the claim you want debunked? I for one have never heard of it.
    – Sklivvz
    Mar 6, 2011 at 18:07
  • @Sklivvz: +1, and more if I could.
    – Borror0
    Mar 6, 2011 at 18:11
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    Link added to the most common "product" i hear advertised.
    – Russell Steen
    Mar 7, 2011 at 14:24

1 Answer 1

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From the Linus Pauli Institute: "The results of a few clinical trials suggest that phytosterol supplementation at relatively low doses can improve urinary tract symptoms related to benign prostatic hyperplasia, but further research is needed to confirm these findings."

A search on PubMed will give you 36 results, not all of which may be relevant. It looks like the research is being done on cells in a dish, and on animals.

From this I'd say there may be something to this story, but we're not sure. And I'm guessing it's too early to say what dosage you'd need to take. But I'm not an MD, just a googler.

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