Complicating matters is the fact that most of the prostate cancer treatments that there are have side effects and contraindications that few people if any are proud to have to live with. Take the Prostate Cancer Surgery for instance; during the procedure the entire prostate gland is more or less inevitably removed in order to take out the tumor growing within it entirely. This organ produces the most part of the fluid in semen, so that without much ado, there is a foreboding understanding that the man may never again produce semen; thus leading to impotency in many cases.

Life and sex post prostate cancer surgery is a case study, but one that is not difficult to deal with considering the number of people who are diagnosed with the disease annually. More than two hundred thousand men get the ill news each year, and immediately they know that if they are going for the radical prostatectomy, they might never again be able to have sex – at least not in the good old way.

Besides the loss of continence that results from the procedure, all men who have undergone a prostate cancer surgery have to deal with impotence… at least for a while if things turn out rather well, which they are not likely to. The nerves that control erection are so close to the prostate gland that operating on the organ will harm them in some way, so that man may not be able to achieve and erection again.

Some men over the course of time recover some degree of potency, but it is often nowhere near what they used to have; for the most part, many men report that they have to do it with the aid of Viagra or Levitra, or some other such drug that helps to deal with impotence. Other men say it’s the penile injection for them; and some say it’s the vacuum penis enlargement pumps.

Considering the fact that penile sensation, libido, and the ability to achieve an orgasm generally remain intact after a prostatectomy, it is understood how erectile dysfunction can be tortuous for a man. Realizing that he might never again have any ejaculate after sex might be tumultuous for a man’s mind. But consider this: virtually millions of American men live with this even this moment… and they still find some purpose in life, even in the absence of sex the good old way.

The VA compensation for prostate cancer victims who were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War takes into account the fact that these men are more likely to develop prostate cancer than the rest of the population. As a result if one were to develop the disease, he would be entitled to compensation and medical treatment from the Veterans Administration – but only if the patient in Vietnam between January 9, 1962 and May 5, 1975. But that aside, it does not matter what time he developed the condition, he is presumed to have been affected by Agent Orange and are entitled to compensation.

The veteran gets monthly payment rates based on the combined rating for his service-connected disabilities based on the severity of the disabilities. Additional amounts are paid to veterans who have severe disabilities, called the “special monthly compensation,” and certain other veterans who have dependents get a little something as well.

The man does have to submit an “Application for Compensation or Pension” by filling out the VA Form 21-526 as soon as possible after being diagnosed with prostate cancer; and it is important that he does it before he receives Prostate Cancer treatment. There are provisos for those who have been treated and cured, and for those who are only suffering a relapse of the condition, but things are clearer when the application is filled out prior to any treatment, especially if the man desires to initially qualify for 100 percent disability rating for at least six months. Applications filed after treatment may only allow the man to qualify for a reduced disability rating if treatment resulted in side effects.

According to the Compensation Rate Table at www.vba.va.gov, which was effected December 1, 2006, 100 percent disability compensation rates are as follows include $2,471 a month for a single veteran individual, and $2,610 per month if he has a spouse. The application may be filled out online as well on the same website.

Many people insist that these treatment options can really help you survive prostate cancer.

The question is – if they are so effective, why are lots of doctors not recommending nor using them for their patients?

This is a very important question and one which the below news article covers. Apart from just covering the question, it also throws more light on these wonder prostate cancer treatment options.

Drug trials are rarely halted halfway through because the drug being tested is so effective — but that’s exactly what happened a few months ago at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, one of the foremost cancer centres in the world, where doctors were testing a powerful radiation drug for men with advanced prostate cancer.

Patients being given Radium-233 Chloride, known as Alpharadin TM, lived longer and experienced less pain and fewer side-effects compared with those on a placebo.

It was decided that the difference in outcomes between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ was so marked that it was unfair to withhold the drug from half of the men on the trial.

This is just one of several recent breakthroughs in prostate cancer treatment.

In September, Australian researchers announced they had found that certain types of oestrogen appear to block the growth of tumour cells in laboratory studies.

These tantalising developments are all the more important because there remains a daunting fight against prostate cancer — the most common and the second deadliest among men after lung cancer, killing around 10,000 men in the UK each year, or an average of more than one an hour.

While new treatments are being found to treat every stage of the disease, and older treatments are being refined and developed, mortality rates remain stubbornly high.

Only 51.1??per cent of men in the UK with prostate cancer, which affects the doughnut-shaped gland that surrounds the urethra near the bladder, are still alive five years after diagnosis.

That compares badly with the 91.9??per cent of Americans who manage to make the five-year mark, according to the CONCORD study conducted from 1990 to 1999 — the first worldwide analysis of cancer survival rates. This may be because Americans have traditionally taken a more aggressive approach to prostate cancer.

A recent U.S. study found that 75??per cent of men with low-risk prostate cancer had aggressive therapy including radiation treatment and radical prostatectomy.

‘In the UK, the default option is to tell the patient they have choices — and many opt to wait to see if the disease gets any worse before having treatment,’ says Chris Eden, a consultant urologist who regularly travels to the U.S. to research the latest techniques.

‘About 40 per cent of all patients diagnosed each year in the UK choose to have active surveillance, when nothing is done except for repeated monitoring with blood tests and prostate biopsy.’

This is despite the fact that surgery still seems the most effective way of improving outcomes for patients. A recent U.S. study of 404,604 patients has found that ‘with the exception of men over 80 years, surgery provides the most favourable survival rates in most patients’.

Mr Eden, who performs around 200 nerve-sparing keyhole prostate removals each year — carefully avoiding the nerves which are key to erectile function — feels there are ‘some lessons’ to be learned from the U.S. approach.

‘American men will research their options and take themselves to specialists who have published excellent results, rather than accept what is available locally,’ he says.

‘And when it comes to the other end of the treatment spectrum — men who can no longer be cured of their prostate cancer but can still be effectively treated — the UK also lags behind, not least because NICE (the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence) takes a long time to make decisions about whether a drug should be available through the NHS, sometimes rejecting drugs that show promise because they are too expensive.’

He says Americans also have far more regular tests for prostate specific antigen (PSA) — raised levels of which can be an early sign of the disease.

However, other experts are not convinced the U.S. approach is the right one.

Emma Malcolm, chief executive of the charity Prostate Action, says the comparisons between UK and U.S. mortality rates do not paint an accurate picture.

‘I suspect there is a lot of over-treating in America — where men who could have lived normal lives for decades undergo procedures, which often leave them with life-altering side-effects.’

Potential problems from surgery include incontinence and impotence.

Depending on the study, between 30 and 70 per cent of men in the UK who undergo prostate removal become impotent, and between two to 15 per cent suffer mild to severe incontinence.

However, as the recent trial at the Royal Marsden shows, these are exciting times in prostate cancer research, with UK academics leading the world in promising new drug therapies.

Here, we look at some of the latest developments…

ROBOTIC SURGERY

Surgery plays a very important role when it comes to treating early-stage prostate cancer — and by far the most common procedure is the radical prostatectomy, when the entire prostate is removed.

A growing number of radical prostatectomies are now carried out with the help of sophisticated robots which aid the surgeon as he or she carries out the procedure.

In the U.S., more than 60 per cent of radical prostatectomies are carried out with robotic assistance.

Ben Challacombe, a consultant urologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Prostate Centre, recently began performing prostatectomies using the latest Si HD robot.

‘This new system helps to achieve the best possible outcome in terms of cancer control, continence and potency,’ says Mr Challacombe.

Clinical trials show this method has improved results over non-robotic procedures, particularly regarding less post-operative pain and shorter stays in hospital.

BEST FOR: Men diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer.

 

CYBERKNIFE

Despite the name, the Cyberknife involves no cutting. It is, in fact, a precise form of radiation therapy where around 150 cross-beams of radiation are fired at the target from multiple directions.

Side-effects are similar to standard radiation therapy: 1-2 per cent of men will suffer incontinence and 30-50 per cent of men become impotent as a result of the treatment, although more surrounding healthy tissue is left unharmed.

Dr Katharine Pigott, a consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London and The Prostate Centre, says: ‘The attraction of the procedure is that it is an outpatient-based, one-week treatment, compared with between four and seven weeks of radiotherapy treatment as an outpatient.

‘It is less invasive than surgery, and with a faster recovery period.’
Consultant urologist Chris Eden says: ‘Cyberknife is only available in one (private) UK centre, which is unfortunate for patients who opt for radiotherapy, or who are unsuitable for surgery, as this does show significant promise.’

BEST FOR: Men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer.

 

ULTRASOUND

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is still considered to be an experimental treatment in the UK because there is no long-term data, but it is gaining ground because it is non-invasive and doesn’t interfere with the nerve supply, meaning a man’s sexual potency and continence are rarely affected.

HIFU uses high-frequency sound waves to superheat prostate cancer cells, destroying them.

A balloon is inserted via the rectum and is filled with cooling water to help protect the tissue of the rectum from burning.
HIFU is only available in a few NHS centres but is offered at a number of private clinics.

‘HIFU is available on the NHS but only in a trial setting after deliberations by NICE,’ explains Mr Eden.

‘This is because of concerns regarding a lack of effectiveness and a significant complication rate from published intermediate-term (up to five years) follow-up.’

BEST FOR: Men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer who do not wish to have surgery.

HORMONE THERAPY

Men who have more advanced forms of prostate cancer, which cannot be treated with surgery alone, can have a range of hormone therapies which work by reducing the amount of testosterone circulating in the blood, which ‘feeds’ the cancer.

In the past, these drugs often ceased to work after several years because patients eventually became resistant to them.

However, new developments hold out real hope to men who’ve reached this stage.
Abiraterone, which was launched at the end of September and can now be prescribed by doctors, is a new hormone-blocking drug which seems to extend life significantly and shrink tumours in men with advanced cancer.

Most hormone treatments focus on cutting testosterone production in the testes — the main site of production — but abiraterone is able to reduce the hormone throughout the body by inhibiting an enzyme essential to its production.

Dr Heather Payne, a consultant clinical oncologist at University College London Hospitals, was involved in clinical trials for the drug, which is manufactured by Janssen, part of pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson.

She says: ‘Historically, there have been few treatment options for advanced prostate cancer when it relapses after hormonal therapy and chemotherapy, so this new treatment has the potential to meet a significant and previously unmet need.’

NICE and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) are currently assessing whether to approve the medication for use on the NHS. A decision from NICE is expected in May 2012.

Another exciting hormone reducing drug on the horizon is MDV1300, developed by Medivation, which is still undergoing clinical trials in Germany.

Lead researcher Professor Axel Heidenreich says it looks ‘very promising’ and could even prove more effective than abiraterone, as it gets to work blocking the creation of testosterone in the testes, the prostate and in the cancer itself.

‘I am hoping it will be available to patients within the next 12 months in the UK and elsewhere,’ he says.

BEST FOR: Men with prostate cancer that has spread. 

CHEMOTHERAPY

Just as for many other types of cancer, chemotherapy has been proven to be effective for men with advanced prostate cancer by slowing the progression of the disease.

Standard treatments, including docetaxel, which is taken with steroids, have now been supplanted by the next generation of chemotherapy drugs, specifically cabazitaxel, developed by Sanofi-Aventis, which has far fewer side-effects such as hair loss, nausea and diarrhoea.

Patients can take the drugs in tablet form, by injections or via a drip. But NICE reported last week that it will not recommended them, as it is too expensive.

‘I think it’s a pity if we don’t continue with it, as it is part of the stepping stones to further improvements,’ says Dr Tom Stuttaford, medical writer and a Trustee of the Urology Foundation. It will still be available to private patients.

BEST FOR: Men with advanced prostate cancer which no longer responds to hormone treatment.

CRYOTHERAPY

This therapy involves freezing the tissue of the prostate gland, which destroys all the cells within and leaves just the shell.

Doctors insert very fine needles into the prostate via the perineum (the skin between the scrotum and the rectum) and pass freezing gases through the needles until the temperature within the prostate drops to around minus 40c.

The prostate usually undergoes several freeze-thaw cycles until all the cells — including the cancer cells — are dead.

This relatively new therapy is not yet widely available, although there are six NHS cryotherapy clinics in London. There are also no long-term studies to show its effectiveness. Read more.

I hope you learned a thing or two from the above news article about the prostate cancer wonder treatment options.

One of such researches/studies has just indicated that those men who have had their cancers spread out of their prostate to other surrounding tissues (thus have aggressive prostate cancer) can now live much longer than previously thought, if they are treated using a combination of hormone therapy and radiation.

Read more about this in the below news article:

Men with prostate cancer that has spread to local surrounding tissues live longer and are less likely to die of the high-risk disease if treated with a combination of radiation and hormone therapy, rather than with the drug treatment alone, a study has found.

The finding could change the standard for treating this aggressive form of prostate cancer, which represents about one in five cases of the disease, said Dr. Padraig Warde, a radiation oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto who led the international study.

“The study shows combining radiation and hormone therapy improves overall survival by 23 per cent and disease-specific survival by 43 per cent, compared with treating with hormone therapy alone,” said Warde.

To conduct the study, 1,205 men with locally advanced prostate cancer in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. were randomly divided into two groups. Half received androgen-deprivation therapy to suppress testosterone production, while the other half were treated with the hormone therapy plus radiation.

After seven years, 66 per cent of men who had the hormone therapy alone were still alive, compared with 74 per cent who received the combination treatment. Among those in the hormone treatment-only group, 26 per cent died from their prostate cancer, compared with 10 per cent who received both therapies.

“The two of them together combined are the important thing,” said Warde. “You can’t use radiation alone. What it’s showing is that radiation plus hormones are better than hormones alone.”

Androgen deprivation therapy, given by intramuscular injection, works by starving prostate cancer cells of testosterone, which they need to multiply. The treatment also makes cancer cells more sensitive to the killing effects of radiation, Warde explained.

This year, an estimated 25,500 men in Canada will be diagnosed with cancer of the walnut-sided gland, and about 4,100 will die of the disease. About 15 to 20 per cent of cases are the aggressive or high-risk type with localized spread.

“And these are the bad actors,” said Warde of this form of the cancer. “These are the patients, if you look overall, who die of prostate cancer, whereas many of the people who present with earlier-stage disease, they actually will live very long even with or without treatment. They don’t die of prostate cancer — they die with it.

“But with these ones, a lot of the patients will die of prostate cancer.”

The study is published in the Nov. 2 issue of The Lancet, and Warde believes its findings will alter the practice of using just hormone therapy for locally advanced prostate cancer.

“There is substantial evidence that many, many patients … are treated with hormone therapy alone and are never referred for consideration of (radiation) treatment,” he said. “So they’re never given the chance of cure because with locally advanced disease, many urologists in particular — although I’m not picking on them — believed that this is incurable cancer and there was really no point in giving them additional treatment beyond hormones.”

The international research team enrolled and treated patients over 10 years beginning in 1995, and Warde said the radiation therapy used was typically “old-style” — employing lower doses of radiation in less finely targeted beams, compared with treatment today.

“So, in fact, there’s every reason to believe that with the radiation we use now … that the results are likely to be much better because we hopefully kill more cancer cells with the radiation and we’re much more precise now,” he said.

Some side-effects can occur, however, including damage to surrounding tissues like the rectum and bladder, which can cause tenderness, some bleeding and diarrhea. Warde said these effects are most pronounced in the first six to 12 months on average, but don’t seem to persist beyond three years following treatment.

Still, he believes that adding the radiation component will lead to a better outcome for many patients.

“It’s practice-changing in that we will be getting out to patients, physicians across North America and Europe … that actually these patients should no longer be treated with hormone therapy alone. They should be referred for consideration of radiation, and hopefully many of them will benefit and live longer and more productive lives.”

Dr. Martin Gleave, director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre, does not see the study so much as a “game-changer,” but a confirmation of what cancer specialists have surmised for some time.

“The fact that adding radiation helps survival affirms our biases,” Gleave, a professor of urology at the University of British Columbia, said from Vancouver. “But on top of that, I think it will lead us in the future towards being more aggressive in managing the local disease.”

“Where we would have thought, or at least hypothesized, that maybe the horse is out of the barn and closing the barn door doesn’t make a difference … (the study suggests that) closing the barn door and preventing more horses from getting out does make a difference,” he said of the double-barrelled treatment to halt the migration of cancer cells.

Gleave said more aggressive treatment could mean using chemotherapy along with hormone-suppression and radiation, a triple combination that Warde’s team has already begun testing. Surgery might also be included in such a treatment regimen, Gleave added. Read more.

As you can see from the above news article, it’s never too late to give up, even if you have aggressive or end stage prostate cancer.

There’s always hope, like we like to say on this website… so you should always be POSITIVE while looking for how to survive prostate cancer!

For the record, after a radical prostatectomy, the entire prostate is gone, meaning that no more prostate fluid is being produced. The prostate fluid is the substance produced by this organ which makes up most of the liquid part of the semen that is discharged during sexual orgasm. The sensory neurons in the region are still intact, as a matter of fact, so that penile sensation has not gone anywhere; contrary to certain popular beliefs, the ability to achieve an orgasm has not gone anywhere either. What has suffered is the ability to achieve an erection, and yes, painfully the ability to ejaculate. With the prostate fluid out of the way, there isn’t much to carry the sperm on their way out from the testicles – if the testicles are still in position and not removed for some form of hormonal therapy… 

Post prostate cancer surgery orgasms, according to reports by those who have experienced it – and still are experiencing it – are some of the most intense experiences that a man may ever go through. The strength and concentration of the experience may fade with frequency after the first occurrence, but they generally seem to remain a lot more forceful than previous ones before the operation, if reports are to be believed.

Most men certainly desire the pleasure of the seeing the creamy white ejaculate springing out of the penis at the time that they orgasm, but that is not likely to be. There of course is the lubrication fluid from the cowper’s glands that generally comes before the act of sexual intercourse, and may in certain cases be sustained through to the end of the copulation, but it generally is nowhere near the quality of good old fashioned semen.

In order to achieve an erection in this phase of a man’s life, he may have to rely heavily on little blue pills Viagra, of Levitra, or Cialis. VED vacuum pumps also help a great deal, although they will have to be helped by a cord to band tied around the base of the penis to keep the blood from flowing back out. Otherwise, the man may go with the penile injections option to achieve a semblance of potency. But as for the ejaculate at orgasm, if it is prolonged or anything of that sort, it is likely just urine from the bladder.

The most important factor however in determining what the chances of survival are for a man who has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer is the stage of the cancer as at the time of diagnosis. This is partly why so much effort is placed on staging the Prostate Cancer disease; so that they can know how far the disease has spread (or metastasized) in the body of the patient, and thus decide on treatment while also having an idea of how well the patient might respond over the course of the intervention.

Early stage prostate cancer is not only treatable, but it is also curable, to the extent that there are excellent five year outcomes of patients treated with radical prostatectomy – prostate cancer surgery – or early stage radiation therapy.

According to the American Cancer Society, the survival rate for men treated for early stage disease at five years is almost a hundred percent; at then years also, it still stands at an impressive 93%, and at fifteen years it drops to 77%, which is not too bad considering that the man will likely be well stricken with age at this time anyhow.

The story with late stage disease is a different matter altogether. Perhaps the biggest matter to realize first and foremost is that advanced stage prostate cancer is not really so curable – it is treatable, but it cannot be really cured – so whatever treatments are ordered by the oncologist or urologist will likely be to provide palliative care to the said patient, and little else.

Rarely are advanced stage prostate cancer patients expected to live longer than three years, although that also is determined by how aggressive the cancer is, how extensively it has metastasized through the body, and how well the patient responds to therapy. There are actually men who have lived as long as eight years after the diagnosis and with proper care before eventually dying – and there are those (very few) who have lived even further than that, although the doctors would hardly acknowledge them, putting them down as anomalous instances, exceptions that prove the rule.

It might be possible to further extend life expectancy for such a patient, say certain published research reports, but that has not been confirmed. According to this finding, prostatectomy can double or even triple the survival rate for advanced prostate cancer, but as said, this claim is yet being studied and may take a few years before it becomes founded… or not. In the meantime, men with advanced prostate cancer may only look forward to… er, five years?

However several risk factors have been identified that increase the chances of developing the disease. For instance, the risk of a man developing prostate cancer has now related to his age, genetics, race, diet, lifestyle, medications, and other factors that may vary based on location of something.

AGE: The primary risk factor for prostate cancer is however is the age the person in question. Prostate cancer is uncommon in men less than 45, but becomes more common with advancing age. Specifically, only about one in 10,000 men under age 45 are ever diagnosed with the disease, while about 65% of men that make it over 65 years old will be diagnosed with the disease. According to the American Cancer Society, the average age at the time of diagnosis is 70.

GENETICS: Second on the list, genetics certainly contributes to prostate cancer risk. For instance, a man who has a close (blood) relative who has been diagnosed with the disease in the past has been determined to have twice as much risk of developing the adenocarcinoma as a man who has never had anyone in his family diagnosed with the disease. The risk likewise increases arithmetically as more people in the same family are diagnosed with the disease.

AFRICAN AMERICANS: In the United States African American men as twice more likely to develop prostate cancer than men of almost any other race in the country. Asiatic men, according to the ACS have the lowest rate of prostate cancer in the country, while Hispanics follow closely. Whites are situated somewhere in between, sealing the argument in favor of race being contributory as a factor of prostate cancer incidence.

DIET as a prostate cancer risk factor is getting ever more prominent. Various foods have been implicated as causal factors for the disease, while others have been outlined as reducing the risk of prostate cancer by substantial percentages.

Low intake of vitamins and high intake of processed foods; high fat diets and red meat; and the consumption of dairy products to which vitamin A palmitate has been added increase the risk of prostate cancer.

However a vegetable rich diet with a lot of fruits, tomatoes, and yes, pepper, has been depicted by authoritative bodies and helpful in lowering prostate cancer risk… and fish oils too. Fish oils also help.

Click to See some of the foods allegedly bad for prostate cancer.

Click to See more of the foods allegedly bad for prostate cancer.

Click to See some of the foods allegedly good for prostate cancer.

Click to See more of the foods allegedly good for prostate problems.

You see, prostate cancer is not so much as the death sentence it used to be in the past. Now lots more people are surviving the condition than was the case in the past. Yes, lots of people still die from it, but the number is nowhere near what it used to be many years ago.

One of the major reasons why many people don’t survive this condition is that they give up too soon. They believe the prognosis and think nothing else can be done to survive. Yes, cancer of all kinds are deadly, but prostate cancer doesn’t have to send you to an early grave, if you do all that can be done to survive it.

Just like one of the major reasons for failing to survive is giving up too soon, one of the most important determinant as to whether one survives prostate cancer or not is NOT TO GIVE UP! You read that right – if you really want to survive this condition, then you have to decide, upfront, regardless of what the doctor or anyone else tells you, that you will do everything within your power to survive.

Below are some of the things that can help you survive prostate cancer: 

1. Like I said above, DO NOT GIVE UP, regardless of what your prognosis is:

Have the deep-rooted determination that you will FIGHT on until you win. As you may have known about life – the person who gives up is already defeated, even in battles like cancer. There have been stories of people who won just because they didn’t give up. They fought on and did everything they could and eventually survived. So, determination and doggedness in fighting prostate cancer is very important to surviving it!

2. Tell yourself and believe it – if others have survived this, you CAN survive it as well:

It’s a fact that lots of people have survived prostate cancer. Some of them you don’t know and many you may have heard of. As you can see when you visit the following links – Popular Celebrities Who Survived Prostate Cancer and Famous Prostate Cancer Survivors- you will find the many popular people who were diagnosed but survived this cancer. Like we always say on this website, if they could, you CAN survive it as well.

They are not any more human than you and they didn’t do anything magical. If they could, you can as well. The fact that the survivors span people from all over the world and all over different races further shows that surviving the condition is not a preserve of any one type of people or race. If ANYONE has ever survived the condition, it means EVERYONE can also survive it!

3. Find out what the prostate cancer survivors did to survive and do the same:

It’s very important not to isolate yourself from the world because of this condition. You need to get around those people who have survived it and learn from them. While some of them are celebrities, many are ordinary people like you and I. Of course it may be difficult to find the celebrities and famous people who have survived prostate cancer, but you can read up about them – learn what they did, what they didn’t do, the types of treatment that worked for them, the types that didn’t work for them, etc.

Keep visiting this website as we will be including a section where REAL survivors of prostate cancer will be sharing their experiences with our readers. You will learn what worked for them and what didn’t work. You will also get encouraged as they had been in your shoes before so they know how you are feeling right now. They can definitely help you survive this deadly condition!

Of course, we are all different and what works for one person might not work for another person, especially because the stages and peculiarities of the cancers may be different, but MOST people can get similar results from what worked for other people.

4. Learn about the many different workable prostate cancer treatments and discuss your best options with your doctor:

And listen – don’t take what the first doctor tells you as the gospel truth. It’s very important to weigh your options very carefully before deciding what to do. Some doctors would recommend surgery right away when other options might be more effective, for the particular stage of the cancer. So, apart from just learning as much as you can, you should also discuss your treatment options with more than one doctor.

5. Keep visiting this Prostate Cancer Victory website and other helpful prostate cancer related websites, to learn more about the condition as well as get inspired to FIGHT on, until you win:

We always believe that it’s not too late until you WIN this fight against prostate cancer. You must never play dead, no matter what your prognosis is. Fight on and you will win. Thankfully we provide you with lots of helpful information on this website to help you in surviving this condition.

These dietary differences are even construed then to be the ultimate explanation for why the incidence of prostate cancer is a hundred and twenty times greater in the United States than in a nation like China, where they really don’t at fatty foods as part of the general diet.

It would appear as though certain fruits and vegetables act as a shield against the adenocarcinoma also. According to a study that was reported all the way back in 1995, tomatoes offer protection against prostate cancer because, it was believed, of its lycopene content.

As a result subsequent researches focused on lycopene, the antioxidant found in the vegetable fruit as well as in certain other (red pigmented) fruits, and what was found is that lycopene actually does help. With its antioxidant properties, it can neutralize free radicals that make body cells more vulnerable to cancer-causing agents. Now it is believed (based on studies) that a daily helping of tomatoes or tomato-containing products can lower prostate cancer risk by as much as 35%.

There are other studies also, which suggest that cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, have some protective effect against prostate cancer, so it is urged that they be taken with the intention of preventing the disease from occurring, especially for men with a higher risk of developing prostate cancer.

There is also evidence that suggests that long-term, moderate doses of vitamin E, another type of antioxidant, may block the progression and growth of prostate tumors. Specifically selenium, an element found in tiny amounts primarily in plants and yeasts, is now associated with a lowered risk of certain cancers, especially cancer of the prostate.

Certainly large amounts of the element are toxic to the body, but clinical tests have shown of the effectiveness of vitamin E and selenium in preventing prostate cancer, although the final results of those are expected only in 2013.

Basically, as an alternative to active surveillance or definitive treatments, PSA levels are lowered in men that are on a fish allowed vegan diet, regular exercise, and stress reduction. In addition, pomegranate juice or genistein, an isoflavone found in various legumes, have both been shown to reduce PSA and/or slow PSA doubling times.

Canine prostate cancer has various signs and symptoms that like in humans may resemble those of prostate enlargement. It’s because the swelling that results from the growing tumor in the dog’s organ causes it to press against the wall of the urethra, making it very difficult for your dog to urinate.

As a result the dog may suffer from weight loss, general pain, blood in the urine, blood or pus dripping from the penis, weakened hind legs, difficulty and straining while urinating, constipation or difficulty passing stool, frequent urination, an arched back while walking abnormally, fever, and lethargy.

It is a lot of suffering for an animal that cannot speak the words to express it, so that it becomes important for the owner to be close enough to the animal to observe these changes early and do what they can about it. Diagnosing the condition in canines requires urine tests, ultrasounds and contrast x-rays. Dogs don’t get the PSA test because they don’t generate prostate specific antigens. This however toughens the diagnostic process, especially when it comes to and determining if the cancer originated in the prostate or elsewhere in the body; but with a biopsy of the rectal wall, the diagnosis can be confirmed or refuted.

Treating prostate cancer in canines is not a very versatile procedure but chemotherapy and radiation therapy are generally the best options, many times combined for full effect. A canine radical prostatectomy is considered to be a complex procedure that can be sufficiently dangerous to the animal to constitute complications like urinary incontinence in the dog.

Hormonal therapy may work though, especially anti-androgens which fight the cancer from within. The problem is just that most dogs do not respond too well to these drugs, causing them to have little positive effect, if at all.

In the disease prevention arena, neutering the dog can largely decrease the risk of developing most prostate problems like infections and inflammation; but contrary to popular belief, it does not assure that the dog will not develop prostate cancer. Whether or not the dog is castrated, he can develop the disease; and because most people cannot even guess that their dog suffer from the condition, the canine may live no longer than 30 days after diagnosis die to delayed detection and diagnosis.

By the way, canines are the only animal species that develops spontaneous prostatic cancer with a certain degree of frequency; cats don’t.