Guys, I have a book that I bought when I first contracted PC and I found much of it extremely interesting and helpful. The title of the book is "Prostate Cancer - understand, prevent and overcome" ISBN 1 85227 188 4. The author is Professor Jane Plant CBE who also wrote "Your Life In Your Hands", the international best selling book on breast cancer.
She basically states that PC can be related, amongst other things, to diet and lifestyle. The figures and statistics she quotes, from worldwide respected authorities on the illness, are quite astounding. Obviously I can't reproduce many of them here but I am detailing one set of stats and some general conclusions to give you a taster of what is in the book.
Firstly, the incidence of PC in Far Eastern countries is mind-boggingly lower than that in the West. The following figures were produced in the year 2000 and are the Aged-standardised rates (ASR) of PC incidence per 100,000 men. You can read from where the figures were derived in the book. They are as follows:-
CHINA 1.7: KOREA 4.2: THAILAND 4.4: HONG KONG 7.6: JAPAN 11.0: UK 40.2: AUSTRALIA 76.0 (Musty???): CANADA 83.9: NEW ZEALAND 101.1: USA 104.3.
Some of the conclusions are as follows: The death rate from PC shows two distinct groupings. Western countries such as Germany, UK and USA with high mortality rates; and Oriental countries such as China and Thailand with very low rates. INTERESTING - the death rate in Japan is rising as the Japanese become more and more Westernised.
A selected (mine) breakup of the above figures shows rural China at just 0.5: urban China 1.9/2.3: Scotland 28.0: England and Wales 31.2: USA (whites) 100.8 and USA (blacks) 137.0. Factors influencing these figures include, diet, lifestyle, genetics; medical treatment/opinion and other things.
China of course is very interesting. Being a huge country, figures do tend to vary from region to region and in some areas the incidence of PC and breast cancer remains so low that it is not even mapped; a consequence of the distinctive lifestyle and diet. The author spoke to a number of doctors in China who hardly remember treating a case of PC or BC in their entire career, though this is changing now as Western diet becomes more fashionable.
This book is far more than a set of statistics, tables and figures. It gives a number of interesting perspectives on the illness; on how to avoid it and how to combat it if you've got it. It's well worth a read and gives real hope to those who fear the illness.
I bought my copy from a book club but I have seen it on EBay and it's worth trying Amazon. The cheapest way, of course, is to order a copy through your local library. That way you might be doing other potential readers a service by making it available for them when you have finished with it.
Anyway, I thought this was worth a read and it belatedly occurred to me that you guys might think the same.
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You are quite right in that you can have PC without showing any symptoms. My waterworks were absolutely A1 - strong flow, no leaking, no getting up in the night to go, no trouble holding it in when I had to.....
