Male menopause does not cause prostate cancer: Male Menopause, Testosterone, Prostate Cancer; The Connection Between Them
By: Alt. Dr. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu
I was watching a television and I heard a doctor saying all men will get enlarged prostate and he also linked prostate cancer to menopause in men and I laugh but it was a nice argument anyway. Here is my take on Menopause and prostate problem in men as we age.
According to Dr. David Samadi Vice Chairman, Department of Urology and Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York in his article ?Male Menopause, Testosterone, Prostate Cancer; The Connection Between Them?.
According to him while there is some skepticism about male menopause there is no question that age-related changes in men impact testosterone level. Between pharmaceutical marketing and our sometimes-carefree trust in prescription medicine, a drastically climbing number of men are turning to androgen therapy for prostate cancer. Prostate cancer treatment expert and leading robotic prostatectomy SMART surgeon, Dr. David Samadi, urges men and their physicians to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with caution. “Increased risk of prostate cancer is a very possible long-term side effect of testosterone replacement therapy,” he says. “It concerns me that young men in their mid-30s or early-40s may count on testosterone for a boost in energy or sexual prowess and get much more than they bargained for in the long run.” Dr. Samadi refers to the link between testosterone and prostate cancer risk. Male menopause, or andropause, symptoms occur much more gradually than menopause symptoms in women. Around age 35 or 40, a man’s testosterone level naturally begins to decline at a rate of about 1-2% per year, making the term “pause” not entirely accurate. Normal testosterone level, at any age, is measured in a range of 300 to 1,200 nanograms per deciliter. “Testosterone level is not a high-low scale,” explains Dr. Samadi. “If you’re at the low end of the range it does not mean you need more testosterone.” Testosterone Risks Hormone replacement therapy for men is not new, but recent studies show there may be little effectiveness, and potentially more harm than good. In 2008, during the largest testosterone replacement study to date, researchers in the Netherlands found almost no improvement in quality of life, bone density, cognitive thinking, or muscle strength among those using testosterone. There’s also a myth that increasing testosterone level decreases erectile dysfunction (ED). In truth, testosterone has more to do with sex drive and nothing to do with erections. What’s more, replacing a man’s testosterone level ceases his own natural production of the hormone, causing significant withdrawal symptoms when the replacement is stopped. Prostate Cancer and Testosterone “It’s important to be clear that male menopause does not cause prostate cancer, nor does low testosterone, but how men choose to manage those symptoms may impact their prostate cancer risk level,” explains Dr. Samadi. Testosterone is widely accepted as a prostate cancer fuel, and is regularly countered through androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer. Most recently, an Australia-based study of men in their 70s and 80s showed an increased risk of prostate cancer among men with higher testosterone levels, both naturally high and replacement high. Testosterone replacement therapy is not recommended for men at increased risk for developing prostate cancer. Little is certain about the long-term effects of hormone replacement. “Work with your doctor to explore all of your physical, social, and lifestyle factors that you may be improperly attributing to low testosterone,” suggests Dr. Samadi. “Very few men have truly low testosterone levels and there may be many other remedies or changes worth exploring.”
The term is both controversial and at least a little misleading. (In fact, a 2007 editorial in the journal Menopause said it was time to give the concept of “male menopause” a “decent burial.”) Still, men should know that dwindling hormones can bring new symptoms and challenges as years go by.
There’s another big difference: While the symptoms of female menopause are directly linked to estrogen levels, the picture isn’t nearly so clear-cut for men. Some men with relatively high levels of testosterone still struggle with a fading libido, a lack of energy, and other consequences of aging. At the same time, plenty of men with relatively low levels of testosterone seem to sail through their later years. A 2007 study of more than 300 healthy Swedish men aged 55 to 75 found that you can’t judge a man by his testosterone levels alone. After looking at a wide range of age-related problems, researchers found that only three were especially common in men with low testosterone. As reported in the journal Menopause, men at the low end of the testosterone spectrum were more likely to suffer hot flashes. They were also more likely to say that their job performance had deteriorated and that they had lost some strength and endurance.
With the exception of these problems, men with low testosterone appeared to enjoy the same quality of life as men the same age that had high testosterone. In other words, men in otherwise good health don’t need all that much testosterone to feel healthy and happy
After testosterone vanishes
Testosterone’s value becomes clear when it disappears. Men who receive certain treatments for prostate cancer suddenly find themselves with little or no testosterone, a situation that’s much closer to female menopause. These men are prone to depression, hot flashes, broken bones, anemia, breast enlargement, trouble with thinking, loss of muscle mass and strength, and an overall decline in quality of life. Testosterone supplements aren’t safe for men with prostate cancer — they may promote growth of the cancer — but some of these complications can be alleviated in other ways. For example, regular exercise can help restore muscle mass and strength. And although there is currently no standard treatment for hot flashes in men, pilot studies of prostate cancer patients have shown that antidepressants such as Effexor (venlafaxine hydrochloride) and Paxil (paroxetine) might help to reduce hot flashes. However, this use is considered off-label and is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Warning Signs and Symptoms
Symptoms of the male menopause (androgen deficiency) are non-specific and may include:
Alterations in the circulatory & nervous systems (hot flushes, sweating, insomnia & nervousness)
Changes in mood and mental function (anxiety, irritability, poor sleep, constant tiredness, poor short-term memory & low self-esteem)
Changes in virility (decreased physical energy, decreased muscle strength & inability to participate in sporting activities)
Diminished sexual function (reduced sex drive, poor erections & impaired ejaculation)
Changes in physical appearance (abdominal weight gain – loss of body hair, diminished muscle mass & loss of height)
Changes in body metabolism & chemistry (increased LDL cholesterol, increased total body fat, osteoporosis & reduction in the red blood cells in the blood)
The common factor which lies behind these symptoms is a reduction in the levels of active testosterone (male hormone) in the blood with increasing age. At the same time, there is an increased risk of heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, all of which can contribute to health problems.
Boosting your Testosterone level
Old men may wonder if a boost in testosterone will help them regain some of their youth. In some cases, a testosterone remedy really does make sense. It’s also a popular choice; doctors write about 2 million testosterone prescriptions each year.
Extra testosterone isn’t for everyone. If an older man is suffering from osteoporosis, thinking problems, depression, or other problems that are sometimes related to low testosterone levels, a doctor may decide to measure hormone levels in the blood, although it is not a routine test. Should the level turn out to be unusually low, a testosterone prescription may be worth a try? To make sure that the dosage is right, a doctor should monitor the levels in the blood over time. The hormone can be given as a gel that is rubbed into the skin or gums, through a patch that attaches to the skin, or as an injection. Testosterone treatments seem to be safe, although there have not been any studies that followed their long-term effects. At this point, there’s not much evidence that taking extra testosterone can raise the risk of prostate cancer or heart disease, historically the two biggest fears surrounding testosterone treatment.
Even if a man has extremely low testosterone levels, a gel or patch is far from a cure-all. It may help him build more muscle, but studies suggest it won’t do much to improve his strength. And while testosterone may help ramp up a man’s interest in sex, it may not do much to enhance his erections, especially if he has another medical condition that contributes to erectile dysfunction.
Hormones are important. But for men, there’s much more to life — and to health — than testosterone
Natural Ways to boost your Testosterone level
1. Get Enough Sleep.
George Yu, MD, a urology professor at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., says that, for many men with low testosterone, poor sleep is the most important factor. A lack of sleep affects a variety of hormones and chemicals in your body. This, in turn, can have a harmful impact on your testosterone.
Make sleep a priority, aiming for 7 to 8 hours per night, even if it means rearranging your schedule or dropping your habit of late-night TV. Prize your sleep, just like you’d prize a healthy diet and active lifestyle. It’s that important.
If you’re having problems getting good sleep on a regular basis, talk to your doctor.
2. Keep a Healthy Weight.
Men who are overweight or obese often have low testosterone levels, says Alvin M. Matsumoto, MD, of the University Of Washington School Of Medicine in Seattle.
For those men, losing the extra weight can help bring testosterone back up, he says. Likewise, for men who are underweight, getting your weight up to a healthy level can also have a positive effect on the hormone.
3. Stay Active.
Testosterone adapts to your body’s needs, Yu says. If you spend most of your time lying on the couch, your brain gets the message that you don’t need as much to bolster your muscles and bones. But, he says, when you’re physically active, your brain sends out the signal for more of the hormone. If you’re getting little exercise now, Miner suggests starting by: Walking briskly at least 10 to 20 minutes a day. Building strength with several sessions of weights or elastic bands each week. Work with a trainer to learn proper form so you don’t injure yourself.
Don’t go overboard. Extreme amounts of endurance exercise — working out at the level of elite athletes — can lower your testosterone
4. Take Control of Your Stress.
If you’re under constant stress, your body will churn out a steady stream of the stress hormone cortisol. When it does, it will be less able to create testosterone. So, controlling your stress is important for keeping up your testosterone, Miner says.
Miner’s advice to the over-stressed men he sees in his office is to:
Cut back on long work hours. If you’re logging lots of overtime, try to whittle your workday down to 10 hours or less.
Spend 2 hours a day on activities you like that aren’t work- or exercise-related, such as reading or playing music.
5. Review Your Medications.
Some medicines can cause a drop in your testosterone level, Matsumoto says. These include:
Opioid drugs such as fentanyl, MS Contin, and OxyContin
Glucocorticoid drugs such as prednisone
Anabolic steroids used for building muscles and improving athletic performance
You shouldn?t stop taking any of your medications. If you’re concerned about your testosterone level, discuss your medications with your doctor to make sure they’re not the problem, and to make adjustments to your treatment if needed
6. Consume Plenty of Zinc
The mineral zinc is important for testosterone production, and supplementing your diet for as little as six weeks has been shown to cause a marked improvement in testosterone among men with low levels.1 Likewise, research has shown that restricting dietary sources of zinc leads to a significant decrease in testosterone, while zinc supplementation increases it — and even protects men from exercised-induced reductions in testosterone levels.
It’s estimated that up to 45 percent of adults over the age of 60 may have lower than recommended zinc intakes; even when dietary supplements were added in, an estimated 20-25 percent of older adults still had inadequate zinc intakes, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Your diet is the best source of zinc; along with protein-rich foods like meats and fish, other good dietary sources of zinc include raw milk, raw cheese, beans, and yogurt or kefir made from raw milk. It can be difficult to obtain enough dietary zinc if you’re a vegetarian, and also for meat-eaters as well, largely because of conventional farming methods that rely heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These chemicals deplete the soil of nutrients … nutrients like zinc that must be absorbed by plants in order to be passed on to you.
In many cases, you may further deplete the nutrients in your food by the way you prepare it. For most food, cooking it will drastically reduce its levels of nutrients like zinc ? particularly over-cooking, which many people do.
If you decide to use a zinc supplement, stick to a dosage of less than 40 mg a day, as this is the recommended adult upper limit. Taking too much zinc can interfere with your body’s ability to absorb other minerals, especially copper, and may cause nausea as a side effect.
7. Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels
Vitamin D, a steroid hormone, is essential for the healthy development of the nucleus of the sperm cell, and helps maintain semen quality and sperm count. Vitamin D also increases levels of testosterone, which may boost libido. In one study, overweight men who were given vitamin D supplements had a significant increase in testosterone levels after one year.5
Vitamin D deficiency is currently at epidemic proportions in the United States and many other regions around the world, largely because people do not spend enough time in the sun to facilitate this important process of vitamin D production.
So the first step to ensuring you are receiving all the benefits of vitamin D is to find out what your levels are using a 25(OH)D test, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D.
A few years back, the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), but more recently the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml.
To get your levels into the healthy range, sun exposure is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels; exposing a large amount of your skin until it turns the lightest shade of pink, as near to solar noon as possible, is typically necessary to achieve adequate vitamin D production. If sun exposure is not an option, a safe tanning bed (with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields) can be used.
As a last resort, a vitamin D3 supplement can be taken orally, but research suggests the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D per day in order to elevate their levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the absolute minimum for disease prevention
8. Limit or Eliminate Sugar from Your Diet
Testosterone levels decrease after you eat sugar, which is likely because the sugar leads to a high insulin level, another factor leading to low testosterone.7
Based on USDA estimates, the average American consumes 12 teaspoons of sugar a day, which equates to about TWO TONS of sugar during a lifetime.
Why we eat this much sugar is not difficult to understand — it tastes good, and it gives us pleasure by triggering an innate process in your brain via dopamine and opioid signals.
What it is doing to us on both a physical and emotional level is another story entirely, and most people stand to reap major improvements in their health by cutting back on, or eliminating, sugar altogether from their diets. Remember foods that contain added sugar and fructose, as well as grains like bread and pasta, should all be limited.
If you’re struggling with sugar addiction and having trouble dealing with cravings, I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped many “soda addicts” kick their sweet habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving you may have
9. Eat Healthy Fats
Research shows that a diet with less than 40 percent of energy as fat (and that mainly from animal sources, i.e. saturated) lead to a decrease in testosterone levels.
It’s important to understand that your body requires saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut) for optimal functioning, and if you neglect this important food group in favor of sugar, grains and other starchy carbs, your health and weight are almost guaranteed to suffer. Examples of healthy fats you can eat more of to give your testosterone levels a boost include according to Dr. Mercola: Olives and Olive oil, Coconuts and coconut oil, Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk, Raw nuts, such as, almonds or pecans, Organic pastured egg yolks, Avocados, Grass-fed meats, Palm oil, Unheated organic nut oils
10. Keep your testicles cool
Keep your testicles cool and cordyceps can also help you. Ginseng is a root that?s frequently consumed in Asian foods and beverages, but it?s also a powerful nutrient that drives many healthful physiological functions. Included in the list is an increase in libido and testosterone. Ginseng directly stimulates the central nervous system and gonadal tissues, and can help facilitate erections in males. Ginseng also contains ginsenosides that increase the conversion of arginine to nitric oxide, which helps build muscle mass.
11 Look for Fenugreek
Another great testosterone-boosting supplement is fenugreek, an herb from Southern Europe and Western Asia. As with the others on this list, it boosts libido and raises testosterone levels. Another advantage is that fenugreek also increases insulin release, which can help increase muscle mass after weight training. ?Your body sends fenugreek through your liver so that it can balance and regulate it,? Kehoe says. This is different from many pharmaceutical forms of testosterone, which are absorbed into the body.
12. Avoid alcohol
While it?s true that small amounts of alcohol (1?2 drinks per day) may improve heart health, large amounts of alcohol consumed in binges or regularly may suppress testosterone levels. This is because too much alcohol can promote inflammation and testosterone degradation. ?During the time when elevated levels of alcohol are present in the blood, production of testosterone may be impaired,? Kehoe says.
>> Take action: Keep alcohol consumption to no more than 1?2 drinks per day, enough for the health benefits without the disadvantage of severely impacting T levels.
13. Consume cruciferous vegetables.
You already know that vegetables are crucial for optimal health and muscle growth, but you may not know that certain vegetables may also help boost testosterone levels. ?Research has shown that consuming a diet rich in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, collards, watercress, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens and bok choy may help boost testosterone levels.? Kehoe says that this is due to the phytonutrients they contain, including indoles, which help suppress estrogen.
>> Take action: Emphasize these foods in your nutrition program; striving to gets at least one serving a day of cruciferous vegetables. A mix is always better than relying on one and excluding all the others, but chooses those that you like best, as you?ll be more likely to consume them regularly
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About the writer
Alt. Dr. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu is a registered Naturopathic Doctor practicing integrative Naturopathic oncology with Master?s in Prostate Cancer from Sheffield Hallam University UK, ultrasound expert, renowned Prostate Cancer expert, ambassador and Cancer Psychologist focusing 100% on Men?s prostate health. My holistic, naturopathic approach is exclusive for people combating Prostate Cancer, Prostatitis, Bladder Pain / Pelvic Pain and Male sexual dysfunction.
My research, writings and professional passion are exclusive to these conditions: Cancer of the prostate, Enlarged Prostate, Prostatitis, Male sexual dysfunction, Pain (specifically pelvic pain) and urinary incontinence. Treatments include: medicinal herbs, individualized nutrition, supplements and massage.
My research interest are black race and prostate cancer, Doppler for prostate cancer diagnosis, Naturopathy oncology and the Dangme People in Ghana. As a Prostate Cancer Planner for Patient he is passionate with staying up-to-date on cutting-edge prostate cancer research. With Dr. Obu, you will know if doing nothing (or Active Surveillance) is best for you. If you need medical treatment, he knows all the main players and can facilitate a visit both in Ghana and abroad. He is the CEO of De Men?s Clinic & Prostate Research Lab in Dodowa-Akoto House and the founder of Men?s Health Foundation Ghana.
Contact: [email protected].
Tel: 0541090045
References:
Chris Woolston Male Menopause Available at consumer.healthday.com/…/aging-1/…/male-menopause-646132.html last Updated: Mar 11, 2014
Male Menopause, Testosterone, Prostate Cancer; the Connection between Them Available at
www.roboticoncology.com/…/MaleMenopauseTestosteroneProstateCanc.
Male Menopause – Winthrop University Hospital Available at
www.winthrop.org/departments/specialtycenters/…/Male-Menopause/
Brunilda Nazario .Can You Boost Low Testosterone Naturally? ? WebMD Available at
www.webmd.com/men/features/can-you-boost-testosterone-naturally
Dr. Mercola. 9 Ways to Naturally Increase Testosterone Levels Available at
fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/…/07/…/increase-testosterone-levels.aspx
Jul 26, 2012
Steven Stiefel: 13 Ways to Boost Your Testosterone – MuscleMag
Available at www.musclemag.com/13-ways-to-boost-your-testosterone/
