|
| |
CPCN NEWMARKET
CHAPTER NEWSLETTER
Source: Canadian
Prostate Cancer Network
March Notes
. . . David Saul, MD,
Subject; Mister, We Have to Talk
Our speaker for the March meeting was Dr. David Saul. Besides being a doctor who
specializes in men's problems, David is also an author and he also confessed to
wanting to be a stand-up comedian. He interspersed his talk with enough humor to
demonstrate that he could carry this off quite well. His book on men's health
titled "SEX FOR LIFE: The Lovers Guide to Male Sexuality", also
demonstrated that he knows men's health below the waist. He has been treating
male sexual dysfunctions and prostate cancer problems since 1977. David is also
the director of the North Scarborough Men's Health Centre.
He opened his talk with some quick questions and answers . . .
 "If you have
prostate cancer, do you have opportunities to prevent recurrence? Yes!
Opportunities to reverse it? Yes! Is it late in the game? Yes it is but, like
Yogi Berra said, 'when it's the ninth inning and there are two outs and you've
got two strikes against you, it's still not over 'til it's over.' But it's
late".
He went on to say that obviously, when it's a low number PSA and there are no
symptoms, there's a better opportunity for prevention and that's what he wanted
to talk about, prevention. He said that the same information will apply to
treatment. People ask if it's too early or too late to get a PSA test. According
to Dr. Saul, it's never too early, it's never too late. He stressed that PSA
testing is just screening. 25 years ago, when almost everyone was smoking, you
would go to your doctor for a check up and be sent for a chest X-ray. You
wouldn't be told to stop smoking, just go for a chest X-ray and if it was O.K.
they would send you on your way until the next checkup. Until one year something
would show up in the X-ray and then they would tell you to stop smoking.
And that's what's
happening with the PSA test. David dedicated his talk to the memory of Irving
Fine. Irving Fine called him in December and said he was the Prostate Cancer
Support Group leader for Orillia and asked him to come and give a talk on
January 23rd. He had to cancel it because Irving died on January 14th. He didn't
die of prostate cancer, he died of heart attack due to diabetes. He didn't even
have prostate cancer and yet he was the founder and leader of the support group
- he worried a lot about getting prostate cancer, even more than about diabetes
and his heart problem. But, can a prostate cancer prevention strategy also help
against diabetes and heart problems, high blood pressure and strokes? According
to Dr. Saul, Yes! An emphatic yes.
I'm going to continue this report in the first person as it will better
demonstrate Dr. Sauls enthusiasm and knowledge of the subject. He continued by
stating, I'm going to give you some information about men's health. It's going
to be all about men. It's nice to see so many women. Do you know who's leading
the lobbying in the United States for prostate cancer research? It's the widows
of the men who've died from prostate cancer. We're going to talk about health
information and about how to prevent prostate cancer and how to prevent the
recurrence of it. This is not going to be the same old stuff. You're going to
hear new stuff, you're going to hear stuff that's going to shake you up a little
bit. I may be a little provocative and maybe step on some people's toes but
that's O.K. because that's the way to make you think about things and maybe you
can make some positive changes in your life.
I'll start out with a joke. A man says to his wife, "I heard that the
milkman has had sex with every woman on this route, except for one." His
wife replied, "You know, I'll bet it's that stuck-up Phyllis over at number
23."
Now, what happens to us men as they get older? - Less exercise, we're not
working, we're not getting the same physical exercise. There's more weight gain.
We start getting a paunch. We get less sound sleep. Primarily because we have to
get up to pee. All of a sudden, as we get older, the prostate gets bigger and we
start getting up two, three, four times a night to go the bathroom. Women often
have a problem, for instance, when they laugh really hard, they will have a
small accident. That never happens in men unless there's a prostatectomy, or
BPH. Less sex frequency. Why do we have sex? To make a baby, for fertility and
when the hormones are down, when the body's need for making babies goes down,
then the desire goes down, so there's less sex. Is there less happiness?
 What
are the markers of happiness? For men, how do men measure their happiness? Often
through their work and if they're retired, sometimes they feel like they've gone
out to pasture. Sometimes they get into the rocking chair syndrome and they
don't feel there's a purpose to their life. For forty or fifty years they were
the protector and the provider. For two million years, ever since they've been
on the planet, men have been the protectors and providers, going out on the
hunt. Then, all of sudden, they're retired. What are they going to do?
They have different stresses. There can be money stresses, there can be illness
stresses. These changes are all mental states. Then we get some diseases:
Cancer, many different kinds - prostate, colon, lung, or skin cancer, which is
the most common cancer we get as we age; heart disease, stroke, high blood
pressure, that's still the number one killer; arthritis and osteoporosis,
osteoporosis is thought of as a women's disease, if men live long enough,
they'll get it; diabetes; alzheimer's; and of course ARML, we all have that -
age related memory loss, that starts in the forties; cataracts, glaucoma - we
get significant eye problems with aging; the enlargement of the prostate.
The latest hot topic
is andropause, which is male menopause, it's a real phenomenon and it's caused
by insufficient testosterone levels. It starts in the thirties but doesn't
really manifest itself until the sixties and about half the men have it. You get
a loss of endurance, a loss of stamina, you feel tired all the time. There's
more fat gain around the waist. You lose muscle mass, have more irritability,
more depression and a loss of sexual desire. We can't use any of the
testosterone treatments to overcome this, if we have prostate cancer. But
andropause does not cause prostate cancer.
Let's talk about PSA tests. Are you looking for trouble? Yes, you are. If your
PSA is two or one, that's good, that's what you want to hear. Is it 15? - That's
trouble. Is it 8? That's the problem, we need to do a biopsy to find out if it's
cancer. We're looking for trouble and it sometimes drives us crazy. Will it save
a life? It hasn't been proven that PSA will decrease mortality. What happens if
the biopsy is negative? Come back in two months or so, we'll do it again. Do I
have cancer, do I not have cancer? It drives us crazy. And here's the big
question; have you asked your urologist if he takes his PSA? Many urologists
don't.
One I was talking to
at a conference, said he doesn't want to know about it until it's too late to
have surgery. Many urologists feel this way, they don't want to go to limbo
land, they're scared to. So what do we know? Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) is
the best marker for cancer there is. The best blood test we have for any type of
cancer is the PSA test and it still has 75% false positives. It will give an
earlier diagnosis, that's for certain. However, there is no proven impact on
mortality by having early PSA tests, according to the most recent studies.
In a study of 1,000 men with a PSA of 10 or over, which is not normal but it's
not obviously prostate cancer, so they did a biopsy. They did it up to four
times. If the first biopsy was negative, they did it again four to six weeks
later and if that was negative, they did it again, and again. The first time
they did it, they had 22% cancer detection. They repeated the biopsies for the
men with negative results the first time and came up with another 10% positive.
The next repeat biopsies produced 5%. If they keep going, they might find
something but the return gets lower and lower. For the cancers found in biopsies
3 and 4, there was a very low Gleason, a very low prostate cancer. Were they
significant? We don't know. Probably it would take another 10 to 15 years to
really do anything. If you look hard enough - you'll find it. When should we
stop looking? Do we keep going until we find it, or do we stop after the first
or second time? We don't know.
The medical dogma seems to be, "Find the prostate cancer and cut it
out." It doesn't talk about life style changes and preventing it, it's just
cut it out. In my opinion, prostate cancer can be prevented, postponed and
maybe, possibly, even cured with natural methods. What do we know about prostate
cancer? It's the number two male cancer and the estimates say that for every
20,000 men diagnosed in Canada, 4,500 will die of it. 30% of men will die with
prostate cancer, not because of it.
There are many studies and statistics which indicate that lifestyles in
different countries have a strong effect on the incidence of prostate cancer.
People who have emigrated from China, which has an extremely low incidence of
prostate cancer, have shown a marked increase to the North American average
within one to two generations. This is because they are now eating a North
American diet. In fact, statistics in Japan and Shanghai show an increase in
prostate cancer as their diets are changing to be more like North America's.
Prostate cancer is present in all men, increasing as they get older. Autopsies
done on men in their thirties who had died from other causes, showed a
microscopic presence in 20% of them. This went up 10% every decade, until in
their nineties, 100% of men will have at least microscopic prostate cancer. What
we want is to try to stop it from leaving the microscopic stage. The evidence is
less convincing regarding high fats. Everyone was saying eat low fat, low fat
and the studies are not showing it any more. And what about testosterone? They
say testosterone is terrible, get rid of your testosterone and we'll buy you
time.
Well, recent
research is not showing that. It's showing that you need the proper amount of
testosterone to prevent it from going from the microscopic stage to the cancer
stage. Often when the testosterone goes down, because of aging, you know, as men
get older, their testosterone goes down and the prostate cancer rates go up. So
obviously this has something to do with testosterone going lower. So you need to
keep the testosterone at a nice, steady level. Estrogen is now a new marker for
initiating prostate cancer. There's a balance between estrogen and testosterone.
Men have it and women have it. Post menopausal women have lower estrogen than
their husbands who are the same age because a lot of estrogen is converted from
testosterone.
So, if you start
lowering your testosterone because of andropause, you're going to have less
conversion but, if you get fatter, you'll get more conversion because fat will
aeromotize and you'll make more estrogen. Then you're going to shift the balance
and start getting more estrogen and more risk of prostate cancer, it starts the
flow, it makes it go from the microscopic into the full cancer. New information
is showing that prostatitis, inflammation of the prostate, which is really hard
to get rid of, can initiate prostate cancer. Continuous inflammatory response
can finally lead to prostate cancer.
Oxidative, free radical damage - we have this data which shows that free radical
damage from oxidation is present in heart disease, we have it clogging the
arteries and we have it causing prostate cancer. All the more reason for
antioxidant vitamins.
Here's a quick summary of a prevention program, then we're going to get into
more details: Fat - obviously having the good fat is better than the bad fat.
Vitamins - research has shown that vitamin E and vitamin D decrease prostate
cancer. It still has to be proven but it has shown in heart research that people
who used these vitamins to help heart problems also showed a decrease in
prostate cancer. So we see that indirectly it helped. We still don't know about
vitamin C and vitamin A (or Beta carotene). Saw Palmetto hasn't been proven.
Selenium is good.
 More vegetable iso-flavones have been shown to
decrease prostate cancer in rats, in laboratory dishes, - in men they still have
to prove it. Especially the iso-flavones from soy. In the Orient, the majority
of the proteins they eat are from fish and soy. In Japan they eat a lot of fish
and they have the lowest rate of prostate cancer in the world and the highest
stomach cancer as they eat a lot of raw fish. Eat less red meat and more
vegetables And the most important - the most consistent dietary predictor of
elevated prostate cancer is high consumption of milk and dairy products. Have
you heard anywhere from the Dairy Board that drinking milk can cause prostate
cancer? The most consistent dietary predictor, more than fat, more than meat, is
dairy products. We're the only species on this planet that consumes another
species' infant milk.
Calcium - we now know that calcium is associated with prostate cancer risk and a
stronger association with metatastic and fatal prostate cancer with
supplementary calcium. 628 men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer are being
studied on how including vegetables in their diet is helping them. With four
servings of vegetables a day, over a year they showed a 35% less cancer rate. If
they had cruciferous vegetables - brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower - three
servings a week of these vegetables, there would be 41% less cancer rate. Let's
not wait 15 years for the results of studies. We have a lot of men, who have
shown that the natural approach is effective. I don't have time to wait for the
trial results.
This is my personal prevention program: Low saturated fats; no red meat; no
dairy; omega three fatty acids - more fish, especially salmon, it'll help your
heart, it'll help arthritis, it'll help prostate cancer; more fiber - lots more
vegetables a little less fruit, it tastes good but it's all sugar and there's
not a lot of fiber; lower your insulin levels so you'll have less risk of
diabetes - diabetes will kill you faster than anything - lower your insulin
level, less bread, rice, potatoes, pasta corn, fruit and meat, Wait, isn't this
is what everybody eats? This is our diet, this is everything. I didn't say cut
it out, I said cut it down.
 Always
eat the mono-unsaturated fats, nuts like almonds, not the peanuts and cashews.
Bananas are very bad, they have a lot of saturated fats and so do egg yolks. Less
coffee, it's linked to prostatitis;
moderate alcohol, no pop - it's all sugar and the diet pop is worse. Soy
products are very good; legumes; tempeh, which is fermented soy, that's what
they eat in the Orient. They don't eat tofu there, they eat tempeh. Tofu is a
little bad; tomato, because of lycopene is something you should eat, also onions
and garlic. Get plenty of exercise and a good sleep, nine hours a night if you
can. Eat less to live longer. Get out in the sun. Be happy!
Dr. Saul spent another thirty minutes fielding questions from the audience but
space doesn't allow me to include it here. Members attending the meeting often
take this opportunity to get a second opinion on the treatment they are taking.
Many times they take home information that helps them enjoy a longer more
meaningful life.
 Mahalo
(Thanks)!
Keywords: prostate cancer, PSA, PSA
(prostate specific antigen), lowering
PSA, prostate cancer alternatives, prostate cancer treatments, cancer news, diet
can fight cancer, exercise can fight cancer, full spectrum light can fight
cancer, watchful waiting, cancer alternatives warnings, prostate cancer natural
alternatives, prostate cancer information, CPCN NEWMARKET CHAPTER
NEWSLETTER, Source: Canadian Prostate Cancer Network, March Notes . . . David
Saul, MD, "SEX FOR LIFE: The Lovers Guide to Male Sexuality", men's
health below the waist, Yogi Berra said, 'when it's the ninth inning and there
are two outs and you've got two strikes against you, it's still not over 'til
it's over.' But it's late"., North Scarborough Men's Health Centre, Irving
Fine, Less exercise, we're not working, we're not getting the same physical
exercise. There's more weight gain. We start getting a paunch. We get less sound
sleep. Primarily because we have to get up to pee
|
