Men's Health article

[Woggler58 (imported)]

I read Dr Morgentaler’s book with intense interest when it was released in late 2009, having seen it touted in the monthly mag of Life Extension Foundation.

My interest was in going onto MD-prescribed testosterone (T) supplementation as I was completing 2 years after apparently successful treatment of my medium-grade prostate cancer. Treatment was by two complementary forms of radiation (HDR Brachytherapy followed by IMRT external beam, without any temporary T deprivation being prescribed.) The snag: Since 1941, letting any treated prostate cancer patient have supplementary T at any time was considered counter-productive to continuing success of his cancer treatments, but allowing his own natural production of T to persist was not, regardless of it being high or low. Logic in that prevailing attitude escaped me.

In his book, Dr Morgentaler reveals how a poorly written, misleading passage in a widely distributed summary of the original, pioneering 1941 research paper in a Harvard library archive led generations of doctors to suppose that post-treatment prostate cancer relapse is linearly dose-dependent on one’s T levels throughout the entire possible T range, from just above 20 (surgical castrate level) past 240 (lower bound of the middle 95% of normal test results) past 540 (mean value of normal) to 840 (top of the middle 95%.) He found that the T range beginning at about 30 and ending well below 200 is what’s decisive to whether a viable prostate cancer is nourished by T circulating in one's blood or not. Thus castration-level T starves the cancer but with either self-made or added T above 200, the cancer is already saturated with all the T it can use, so adding more T—as desired for other health and vitality purposes—does no further harm, cancer-wise.

My own normal T had been 410 but it crashed to 210 during the two years after my radiation treatments, and the effect on my life of now being at about the 2nd percentile in T was distressing. Dr Morgentaler’s findings were encouraging and his methodology I found ethical, credible, even-handed, professional, and persuasive. I’m a professional myself in a different form of applied science that also has life-safety implications and I have a keen sense of prudent professionalism to apply to this man’s writings and bases of opinion.

As my quarterly PSA test results leveled off at 0.3 (+/- 0.1) after two years, I sought and obtained a well-monitored, hormone specialist MD's prescription for T supplementation, and have been on it for 19 months, with great satisfaction and no adverse PSA or subjectively experienced outcomes. My experience is consistent with that of patients similarly treated in Dr Morgentaler’s Boston clinic.

I chose to believe that my consistently low PSA meant no cancer was still viable and that boosting my T to above 750 would risk no return of it. If any cancer comes back it would have anyway in my un-boosted, naturally hypogonadic T state, and if it does, I simply stop taking T and stop having testicles in my scrotum. Both measures would be necessary.

Meanwhile a more feisty and ambitious attitude has accompanied my boosted T levels. Sometimes I have to watch what I say in meetings and when I say it. But no road rage problems have come up to join my continuing computer rage syndrome.