The hormone therapy is generally known under the name of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT).



This treatment method is included in the list of conventional treatments for prostate cancer, being discovered in 1941 by Charles B. Huggins while conducting several research studies by using estrogen to oppose the production of testosterone. The “chemical castration” is done by depriving the organism of testosterone because it was discovered the fact that the male androgenic hormone is the cause of the rapid growth of the cancerous cells in the prostate gland.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

For this treatment procedure, two drugs are being used: the LH-RH agonists block the LH-RH produced by the organism and the anti-androgenic drugs, stopping the testosterone effects on the prostate.

The great disadvantage of using this treatment procedure is that the tumor can always reappear, being more aggressive in comparison to the first time.

It is true that each form of treatment has its side effects so you should stay well informed about the procedure you opt for in case you are diagnosed with this disease.

Besides decreasing the quality of life when impotence and breast enlargement known as gynecomastia tend to appear, the side effects of hormone therapy are usually much more serious leading to death sometimes. The androgen deprivation therapy can increase the risk of a coronary artery disease, the result being death caused by a cardiovascular disorder. Statistics have also shown that the hormone treatment significantly increased the risk of death in patients who opted for the surgical procedure or prostatectomy for localized cancer of the prostate.

There is also an increased risk of developing incident diabetes.

If we are talking about metastatic cancer, the doctor’s suggestion is to keep in balance the negative after effects, like the cardiac risk, with an aggressive nutritional diet, plenty of exercises daily and using lipid lowering drugs.

Hormone therapy can always be complemented with the expectant management or watchful waiting procedure but it would probably be better to consult your doctor about that before deciding.

If you are not satisfied with what you hear about the hormone therapy there are some other conventional treatments you can always choose from. But do keep in mind that we are not talking about what procedure you like the best, we are talking about what treatment method applies better in your case; since the prostate cancer is categorized in different stages, describing how spread is the tumor, there are also treatments available for each type of cancer.

The best option for preventing such a disease is to regularly consult a doctor, perform the screening tests and try to maintain a healthy life by making exercises everyday and eat natural products. This could be the first important step to gain a long life without worries!

The organ known as the prostate is a gland with the size of a walnut, found only in the male reproductive system, storing and making the seminal fluid; its location is below the bladder, near the rectum and surrounding the urethra.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

Niccolo Massa, a Venetian anatomist, made the first attempt to describe the prostate gland and the symptoms of the prostate disorders, in the late 1530’s, while illustrations of it, dating from the same period of time, are being attributed to Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist. Strangely enough, because of the lack of medical information and the short life expectancies, the prostate cancer was considered a rare disease and was not officially recognized until 1853.

We can’t talk about the early symptoms of the prostate cancer because they do not exist.

Still though, if the tumor began spreading, symptoms tend to appear shortly afterwards: frequent urination or weak urine stream, burning or pain while urinating, blood in urine or semen, painful ejaculation, back pains, stiffness, ache, frequent bone pain, pain in the abdomen, compression of the spine resulting in leg weakness or incontinence.

Recent studies concluded there are several causes standing behind the development of cancerous cells in the prostate: age, is the first and most important factor because usually after the age of forty men experience internal body changes, race and genetic background, cancer being an inherited disease, and the high diet in animal fats or junk food, alcohol and smoking, increasing the exposure of developing cancer.

Since we know that cancer is not the only disease affecting the prostate gland, screening testes are recommended for an early diagnosing. These screening tests include two procedures: the digital rectal exam or DRE, when the doctor searches for hardness or lumps on the surface of the prostate gland by inserting a gloved finger into the rectum and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA using as an indicator for the spreading of the cancer the prostate-specific antigen.

Depending on the result of these screening tests, being either normal or abnormal, the doctor decides if further medical investigations are needed or not.

If the result is normal, consider yourself lucky for the moment, and come again to the hospital for some other screening tests as soon as it is recommended.

If the result is abnormal, a prostate biopsy will provide better and relevant results. This procedure is done by withdrawing of one or two small pieces of the prostate tissue, using a needle trans-rectally, under the guidance of ultrasound images of the prostate area.

If cancer is diagnosed, a pathologist uses the Gleason scale to classify the stages of the cancer: scores of two to four indicate a slow growing tumor, scores of five to six indicate an intermediate aggressiveness of the tumor while scores from seven to ten indicate the rapid growth of the cancerous tumor.

There is also the staging process which indicates how spread is the disease, and there are usually four stages: stage I, stage II, stage III and stage IV.

The next step is prescribing a proper treatment; doctors recommend the conventional treatment, but the alternative treatment should not be ignored and be regarded as another available option. It all depends of how far has the tumor spread into the organism.

Into the conventional treatment list we include surgery, done by removing the malignant tumor or parts of infected tissues, radiation therapy, done by damaging the DNA of the cancerous cells with implanted radioactive seeds or an external beam radiation, cryotherapy or the freezing of the prostate, chemotherapy, hormone therapy also known as androgen deprivation therapy, limiting the release of the testosterone in the organism.

The alternative type of treatment, known as Complementary and Alternative Medicines Treatments (CAM) involves homeopathy, herbal therapy, hydrotherapy, exercises for the relaxing of the mind and magnetic fields therapy.

There is another form of treatment, reclaimed by both conventional and alternative treatment and is known under the name of watchful waiting or expectant management, described as monitoring the evolution of the prostate cancer without prescribing any treatment to it and based only on maintaining a strict nutritional diet. This is a procedure recommended for elderly men since the cancer growth is rather slow, doubling once every four years.

The last and most nerve-wrecking step is to wait and see if the treatment you chose has an effect. It can be a painful wait but life is valuable and any means to prolong it are necessary.

It is a lucky thing that we can talk about prostate cancer treatments, since we do know cancer is a ravaging disease, affecting a great part of the world’s population.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

Side effects do exist though, and each particular treatment procedure may has its own set of side effects.

Basically there are two accepted treatment procedures: the conventional one and the alternative treatment.

The first includes surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, while the alternative method includes herbal therapy, homeopathy, physical body relaxation exercises, the use of magnetic field and hydrotherapy, etc.

We can’t actually say prostate cancer has side effects, because cancer is a disease that gravelly affects the functioning of the organism, especially when it’s an advanced stage.

The well known prostate cancer symptoms are frequent urination or weak urine stream, burning or pain while urinating, blood in urine or semen, painful ejaculation, back pains, stiffness, ache. When we talk about advanced cancer, bone pain is the most common of all, the cancer spreading fast to the lungs and liver causing coughing and chest pains, yellow skin and pain in the abdomen. If the spinal cord is affected by the prostate cancer it can cause a compression of the spine, resulting in weakness or fecal and urinary incontinence.

The side effects of the prostate cancer can actually appear only after we start a treatment, and since the purpose of this article is to talk about the prostate cancer side effects I’ll make a short list, depending on the treatment procedure used.

Surgery, also know as prostatectomy includes the risks of local bleeding, one per cent among men with ages between sixty five and sixty nine die because of the operation, anesthesia, impotence in about thirty five point five per cent cases or incontinence, in four point five per cent cases. For impotence there are treatments like Viagra or sildenafil tablets, devices to help stiffen the penis, injections with Caverject or the penile prosthesis; incontinence can be treated with medications or by using an artificial sphincter implanted around the urethra.

The radiation therapy is the second most common form of conventional treatment and its side effect are incontinence or impotence.

Cancerous cells tend to reappear after some time and the great disadvantage of the androgen deprivation therapy is its temporary effectiveness and serious side effects like cardiovascular diseases, breast enlargement or impotence.

Besides the evident hair loss, chemotherapy has its own set of side effects, even though we are talking about a long lasting treatment procedure, used even in leukemia cases.

Cryotherapy is the newest medical treatment procedure and its side effects are still being studied. The results gathered until today concluded that it may cause fistulas that leak urine, infections, the blockage of the urethra and sometimes an ineffectiveness of the freezing liquid inserted to kill the cancerous cells.

There are many other side effects and the doctor is responsible of keeping the patient informed about it. You are probably wondering why only conventional treatment side effects are mentioned. Usually the medical approach of curing a disease could be regarded as a bit more radical just because we are talking about a direct intervention on the damaged area of the body. This exact radical approach can have different results and even if we talk about a definite cure for the disease the side effects may still exist.

A correct treatment may decrease the number of the side effects.

The prostate cancer is a disease which affects only men and its potential effects could very well endanger their lives.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

The cancer is not the only disease affecting the prostate and to reach a correct diagnose, doctors often recommend the screening tests; depending on the results they decide to conduct, or not, further medical investigations.

These screening tests include the digital rectal exam or DRE, when the doctor searches for hardness or lumps on the surface of the prostate gland and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA.



If the test result is considered to be abnormal, a prostate biopsy is needed and is done by withdrawing one or two small pieces of the prostate tissue, using a needle trans-rectally, under the guidance of ultrasound images of the prostate area.

If cancer is diagnosed, a pathologist uses the Gleason scale to classify the stages of the cancer and how far is the tumor spread. There are three ways a cancer can spread: invading the neighboring tissues, spreading through the lymph vessels and lymph nodes or by traveling through the blood to far away tissues.

The doctor’s recommended treatment options are based on this information.

Radiation therapy, a treatment procedure developed in the early twentieth century has the effect of damaging the DNA of a cancerous cell so that is won’t be able to multiply.

In early stages this method consisted of intraprostatic radium implants but once the radiation sources became stronger, external beam procedure soon became the popular choice for radiation therapy.

Now we talk about two radiation therapy procedures, the first being brachytherapy, dating back since 1983.

The brachy part from the brachytherapy word comes from the greek translation of “short” because the radiation therapy is placed at a short distance from the damaged tissue; it is also known as internal beam radiation, the radioactive seeds being directly inserted in the prostate gland through needles thus avoiding the damaging of the surrounding organs or body parts.

The second radiation treatment is the external beam radiation therapy or the EBRT when x-rays with a high energy are directed towards the tumor area. This treatment could be done for about six to eight weeks, depending on its effects.

Radiation therapy could still be regarded as a new method of treating the prostate cancer since not many things are known about it except the fact that it does has an effect in eliminating the cancerous cells.

Studies about comparing the two methods of radiation therapy are still being conducted, so we can not say with certainty which one is better.

We do know that radiation therapy has some side effects like impotence and incontinence, but they are less frequent if we compare this treatment with surgery; also cryotherapy had some less favorable results in treating an advanced form of prostate cancer than radiation therapy.

Either way, before choosing a treatment method stay informed about what changes might occur in the treatment research medical field.

Detecting the early stages of a prostate cancer can be a tricky task if men tend not to seek for medical counseling after the age of forty.

Unfortunately, when symptoms like frequent and painful urination do appear it is the definitive sign to see a doctor. We simply can not talk about early symptoms of the prostate cancer because they aren’t any.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

This is a type of cancer with a slow growth, doubling its size once every four years, so there are known cases when symptoms did not appear until the cancer reached an advanced stage and in some other reported cases the patients died because of a different disease.

An early diagnosis of the precise prostate disorder could be obtained by using the screening procedure. The screening tests have to be done at regular periods of time, to detect early or tiny cancers and locally confined. The results of the screening tests can either be normal, when cancer is not detected, or abnormal, so further tests are necessary like a prostate biopsy.

The screening should be done starting from the age of forty, especially by all American African men known to have a higher risk to get a prostate cancer in comparison to the American-Caucasian ones.

The screening tests include the common procedures like digital rectal exam or DRE and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA. In the DRE test a doctor usually inserts a gloved finger into the rectum to feel the size of the prostate. The last one is used as an indicator to see how far cancer has spread apart from the gland. While both diagnosing procedures may be unpleasant and do not give a one hundred per cent accurate result, they still remain the best methods of discovering the prostate cancer in its early stages.

In the DRE test, if a lump or hardness is felt on the surface of the prostate it could indicate a possible prostate disorder or even cancer.

The PSA blood test uses as an indicator for determining the recurrence of prostate cancer the prostate-specific antigen and is recommended to be done annually, especially by men over forty. If the PSA test result indicates under four nanograms per milliliter of blood then it is considered as a normal result, the result between four and ten is at the borderline, depending on the patients age, genetic inheritance, symptoms and even race, while a result higher than ten is abnormal, and it is necessary for a doctor to inquire further medical investigations to reach an exact diagnosis. Values between thirty and forty indicate the existence of a prostate cancer.

The next best thing after reaching a diagnosis is to start treating this disease, but not before you learn about all the treatment options available for your cancer stage. It is a doctor’s responsibility to keep you informed about all that prostate cancer is about.

The prostate cancer is a common type of cancer affecting a serious number of men from all over the world.

Its early symptoms don’t exist, so the best medical advice to detect the prostate cancer at an early stage is to regularly have screening tests.

The most common manifestations of a prostate disorder are frequent and painful urination, problems of sexual function or blood found in the urine.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

If we talk about an advanced stage we encounter symptoms such as weakness in the legs, fecal an urinary incontinence, bone pain; if the cancer had spread to the lungs and liver it will cause breathing problems, chest and abdomen pains; if the spinal cord is affected it can cause the compression of the spine. If we are talking about metastatic cancer the most affected parts of the body will be the pelvis, ribs and vertebrae.

An early diagnosis of the exact disorder which affects the prostate can be obtained by using the screening procedure, done on a regular basis, the results being either normal when cancerous cells are not detected and abnormal, suggesting cancer.

Screening tests include two procedures: the digital rectal exam or DRE, when the doctor searches for hardness or lumps on the surface of the prostate gland by inserting a gloved finger into the rectum and the prostate specific antigen blood tests or PSA using as an indicator for the spreading of the cancer the prostate-specific antigen.

If the PSA test result indicates under four nanograms per milliliter of blood then it is considered as a normal result, the result between four and ten is at the borderline, depending on the patients age, genetic inheritance, symptoms and even race, a result higher than ten is abnormal, as also if the values are between thirty and forty which definitely indicate the existence of a prostate cancer.

In this last case the doctor has to inquire further medical investigations to reach for an exact diagnosis. A biopsy is the best procedure used in this case and is described as the withdrawing of one or two small pieces of the prostate tissue, using a needle trans-rectally, all this is done with the guidance of ultrasound images of the prostate area.

Biopsies can also be performed near the lymph nodes, the urinary bladder or the rectum. If the cancer has spread to the bones, radionuclide bone scans can confirm that, if we are talking about affected surrounding organs coaxial tomography or CAT scans and magnetic resonance imaging or MRIs can tell how much the cancer has spread in these areas.

If cancer is diagnosed, a pathologist uses the Gleason scale to classify the stages of the cancer: scores of two to four indicate a slow growing tumor, scores of five to six indicate an intermediate aggressiveness of the tumor while scores from seven to ten indicate the rapid growth of the cancerous tumor.

There is also the staging process which indicates how spread is the disease, and there are usually four stages: stage I, stage II, stage III and stage IV.

The next step is to start treating this disease under the guidance of a doctor and to start caring about what foods you consume. For that a doctor’s advices are imperative.

Research studies talk about two methods of treatment for the prostate cancer disease: the conventional treatment which includes surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy or androgen deprivation therapy, and the alternative treatment, also having the long name of Complementary and Alternative Medicines Treatments (CAM). On the list of alternative treatment we find herbal therapy, homeopathy, physical body relaxation exercises, the use of magnetic field and hydrotherapy. There are, of course, many other procedures, but I think only these are worth mentioning. If surgery is the most popular type of conventional treatment than herbal therapy is the most popular form of alternative treatment.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

Natural treatment is based on a diet which includes only natural products, such as vegetables and fruits. Also, the same diet must include antioxidants and mineral supplements such as magnesium, zinc, selenium, lycopene, calcium, resveratrol or phyto-oestrogens with its two groups: isoflavonoids and lignans, found in berries, nuts and cereals, vitamin C in high doses, also vitamin A and E, amino and essential fatty acids, enzymes.

Large doses of calcium suppress the vitamin D which inhibits the prostate cancer.

The African plum tree also know as Pygeum lowers the cholesterol, the pomegranate juice from the Punica granatum tree has anti-inflamatory properties, zyflamend extract from the olive oil, hot peppers and jalapenom habenero reduces the growth of prostate cancer cells, the saw palmetto and the soy are considered miracle herbs, soy products such as tofu or miso have isoflavonoids.

Zinc is stored in larger quantities into the prostate than in any other part of the human body so pumpkin seeds are recommended, also oysters, barley, chicken meat, sunflower seeds.

In apricots, pink grapefruit, guava, watermelon and cooked tomatoes we find lycopene.

The Omega 3 is found in cold water fish meat while selenium is found in liver, seafood, brown rice, garlic, grains and chicken meat.

Maitake mushroom extracts show some beneficial effects, but further research studies must be conducted.

Fructose, meaning the sugar in all fruits is regarded as a food which prevents the apparition of prostate cancer; we add on the list lemon juice and honey.

About drinking products, water is the best, and the more you drink it the better it is. The daily recommended quantity would be fifty percent of body weight in ounces or at least eight glasses of water. Eucalyptus and green tea are the alternatives for simple water.

A nutritional diet is recommended usually by doctors or specialists in herbal therapy, since the dosage of a certain supplement could have side effects. The above mentioned natural products are generally accepted for the treatment of prostate cancer but it is necessary to seek for a doctor’s counseling and once you do so, try to get a more complete list of what products you could use in your case.

When it comes to the prostate cancer disease, the patients receive treatment depending on how advanced the cancer is. We differentiate the prostate cancers into three categories: organ-confined, locally advanced and metastatic. For the last there is no known cure, but for the first two categories, surgery is probably the most frequently used treatment method.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

The surgery for the prostate cancer is also known as prostatectomy, and it is usually carried out if patients have a low risk disease. In some cases surgery is used even for advanced stages of cancer.

Prostatectomy basically means the removal of the prostate gland, and it was first performed by Hugh H. Young, in 1904, at John Hopkins Hospital. Other methods of surgery were soon developed afterwards like the transurethral resection of the prostate or TURP and in 1983, the radical retropubic prostatectomy, developed by Patrick Walsh, both of which preserved the penile function. Ever since 1990, in the United States alone, almost thirty six per cent of the male population with confined prostate cancer opted for this surgical procedure.

The discovery, in these last years, of some other forms of treatment, lead to a bit of a paradox regarding surgery to whether it’s worth having it or not.

If we are talking about an advanced type of cancer, the surgery has little worth, since the cancerous cells already reached the surrounding areas of the prostate gland. If the cancer is still contained into the gland, there are some other treatments the patient could opt for, without being necessary the removal of the gland. Some of these treatments have almost the same results as surgery.

Before deciding on this medical treatment you should probably know complications may arise during surgery, and even if the surgery is successful there are some side effects.

Prostatectomy includes the risks of local bleeding, one per cent among men with ages between sixty five and sixty nine die because of the operation, anesthesia, impotence in about thirty five point five per cent cases or incontinence, in four point five per cent cases. For impotence there are treatments like Viagra or sildenafil tablets, devices to help stiffen the penis, injections with Caverject or the penile prosthesis; incontinence can be treated with medications or by using an artificial sphincter implanted around the urethra.

Alternative treatment has its set of advices in case you opt for the surgical approach of treating cancer, so to prevent medical complications, with two weeks before the surgery keep a nutritional diet which includes products with vitamin C, the recommended dose being of 2000-5000mg daily, vitamin B-complex, 60mg doses of zinc daily, vitamin A, modified citrus pectin, vegetables, water, bioflavonoids and protein; avoid smoking, sugar, alcohol, valerian, kava, aspirin and vitamin E.

After surgery you can add to your diet curcumin, small doses of vitamin E or bromelain.

You can also use as a complementary method of treatment homeopathy and follow your doctors recommendations to prevent the cancer cells from appearing again. Health starts with being careful!

The second most utilized conventional treatment for prostate cancer has to be the radiation therapy.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

It was developed for the first time in the early 20^th century, consisting of intraprostatic radium implants but once the radiation sources became stronger, external beam procedure soon became the popular choice for radiation therapy.

Radiation therapy is done by damaging the DNA of a cell so it won’t be able to multiply. There are two known radiation procedures: brachytheraphy or internal beam radiation, referring to the direct placing of the treatment or at a short distance away from the infected tissue, and the EBRT or external beam radiation therapy where x-rays with a high energy are directed towards the tumor area. The first method of radiation therapy dates back since 1983.

Brachytherapy is considered to be more advantageous in comparison to the external beam radiation, since the radioactive seeds are being directly inserted in the prostate gland through needles thus avoiding the damaging of the surrounding organs or body parts. Studies about these two procedures have not ceased to appear.

Prostate cancers, depending on how wide spread they are, are classified into organ confined, meaning inside the region of the gland, locally advanced, when the cancer spread locally and metastatic, the advanced form of prostate cancer. A cure for this last stage cancer is unavailable at the moment but it could be avoided if the cancer is diagnosed on time.

Treatments are used to slow down the multiplying of cancer cells or the growth of a tumor but also for eliminating painful symptoms. Before advising you to choose a treatment procedure, a doctor has to take in consideration a patient’s age, general health details, extent of cancer and last but not least, it’s preferences. Information is a bliss so before making up your mind about something gather as much information as possible about it.

If a patient has a disease with low risk he can either choose radiotherapy or prostatectomy as a treatment method; the intermediate and high risk diseases are treated with radiation therapy and either for a long or a short period of time with hormonal ablation.

Radiation therapy has the benefit effect of damaging only the cancerous cells, while normal cells continue to function.

The negative side effects encountered when radiation therapy was used are impotence and incontinence, but are less frequent in comparison to the surgery’s effects. Studies have shown that the survival rate after ten years of treatment is similar to that for prostatectomy.

The data obtained after comparing the radiation therapy to cryotherapy gave a favourable result for the first treatment procedure.

Remember, each patient can choose the method of treatment but a doctor’s advice is still important, so if you find yourself among those struck by this disease, remember, again, that there are treatments. The only important thing is to select the right one for your case.

Cryotherapy is one of the newest methods of prostate cancer conventional treatments.

Cryotherapy or cryoablation means the freezing of the prostate, if the tumor has not spread from the prostate body region by killing both cancer and normal cells.

<-336x280 Large Rectangle - center->

This treatment technique actually dates back since the 1960’s when it was used in treating stomach ulcers by freezing the lining of the stomach. Because of the serious negative side effects doctors stopped practicing this treatment method until its reintroduction in 1998.

The prostate cancer comes in second place if we are talking about the most common causes of cancer death in male population, especially on the western side, affecting about eighteen per cent of the American male population. Prescribing a correct treatment could help ensure the continuity of life so doctors classify prostate cancer into three categories: near the prostate gland or organ-confined, locally advanced or spread only locally and metastatic, which is the advanced form of prostate cancer. For the last stage there are no effective treatments, but on the list of treatments used for the organ-confined and locally advance stages we find the cryoablation method.

It can be described as the insertion through a needle of a freezing liquid such as argon or liquid nitrogen into the prostate gland, procedure accomplished only with the help of ultrasoundimages.

Since we are talking about the same old procedure used back in the 1960’s, which underwent some minor modifications, studies regarding it are still being conducted and new information appears each time but it just doesn’t seem enough for a better understanding of  the full capacity of this medical method of treatment.

Medical researchers know about the side affects it may cause like infections, fistulas that leak urine or blockage of the urethra, but also about its temporary ineffectiveness when the liquid inserted doesn’t kill the cancer cells. A Canadian study, comparing two forms of cancer treatment, and I’m referring to radiation therapy and cryoablation, concluded that the last one is less favorable for the advanced stages of prostate cancer.

This kind of result is somehow discouraging and it usually seems like medicine didn’t make much of a progress in these past years. There are people suffering for years of incurable diseases but are hoping for a treatment to be discovered while they are still alive. Positive thinking is very important for this people.

While prostate cancer has its treatments we still can’t talk about a definitive cure for it.

Cancerous cells tend to reappear after some periods of time and unfortunately the new tumor could spread more aggressively in comparison to the first time. Expectant management can be the right treatment in this case, complemented by the doctor’s advices about what natural products should you include in your diet.

Expecting for a slow death is not the answer because as long as you’re alive anything can be accomplished!