Talk About Prostate Cancer: On Medications, Prevention and Treatment

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men but can be treatable when found in the early stages. This type of cancer affects the prostate gland, which is the gland that takes responsibility in producing some of the fluid in semen and plays a role in urine control.

This type of cancer is the second leading of deaths in men and its victims’ rates increase drastically almost every year. Usually, prostate cancer grows slowly and may not cause serious harm when it is just initially confined to the prostate gland. However, there are other types that are aggressive and would spread quickly, so exercise caution by being knowledgeable about this illness.

What Causes Prostate Cancer

Mainly affects older men, there is about 80 percent of cases of prostate cancer patients that are over 65 years of age, and a less than 1 percent of cases that are under the age of 50. Medical practitioners still do not know what causes prostate cancer but it there’s a link that a man is at risk when there’s a family history of prostate cancer.

There are also other suspected causes of prostate cancer that a man should look out for such as eating lots of fat from red meat. Men who eat lots of fat from red meat may get prostate cancer because high-temperature cooked meat produces cancer-causing substances which affect that prostate. If you have observed, this disease is much more common in countries that the diets are composed of meat and dairy products.

Additionally, lifestyle can also play a role, like not exercising makes prostate cancer more likely to happen.

Medications and Treatment for Prostate Cancer

Men with low-risk prostate cancer may not necessarily have immediate treatment and some may never need one. Instead, doctors would recommend active surveillance such as follow-up blood tests, rectal exams and other tests that are to be performed to monitor your cancer progression. 

Radiation Therapy

This therapy is a high-powered energy to kill cancer cells and can be delivered in two ways: External beam radiation and brachytherapy.

External beam radiation is a radiation that comes from outside of your body which is directed to your prostate cancer, which treatment would typically last five days a week for several weeks. On the other hand, is brachytherapy which involves placing in your prostate tissue many rice-sized radioactive seeds.

Hormone therapy

Hormone therapy is a treatment which stops your body from producing testosterone, a male hormone since prostate cancer cells feed on those hormones to help them grow.

Hormone therapy includes medications that may stop your body from producing those male hormones, such as luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH) agonists which prevent the testicles from receiving messages to create testosterone. The drugs typically used are leuprolide (Eligard, Lupron), Triptorelin (Trelstar), Goserelin (Zoladex), Histrelin (Vantas).

Anti-androgens are also sometimes suggested which is made to block testosterone from reaching cancer cells. Examples of this include bicalutamide (Casodex), flutamide, and nilutamide (Nilandron).

Although these treatments and medication may help, know that there are possible side effects on taking them so ask your doctor to sort out your options. Also, doing your research will help you, information about drugs are present at pharmaquotes.com which might help you both in financial aspects and knowledge.

Prevention

Prevention is better than cure, right? So as early as now, you should do what you can do to prevent any type of disease that may come into your life.

Choosing a Healthy Diet

Avoid high-fat food and choose to go green instead with fruits and vegetables as your companion. Fruits and vegetables contain many nutrients and vitamins which would surely help your body fight off foreign substances or infections.

Healthy Food over Supplements

Although there is nothing wrong with the intake of supplements, no studies have shown yet about supplements helping in reducing the risk of prostate cancer. That’s why always choose foods that are rich in nutrients packed with vitamins and minerals so that you can maintain healthy vitamin levels in your body.

Exercise more

There is an evidence that those men that do not do exercise have a tendency to have higher PSA levels or Prostate Specific Antigen while those what who do may have a lower risk of prostate cancer. However, this is not all there is to it in terms of exercising, it does not only lower your risk but it also helps improves your overall health and well-being.

Try exercising at least thrice a week, and if you are still new to exercising, start slow and work your way up to more exercise routine each day. 

Takeaway

Prostate cancer might be treated if found early, thus keeping tabs on your body should be a priority to avoid serious health complications that negligence to one’s body may result in. However, the best cure for this disease is prevention, thus, make sure to keep a healthy body by living a healthy lifestyle.