I am often asked by prostate cancer patients if they should take hormones to treat the disease. This is a tough situation, as hormone therapy can prolong your life. But it can also end it. So what should you do?
Prostate cancer is hormone driven. But theres some debate about which hormone causes it. The current medical dogma says DHT, which comes from free testosterone, is the culprit. Free testosterone is simply testosterone that floats freely in your plasma. Free testosterone passes through your prostate cell membrane. There its metabolized into DHT by the enzyme 5 alpha-reductase.
DHT is 2.5 times more potent as a male sex hormone than testosterone. DHT binds to androgen receptors (AR) within the glandular cells and can drive cell proliferation. Ask a urologist or oncologist and hell tell you that DHT caused your problem. So, shutting off the source of DHT, namely testicular-produced testosterone, might slow the process.
Your pituitary gland, which is just below your brain, drives the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen). The drugs available for treating prostate cancer shut off your pituitary glands stimulation of your testicles. One of these drugs is Lupron. Lupron shrivels up your testicles (and your sex life). Without testicular testosterone, the theory holds that there will be less DHT and a slower growing cancer.
The other theory on what causes prostate cancer is centered around estrogen. Ive mentioned this in past issues. Certain metabolites of estrogen are highly destructive to DNA. Theres growing evidence that your own estrogen and environmental estrogens (such as man-made chemicals found in pesticides and other toxins) accumulate in your prostate and lead to disease. Its this estrogen that may be the real driving force behind prostate cancer. After all, its what drives breast and uterine cancer. And the prostate is made of the same hormone sensitive tissue as the uterus.
Whether prostate cancer is caused by testosterone or estrogen does not really matter – the hormone-blocking drugs will work for either one. But it will only work for a little while.
Using these drugs will lower your PSA. And it can keep it low for several years. But eventually the cancer cells that are not hormone sensitive will grow and eventually take over. When they do, the tumor is now hormone insensitive. At that point, the cancer returns and resumes its detectable growth.
But this is not the biggest problem with hormone-blocking drugs. Theres a new reported complication for men who take hormone therapy for prostate cancer – dropping dead of a heart attack! Again, we see that conventional treatment may be worse than the disease.
Oncologist Dr. Anthony DAmico of Boston combined 206 men in his Boston study with studies overseas to evaluate 1,372 men. Researchers gave half of the men both radiation and hormone suppression. They gave the other half only radiation. The researchers tracked the men for five years.
There were 51 fatal heart attacks evenly distributed between the two groups. However, the heart attacks in the hormone group occurred on average two-and-a-half years earlier than the group not receiving the hormones. Some heart attacks occurred within the first six months to two years after treatment, hitting about 2.5% of the men.
Why did they have a heart attack? There are plenty of testosterone receptors in your heart to keep it young and vigorous. Many integrative physicians use testosterone to help reverse heart disease, especially in diabetics and those with significant risk. So, it makes sense that shutting off the supply of heart rejuvenating testosterone could quickly spur a heart attack if you are susceptible.
Conventional treatments for many diseases are far worse than the disease. In the case of prostate cancer, theres little evidence that conventional treatments do any better than living out your life. However, there is a place for hormone blockade. In a number of men, the cancer can be suppressed for years. But the longest Ive ever seen is about 10 years. Many are back much sooner.
If you have prostate cancer and are considering or are already receiving the hormone-blockade drugs, please be sure to have your heart status evaluated. You might trade the possibility of delaying death from prostate cancer to hastening your death from a heart attack.
I also recommend you do not take the hormone blockade unless you have tried everything else. Ive reported on many treatments that have stopped and even reversed prostate cancer in many cases. You can read about these treatments on my website. You will also need to find an integrative physician to work with. He or she can help you with an individualized treatment plan that has a much better chance of succeeding. If all else fails, then try the hormone blockade.
Ref: J of Clinical Oncology, June 2007.