God has hope for your prostate cancer!
Here is the 2019 guide from the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Section One deals with General Information and Medical Basics. Section Two provides valuable information for those who are newly diagnosed. Section Three describes treatment options for localized or locally advanced prostate cancer. Section Four discusses aspects of living with and after prostate cancer. This guide is a valuable resource for any man with any interest in prostate cancer. Please circulate it.
Earlier this year, a series of informative videos dealing with several prostate cancer topics were produced by the Prostate Cancer Research Institute (PCRI). These included:\
1. The Best Prostate Cancer Diet by Dr. Mark Moyad;
2. HDR Brachytherapy (temporary seeds) for Intermediate Risk by Dr. Mark Scholz:
3. How Immune Therapy Works to Treat Prosate Cancer by Dr. Eugene Kwon;
4. Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) by Dr. Mark Scholz: and,
5. Impact of Lifestyle and Exercise on Prostate Cancer by Dr. Mark Moyad.
For more information, one can subscribe to the PCRI YouTube Channel for weekly videos. See the following link.
I am grateful for all of you who subscribe to receive my blogs by email the day after they are posted. However, it has come to my attention that on occasion the Godandprostate blogs end up in spam instead of my inbox. It has happened to me on a few occasions. Therefore, please check your spam folders occasionally to see if this has occurred. Thank you for your continued support.
This post is a bit out of the ordinary but I first want to thank all of you who read this website. As many of you know, anyone can subscribe to automatically receive the blogs by e mail as they are posted by entering an e mail address on the right side of the home page. The posts cover a wide variety of prostate issues including general patient information, screening, diagnostics, genetics, imaging, and treatment at various stages. Also included are posts dealing with encouragememt from a Christian perspective which I have found useful during my own disease journey. I want to ask you faithful readers to send this blog to any men in your community who could possibly benefit from reading this site and tell them they can subscribe. Word-of-mouth is the best way to disseminate the information to as many men as possible. They can sign up and read only those posts that apply to their individual interests. Thank you in advance for doing this.
Meanwhile, I want to share the funniest story I know dealing with urological issues. A 90-year old man goes to his urologist for a checkup. Physically, he passes with flying colors. During the exam, his urologist asks, “how are you mentally?” “Oh”, the man exclaims, “I am as sharp as a tack for my age. I remember names, dates, and hardly ever misplace anything.” “Amazing”, proclaims the urologist, “and how are you spiritually?” “I am glad you asked”, the man confidently responds. “God and I are like that”, he said crossing his fingers. “We are tight. In fact, I’ll give you an example. At night, when I get up to go to the bathroom, a surreal glow guides my path. Upon finishing and returning to bed, the surreal glow dissipates”. The urologist listens intently, shakes his head in amazement and at the end of the visit, he tells the man how extremely fortunate he is for his age. Several weeks go by and the urologist accidently runs into the man’s wife at a local supermarket. He greets her and says, “congratulations on your husband. Physically he is fine, he is mentally sharp and spiritually, he related to me a most unusual phenomenon. He says that when he gets up at night to use the bathroom a surreal glow guides him and when finished to return to bed, the surreal glow dissipates.” Upon hearing this, his wife’s face droops, eyes widen, mouth opens, as she exclaims, “oh my goodness, he’s peeing in the refrigerator again.”
I received an e mail describing a host of cancer-fighting recipies for every meal. They include breakfast, dinners, side dishes, snacks and beverages. This comes from a site called health, hope and inspiration. For the recipies, see the following link.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) publishes an e mail blog entitited Current Contents to which one can subscribe. On January 23rd, their blog focused on non-opiod methods of managing cancer pain (see below). Pain is a common and much-feared symptom among people being treated for cancer and long-term survivors. Cancer pain can be caused by the disease itself, its treatments, or a combination of the two. It may be short-lived or chronic, and for some people it can persist long after treatment ends.
The most common cancer types, such as breast, lung, prostate, and colon cancer, rarely cause pain at the site where they originate. One of the most common types of cancer pain is bone pain. Cancer-induced bone pain occurs when metastatic tumors of cancers that start in other parts of the body grow in the bone marrow, the sponge-like tissue in the center of most bones. In fact, bone pain may be the first symptom of several forms of cancer, including prostate and lung cancer.
Researchers have found that “tumors in bone stimulate the sprouting of pain-transmitting nerve fibers near the tumor. Once tumor cells are established in the bone marrow, they hijack the molecules that regulate cells involved in breaking down bone, called osteoclasts. As a result, the osteoclasts get bigger and then they avidly digest bone. To digest bone, osteoclasts create an acidic environment that is almost like pouring battery acid on bone. The causes of bone cancer pain are twofold. First, sensory neurons, or nerve fibers, in bone “detect the acidic environment and signal it as pain. Second, excess osteoclast activity results in microfractures or full fractures of bone that can cause extreme pain.”
Denosumab (Prolia) and bisphosphonates like alendronate (Fosamax), are both first-line therapies for cancer-induced bone pain caused by metastatic cancer. Both denosumab and bisphosphonates, which were originally developed to treat osteoporosis, help maintain bone integrity by reining in osteoclast activity. A potential new treatment for bone pain due to metastatic cancer is an antibody called tanezumab, which blocks the activity of a pain-signaling molecule called nerve growth factor (NGF). Researchers found that in mice, tanezumab blocks nerve-sprouting in bone and reduces the development of late-stage cancer pain. Tanezumab is now being tested in phase 3 clinical trials for cancer-induced bone pain. A related approach seeks to block the actions of NGF by blocking its receptor, known as TrkA (tropomyosin receptor kinase A), on sensory nerve fibers. There is also keen interest in using cannabinoids, chemicals found in marijuana, to treat cancer-induced and other types of bone pain but this research is still in the stage of animal testing.
The NCI article below also describes chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), often an undesirable side effect of chemotherapy. This is often the reason that patients must reduce their chemotherapy dose or stop treatment prematurely. Other sections in the NCI blog include non-drug approaches to relieving pain and other challenges to pain management.
The entire NCI blog can be found at the following link.
The Prostate Cancer Research Institute (PCRI) has produced several short videos covering many aspects of the disease including, imunotherapy, brachytherapy, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), sexual disfunction, testosterone levels, and more. The speakers include Dr. Mark Moyad, Dr. Eugene Kwon from the Mayo Clinic and others. It is my understanding that such videos will become available on an on-going basis. One can obtain these videos by subscribing to Google below.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPYrfTJMCTfhBNZxb31Z1tg
This website has been active for some years now and it is about time for an update of the site in general as well as indiviudual posts. The first change we have made is that all of the hundreds of posts have been separated into one of the following categories: 1) General Patient Information; 2) Diagnostics, Genetics and Imaging; 3) Treatment Information; and 4) Encouragement. Each of the four categories will eventually have sub-categories which will facilitate searching. The latter is yet to be done as I have to perform this manually. When you now see a post, there is: 1) a box linking the most recent posts as well as an archives area; 2) an area listing the four major categories above; 3) an index to other portions of the site such as lessons learned through my cancer, medical resources, scriptural medicines, my own story updates, and an area which describes how God can help you personally in this disease process; and, 4) an area wherein you can subscribe to receive the blogs automatically as they are posted as well as a comment area (which are greatly appreciated). The home page will also be streamlined. Thank you for your readership over the past years. I pledge to personally continue writing this site as God blesses me with health and ability and the technological help from CrazyTreeMedia, who have been my source of web technology since the site’s inception. I will soon be 77 years old and a cancer survivor since 1995. Thanks for your patience and support.