The Prostate Health Program; A Guide to Preventing and Controlling Prostate Cancer

by Daniel Nixon; Max Gomez;

• ISBN13: 9780743253482
• ISBN10: 0743253485
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-04
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

From two of America's leading spokesmen in the field of prostate health -- Daniel W. Nixon, M.D., president of the Institute for Cancer Prevention, and Max Gomez, Ph.D., television's leading Health and Science editor for WNBC. Based on the latest cutting-edge research, the authors explain. What foods should you eat if you want to keep your prostate healthy? How does sexual activity affect the health of your prostate? What are ways you can prevent prostate cancer? What should African-American men know about prostate cancer? What are the best alternatives to radiation and surgery in treating prostate cancer? What are the symptoms of an unhealthy prostate?

Author Biography

Daniel W. Nixon, M.D., is the president of the Institute for Cancer Prevention and the editor-in-chief of the journal Preventive Medicine. Formerly the associate director for Cancer Control and Prevention at the Medical University of South Carolina/Hollings Center, Dr. Nixon has written dozens of scholarly papers and is the author of The Cancer Recovery Eating Plan: The Right Foods to Help Fuel Your Recovery. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. xv
Preventing Prostate Problems and Diseases
An Overview	p. 3
Liberating Yourself	p. 3
The Nutrition Connection	p. 6
The Exercise/Fitness/Lifestyle Connection	p. 8
The Importance of Regular Checkups	p. 10
Prostate Myths and Reality	p. 13
The Healthy Prostate	p. 19
Prostate Power	p. 19
The Male Urogenital System	p. 21
Do I Have a Problem?	p. 22
Risk Factors of Prostate Cancer	p. 23
The Prostate Checkup	p. 35
Warning Signs	p. 35
Basic Diagnostic Tests	p. 36
When Should You See a Urologist?	p. 45
The Prostate Health Pyramid and The Cancer Prevention Diet
The Prostate Health Pyramid and the Nutrition Connection	p. 49
The Prostate Health Pyramid and the Basic Food Groups	p. 49
Nutritional Elements of the Prostate Health Pyramid	p. 51
Negative Nutrition	p. 70
The Fats and Calcium Controversies	p. 70
The Worst Foods for Your Prostate	p. 74
The Irritants	p. 75
Additives	p. 77
Supplements: Good and Bad	p. 80
The Transition Diet	p. 85
A Gradual Approach	p. 85
A Better Way	p. 86
Getting Ready--Suiting Up	p. 88
The Six Food Settings	p. 90
The Five Passageways	p. 91
A Parting Word	p. 115
Menus and Recipes: Prostate Health, the Delicious Way!	p. 116
Choosing the Right Meals	p. 116
Prostate Health and Fertility
The Healthy Prostate Fitness Regimen	p. 149
The Link Between Exercise and Prostate Health	p. 149
Can Exercise Prevent Prostate Cancer?	p. 150
The Healthy Prostate Fitness Regimen	p. 152
Aerobics: A Key to Prostate Health	p. 157
Kegel Exercises (Pelvic Floor Exercises) for Men	p. 161
Exercise After Prostate Surgery	p. 163
Sex and the Prostate	p. 166
The Prostate and Sexual Function	p. 166
Impotence (Erectile Dysfunction)	p. 169
Incontinence	p. 176
Infertility	p. 178
Prostatitis: A Little Tenderness Goes a Long Way	p. 181
An Insufficiently Understood Disease	p. 181
The Three Faces of Prostatitis	p. 181
Which Kind Do I Have?	p. 185
Treatment Strategies for Bacterial Prostatitis	p. 187
Treatment Options for Chronic Nonbacterial Prostatitis (CNP)	p. 189
Diet and Lifestyle Changes	p. 192
Gay Men and Prostatitis	p. 193
Living with Prostatitis	p. 194
When Size Matters: Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)	p. 196
What is BPH?	p. 196
Who Gets BPH?	p. 198
Symptoms of BPH	p. 199
When to See a Doctor	p. 199
Treatment Options	p. 204
Putting It All Together	p. 221
Prostatodynia (Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome)	p. 223
Symptoms of Prostatodynia	p. 223
Diagnosis of Prostatodynia	p. 224
What Causes Prostatodynia?	p. 225
Drawing a New Diagnostic Map of Prostatitis-Type Disorders	p. 227
Treatment Options for Prostatodynia	p. 228
Solving the Enigma of Prostatodynia	p. 230
Prostate Cancer
Guarding Against Prostate Cancer	p. 233
The Institute for Cancer Prevention on Prostate Cancer	p. 233
The Institute for Cancer Prevention's Prostate Cancer Prevention Program	p. 235
The PSA Test: Cutting Through the Controversy	p. 241
Grading Prostate Cancer	p. 243
Prostate Cancer Q&A: Things You Need to Know	p. 249
In the Wake of Prostate Cancer: Coping and Getting On with Your Life	p. 253
Treating Prostate Cancer	p. 254
A Treatment Dilemma	p. 254
Determining the Right Treatment for Each Patient	p. 254
Expectant Therapy	p. 255
Radiation Therapy	p. 257
Hormone Therapy	p. 260
Chemotherapy	p. 266
On the Horizon: The Prostate Cancer Vaccine	p. 268
Biological Therapy	p. 270
Gene Therapy: The Future of Prostate Cancer Treatment?	p. 270
Surgery	p. 275
Cryotherapy	p. 279
Treating the Complications of Prostate Cancer	p. 280
Relieving and Treating Pain	p. 281
The Institute for Cancer Prevention's Prostate Cancer Symptoms and Treatment Charts	p. 283
African Americans and Prostate Cancer	p. 299
Stopping the Crisis	p. 299
Race and Age	p. 300
A More Aggressive Incidence of the Disease	p. 300
How Much Does Race Have to Do with It?	p. 301
Possible Causatives and Risk Factors Other than Race	p. 303
The Institute for Cancer Prevention's Ten-Step Plan to Prevent and Combat Prostate Cancer in African Americans	p. 306
Hispanic Men and Prostate Cancer: No Easy Answers	p. 310
Alternatives
Alternative Treatments	p. 315
Outside the Realm	p. 315
What Is Conventional (Allopathic) Medicine?	p. 315
What Is Alternative Medicine?	p. 316
Types of Alternative Therapies	p. 317
The Placebo Effect	p. 318
Homeopathy: Something for Nothing?	p. 321
Traditional Chinese Medicine	p. 325
Chiropractic Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine	p. 330
Ayurveda: The Oldest Medicine?	p. 330
Back to Mother Nature: Herbs and the Prostate	p. 334
An Alternative Diet Therapy for the Prostate	p. 339
Physical Therapy (Bodywork)	p. 340
A Final Word on Alternative Therapies	p. 343
About the Institute for Cancer Prevention	p. 344
Index	p. 347
About the Authors	p. 361
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction Max Gomez, Ph.D., Health Editor, WNBCHow's your prostate? What do you think it will be like in five years? In ten? In fact, as long as I'm asking -- how's your health in general? How is your cholesterol? Your blood pressure? Your PSA?Sound a little nosy? Even rude? Sort of like asking what your bank balance is or whether you'll be able to afford to retire at age sixty-five or put your kids through college. I would never dream of asking about your private finances, but I'll bet you have at least a pretty good idea of how much you have in the bank. You may even read money magazines, newsletters, follow the stock market, or get financial advice from friends or professional advisors. But I'd be willing to bet just as much that you don't know your blood pressure, cholesterol, or, since this book is about prostate health, your PSA number.Most men are serious about providing for the financial needs of themselves and their family. But when it comes to their personal health, their level of concern or interest is nowhere near the same. How many men subscribe to health newsletters or confer with nutritionists, never mind see their doctors regularly? Think about the financial straits your family would be left in should you develop a serious illness or, God forbid, die from a disease that could have been treated and even prevented! When you consider what you mean to your family, maybe you should be paying more attention to your health; at the very least, it should be as much as you pay to your finances.In the United States -- a country with some of the best doctors, hospitals, and medicine in the world -- the majority of men never visit a doctor regularly. For many men, years can go by without their having their blood pressure taken, cholesterol checked, or urine analyzed. Men in America don't go to the doctor until they are sick, figuring that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The trouble is, this attitude is like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. By that I mean that, often, by the time you get sick enough to force you to go to the doctor, there may be precious little a doctor can do to help. The problem may have been treatable or even preventable had you gone sooner; but in a later stage, treatments may be painful, devastating, or may not be able to "fix" the problem.Remember the old Geritol commercial slogan that proclaimed, "When you've got your health, you've got just about everything"? Sounds trite, but it's really true. When you're sick, nothing else matters; when you're healthy, everything else is possible. The fact is that the single most important thing a man can do to provide for the security of his family -- both financial and emotional -- is to take care of his health. Caring for your family means caring for your health, pure and simple.But visiting a doctor is only one part of taking control of your health. An equally important part is learning everything you can about preserving your health with preventive care -- learning about the foods and nutrients that enhance your health as well as the substances that can harm it. The dirty little secret no one wants to talk about when it comes to health is that most of the diseases Western man dies of are largely self-inflicted. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but we have to own up to the fact that the heart attack or cancer we suffer from at age sixty probably had its roots in the cheeseburgers we were eating (and other bad habits we were practicing) throughout our twenties, thirties, and beyond.But let's get back to prostate cancer, which has been a topic of special interest to me for some time. It has long struck me that men just don't take prostate cancer as seriously as women take breast cancer. Men are certainly are not as vocal about it, yet prostate cancer is very similar in terms of the numbers affected, while treatments are nowhere near as advanced as t