Got ED? Think About Your Prostate

Because the two can be closely linked, when I hear "ED" I often think "prostate." Here are two news bulletins that provide important information regarding prostate health:

1. Men who are childless have a lower risk of prostate cancer. A recent finding was that men who have not had children have a 16% "lower risk" of being diagnosed with prostate cancer, when compared to men who have fathered children. Here's the paradox - among fathers of children, the ones who had THE MOST children - had the lower risk of prostate cancer.  Since these findings seem to be in direct conflict - researchers are scrambling to do more studies to further investigate these findings. Stay tuned.

2. A POPULAR PROSTATE DRUG IS ACTUALLY SAFER THAN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED.  Proscar, which is a drug routinely used to treat BPH, benign prostatic hypertrophy, a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate, was implicated negatively in a past study.  About 5 years ago, a study found that Proscar actually reduced prostate cancer rates by about 25%, but among men on Proscar who did get cancer - it was typically a more aggressive form of prostate cancer.

A new evaluation of the study found that the size of the prostate was not taken into account. Because Proscar successfully reduced the size of the prostate, cancers (in this case more aggressive ones) were much easier to find.