EP130 The One About Prostate Health

Transcript Of Today's Episode

Dr. Martin Jr.: Hello, I'm Dr. Martin Jr.

Dr. Martin Sr.: And I'm Dr. Martin Sr.

Dr. Martin Jr.: This is The Doctor Is In podcast, and this is episode 130. Today, we're going to talk about a new study that came [00:00:30] out on prostate cancer specifically, and we're going to share with you three things that really have an impact on the health of the prostate and why we're seeing so much more prostate cancer nowadays and how prostate cancer really is the male version of breast cancer in a lot of ways. A lot of the same things that seem to cause breast cancer also cause prostate cancer in men. So we'll talk about that. But first, let's get into the study that you were talking about [00:01:00] this before we got on the air, and I found it interesting.

Dr. Martin Sr.: It's quite an extensive study that actually looked at over a period of 20 years. So a long-term look at the treatment of prostate cancer versus when they decided, the oncologist or whatever had decided not to treat it, meaning just watch it. So there's two schools of thought in the medical profession [00:01:30] when it comes to prostate, and that is one, the PSA test is everything. So if you have high PSA, they start investigating. Probably leads to a biopsy. And then if they see any kind of cancer cell at all, you have some options. The options, depending on who you're seeing, I see it several times a week, so I can tell you with lots of experience, here's some of the options.

Dr. Martin Jr.: [00:02:00] I remember reading something about the guy who invented the PSA test.

Dr. Martin Sr.: He repented in sackcloth and ashes.

Dr. Martin Jr.: How he wasn't a fan of how it was being used as the gold standard, in a sense, and how it led to a really over diagnosis.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Over treatment.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Over treatment of prostates. And you see a lot of men that have been treated for prostate cancer in the past, so you have a good understanding of the negative side [00:02:30] of these men who were probably overaggressively treated, based on high PSA tests.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Let me just go back a second. Over 20 years, they found, okay, so whether you had aggressive treatment, which would include surgery — a lot of men take the option if I have cancer in there, any cancer cells or whatever, get rid of the thing; I don't need it anymore — versus people [00:03:00] that maybe the decision they made or certainly made with their doctor was that they would just watch it, meaning that we saw maybe some cancer cells or whatever, but we're going to leave it alone and just look at it and watch it. We'll be really looking closely. They got 20 years of these studies. It's really fascinating that the outcome I think would shock a lot of people. [00:03:30] That is that after 20 years, whether they had surgery or whether they chose not to have surgery, the mortality didn't change. So meaning that surgery did not improve the outcome of that cancer. Of course, the side effects of surgery are legion.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the thing. The mortality may not have changed, but the quality of life difference between the two choices would have been ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Oh yeah, big time. Some people [00:04:00] can have radical surgery. You have the prostate removed. Very few people do well with that. Men usually that have their prostate removed become impotent. They no longer are able to have sex. That is common, common, common. I don't know if doctors ... I talked to a patient the other day. Just to give you a little bit of what I see in the office, a guy came in. He was told he had prostate [00:04:30] cancer. He wanted to know what my thoughts were. I talked to him about this study. I just told him about my experience with it. He said, doc, the thought of me — and he was 55, so 11 years younger than I am — the thought of him, you know, his sex life would be over, really bothered him. I get some men coming in, they go, you know what? Take it out. I don't care anymore. But for him, he was a young guy, 55 years old. [00:05:00] Still pretty young. He said, doc, I can't. That bothers me. I said, well, yeah. You almost for sure are going to be ... If you get radical surgery done, whether they take it out robotically they do now. It's a lot less invasive than it used to be. They're better at it, blah. Blah. You still don't have a prostate.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's right.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Your prostate is there for a reason, right?

Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, so they also have a lot of issues. A lot of them end up having to wear diapers. [00:05:30] They have a lot of issues that way. It has a huge effect on the quality of their life afterwards. It's one of those things when the PSA test came out, they went crazy with it, and every man over a certain age had their PSA checked, and a lot of them, a lot of false positives. Tons of false positives. First, they were overaggressively treating everything. A lot of surgeries. [00:06:00] Research started coming out that maybe they should slow down a little bit.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Cut back on it. Even having biopsies, right?

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's another interesting thing as well. There's a lot of controversy sometimes on a biopsy itself. You read a lot of different things on ... You get a PSA test done. It shows that it's high. And then they want to do a biopsy to confirm it. A lot of times those biopsies can cause issues as well afterwards.

Dr. Martin Sr.: And plus, there's false positives on biopsies because when you think of it, you're taking ... [00:06:30] You and I have talked about this in the past. To see that your body fights cancer every day.

Dr. Martin Jr.: This is the thing, right? A lot of times, modern medicine has done a lot of good things. A lot of times that we're over treated in a lot of ways, so imagine this for ... A good analogy would be taking a picture in a sense. You get this testing done. You get a PSA test. You get a biopsy done. It's kind of like a snapshot in time. [00:07:00] You're 55 years old. You've had 55 years. They take a snapshot at that time. Maybe at that time, it was an issue, but how many times, in life, and I remember reading different articles and different studies on this, how many times in life you fight off cancer or you fight off something.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Fight off infection.

Dr. Martin Jr.: A person may have been in the process of dealing with this, fighting it off and they would have never have known, and they would've been none the wiser. And then they go and it just so happened [00:07:30] that they get this testing done, and it shows a problem, and they get a biopsy and then they get it treated overaggressively. The study you pointed to backs that up a little bit that the same mortality rate had they done nothing for 20 years. When you say they did nothing, they did nothing. It wasn't like they were taking supplements or changing their food.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Not like what we're going to talk about in a few minutes about how to protect your prostate.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, they did nothing. You may be able to swing it the other way. Now listen, we're not saying not to get tested. We're not saying that. We're not saying [00:08:00] that at all. However, what we are saying is that the body is an amazing machine that was built. It's an amazing machine. It can fight off a lot of things. My background is a lot of sports injuries, and I remember even when the MRI unit came up. The MRI is an amazing machine for imaging. Fantastic. So what happened was is that the MRI machine came out and everybody with back pain, their doctor was sending them to get an MRI. What was happening [00:08:30] was ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Lots of surgeries, right?

Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, so they get MRI results, and all these people had bulging discs. They had bulging discs. A lot of surgeries. And then after a period of time, they realized that even a high percentage of healthy individuals have some form of bulging discs.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, who doesn't.

Dr. Martin Jr.: It wasn't causing their back pain. That's the problem. A lot of times they get these imagings done, and they find out ... Without starting a firestorm, the same thing is with a mammogram [00:09:00] in a lot of ways.

Dr. Martin Sr.: A lot of false positives.

Dr. Martin Jr.: A lot of false positive mammograms, and there's a lot of research. Just go look it up. I don't have to tell you about it. Go look it up. It's the same thing. We can be over imaged. We can be over tested, especially ... This is kind of the problem in today's ... The medical community has this idea that early detection is the best form of prevention. That's what they ... If you catch it early enough, [00:09:30] you could treat it. You can fix it, and you can get on your way. I'm not disagreeing with that. But sometimes what they're detecting is never going to be an issue in the first place or your body would have fought ... You just don't know.

Dr. Martin Sr.: What man over the age of 50 doesn't have some swelling of the prostate? It's just very, very, very normal. You know men, when you get up to pee, men, that you never peed when you were a young guy and you wonder, now I've got to get up [00:10:00] at night, especially if I drink a lot of water or whatever, I'm up once or twice a night. Does that mean your diseased? No. It means it's inflamed. It's bigger than it used to be.

Dr. Martin Jr.: We talk about this in anti-aging, but one of the things that happens as you age is that your organs and everything becomes more insulin-resistant. So things grow. That's a normal thing. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. That's the only thing ... Again, we're not knocking ... [00:10:30] Oh, no. We're not telling you not to do that. We're just saying ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Not telling you not to get tested, get your PSA tested. Get it tested. I've got no issue with that. We're just giving info.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the thing because you know we'll get a couple of emails from people that are saying that we're anti-testing. That's not the case at all.

Dr. Martin Sr.: We're not even anti-surgery. If you make that decision to have it for a man. A lot of times, we know a lot of women are listening to this. You often are the ones that know more about health than men. I'm not picking on men, but I am ...

Dr. Martin Jr.: [00:11:00] They'll do the research.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Women are much more. We know that. Just generally, women are much more interested. We just want to give ... The podcasts are all about giving information and looking at these things and getting you to think. We want people to look at stuff and to think. It's interesting because I can just tell you that I have always had this opinion. As long as I've been in practice, I've always said you're better off in 99 percent [00:11:30] of cases of prostate to watch it, to observe it, to leave it alone, to see because most prostate cancers are not aggressive at all.

Dr. Martin Jr.: I remember reading one researcher saying that you're more likely to die with prostate cancer than from prostate cancer. This one researcher was saying it's kind of like an ebb and flow thing. It just kind of comes and goes at any given time at an older age. There were [00:12:00] a lot of people that have probably died over the years that their cause of death was a heart attack, but they may have prostate and they didn't even know they had prostate cancer. There are some forms of prostate cancers that are very aggressive. There's a connection of veins from the prostate that goes pretty much right up to your brain. It could travel very quickly. But that's a minority. A lot of these are men that have swollen prostate and they remove them, especially early on. Again, I think things are hopefully changing a little bit. [00:12:30] They definitely were overaggressive for a while.

Now that we've talked about that study, let's talk about the three things from a, not from a nutritional standpoint but more from a hormonal aspect in a sense that happens because you and I have talked about this, but in a lot of ways, prostate cancer is kind of like a breast cancer for men.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Are we the only ones that have ever said that? I haven't read that anywhere. I really haven't. There isn't, in terms [00:13:00] of hormonal therapy for the prostate cancer, and by the way, some oncologists do that, that there's hormonal therapy, but they actually say that prostate cancer and breast cancer are very, very similar types of cancers causation and that. I don't know if we're the only ones that ever have said it.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Let's talk about really three hormonal changes that occur that impact the prostate and really can cause some issues, the first being testosterone. Why [00:13:30] don't you talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Martin Sr.: Testosterone makes you a man, obviously. Testosterone you always look at things in balance. Women are much more acute in terms of balance of hormones because they've got lots of moving parts between their thyroid and their estrogen and their adrenals and everything is connected in there. Women are really much more complicated. But men, your prostate will be healthy, men, generally, almost without [00:14:00] exception if you have good, elevated levels of testosterone. So testosterone is very, very important for the prostate. Your prostate usually will be quite healthy if your levels of testosterone are good. If you have good levels of testosterone, it minimizes your womanly hormone, which is estrogen. Now men, sometimes that shocks men when I tell them that in the office.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's really the second hormone, which we'll talk about in a second. Again, of the issues that happens as you age, [00:14:30] we talk about this anorexia of aging. Certain things shrink. Certain things waste away as we age. One of the problems that happens is that once you get over, around that age of 30, your testosterone levels start to naturally decrease every year. So you lose a percentage.

Dr. Martin Sr.: What did you say? We're fighting a losing battle.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, we're fighting a losing battle when it comes to testosterone. So it's only natural in a sense that as your testosterone levels lower as you age that your prostate problems increase as you age. [00:15:00] One of the things that you'd want to do strategy-wise is to minimize the ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Loss of testosterone.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Exactly. You want to minimize the loss of testosterone. You want to definitely stop doing things that are lowering testosterone, and you want to do things that would help slow that natural loss and make sure that the levels are normal. There are a lot of men, a lot of men, who are having some serious testosterone issues.

Dr. Martin Sr.: That's very common.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Very, very common. The problem is [00:15:30] kind of like fat and saturated fat. Saturated fat is such a terrible name. It sounds so bad. Old-time medicine has destroyed saturated fat. You hear it and you think it sounds bad. It sounds like a villain in a movie. No matter what you do. It doesn't matter what research comes out with saturated fat, people are scared of it. It's like testosterone in a lot of ways as well. Testosterone has a bad connotation to it. He's got a lot of testosterone, like that's the cause ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: That's anger.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the cause of their problems because he's got high testosterone. No, the guy's [00:16:00] just a jerk. It has nothing to do with testosterone levels. He's a jerk. We've equated that with testosterone. Also, we think of testosterone as a performance-enhancing drug. So it's got a negative thing. We talk about elevated testosterone levels and people think cheater, steroids or ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Sammy Sosa. I'm mentioning the Cubs here. I want to bug you.

Dr. Martin Jr.: I know. I'm a big Cubs guy. What's interesting, you're right. That's what you think about when you think about testosterone. But [00:16:30] the reality is, a lot of men and a lot of women have low testosterone. A lot of men have low testosterone and you know they have low testosterone because as they're aging, their energy is decreasing. They're not as strong. They don't feel the vitality that they used to have. Their sex drive has fallen off the table. They're not sleeping as well as they used to. There's a whole lot of symptoms that go along with that. That's a very common thing. Unfortunately, not a lot of doctors check for testosterone. [00:17:00] I mean, they just don't check for that. We'll talk about a little bit at the end of this a few things you can do to help elevate testosterone.

Dr. Martin Sr.: To elevate it.

Dr. Martin Jr.: The first hormone that works against a guy and his prostate is testosterone. The second, you mentioned it, which is estrogen, which is kind of funny. Estrogen and testosterone have this yin and yang type of thing, and one goes up, one goes down. The reality is today because of the amount of plastics in the environment, the amount of scents, [00:17:30] chemicals, all these chemicals that mimic estrogen, men ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Shampoos, all the phthalates and you name it.

Dr. Martin Jr.: We're struggling with estrogen like chemicals, and it's causing an estrogen dominance in men, which is affecting their testosterone levels and estrogen as well. I'll say this, a lot of men end up with a prostate cancer because of estrogen metabolizing issues. Just like breast cancer for women. [00:18:00] A lot of breast cancers have a lot more estrogen receptors, a lot more insulin receptors as well, which we'll talk about in a second. It's interesting. Estrogen is a big problem for men, which is why one of the things we like to do for swollen prostates also is recommend that we use our hormonal support formula, like DIM.

Dr. Martin Sr.: DIM. I take it every day.

Dr. Martin Jr.: It's fantastic, right? It helps with estrogen metabolism. It's one of those things that ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Blocks the extra estrogen.

Dr. Martin Jr.: So that's a major problem for a lot of men as well. A lot of men have low testosterone [00:18:30] and then coupled to make it worse, they've got elevated estrogen, so it's even a double whammy. It makes things so much worse for them. So then end up with a lot of prostate issues. The third hormone that really caps it off is the person has high-circulating insulin.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Insulin, yeah.

Dr. Martin Jr.: The reason why that's a problem is because — we've said this a lot, but we'll say it again — insulin is a growth hormone. It's a very powerful growth hormone. It makes things grow. [00:19:00] Body builders for years have tried to manipulate insulin levels to help them grow their muscles because it's a tremendous growth hormone. It's very, very anabolic. It makes sense. As you age, if you have high circulating insulin, it only makes sense that certain things start to grow, and your prostate seems to be very sensitive to insulin, and it grows. So you have these men that have high insulin. They've got high estrogen, and their prostate just explodes.

Dr. Martin Sr.: And if they have extra weight, and insulin [00:19:30] is the big fat storer. Plus estrogen, right?

Dr. Martin Jr.: Insulin, estrogen, low testosterone, it's kind of ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: It's the triad, the trifecta for prostate cancer, when you really look at it. We should write a book about that.

Dr. Martin Jr.: We'll have to add that to the list of books that we want to write.

Dr. Martin Sr.: I just had that idea. I like that idea. The trifecta.

Dr. Martin Jr.: You're right. The combination of those three, those are lifestyle. [00:20:00] The nice thing is with that is those are things that you can control by diet, by doing certain things. We talked about lowering estrogen. We talked about improving testosterone. From a nutrient standpoint, there are two very common deficiencies that majority of the population has, a lot of men especially, and those two deficiencies definitely cause low testosterone. First one, vitamin D.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Vitamin D is essential for [00:20:30] the ... You can't have good levels of testosterone unless you have good levels of vitamin D. They go hand in hand. Vitamin D, we're always talking about it. Very important. Remember, vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, and this is why you and I are big into making sure you get enough fat in your diet because you're not going to absorb vitamin D without ... It's a fat-soluble vitamin. It's very important. So [00:21:00] to go fat-free like our society did ... It's one of the reasons. It's one of the reasons. Not the only reason. It's one of the reasons that prostate cancer is on the rise big time is that people avoid fat like the plague. You're not absorbing vitamin D without ... You just need. It's a fat soluble vitamin. That's why I like peanut butter and vitamin D for me.

Dr. Martin Jr.: I've got a feeling you'd like peanut butter anyways.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah.

Dr. Martin Jr.: The second nutrient that [00:21:30] men are deficient in, and women, but it really impacts the level of testosterone, is zinc. Such a common deficiency. We don't talk a lot about zinc because there's so many other things we talk abut, but zinc is another ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Where do you find it? What foods?

Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, and really that's the thing. Unfortunately, we don't care ... There are a lot of people that are vegetarian or vegan. They can eat a low carb lifestyle, and they can eat [00:22:00] a low carb, higher fat and get enough protein, but there's a lot of people that are eating a vegan lifestyle or a vegetarian lifestyle that aren't getting the nutrients. They're just not getting them. They're not getting, and that's the problem because zinc is found in ...

Dr. Martin Sr.: Eggs, meat and cheese.

Dr. Martin Jr.: Eggs, meat and cheese. That's where you get a lot of zinc. You start cutting those things out of your diet because, and this is what happens to a lot of men. They end up, as they get older because of high-circulating insulin, by the way, they end up with high blood pressure. [00:22:30] They go to their doctor, and the doctor says you've got to stop eating salt and red meat and stop eating eggs, cholesterol foods. So they scare them and they stop eating all those things. The next thing you know, they're eating all these low-fat foods, and they're not getting any zinc anymore. It's creating these deficiencies. They're not getting any vitamin D because they're scared of the sun because their doctor's telling them stay out of the sun. It doesn't take long before the prostate starts to grow, starts to explode. Testosterone levels fall down. They don't feel good anymore. For a long time, [00:23:00] we've been giving this bad advice. So if you're listening and you're vegetarian or you're vegan, you're going to have a harder time getting those nutrients.

Dr. Martin Sr.: So just supplement.

Dr. Martin Jr.: You've got to supplement, yeah.

Dr. Martin Sr.: For some people, they can't even digest meat. It bothers them. I had a lady in this morning that it bothered. I said look, if it bothers you, I don't want you to eat it. If you can't take eggs ... Some people can't have eggs.

Dr. Martin Jr.: I can't eat eggs.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, you can't eat eggs. Your mother can't have eggs. [00:23:30] You know what? Then you substitute.

Dr. Martin Jr.: That's right. You'd better be prepared to supplement.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Take a supplement. That's what they're called. They're called supplements. You supplement your diet with that. It's like B12. It's an essential vitamin and we just say well look, if you're not eating red meat, you're going to be low in it, so just take a sublingual B12.

Dr. Martin Jr.: All right. Well we want to thank you for listening to this episode. If you have any questions, you can email us at info@martinclinic.com. Also, every Thursday morning, [00:24:00] you do a Facebook Live so you can go to our Facebook page. Sign up there. Also on Facebook, you'll get notifications about the Facebook Lives. Great way to come and ask me questions. If you're not a newsletter subscriber, go to our website, martinclinic.com, and just sign up for newsletters. We talk about a lot of these studies every week. So again, we want to thank you for listening and have a nice day.

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