[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Health See other Health Articles Title: Downsides of conventional prostate cancer treatment I am for ever telling men about the downsides of various prescription drugs and invasive treatments for prostate disease. It is really astonishing to me that billions of dollars are spent each year by men who do not realise that those drugs and invasive treatments do not work and that those drugs and treatments will do them harm. Of course changing your diet and lifestyle is not the easiest thing to do but it does remain the only real way in conjunction with supplements, to heal your disease. I have a website which provides a great deal of information about the prostate and the various drugs and treatments that are available, and the side-effects and consequences of using them. You can read more and see videos about the prostate, about prescription drugs used for the prostate, the invasive treatments and the side-effects at the link below: There is a constant stream of new research that always confirms the dangers of both drugs and invasive treatments. It is part of my brief to keep you up-to-date with those studies and today I'm going to tell you about two recent studies. One comes from Australia which confirms that virtually all men who have invasive treatments for prostate cancer end up being impotent. Of course to some men that does not matter so much but to many it does matter. And doctors do not necessarily tell them the truth before that treatment. As I have always said, becoming impotent and incontinent might be considered a price worth paying if in fact the treatment does cure you of prostate cancer, but it does not. So you pay the price but you do not get the goods. The major Australian study, led by Cancer Council NSW epidemiologist David Smith, found sexual performance problems were almost guaranteed to follow most front-line treatments for prostate cancer. Contrary to the views of many doctors, the problem could be long-term and it was seen to get worse over time. Impotence is a common side-effect of prostate cancer treatment, along with incontinence," Dr Smith said in a statement on Wednesday. "There is a widespread perception that symptoms ease with time, but there has been little in the way of research to confirm whether this is the case. "Our study shows that for conventional prostate cancer treatments - with the exception of low-dose brachytherapy - patients experience high levels of impotence which is still evident after five years." One treatment, known as androgen deprivation therapy, saw 94 per cent of patients who received it report they were impotent two years later, and this increased to 97 per cent after five years. Radical prostatectomy, or external beam therapy, or a combination of these two treatments, led to impotency problems for 70 to 80 per cent of patients over the years. Nerve sparing surgery improved outcomes slightly, but even low-dose-rate brachytherapy had significant levels of impotence, and that was the only treatment that did not cause impotency in the majority of patients. Low-dose-rate brachytherapy caused impotency in 38 per cent of men after two years rising to 43 per cent after five years. The five-year study assessed impotency rates across more than 1600 prostate cancer patients and 500 healthy control subjects. "Clinicians tend to underestimate side-effects following prostate cancer treatment and invariably are surprised when they learn of the extent and duration of impotence following treatment," Dr Smith said. The research was presented on Wednesday at the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia's (COSA) Annual Scientific Meeting, being held this week in Melbourne. Here is the second study. Long-term use of androgen deprivation therapy to treat prostate cancer does not only cause impotence and increase the risk of heart failure (as found in previous studies) but may also increase older patients' risk of broken bones, according to a new study presented at the annual AACR Cancer Prevention Research Conference, Nov. 7 to 10 in Philadelphia. The study analyzed data from more than 46,500 men, aged 66 and older, who survived at least five years after a diagnosis of localized prostate cancer and received long-term androgen deprivation therapy. The study found that men treated with androgen deprivation therapy ADP had a 20 percent increased risk of a first fracture and a 57 percent increased risk of a second fracture after two years of treatment. "Treating men who have pre-existing conditions with longer duration of androgen deprivation therapy exacerbates their risk of fracture, and becomes more pronounced over time," Grace Lu-Yao, a professor of medicine at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, said in an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) news release. "Fracture has a strong impact on quality of life and mortality," she added. In addition, treatments involving removal of the testicles to stop testosterone production (which prostate cancer needs in order to grow) and/or long-term gonadotropin-releasing hormone use are also associated with an increased risk of fracture among men with prostate cancer. Please keep in mind that not only do men suffer these downsides but also these drugs and treatments do not improve the health of their prostate. The evidence is that these treatments do not improve their life expectancy by even one day. Here is an excerpt from the latest study by Researchers at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which is based at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute for Technology Assessment published by the National cancer institute on their website January 12th. They concluded that the various approaches—including active surveillance, surgery, and radiation therapy—result in similar overall survival and tumor recurrence rates. However, compared with the immediate treatment options, active surveillance yields both a comparable net health benefit and more quality-adjusted life years for men age 65 and older, according to the economic model used in this study. Active surveillance is a euphemism for doing nothing, so what this study is saying is that doing nothing produces a better result than any conventional medical treatment for prostate cancer. Ben Ong Please visit my website for more information http://bensprostate.com Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||