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The Hidden Cost of Androgen Deprivation Therapy · Intellectual Medicine

• 0:00
  Androgen deprivation sounds nicer than castration and
• 0:04
  therapy. Things have sound, well,
• 0:06
  therapeutic. It's good for you.
• 0:09
  If it's therapeutic. Negative to both guys, negative
• 0:13
  to both, you can stop now. The era of prostate biopsies
• 0:19
  will be a bygone phenomenon in the near future, and we're here
• 0:23
  to make that future happen more quickly.
• 0:25
  I'm also going to encourage you men to not get castrated.
• 0:30
  This is what they euphemistically call androgen
• 0:34
  deprivation therapy. Most importantly, guys, I want
• 0:39
  to drill home this message. Do not let them scare you into
• 0:43
  getting castrated. There is a time where androgen
• 0:47
  mitigation therapy could have some value, specifically if the
• 0:52
  cancer goes to your bone and it's causing pain, if the cancer
• 0:57
  expands within the prostate to the point where you can't
• 1:01
  urinate, Those are two circumstances where androgen
• 1:06
  mitigation can't help. But guys, don't fire this
• 1:10
  weapon, if you will, prior to its absolute need because you're
• 1:14
  going to waste it and you're not going to feel good.
• 1:18
  Well, I'm glad you're listening. I told you never get a prostate
• 1:22
  biopsy. And if you've gotten them in the
• 1:24
  past, you can stop now. The era of prostate biopsies
• 1:30
  will be a bygone phenomenon in the near future, and we're here
• 1:34
  to make that future happen more quickly.
• 1:36
  I'm also going to encourage you men to not get castrated.
• 1:42
  This is what they euphemistically call androgen
• 1:45
  deprivation therapy. Androgen deprivation sounds
• 1:50
  nicer than castration, and therapy makes it sound, well,
• 1:55
  therapeutic. It's good for you if it's
• 1:58
  therapeutic. Negative to both guys, negative
• 2:02
  to both. Now here's the dogma that has
• 2:05
  been built up out of intuition without adequate proof of
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  benefit. We know that PSA goes up as we
• 2:16
  get older. We know that it goes up more
• 2:18
  significantly when you have prostate cancer.
• 2:23
  We do not know whether or not or how much that increase in PSA
• 2:28
  correlates with disease progression.
• 2:31
  It's an important detail. In some cases, it's known you
• 2:36
  have prostate cancer. All right, And how do we follow
• 2:39
  it? I told you no biopsies.
• 2:42
  Sometimes what I advocate for is sequential PSA, But you've got
• 2:46
  to be careful. Anxiety pushes men to make
• 2:51
  treatment decisions at the behest, often of their
• 2:55
  oncologist or the urologist that harms them.
• 2:59
  Not been proven to help. And this is especially true when
• 3:03
  it comes to castration. So here's a common scenario.
• 3:07
  A man gets diagnosed with prostate cancer, treatment is
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  rendered, the PS:. LPSA level goes down,
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  everybody's happy. Bear in mind, most of the men
• 3:18
  feel pretty darn good prior to the treatment.
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  It's the treatment that makes them feel awful.
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  So here you're chugging along, your PSA level is X and
• 3:29
  everybody's content. Now it starts to go up.
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  That's what they call a chemical relapse.
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  An ominous word if you've been told you have cancer in the 1st
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  place is oh, you have a relapse. Nonsense.
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  Men 1000% BS. This is a made-up disease, a
• 3:50
  chemical relapse. You're treating a number, the
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  number goes up and everybody's going to impose anxiety that
• 3:57
  compels you to get castrated. Now we know that we can lower
• 4:02
  the number, we can castrate men, and it does lower the PSA
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  number, but to what avail? Here's what is the hard truth
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  that is universal. This is not ambiguous.
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  This is settled science. When you start castration
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  therapy, the cancer will push through that.
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  Not maybe 100% of the time. Eventually the cancer adapts to
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  the low testosterone state and it progresses.
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  That's called castration resistant cancer.
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  Another nice, nice euphemism is that it means they got nothing
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  left. They've already wasted a
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  potentially effective treatment at a time when you don't really
• 4:51
  need it. You feel good.
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  But the number went up. The minute they launch androgen
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  deprivation therapy, whether it's injectable or it's a pill
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  or in the old days, you just castrate.
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  Men literally cut their Godads off.
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  The minute that happens. The clock is ticking on average
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  two years, two years before it ceases to be effective and the
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  PSA level starts to go up again. In addition, a bonus you get for
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  all of the ineffectiveness of this treatment is you feel
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  terrible. You take away men's
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  testosterone. It's bad for us guys.
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  It's bad. We need it.
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  The brain gets weak, confidence fades, mood gets depressed,
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  people lose their mojo. Your sex drive, your energy,
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  your force of life, all drained out of you.
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  Muscles get weak, fat grows. You get tired, dumpy, doughy,
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  impotent. Can I go on?
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  Osteoporotic. Increased risk of heart disease.
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  Increased risk of dementia. Oh my goodness, can we stop the
• 6:00
  insanity? You men, you are the eyes in
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  control. Conventional medicine will make
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  you feel nervous. Your PSA went from one to three.
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  Went from one to five. Oh, my goodness.
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  We must put you on this androgen deprivation therapy or else
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  you're going to die really, really well.
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  We all know we're going to die. Thank you for the for the
• 6:25
  headline news, doctor. But when and what I'm going to
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  die of? The vast majority of men with
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  prostate cancer die from heart disease and other causes.
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  I'm not advocating we do nothing.
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  I'm advocating you don't do something that's going to cause
• 6:42
  you harm. And yes, you should consider the
• 6:45
  protocols that we discuss on this podcast.
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  Why isn't that going to hurt you?
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  And they have potential to help. Now, here's an example from my
• 6:54
  case files. This is a gentleman who has
• 6:57
  biopsy proven prostate cancer 2021.
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  He went overseas to get treated. They wanted to do focal
• 7:05
  therapies and other treatments. At the time he went overseas his
• 7:09
  PSA level was in the 20s. Now normally post treatment they
• 7:15
  like to see it go below 1. His hovered at 14 and it never
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  went down in 21 PSA of 14. Special medicine says at that
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  point, we're going to castrate you, we're going to give you a
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  pill to wipe out your testosterone, to make that
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  number go down before it kills you. well-being my patient, he
• 7:39
  has the wisdom to pause and the intelligence to follow my
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  counsel and not do that. He's never gone on castration
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  therapy. His PSA number still hovers in
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  the mid teens. He feels great.
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  His cancer hasn't made any significant progression.
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  We monitored with his MRI. He feels great four years later.
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  Had he done conventional medicine and gone on castration,
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  he'd have felt awful, and that would have broken down on
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  average in two years. He's already two years past the
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  point of time at which we would have expected castration to
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  cease working. And although his number is high
• 8:28
  enough to make conventional doctors get nervous, he feels
• 8:33
  great. So this takes courage, men.
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  It takes courage because the number is objective, the number
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  is tangible, the number is real, but it doesn't necessarily
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  correlate with your disease state.
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  You can remain in a state of remission with APSA that is
• 8:54
  uncomfortably high. Now, here's the real hook with
• 8:57
  this guy. He's actually on testosterone.
• 9:00
  Whoa, isn't that heretical, is it?
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  Putting a man with prostatic cancer, putting him on
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  testosterone? Isn't that pouring gas on the
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  pot? Well, we're here to shed light,
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  research, science and philosophy on dogma.
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  And there are a lot of reasons why this theory of testosterone
• 9:22
  pouring gas on the fire may not be true.
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  In fact, it may be that properly utilized testosterone can be
• 9:31
  helpful. It's a topic for another day.
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  It's rather detailed. But this approach, for those of
• 9:37
  you that have the courage to consider it and have the
• 9:41
  intellectual curiosity to expand your mind, it's an option to
• 9:46
  contemplate. But most importantly, guys, I
• 9:47
  want to drill home this message. Do not let them scare you into
• 9:52
  getting castrated. There is a time where androgen
• 9:56
  mitigation therapy could have some value, specifically if the
• 10:02
  cancer goes to your bone and it's causing pain, if the cancer
• 10:08
  expands within the prostate to the point where you can't
• 10:11
  urinate, those are two circumstances where androgen
• 10:17
  mitigation can help. But guys, you wait.
• 10:21
  You don't fire this weapon, if you will, prior to its absolute
• 10:25
  need because you're going to waste it and you're not going to
• 10:29
  feel good. So bear in mind, my patient, I
• 10:32
  have another gentleman in my practice that prostate cancer
• 10:37
  for 20 years, no conventional treatments, 20 years, feeling
• 10:42
  great. His PSA number in the 50s went
• 10:46
  up to the 70s. They want to castrate him.
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  He paused, said, But I feel great.
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  I'm going to work every day. No castration.
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  Three years later, when his number was up around 150 and now
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  he had some disease in the bone, he went on androgen mitigation.
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  Now you could ask the question, well, gosh, if he'd gone on
• 11:12
  androgen deprivation back then, would that have prevented the
• 11:16
  cancer from going to the bone? No, there's no evidence of that.
• 11:20
  It actually is more logical, more intellectual, better for
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  your health, in my view, to wait, to wait and use the
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  treatment at a time when the risks are worth the benefit.
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  So androgen deprivation therapy, castration therapy.
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  Just think twice. Think twice.
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  Here's what I advise if you're facing this dilemma.
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  Get an MRI of the prostate. See what it looks like.
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  See how much it's changed at its value.
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  Do not do biopsies. If you've had it done in the
• 11:58
  past and you've been diagnosed with cancer, there's nothing
• 12:01
  more to be gained. You know what you got?
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  Oh, but we need to know the Gleason score.
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  That's another fallacy. You don't.
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  The Gleason score has no correlation to your clinical
• 12:11
  outcome with regard to choosing the treatment pathway.
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  Now, my guy, in 2021, the fellow I was just talking about, they
• 12:21
  had a Gleason score of nine in 21 where they boxed.
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  You have considered very aggressive, right?
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  Four years later, no progress. The Gleason score is a is a
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  number subjectively applied. The real, the real test of
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  cancerous aggression is its capacity for change and
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  progression. We can do that without a biopsy.
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  So think twice with antigen deprivation therapy.
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  You will get that anxiety imposed upon you because of the
• 12:55
  number going up. Wait, look for the imaging.
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  PSMA PET scan is a consideration as well.
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  It's a tough spot to be in. Guys.
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  I have great sympathy for you all.
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  That's why I do the podcast. That's why we talk about it.
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  That's why we have the prostate protocol community, which you
• 13:13
  all can join. You do not need to be my patient
• 13:16
  to join the community. It's a place where you can gain
• 13:19
  information from other men walking the same path.
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  Well, I think that's enough for the moment.
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  So no to biopsy, think twice about antigen deprivation, do
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  not let them castrate you without clear and present danger
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  and a solid plan. All right guys, till next time.
• 13:36
  Thanks for tuning in.