Dr. Kathy Maupin and Brett Newcomb discuss how Testosterone Replacement affects Prostate Cancer in men.
One of the most prevalent fears of disease that men encounter as they age is prostate cancer. Common wisdom states that if a man lives long enough, he will get prostate cancer, and—if nothing else kills him first—he will die from it. However, most men wrongly believe that testosterone, which they require to stay young and virile, is the cause of prostate cancer. We are presenting the truth behind the fiction in this week’s healthcast.
Many men have been reluctant to replace their declining testosterone because there has been an unsubstantiated belief among most men and some physicians that replacing testosterone increases the likelihood of prostate cancer. That myth, however, has been laid to rest by some recent research results.
This week, my friend Brett Newcomb and I will be discussing this research and spreading the good news that there is absolutely no causation established between replacing testosterone lost to aging, and the development of prostate cancer. If you are genetically programmed to get prostate cancer, you will eventually get it if you live long enough. Contradictory evidence has been uncovered that proves that replacing testosterone can prevent men with low levels of T from developing it.
If you wonder why this news is not being shouted from the rooftops, we think there are two main reasons. The first reason is that many doctors learned that testosterone was “bad” decades ago when they were in medical school. The belief was so widely believed that researchers were discouraged from investigating and proving this belief wrong. Until recently, researchers have not publicly challenged the old standard of care. We challenge this old belief based on the long term and new research of Dr. Morgantaler of Harvard. His research matches what we see in our practice. Normal testosterone levels prevent prostate cancer, and careful replacement with bio-identical testosterone does nothing but prevent it.
The second source of fear comes from the Trial Lawyers Association and its members, who have been aggressively marketing class-action lawsuits against all forms of testosterone replacement based on old and shaky studies that imply a risk from testosterone, but that do not prove that risk.
Because of their ads, many men have unconsciously associated replacing their testosterone with cancer, stroke, and heart attacks. Doctors are, of course, afraid of lawsuits almost as much as men are afraid of prostate cancer so they are afraid to prescribe testosterone for their patients.
This fear of testosterone, the most prevalent hormone in young males, is representative of what propagandists call the Big Lie Technique of manipulating behavior. If you tell a lie often, consistently, and loudly enough, people will come to believe it even though it is demonstrably untrue.
Most people do not have the time, the desire, or the skills to research these topics for themselves so they tend to rely on the mass-media and the professional training of their physician. We want to re-educate doctors and patients to change their beliefs to the truth: testosterone is healthy and necessary for the life of men at any age.
Listen to our podcast to hear more about this good news and then contact your doctor to see if testosterone replacement might be right for you.
