Prostate Problems: Peatian Views?

Kelly

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Jan 9, 2013
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Maybe I will email Peat about it. He's not having any symptoms of low testosterone, except for 2 bouts of depression and anxiety which just lasted a week last year and about 4 days this year. The enlarged prostate was just found by accident on a cat scan a few months ago. I didn't go to the appointments he had about that so I don't know how enlarged it really is. So I'm glad we know about it and can do something now before any real problems manifest.

Only thyroid test was TSH, it's 1.17. His pulse is always low though (high 50s or low 60s) and the couple times we temped him it was low 98s. If we would want to try thyroid supplements, is it better to start with NDT or some T3?
 
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narouz

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Kelly said:
Maybe I will email Peat about it. He's not having any symptoms of low testosterone, except for 2 bouts of depression and anxiety which just lasted a week last year and about 4 days this year. The enlarged prostate was just found by accident on a cat scan a few months ago. I didn't go to the appointments he had about that so I don't know how enlarged it really is. So I'm glad we know about it and can do something now before any real problems manifest.

Only thyroid test was TSH, it's 1.17. His pulse is always low though (high 50s or low 60s) and the couple times we temped him it was low 98s. If we would want to try thyroid supplements, is it better to start with NDT or some T3?

I would chart the temps and pulses more carefully and over a longer period of time.
That would give you a clear picture on the question of hypothyroidism.

Here's a concise statement from Peat about hypothyroidism:

Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or "aerobic" (i .e., anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts. unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens. Many health conscious people become hypothyroid with a synergistic program of undercooked vegetables, legumes instead of animal proteins, oils instead of butter, carotene instead of vitamin A, and breathless exercise instead of a stimulating life.
-Ray Peat
 

Kelly

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I emailed and got this response a few hours later:

Correcting hypothyroidism will usually reduce prostate problems, and often pregnenolone helps with that as well as with increasing testosterone. Checking temperature and pulse rate at waking and in the middle of the day, and checking the Achilles tendon reflex relaxation rate, can help to judge the hormonal situation. Having a carrot salad every day (shredded carrot, with a little olive oil, vinegar, and salt) can help to lower the stress hormones that are usually associated with prostate inflammation.
 
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narouz

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Kelly said:
I emailed and got this response a few hours later:

Correcting hypothyroidism will usually reduce prostate problems, and often pregnenolone helps with that as well as with increasing testosterone. Checking temperature and pulse rate at waking and in the middle of the day, and checking the Achilles tendon reflex relaxation rate, can help to judge the hormonal situation. Having a carrot salad every day (shredded carrot, with a little olive oil, vinegar, and salt) can help to lower the stress hormones that are usually associated with prostate inflammation.

Cool, Kelly!
Can't tell from the context,
but did Peat seem to have an opinion about using testosterone injections/creams
as a way of "increasing testosterone?
I tend to think he would not recommend it, but I could be wrong.
I have several friends with prostate problems, so this is very interesting to me.

Oh, and please deposit this in the Ray Peat Email Advice Repository thread
(or whatever it's called).
 

Kelly

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I asked about if it was ever a good idea to supplement testosterone. His reply:

Yes, pure testosterone on the skin is safe if the diet and thyroid function are good, but it's better to try supplements of pregnenolone first, and then DHEA, to normalize the testosterone production.
 
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narouz

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Kelly said:
I asked about if it was ever a good idea to supplement testosterone. His reply:

Yes, pure testosterone on the skin is safe if the diet and thyroid function are good, but it's better to try supplements of pregnenolone first, and then DHEA, to normalize the testosterone production.

Ah...perfect.
Don't think I've ever seen that before.
Thank you very much.
 

Kelly

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I thought it was very interesting too, I was expecting a no on testosterone supplementation. It's nice to know we have that option in the future if needed. My husband has decided against it for now, mainly because we have small children in the house who he holds often and we've read some scary stuff online about the cream affecting them. Plus it is outrageously expensive. Like $500+ per month. We have a high deductible health plan, and don't get many Rxs, so I don't know if that is common but it sure blew our minds. Makes me feel a lot better about having to spend (only) $50 per month for 2 bottles of progest-e for me! :lol:

If I'm remembering correctly, isn't DHEA supplementation kind of a bugger? Didn't Peat pull his product because people were taking it without proper thyroid function and really messing themselves up? If a person would want to try that, is it best to find some kind of natural medicine practitioner?
 

jyb

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@Kelly: Yes, there are more warnings about dosage with DHEA hence its not a first choice, see RP's article on DHEA, progesterone, pregnelonone.
 
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narouz

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Kelly said:
I thought it was very interesting too, I was expecting a no on testosterone supplementation. It's nice to know we have that option in the future if needed. My husband has decided against it for now, mainly because we have small children in the house who he holds often and we've read some scary stuff online about the cream affecting them. Plus it is outrageously expensive. Like $500+ per month. We have a high deductible health plan, and don't get many Rxs, so I don't know if that is common but it sure blew our minds. Makes me feel a lot better about having to spend (only) $50 per month for 2 bottles of progest-e for me! :lol:

If I'm remembering correctly, isn't DHEA supplementation kind of a bugger? Didn't Peat pull his product because people were taking it without proper thyroid function and really messing themselves up? If a person would want to try that, is it best to find some kind of natural medicine practitioner?

Yeah. Very interesting.
It does surprise me that he said that.

As I might've said already,
before I discovered Peat
I had been reading the book by a doctor called Shippen (think that's the name)
about testosterone.
I was set to explore that route--testosterone supplements.

But when I read Peat's stuff
he presented all the hormones in such a holistic way
rather than looking at their functions in isolation.
While he advises you in your specific case that testosterone is safe,
he generally doesn't recommend along those lines.
He wants to back up, up the chain of hormones,
and try testosterone's precursors first, it seems to me,
along with its controllers or regulators (those are my words--not sure of the exact scientific terms)
like thyroid.

If it were me in your husband's situation
I'd really look into my thyroid function
(and not rely upon standard docs to tell me it was okay or not),
eat along Peatian lines,
take some pregnenolone.
I'd see what my estrogen levels were
and if high do all the Peat-recommended stuff to get that down.

Now DHEA...
I know Peat says to use this with caution only in certain situations,
but, you know, your husband's might just be one of those.
Seems like to me he says that DHEA can stimulate testosterone.

Thanks for the great report and info!
 

Kelly

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Jan 9, 2013
Messages
109
narouz said:
Kelly said:
I thought it was very interesting too, I was expecting a no on testosterone supplementation. It's nice to know we have that option in the future if needed. My husband has decided against it for now, mainly because we have small children in the house who he holds often and we've read some scary stuff online about the cream affecting them. Plus it is outrageously expensive. Like $500+ per month. We have a high deductible health plan, and don't get many Rxs, so I don't know if that is common but it sure blew our minds. Makes me feel a lot better about having to spend (only) $50 per month for 2 bottles of progest-e for me! :lol:

If I'm remembering correctly, isn't DHEA supplementation kind of a bugger? Didn't Peat pull his product because people were taking it without proper thyroid function and really messing themselves up? If a person would want to try that, is it best to find some kind of natural medicine practitioner?

Yeah. Very interesting.
It does surprise me that he said that.

As I might've said already,
before I discovered Peat
I had been reading the book by a doctor called Shippen (think that's the name)
about testosterone.
I was set to explore that route--testosterone supplements.

But when I read Peat's stuff
he presented all the hormones in such a holistic way
rather than looking at their functions in isolation.
While he advises you in your specific case that testosterone is safe,
he generally doesn't recommend along those lines.
He wants to back up, up the chain of hormones,
and try testosterone's precursors first, it seems to me,
along with its controllers or regulators (those are my words--not sure of the exact scientific terms)
like thyroid.

If it were me in your husband's situation
I'd really look into my thyroid function
(and not rely upon standard docs to tell me it was okay or not),
eat along Peatian lines,
take some pregnenolone.
I'd see what my estrogen levels were
and if high do all the Peat-recommended stuff to get that down.

Now DHEA...
I know Peat says to use this with caution only in certain situations,
but, you know, your husband's might just be one of those.
Seems like to me he says that DHEA can stimulate testosterone.

Thanks for the great report and info!

Thanks narouz and jyb. How would you test estrogen? Ask pcp and hope they agree to do it? We'll do the anti-estrogen stuff anyway, it certainly can't hurt.
 
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j.

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Question: Would having good thyroid supplementation and diet lower a person's PSA, of a person with high PSA (10,000, for example) but no noticeable prostate enlargement?
Ray Peat said:
It would be good to investigate other possible causes, other hormones could be involved.
Question: Might a blood test of some hormones be useful?
Ray Peat said:
Estrogen, prolactin, and cortisol would be the most likely involved.
 
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"Look at what the functions of the prostate gland tell us. The prostate provides about 20% of the volume of seminal fluid, that fluid which is ejaculated by the male at sexual climax. The function of the prostate is to secrete fluid into the semen – in fact, prostatic fluid forms about 20% of the ejaculate. Since it wraps itself around the urethra, it is ideally suited to help regulate the flow of urine, by contracting its muscle fibers. This is probably why the α2 blockers (saw palmetto, Hytrin, etc) are effective in reducing symptoms of enlargement of the prostate (BPH, or benign prostatic hypertrophy).

The prostate also contains large numbers of receptors for thyroid hormone. We know that a woman’s breasts also contain large numbers of these same thyroid hormone receptors. The woman’s breasts and the man’s prostate are the two largest accessory sexual organs of their bodies. It is not unreasonable to suspect that thyroid hormone plays some role in their function.

We know that iodine deficiency is linked with fibrocystic breast disease and breast cancer. When a woman with fibrocystic breasts is treated with iodine, the fibrocystic breasts soften and turn into normal breasts. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that the same thing could happen when men with enlarged prostates are treated with iodine. Nature tends to be fairly conservative, and does not invent new processes when the old ones are perfectly adequate to the task. Iodine deficiency is associated with increased risk of three different cancers, including breast, thyroid and stomach, all of which have thyroid hormone receptors.2

The prostate also contains thyroid hormone receptors.3 Thyroid hormone requires iodine for its synthesis. Therefore the prostate must also require iodine, since it has the receptors for thyroid hormone, and nature really does not create useless redundancies. This could explain why therapy with iodine or iodide could help to shrink the size of the prostate. It is known that iodine deficiency in adolescents results in enlargement of the testes, just as it results in enlargement of the thyroid gland without concomitant production of androgenic hormones and virilization." -http://arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/prostate-the-most-troublesome-gland/

Not really "Peat" but I'd look into it. The stories of iodine helping/reversing enlarged glands in both male and female are too numerous to ignore.

[mod]This post contains alternatives to Ray Peat's views. For a full explanation click here.[/mod]
 

Capt Nirvana

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Joined
Mar 25, 2018
Messages
108
A friend of mine just found he has a very enlarged prostate.
His doctor said it was "as big as a baseball."

Prostate hasn't been on my Peat radar very much
because I haven't had that problem myself.
And I don't remember seeing much on prostate problems here on this board.

I know Peat would probably talk about it within the overall context of inflammation,
estrogen dominance, and the cascade of related problematic stuff like serotonin, prolactin, etc.
But beyond that I don't remember reading posts here focused on the prostate.

So I just wanted to ask for information on this topic.
What has Peat said on matters prostate?
Has anyone has a personal communication with Peat about this?
Have you read Ray Peat's blog entry? — "Prostate Cancer." (2013). Regarding prostate enlargement, I shrunk mine by massaging it in the 1980s. Sometimes excess gas pressure in the lower intestines causes (or at least contributes to) prostate enlargement — splanchnic constriction. According to psychosomatic sources, prostate trouble often points to unresolved father issues.
 

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