TowerNetWeb

External beam radiation treatment or radiotherapy is not new. Electron beam radiotherapy was first tested in 1915. This beam, the one used in X-Rays was not successful because it caused almost as much harm as it did good.

Proton beam radiotherapy was first suggested in 1946 and was performed from 1954. This was far more successful because it is possible to retain more control over the point of influence of the beam. This means less collateral damage to the adjacent healthy \cells.

Besides these technologies there are also other external beams like the neutron beam and the 3D-CRT beam. There are also other more investigational beams and what is known as seed radiation too.

Except for seed radiation, there is no invasive surgery needed with external beam radiation therapy, there is very little collateral damage and virtually no side effect, so you would imagine that this is the best prostate cancer therapy to go for.

However, this is not always the case, because there are so many other factors that need to be taken into account. These factors, such as the phase of the cancer, the general health of the patient and the patient’s point of view make the decision a complex one.

Therefore, if you have questions that have been raised from reading this short piece, please take them up with your medical doctor or healthcare provider.

Prostate cancer is like an oil tanker, it can move quickly, but it takes a long time to attain this speed. If you have caught the cancer early, say, in stage one, your medical doctor may make a decision to ‘wait and see’.

This could get upsetting for the patient, but it is a sincere tactic, because not all growths are cancerous and the prostate enlarges with age anyway. It is better for the doctor to carry out several tests and ‘watchful waiting’ to have irrefutable evidence what the growth is.

The first test will be a rectal examination with a finger (DRE), the GP may then check your PSA count. PSA stands for ‘prostate specific antigen’, This antigen is produced by the prostate and some of it flows into the blood.

A small amount is normal, higher amounts might indicate a difficulty and its severity. Age is a factor, but if the degree reaches 10, then more check ups have to be carried out and they might require a biopsy of the prostate to carry them out.

When the medical doctor is certain that you have cancer, then radiation therapy is merely one of the options you have and although you might prefer the sound of it, it may not be the most appropriate treatment in your case.

Radiation treatment is very local in its effect, so if your cancer has not spread, radiation therapy can be used to pick off isolated specks of growth. However, if it has gone further than that, it is likely that a different treatment will be chosen

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with the proton prostate cancer treatment. If you want to know more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?

Knowledge is power, isn’t it? information empowers you to be able to do something. Having knowledge of prostate cancer at your finger tips will enable you to have more opportunity of diagnosing yourself or helping your family and friends. One of the concerns with prostate cancer is that it grows slowly but by the time you notice it, it can be well advanced.

The information that you will find in this article is stuff that I have discovered for my own information and benefit. It is not definitive medical advice. For that depth of knowledge you will have to talk to a physician.

I am not a physician, but my father and a good friend passed away of prostate cancer and as a man, I have a fairly high risk – one in six – of contracting the problem myself, hence my interest.

It seems that there are things that a man can do to lower the likelihood of acquiring prostate cancer and these include eating healthily and doing manly things like sport and manual labour. One of the worst things you can do is sit on your prostate gland all day long – desk jobs and watching TV is not good for the prostate.

If you cannot help but have a sedentary lifestyle, then you have to be aware of the early symptoms of prostate cancer so that it can be treated before it becomes life-threatening. The main thing to be on the look out for is issues urinating.

Most older men have problems with their bladder, but when it begins happening to you, go to your medical doctor and have it checked out. It may be nothing except age, but on the other hand …

The bigger the problems, such as pain or bleeding, the more reason that you ought to go to the GP. Frequent urination may be the first sign of prostate cancer but it could just mean that you are getting older too.

I was once told by my Thai optician that the reason why I was losing my sight was because I was ‘prematurely senile’. it can happen, but I asked him to check the wording and he came back with ‘premature senile cataracts’. We had a hearty laugh at that.

Prostate cancer is curable. About 90% of people are cured (some surveys say 85% others say 95%), however, it very much depends on catching the disease in its infancy. All men over around 40 ought to have a check up at least one time every year, perhaps two times. The test is embarrassing but quick, painless and simple – a finger up the bum.

Dying of prostate cancer is the result of negligence nowadays, because it grows slowly in its initial stages, but when it gets a hold, it goes like a train and moves to other areas of the body, giving the patient far less opportunity of recovery. If the worst comes to the worst you can do without your prostate gland anyway – after all, women don’t need one.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with prostate cancer and radiation treatment. If you want to know more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?

Make no mistake about it, prostate cancer is a life-threatening disease. Not just that, but it will kill all men that it affects unless they do something to stop it. The number of deaths per annum is falling, but it still stands at just under 30,000 men a year in the USA alone.

Successful therapy relies a lot on the early diagnosis of the disease and when caught early, the success rate of survival is as high as almost 90%. Prostate cancer can afflict men of all ages, but the older the man, the more chance he has of acquiring it. The age when the risk starts to rise is 50 years of age.

The occurrence of prostate cancer before 50 years of age is quite to very rare and is thought to be associated to DNA or hereditary factors. Therefore, if there is a history of prostate cancer among the men in your family, start planning regular check-ups when you are 40 or even 35, just to make sure.

Numerous people believe that there is a strong link between cancer and smoking, because they contend that smoking can deform the DNA allowing cancers to grow more freely. If you believe this, then it makes sense to give up smoking or never take it up.

Diet is a means to maintaining a healthy body and an effective immune system. The standard advice is to eat a balanced, low-fat diet which is rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, low in fat and high in fibre. To this you can add high in lycopene and quercetin, both of which occur naturally in fruit and vegetables.

Lycopene is the red dye seen in numerous fruits such as tomatoes, dragon fruit, red cabbage, carrots, water melons, peanuts and many others and quercetin is found in numerous leaves that are used to make tea, both green and black teas. Some have higher concentrations than others.

Drinking water and exercising is an excellent way of massaging the internal organs and flushing out the excess toxins that your body creates just by being alive. Exercise is also said to amplify the immune system and will help you tackle not just prostate cancer but other illnesses as well.

Frequent testing for (prostate) cancer remains the best procedure for the prevention of a life-threatening predicament. A PSA test will reveal the amount of antigens that the prostate is releasing into the blood.

This is one of the first symptoms that there might be a problem on the horizon. Regular testing will provide a benchmark to see whether the amount is rising, which it might do due to no other reason than your advancing age.

As with all cancers, it is crucial to diagnose prostate cancer early. Once your medical doctor is certain that there is a malignant growth there are quite a few methods of tackling it. Which course of action is chosen relies on you and the condition your body is in.

You can prepare for the eventuality by keeping your body in passable shape; doing some research and being conscious of the options, which you will need to discuss with your medical doctor.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is currently involved with proton prostate cancer treatment. If you want to kcurrently more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?

This question bothers millions of individuals worldwide each year. Although prostate cancer can only affect men, any significant, life-threatening infection has an effect on not merely the sufferer, but also his family and friends. Doctors and surgeons also wonder what the best prostate cancer treatment is each week.

In this article, we will endeavour to give you some food for thought on the issue so that you may do more research on the Internet later or have some questions prepared to ask your medical doctor.

It is better to be able to comprehend the terminology and have some fundamental concept of what the disease is than to be completely oblivious.

Having said that, you should not use this piece of around five hundred words to base your medical judgments on. This piece is only meant as a stimulus for further research.

The first thing to consider is the general health of the sufferer and the phase of development of the cancer. These two issues will establish which treatment is most suitable. The important thing with prostate cancer is to catch it very early on because it spreads so rapidly when likened with most other cancers and spreads early.

If you have been having regular check-ups and the cancer has been diagnosed early, your doctor might make a decision that he wants to ‘wait and see’. This may be distressing for the patient as the patient expects cancer to be taken on immediately.

However, if the cancer is in an early stage, it may be better to monitor its speed of development before deciding what to do about it After all, you do not want to go through unnecessary remedies, only to have to be treated again afterwards.

if you are worried about waiting or the treatment suggested (or combination of treatments), go for a second opinion. You will not upset your medical doctor by doing this, in fact, it relieves him of some responsibility, so he will probably be happy of it.

If the cancer is still small, hormonal treatment may be recommended. Male hormones are partially responsible for the rate of growth of prostate cancer, so if you reduce or cut off these hormones (testosterone in particular), the speed of growth of the cancer should slow down.

It might become possible to do this with medication or surgery may be necessary. This will mean castration either chemical or surgical. Both sound radical, but it might mean less side effects.

Again, if the cancer is small, they may make a decision to try to kill it with external radiotherapy beams. These beams resemble X-Rays, but far less perilous to healthy tissue. That is, they can be tightly focused on the cancerous cells, causing very little collateral damage.

If the cancer is spreading quickly, the team might suggest cutting it out. This might involve a full or partial prostatectomy. This is why waiting and keeping an eye on it may be a wise tactic in the early stages. You do not want radical surgery if it is not absolutely crucial.

There are quite a few options for the treatment of prostate cancer and over 80% of sufferers are cured, but it has to do with those regular tests to a large extent.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is currently concerned with the proton prostate cancer treatment. If you want to kcurrently more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?

As men get older they run more and more danger of getting prostate cancer. Some doctors advocate regular check-ups after the age of 50 or even 60, but others suggest that you ought to begin checking at 40.

It is wiser to start checking as early as you are able and certainly at 40 or 50 years of age, because the earlier it is noticed, the more opportunity you have of surviving it. The difficulty with prostate cancer is that it spreads more quickly than most cancers.

In this article, we will try to give answers to a couple of basic questions that you may have concerning this male illness. However, there is only room here for the basics, so please take serious questions to your doctor.

What is the prostate gland and where is it? The prostate is around the size of a walnut, but is conical in shape. It forms part of the male reproductive system and is connected to the penis because it is wrapped about the urethra right up near to the bladder.

This makes the prostate somewhere between the anus and the penis. Because of its location, it is not easy to get at and so most examinations are rectal ie from the colon. Many men find this embarrassing, which is why lots of men put of a check-up until it is too late.

What are the chances of getting prostate cancer? White American males more than the age of 50 have a one-in-six risk of developing some malignancy.

Hispanics and Blacks have a one-in-four risk. However, all these figures increase if there is a history of prostate cancer in the family.

What are the indications of prostate cancer? This question is not simple to answer, because the symptoms can look like other concerns and everyone knows that ‘all old men’ have bladder concerns

The prostate swells as it gets older anyway, so this could be the cause of urination issues. This is characterized by urinating a little at a time, but having to urinate often. Occasionally there are drips as well after you have put it away.

The symptoms of prostate cancer are comparable but may include blood in the urine and lower back pain. If you have anything like these problems, you need to have a check-up as soon as possible.

Can prostate cancer be diagnosed early enough to save life? Luckily, the answer to this is yes. There are two forms of examination: 1] the DRE – digital rectal exam (or ‘finger up the bum’) and 2] the PSA blood test (prostate specific antigen), although this test is often only carried out if the DRE raises suspicions.

If the cancer is diagnosed early enough through regular screening, the likelihood of living more than five years are more than 90%. Continued success relies on a number of factors, but the cancer can also be totally eradicated never to return.

It can not be stressed too much, that, as with some female-specific cancers, success fighting this cancer depends on catching it early.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is currently concerned with the proton prostate cancer treatment. If you want to kcurrently more go to What is the Treatment for Prostate Cancer?