[Cure] Issues in the Land Down Under?

     It is now time for the final Action Project in my STEAM class, Cure. In this unit, we have been talking about preventing diseases before they become a problem. One example of a surgery that we looked at is the preemptive double mastectomy that Angelina Jolie had because she had a very high chance of developing breast cancer later in life if she didn’t have the surgery. This was preventative care because she did not currently have breast cancer but she may have died from it if she didn’t have the surgery done. We also spoke to Chris Riley who works at Tempus where they research cancer patients to find better solutions to cancer based on demographics. Another person we spoke to was Dr. Karen Johnson who works at the Raby Institute. She talked to us about Western and Eastern medicine and how she believes the best medicinal practices are a mixture of the two. For this Action Project, we have been tasked with taking a patient profile and identifying a disease for which they are at genetic risk. We then have to outline a preventative care plan for them based on what we have learned about their family and the research we have done. For my project, I chose my friend “Max” who has a history of prostate cancer in his family. Here it is!

    First, some basic information that you have given us. You are a caucasian male named Max. You are 54 years old. You are overweight. Your immediate family contains eleven males in total and of them, six have had prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is cancer in the prostate, which is an organ only present in males. It is used for creating seminal fluid, the place where sperm live, and moving it to its eventual destination. Prostate cancer is often slow-moving and mostly non-destructive, likely because it is one of the most common cancers. In its early stages, prostate cancer usually has little to no symptoms. It is only when it grows that it begins to affect the body. Prostate cancer can cause trouble when urinating, decreased force in the stream of urine, blood in the urine, blood in the semen, bone pain, losing weight without trying, and erectile dysfunction.  

File:Diagram showing the position of the prostate and rectum CRUK 358.svg. Cancer Research UK. 2015. commons.wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Nothing changed. 

    Over 54% of the people who are at risk to get prostate cancer in your family have gotten it. You fall under three of the four risk factors for prostate cancer, because of your age (over 50), your weight, and your family history making it likely you will get it too. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to lower your likelihood of getting prostate cancer. 

    There are two medications that can help you lower your risk of getting prostate cancer. The first one is finasteride. Finasteride is prescribed to block the body’s production of male hormones to stop the enlargement of the prostate. It also stops hair loss by blocking the male hormone that tells the scalp to stop growing hair. Some common side effects of finasteride are issues with sex and sexual organs, irritation on the skin, difficulty breathing or swallowing, and depression. The other medication that can help prevent prostate cancer is dutasteride. Dutasteride works similarly to finasteride in that it aims to shrink the prostate before it becomes cancerous. It works by blocking the substance that grows the prostate. Both of these medications do not cure any conditions, but they can alleviate symptoms so the risk of prostate cancer is lower. Some common side effects of dutasteride are issues with sex and sexual organs, irritation on the skin and in the mouth, and difficulty breathing or swallowing.

    Another potential way to prevent prostate cancer, especially in people like you who are overweight, is to introduce a change in diet. You are overweight because you consume a large number of carbohydrates as a large portion of your diet. A way that you could lower your weight and therefore your chances of getting prostate cancer is to introduce more fruits and vegetables to your diet. You must reduce trans fats and saturated fats while eating more healthy fats such as those absorbed from nuts, fish, and seeds. You need to avoid charred meat as frying or grilling at high temperatures can lead to a carcinogen that can cause cancer. You often take supplements to make up for the fact that you do not eat very healthily but unfortunately, there is no evidence that supplements help reduce the risk for prostate cancer. It has not been conclusively proven that prostate cancer can be prevented by diet changes, but it has been proven that you are more likely to get it if you are overweight, so losing weight can help your chances as well as current data suggests that diet changes do help prevent prostate cancer.

    Another way you could lessen your chances of getting prostate cancer is by exercising more. By exercising most days of the week, you can lose weight as well as improve your mood. This lowers your risk of prostate cancer because a lower weight means your chances are lower to have prostate cancer and a better mood means you are more likely to do things that are beneficial for your body rather than falling into a slump where you eat poorly and don’t exercise. Another lifestyle change that you could implement would be to increase sexual activity. Studies have shown that men who ejaculate more frequently are less likely to get prostate cancer.

    Unfortunately, there isn’t much therapy that can be done to lower your chances of getting prostate cancer but there are therapies to help once you have gotten it. The most common therapy used to treat cancer is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is when you take specific drugs to kill off cancer cells. Unfortunately, some of your cells get caught in the crossfire as the drugs don’t necessarily know what they are killing. Another common therapy used to treat cancer is radiation therapy. Radiation therapy is when high-powered x-rays and other forms of radiation are pumped into you to kill cancer cells. Similar to chemotherapy, radiation therapy often results in some good cells being killed along with the bad.

    To assist you in your goal of lowering your chances of getting prostate cancer, I recommend a three-step plan. Step one starts fairly slow by implementing some of the diet changes, such as more fruits and vegetables but not the fish, nuts, and seeds. More specifically, you should incorporate leafy greens, cooked tomatoes, and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli and cauliflower) to get sulforaphane, which helps slow the growth of cancer, and the antioxidant lycopene, which has been proven by some studies to slow the growth of cancer cells. You should include these in all of your meals in some form or another. Additionally, begin integrating light exercise such as going on walks at least 4 days a week into your everyday life. Step two starts to pick up speed with more intense exercise such as running and weight training as well as implementing all of the diet changes such as snacking on nuts or seeds instead of chips or candy and eating more fish instead of cattle and poultry. You should also begin having sex or masturbating. Step three if all of this is not working, is to take one or both of the medications that could help prevent your prostate from inflaming.

All of this would hopefully lead to you having a very low chance of getting prostate cancer even if the majority of male people in his family have gotten it. Fortunately, prostate cancer is slow-moving and easy to treat, even more so if these lifestyle changes are implemented, so if all goes well you should live a healthy life.

Works Cited

“Cancer Treatments: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia.” Medlineplus.gov, 2022, medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000901.htm. 

“Dutasteride: MedlinePlus Drug Information.” Medlineplus.gov, 2016, medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a603001.html. 

“Finasteride: MedlinePlus Drug Information.” Medlineplus.gov, 2022, medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a698016.html#:~:text=Finasteride%20is%20in%20a%20class,scalp%20that%20stops%20hair%20growth.

“Prostate Cancer: Prevention.” Hopkinsmedicine.org, 8 Aug. 2021, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/prostate-cancer/prostate-cancer-prevention#:~:text=Men%20with%20benign%20prostatic%20hyperplasia,risk%20by%20about%2025%20percent.

“Prostate Cancer - Symptoms and Causes.” Mayo Clinic, 2022, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prostate-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20353087. 

This was my final action project for my STEAM course Cure and the final Action Project of the entire year! I really enjoyed this project because stepping into the shoes of a doctor is very helpful when trying to understand the medical world. If I were to do this project again, I might pick a less common disease but other than that this was a very fun project! This may be the last Action Project of the year, but there are more to come in my junior year! Stay tuned!