Can Boosting Testosterone Actually Fight Prostate Cancer?

Photo credit: bigstock.com

Photo credit: bigstock.com

Testosterone is the manliest of hormones. Both men and women have testosterone, but men have about ten to twelve times as much of the male sex hormone as women do. Testosterone is associated with muscle growth, sex drive, energy levels, emotional and psychological wellbeing, and more. Anabolic steroids—a synthetic form a testosterone—and testosterone boosting supplements have been popular with bodybuilders, fitness enthusiasts and athletes for decades (even if they are not always legal). Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) has become popular with older men who wish to feel young and vigorous again. Unfortunately, for many years, testosterone was also linked to a serious illness affecting millions of men around the world: prostate cancer.

For many years, doctors and researchers had concluded that high testosterone levels were associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer and could exacerbate it in men who had already been diagnosed. Their solution was to treat men to reduce their levels in hopes of slowing the progression of the cancer. But new research shows that raising testosterone may actually help beat this all-too-common affliction.

 

Boosting Your T Levels May Give You An Edge Against Prostate Cancer

The Telegraph recently ran a story about a man who had been cured of prostate cancer. The cause? Mega dosing on testosterone.

Sound far-fetched? There is pretty solid evidence to suggest scientists may have found a potent, yet very unexpected, method for treating one of the most serious forms of cancer among men.

Up until very recently, the conventional wisdom regarding the treatment of prostate cancer has been that testosterone levels in men who are affected should be reduced. This is because the cancerous cells use the male sex hormone as “fuel” to grow.

It seems logical that depriving the cancer of the fuel it uses to expand would stop the spread of the cancer. But a new study from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center showed precisely the opposite. In what was described in an article on johnshopkins.org as a “paradox,” researchers found that dramatically boosting testosterone levels in patients with advanced prostate cancer actually appeared to suppress the cancer.

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One Comment

  1. Anthony Cook

    Jan 6, 2017 at 6:14 am

    If this is the experiment I read about in a medical journal, this NaturalOn article is quite misleading and potentially dangerous. The experiment was not just about giving patients testosterone, it was about giving them testosterone prior to then giving them the usual testosterone-negating hormone therapy to remove testosterone from their bodies.
    It was found that this approach was even more effective in reducing PSA levels, due to the extra rebound effect of the hormone therapy when stressed by the prior extra dose of testosterone. It was a method of increasing the effectiveness of the testosterone-clearing hormone treatment. It was not simply a treatment based on increasing testosterone levels to reduce PSA, as this article suggests.