In the course of the last 15 years, I’ve seen 3 urologists for various issues, from vasectomy to kidney stones. In each case I made them aware of my family’s history of prostate cancer. My paternal uncle died from it. My father had surgery at 74. My oldest brother has had bracytherapy. Another older brother is still deciding on his treatment option and third brother had da Vinci surgery. Although the cancers my brothers have are more recent, at NO TIME in the course of 15 years has a single urologist made concrete suggestions on lifestyle changes, such as diet or weight loss, or dietary supplements, or medicines, that might have prevented the development of prostate cancer, which I now have too. So my question – and challenge – is, why is the urological establishment so deficient in offering this advice? To my mind it borders on malpractice.
Great question. This is also a frustration of mine. I can tell you that doctors are marginally at fault. The real problem is that lifestyle modification, nutrition, environmental medicine and the proper use of herbs are not taught in medical schools- so physician’s do not know about these things. So once Urologist’s go through 4 years of medical school, 6 years of residency and 2 years of fellowship, there are too invested in mainstream medicine (surgery, medications, etc.) and have no time to study other branches of medicine likealternative medicine. Another reason is that most health care insurances do not pay for these services, particularly Medicare. So if it is not reimbursable, physician’s don’t practice it. I wrote an article on Prostate Cancer Research Institute newsletter in the November issue – you may want to get it and it is free - http://www.prostate-cancer.org/resource/insights.html.
