For men 55 & up....
Today's post: Thursday, 2-26-2009
Ouch !!
The recent medical news for men 55 & up has a recent bad development I’d like to warn you about if you are a man over 55.
I’m not quite as cynical about undue drug company influence in medical guidelines recommending that drugs be used to fight disease as many writers who favor using effective preventive efforts that do not use drugs.
After all, for many doctors, they’ve learned medicine where the fixes they know are limited to drugs and surgery. And they’ve not been trained at all well to care about side effects messing up the quality of life for their patients. In addition, many drugs actually work well to do their intended job and many of those have few side effects for most people.
But this recent news has me really wondering about undue drug company influence. Finasteride is a drug that acts to turn down the part of testosterone that causes some male baldness and helps to cause BPH, or benign prostate enlargement.
The bad news is that it turns your sex drive down or off and can cause ED, impotence.
I don’t know about you, but if I was bald, I’d live with it, wear a stylish hat like the bald Dallas football coach Tom Landry used to do, or get a wig. I would NOT take a drug like Finasteride that reduces my sex drive. I’d rather turn that UP a bit!
Further, many men over 55 have some ED and reduced sex drives would prefer not to. (Following a heart protecting lifestyle can prevent ED caused by blocked up blood vessels and can help reverse it.) Viagra still sells well for a reason!
So, I was shocked to hear that one or two medical groups actually are recommending that Finasteride be given all men over 55 to help prevent BPH & prostate cancer.
This is nuts to put it bluntly.
Some men get neither without taking Finasteride. Even if it didn’t have such disagreeable side effects, why should they have to pay the drug companies to take Finasteride? Second, as I’ll cover shortly, there are other ways to deal with BPH. But third and most important, while taking Finasteride seems to help TREAT prostate cancer, I’ve never seen any study showing it effective in preventing prostate cancer. Moreover, most men who do get prostate cancer get the slow kind that they do not need to treat. Why should they take Finasteride? Further there ARE other ways to prevent prostate cancer and the kind of aggressive prostate cancer that would be the ONLY justification for having them take Finasteride which has NOT been proven to prevent this kind of cancer.
So, to me, this is irresponsible and badly misguided with the only certain benefits going to the bank accounts of the drug companies who provide Finasteride. Hmm. This does NOT look at all good for the ethics or good judgement of the doctors involved.
A. The knowledge of what can be done without this drug, Finasteride, to prevent or reverse BPH that avoids these side effects is not as strong or well known as the ways to prevent heart disease without drugs which is totally possible and beginning to be better known. (See our post on Tuesday this week, Special news on heart health.... Tuesday, 2-24-2009.)
But there is some information available.:
1. If you follow the lifestyle that protects your heart and keeps your LDL cholesterol low, it seems to help slow BPH. It also reduces your risk of getting any cancer by a third from the way you eat and exercise. If you include NOT smoking, which you should ! for heart protection, it cuts your chances of getting ANY cancer by two thirds!
2. If you eat abundantly every week of cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, etc &/or take the supplement DIM which is one of the active ingredients in these vegetables, it slows the conversion of testosterone from the OK form to the form that produces BPH. Eating these vegetables also has abundant other health benefits.
3. If you take 60 mg of the saw palmetto supplement twice each day,
it contains sterols so it will help lower your LDL cholesterol;
it may slow the increase in BPH (I’ve not seen info that this has been tested and verified; but I think it does.); &
it HAS been tested as turning off the disagreeable side effects of BPH on urination to a large degree and will help do that for you.
4. I’ve read that several other supplements can slow BPH even more including nettle root, pygeum, pumpkin seed extract, and bee pollen but I’ve seen less studies on them and have not taken them myself. But we may eventually find a combination of these that will reverse BPH reliably. I have read of some men getting this effect. Best of all, they do NOT turn off your sex drive.
B. But the real kicker is we DO know a good bit about preventing prostate cancer and the aggressive form that would be the only justification for every man over 55 taking Finasteride if they ALL would otherwise get it.
As we describe above, following a heart health protecting lifestyle including eating right, regular exercise and both NOT smoking and avoiding second hand smoke like the plague prevents two thirds of ALL kinds of cancer.
Second, there have been reports that taking 30 mg a day of lycopene, 3 mg a day of boron, 30 mg a day of zinc, and a turmeric or its active ingredient curcumin supplement once a day helps prevent all cancers and prostate cancer in particular. Further, doing this and eating both fresh tomatoes -- and cooked tomatoes served together with extra virgin olive to make the lycopene and other carotenoids bioavailable, tends to lower your PSA reading, may reduce BPH, and is likely to also help prevent all cancers and prostate cancer in particular.
Plus if you do all that, you can still cut your chances of getting the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer by another full HALF by eating raw broccoli or cauliflower at least once every week.
(The research that found this effect and the similar research that found that many of the compounds in broccoli that prevent cancer are destroyed by cooking, did NOT include a study to see if you could get more protection by eating one of these two raw cruciferous vegetables five to seven days a week. But my bet is that if this study had been done, it would have found just that.)
In summary, you can cut your risk of all cancers, prostate cancer, and the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer by something like 90 to 98 %. Plus you do NOT need to ruin your remaining sex life to do so by taking Finasteride! Taking Finasteride does NOT have that kind of proven track record in PREVENTING prostate cancer and the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer
This brings new meaning to the anti-drug motto, “Just say no!”
Today's post: Thursday, 2-26-2009
Ouch !!
The recent medical news for men 55 & up has a recent bad development I’d like to warn you about if you are a man over 55.
I’m not quite as cynical about undue drug company influence in medical guidelines recommending that drugs be used to fight disease as many writers who favor using effective preventive efforts that do not use drugs.
After all, for many doctors, they’ve learned medicine where the fixes they know are limited to drugs and surgery. And they’ve not been trained at all well to care about side effects messing up the quality of life for their patients. In addition, many drugs actually work well to do their intended job and many of those have few side effects for most people.
But this recent news has me really wondering about undue drug company influence. Finasteride is a drug that acts to turn down the part of testosterone that causes some male baldness and helps to cause BPH, or benign prostate enlargement.
The bad news is that it turns your sex drive down or off and can cause ED, impotence.
I don’t know about you, but if I was bald, I’d live with it, wear a stylish hat like the bald Dallas football coach Tom Landry used to do, or get a wig. I would NOT take a drug like Finasteride that reduces my sex drive. I’d rather turn that UP a bit!
Further, many men over 55 have some ED and reduced sex drives would prefer not to. (Following a heart protecting lifestyle can prevent ED caused by blocked up blood vessels and can help reverse it.) Viagra still sells well for a reason!
So, I was shocked to hear that one or two medical groups actually are recommending that Finasteride be given all men over 55 to help prevent BPH & prostate cancer.
This is nuts to put it bluntly.
Some men get neither without taking Finasteride. Even if it didn’t have such disagreeable side effects, why should they have to pay the drug companies to take Finasteride? Second, as I’ll cover shortly, there are other ways to deal with BPH. But third and most important, while taking Finasteride seems to help TREAT prostate cancer, I’ve never seen any study showing it effective in preventing prostate cancer. Moreover, most men who do get prostate cancer get the slow kind that they do not need to treat. Why should they take Finasteride? Further there ARE other ways to prevent prostate cancer and the kind of aggressive prostate cancer that would be the ONLY justification for having them take Finasteride which has NOT been proven to prevent this kind of cancer.
So, to me, this is irresponsible and badly misguided with the only certain benefits going to the bank accounts of the drug companies who provide Finasteride. Hmm. This does NOT look at all good for the ethics or good judgement of the doctors involved.
A. The knowledge of what can be done without this drug, Finasteride, to prevent or reverse BPH that avoids these side effects is not as strong or well known as the ways to prevent heart disease without drugs which is totally possible and beginning to be better known. (See our post on Tuesday this week, Special news on heart health.... Tuesday, 2-24-2009.)
But there is some information available.:
1. If you follow the lifestyle that protects your heart and keeps your LDL cholesterol low, it seems to help slow BPH. It also reduces your risk of getting any cancer by a third from the way you eat and exercise. If you include NOT smoking, which you should ! for heart protection, it cuts your chances of getting ANY cancer by two thirds!
2. If you eat abundantly every week of cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, etc &/or take the supplement DIM which is one of the active ingredients in these vegetables, it slows the conversion of testosterone from the OK form to the form that produces BPH. Eating these vegetables also has abundant other health benefits.
3. If you take 60 mg of the saw palmetto supplement twice each day,
it contains sterols so it will help lower your LDL cholesterol;
it may slow the increase in BPH (I’ve not seen info that this has been tested and verified; but I think it does.); &
it HAS been tested as turning off the disagreeable side effects of BPH on urination to a large degree and will help do that for you.
4. I’ve read that several other supplements can slow BPH even more including nettle root, pygeum, pumpkin seed extract, and bee pollen but I’ve seen less studies on them and have not taken them myself. But we may eventually find a combination of these that will reverse BPH reliably. I have read of some men getting this effect. Best of all, they do NOT turn off your sex drive.
B. But the real kicker is we DO know a good bit about preventing prostate cancer and the aggressive form that would be the only justification for every man over 55 taking Finasteride if they ALL would otherwise get it.
As we describe above, following a heart health protecting lifestyle including eating right, regular exercise and both NOT smoking and avoiding second hand smoke like the plague prevents two thirds of ALL kinds of cancer.
Second, there have been reports that taking 30 mg a day of lycopene, 3 mg a day of boron, 30 mg a day of zinc, and a turmeric or its active ingredient curcumin supplement once a day helps prevent all cancers and prostate cancer in particular. Further, doing this and eating both fresh tomatoes -- and cooked tomatoes served together with extra virgin olive to make the lycopene and other carotenoids bioavailable, tends to lower your PSA reading, may reduce BPH, and is likely to also help prevent all cancers and prostate cancer in particular.
Plus if you do all that, you can still cut your chances of getting the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer by another full HALF by eating raw broccoli or cauliflower at least once every week.
(The research that found this effect and the similar research that found that many of the compounds in broccoli that prevent cancer are destroyed by cooking, did NOT include a study to see if you could get more protection by eating one of these two raw cruciferous vegetables five to seven days a week. But my bet is that if this study had been done, it would have found just that.)
In summary, you can cut your risk of all cancers, prostate cancer, and the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer by something like 90 to 98 %. Plus you do NOT need to ruin your remaining sex life to do so by taking Finasteride! Taking Finasteride does NOT have that kind of proven track record in PREVENTING prostate cancer and the truly dangerous and aggressive kind of prostate cancer
This brings new meaning to the anti-drug motto, “Just say no!”
Labels: bad medical advice about prostate cancer, Finasteride, health policy, men over 55, prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, restore your sex drive, stop ED
posted by David at 1:32 PM
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