Can prostate problems be prevented?????????????

[Nick-48-year-old-male]

  Hi--first i'm not talking about STDs----But can anything be done to prevent or delay Prostate problems--ie.. BPH--prostate pain--chronic prostitis?  What about alternative medicines (saw palmetto--zinc--etc.) and vitamins?  what about conventional medicines (proscar--).  There has to be something which can prevent this--I mean if wee can go to the moon and mars and it's almost the year 2000----there has to be something----anything????
  Thank you
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Dear Nick,
I know you desperately want some answer to prevent prostate growth and the potential for cancer but I’m afraid you would be unwilling to accept the one way we do know to prevent these problems.  When males are castrated before puberty in some societies the growth of the prostate is insignificant throughout life.  The prostate stroma and epithelial glands are both hormone dependent and without testosterone and a derivative of testosterone, DHT, they do not grow.  However, testosterone is the main hormone in males that gives us our secondary sexual characteristics, hair growth patterns, deep voice, enlargement of the phallus and muscular development.  I don’t know many men who would trade all of this for the potential to be prostate problem free. The point is, that after puberty, it is too late.
You mentioned Proscar, this is an inhibitor of a protein that changes ordinary testosterone into DHT (concentrated testosterone).  It is this later hormone that is primarily responsible for prostate growth.  Taking Proscar will actually shrink the prostate gland, but it takes time and often doesn’t shrink the portion of the gland responsible for the typical symptoms described by prostatism.
Prostatitis is really an infection or congestion of the prostate gland. Often an infection can arise secondary to the effects of a large prostate due to the inability of the patient to completely empty the bladder.  Frequent emptying is one of the major protections the body has to prevent infection. If you take this away from somebody and the urine or some portion remains for a long time bacteria that may enter the bladder can multiple and cause severe infections.  There are also other types of prostatitis that cause a pain type constellation of symptoms that  are not related to infection.
These natural medications you have refereed to have not been studied the same way conventional prescription medications have been studied.  Since they have to do with prostate problems, a group of symptoms that patients tend to recover from without medication, about thirty percent of the time, people state that they work.  In reality, the patient would have gotten better doing nothing at all or taking a sugar pill.  Saw Palmetto was intensely researched with the most recent urodynamic techniques.  There was no objective evidence to support the claims that patients feel better after taking the extract.  This group of patients were not compared to placebo (sugar pill).
I think we know a lot about how the prostate grows, when it grows most, and why it grows but the consequences of reducing the growth of the prostate would compromise the patient more that following the gland in the older years and taking care of the problems as they arise.
This information is provided for general medical educational purposes only.  Please consult your physician for diagnostic and treatment options pertaining to your specific medical condition.  More individualized care is available at the Henry Ford Hospital and its satellites (1 800 653-6568).
Sincerely,
HFHS M.D.-AK
*keyword:Prostate
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