Junk Science? Number 4: Prostate cancer and testosterone

Junk Science Number 4: Prostate cancer – the King has got no clothes on.

Older readers may remember a song by Danny Kaye which was about a King riding on horse back through the streets in his finery – except that he actually had no clothes on. It took a little boy to start singing ‘the King is in the altogether’, for people to wake up to the fact that he was actually naked.

Why do I always feel like that little boy when people talk to me about Prostate cancer? I could talk about several aspects of its treatment – today I just want to talk about the ‘chemotherapy’ part.

Consider theses findings from research:

1.  An enlarged prostate afflicts most men in the Western World over 50 years of age. The cause is known to be oestrogen – the female sex hormone. In fact, anti-oestrogen drugs like finasteride are prescribed to reduce the enlargement.

2.  Sometimes this swollen prostate gland becomes cancerous. You may not even realize it. According to a study of men killed in motoring accidents, about two thirds of those over 50 years of age were happily wandering life’s path with prostate cancer and had little idea. Most prostate cancers are slow growing.

3.  There are research studies from Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney covered in CANCERactive’s research centre, Cancer Watch, that show you need the presence of both testosterone (the male sex hormone) and oestrogen to develop prostate cancer.

4.  The conundrum was answered when a Dr Thompson of MD Anderson in Texas showed that nice safe testosterone is converted by oestrogen into something very nasty called DHT, and it is that compound which drives prostate cancer.

Now all this seems pretty clear to me. Added research supports it:

5.  Cancer Watch has also covered research that shows 13 chemicals can drive the process – all of them were xenoestrogens, or oestrogen mimics. It is possible that selenium can work to displace heavy metals and chemicals from the tissues – there is German research on the benefits of selenium in prostate cancer prevention.

6. Professor Robert Thomas (former Pfeizer oncologist of the Year) specializes in prostate cancer and believes getting newly diagnosed patients onto a diet of broccoli and tomatoes, plus daily exercise can delay the need for surgery by at least a year. Broccoli contains indole3carbinol, known to denature aggressive oestrogen, while tomatoes contain lycopene which reduces circulating fat levels in the blood and thus reduces the formation of oestrogens.

7 . Women with oestrogen-driven breast cancer are often given ‘Aromatase Inhibitors’ – oestroegen is produced in the ovaries until menopause, but after this time some is still produced in the kidneys and from fat stores in the body. Men produce it this way too. Aromatase Inhibitors aim to cut all this production –in women.

8.  Oestrogen is known to cause cancers. Oestradiol binds with cell receptor sites and creates havoc within the cell; oestrogen can cause stem cells to stay in a rapidly dividing state. I could go on. Even Cancer Research has stated that Oestrogen drives cancers.

SO…. WHY ARE MEN WITH PROSTATE CANCER GIVEN INJECTIONS OF OESTROGEN?

I have 6 friends between the ages of 57 and 63 all with prostate cancer. They all ask me what to do. A couple have had their operations (more on that another time) and their oncologist is now working on ways to CUT THEIR TESTOSTERONE.

You see all of them have been told they have prostate cancer because they have high testosterone. What bollocks is this? If high testosterone caused prostate cancer, every 16 year old male in the world would have it. They’d be dropping like flies. It is completely illogical.

When we conducted an icon (Integrated Cancer and Oncology News) magazine interview with a top Prostate oncologist in London, he confirmed that there were several treatments for men with advance prostate cancer all designed to reduce testosterone levels.

But nowhere is there any research evidence that Testosterone causes cancer in cells, whereas there is a stack of it about oestrogen. I have written a book entitled ‘Oestrogen – the killer in our midst’; I could not even fill a postage stamp for testosterone.

Our intrepid London Oncologist was then asked about this ‘logic gap’ and replied that oestrogen as the driver of prostate cancer was an interesting theory, but he found that using oestrogen as a treatment ‘worked’, so the theory could not be right.

Now I don’t want to split hairs here but it seems to me the key word here is ‘Worked’.

We are told that prostate cancer is a slow growing disease. Why is it then that the 5-year survival rate in the UK for proste cancer in Eurocare 3 was 54 per cent, and this rose to barely 60 per cent seven years later after the new Government Cancer Plan, stacks of money, and all these new treatments (Eurocare 4)? We are one of the worst countries for 5-year survival in Europe. In Eurocare 3 Austria led the field at 83 per cent, now many countries in Europe are between 80 and 90 per cent.

‘Worked’? A healthy body is in a state of homeostasis – it means all your hormones are balanced. Throw one out and they all go out of kilter. But the body tries to get back to how it should be. Swamp the body with oestrogen and, sure, the testosterone levels will fall away. But in the end, they will gradually rise. And do you know what happens in prostate patients treated with oestrogen? Yup, you’ve guessed it – about three years on their testosterone rises. Now they are in real trouble. The testosterone is rising and the body is flooded with oestrogen. There was a test at Barts Hospital, London, on a treatment using natural compounds – the relevant comment from the oncologist there was, ‘Well, in cases of advanced prostate cancer after hormone treatment has failed we have little to offer patients’. That says it all.

My other three friends with prostate cancer? Well they listened to me. None had an operation, none receives drugs, all are on a strict diet, supplements and exercise. And at their hospitals they are on ‘Active Surveillance’. They have been in a balanced state for three years – as I said at the start, prostate cancer is slow growing. But then they didn’t throw bucket loads of oestrogen on the fire.

Does the sun spin round the earth, or the earth spin round the sun? You decide.

http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=171&Title=Prostate cancer, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment