Gat Goren Method part 2

Hi guys!

Did I mention I was also taking Vitamin D under an MD's supervision? I doubt this is responsible for my improvement after GG (see below), but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I recommend all my friends see their MD for a Vitamin D blood level test. If it's low, you can take Vitamin D3 drops to bring it up. You'll have to repeat the blood test after a few months to monitor your levels.

{edit 8/31} I've often wondered whether my good results from GG could be related to my high levels of Vitamin D due to supplementation. So I'll just throw that out to the forum. I think it's possible considering the wide variety of tissues affected by Vitamin D. Even so, a more likely explanation is that my BPH was fairly new, just two years old, at the time I got the GG procedure.

Vitamin D is a mainstay in my supplement regimen. I don't know how I ever lived without it. I take 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 (Pure Encapsulations brand of liquid Vitamin D3) five times a week to maintain a blood level around 60 or 70. Some folks can get by on much less, but there are two women in the office who are on about 5,000 IU five times a week. These daily doses are far higher than the RDA of Vitamin D, which I think is just way too low. In North Carolina, the primary care physicians have been doing routine blood levels on many patients for a few years now.

If you sunbathe, you absorb something like 20,000 IU after 20 minutes, and then your skin stops producing more Vitamin D. You can't overdose by sunbathing, but you can overdose by taking Vitamin D supplements. Hence the necessity for the blood tests.

If you have some types of medical conditions (including some types of kidney conditions) you shouldn't supplement with Vitamin D.

So powerful are its effects on so many tissues, that Vitamin D is called a hormone by some. One good resource is the Vitamin D Council: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/

There is no entry for BPH or prostatitis among the thirty conditions reviewed. But there is an entry for Prostate Cancer. It suggests that there is a mild association between sunlight exposure and prostate cancer.

Vitamin D did not prevent me from developing serious BPH symptoms. I started vitamin D supplementation in Fall 2008, but in the following two years developed progressively worsening BPH symptoms.

I'm experimenting with Vitamin K2 (in the MK4 form) as an adjunct to Vitamin D. I read that they work together (and possibly with Vitamin A and E too). I have osteopenia, which I hope the K2 will help. Vitamin D by itself didn't help much.

Bob: I'm so sorry for your remaining LUTS symptoms. With me, it used to be days were worse then nights, but getting up 4 or 5 times at night wasn't a whole bunch of fun. But it was better than the "cramping" sensation (LUTS) I'd have much of the day. I credit GG with reducing my LUTS symptoms 70% to 95%, depending on how you measure it. I agree with you that there's a lot more to LUTS than can be explained by prostate enlargement.

Martin: I'm curious, and other folks might be also, as to what improvement you've seen since your procedure. Could you give us a short before-and-after regarding urinary problems, mood, LUTS, whatever?

Andy: Welcome back! I figured you didn't leave us. It will be good to get some more GG patients on this board. I hope Dr. Gat starts accepting prostate patients again soon.

-dave

Post Edited (Chicago Dave) : 8/31/2013 9:22:35 AM (GMT-6)

Hi,
Just composed a long reference to the interesting research/records above only to 'lose' it to the system!
In brief I related my own experiences with both prostatitis and BPH ( chicken and egg ? )
Prostatitis was first diagnosed but without a specific pathogen treatments followed but without lasting/efective result. Gradually BPH has also been revealed but may well have been the initial culprit. All started in my 20's.
Recent years I have travelled to Changsha, China for direct injection via perineum into the prostate. This also involves a "PM" to maniupulate the prostate into position for the shot.
The basis of the treatment is to first identify the pathogen and obtain a culture. This has been providing me with incremental improvement.
seemingly a large number of people have prostatitis with a wide variety of pathogens involved. In my own case staphylococcus aureus and E coli were found. A large percentage of folk have these on there person but only a problem when the enter the blood stream.
Wishing to address the BPH issue I am a candidate for either Israel or Portugal.
Recently heard of a procedure called "urethal lift" this seems to involve a stendt in the uretha within the prostate but have not read a full discription. This would seem to address the voiding issue but not sure about the prostate operation eg the draining of the prostate product.
Hope this adds to wealth of interesting information on this board.

Dave: I have been on 5,000 mg of Vitamin D (cholecalciferol) for many years. I try to maintain a blood level of 70-75. As I previously mentioned my wife and I studied nutrition and biochemistry (she has an M.S) at an accredited university, so I am quite familiar with nutritional supplements.

Prior to Gat Goren I was getting up 2-3x a night. Currently it is mostly one time a night. Occasionally twice. My BPH was never as severe as some on this board. In fact, my urologist thought the volume of 45 grams was rather small compared to most of his patients. Nonetheless, I realize BPH is often like real estate. location, location, location and my problem is mid lobe extension into the bladder neck. My brother had a TURP procedure resulting in a degree of incontinence. Every time he gets up from a sitting position, he leaks urine, and needs a pad. Not wishing to be in his position and knowing that the aging process is not on your side, I decided to be pro-active and found Gat Goren on Wikipedia. To date, my free t and serum levels have improved, and my flow is about the same. As far as retention of urine, prior to G&G I could expel 8 oz. Today it is 6 oz. In 6 months I will see if my prostate size has decreased. My greatest joy will be seeing the face of my skeptical urologist should a rectal ultra sound show significant volume decrease.

Now back to another subject: I have been on 1.5 billion probiotic bacteria a day. Warning: One must go gradual as you can expect major die off of toxic bacteria and symptoms like diarrhea, noxious gas, bloating etc. I have come to realize there may be more than one way to skin a cat. As important as GG prostate reduction is, ...as Bob says other factors come into play... like a bladder that has sufficient elasticity to push the urine out and retain more urine.. Probiotics play an important part in our uro-genital system and I can not find any research studies on massive amounts of pro-biotic effect on BPH. There is however, massive information on the benefit of probiotic bacteria on the condition of the bladder. I am of the belief that prostatitis, BPH and prostate cancer are all related. Get rid of the infection and a reduction in inflammation will follow making urination easier. Rather than use detrimental antibiotics that kill good organisms as well as bad, ...probiotics might be the answer not just for the prostate but also for the all important bladder:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684288/

Grizz, has to my brief knowledge never taken an ultrasound to prove that the size of his prostate from iodine supplementation has gotten smaller. He seems well versed, highly intelligent and knowlegeable. The question comes to mind, if he is telling the truth that his BPH disappeared. One must question whether he had a simple case of prostatitis or a genuine case of BPH or both. I prefer to believe the latter and have come to the conclusion his improvement came not so much from the displacement of flourine, bromine and chlorine in the prostate but from the ANTI-SEPTIC properties of iodine killing off toxic bacteria in the entire uro-genitary tract. According to Dr. Felliciano in the Phillipines, e-coli and other pathogens are a major cause of BPH. Latent or active prostatitis is found in 95% of his BPH patients. Is it no wonder that during prostate milking, urologists find potent bacteria during microscopic investigation in the semen of their patients. There are many ways aside from sexual activity for this bacteria to enter the microscopic folds of the prostate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if fellatio is a major perpetuator.

Good News!....I have a forceful stream during the day and hesitancy at night. Last night, lo and behold, it was VERY forceful. Whether I can account for this change from the G&G procedure or the probiotics or even a mind-body placebo effect is hard to say. Maybe the intelligent body has its own timetable. But I do surmise, there may be several factors aside from the failure of ISM's that enter into the equation of the disease called BPH.

Dave: Do you take Lugols liquid, Iodoral....how much a day?

I made a mention of iodine killing off pathogenic bacteria and being an anti-septic.. Does iodine remove good bacteria? According to "The Guide to Supplementing with Iodine by Stephanie Buist, you do not need to worry. Iodine functions as an adaptogen - meaning it "knows" what does not belong and works to destroy the bad bacteria in the gut. (and i would assume elsewhere). It does not destroy the good bacteria (probiotics). Remember, this is a natural element and not a drug. Anti-bacterial drugs are broad spectrum in most cases and work by removing all bacteria whether it is good or bad. This is why natural remedies are often the best option."

Martin:

Thanks for your update. See, you ARE experiencing improvement from GG! Even though both you and I are greedy for more, more, MORE improvement.

I wanted to get this clarified lest lurkers conclude that GG has been a worthless failure for you. Which I was pretty sure was NOT the case.

Well, you're on Vitamin D, so that's good. You probably haven't looked at the recent research with Vitamin K2, though. I think K2 might have broad general effects on health; I don't think it specifically helps the prostate. If you dig up my gmail address from an earlier post, I will send you my Internet K2 research. It's really just snippets copied from interesting Internet posts on Curezone, Amazon and other sites. I have a similar snippet collection for iodine, closely geared to my own idiosyncratic interests. A lot of which is Grizz's old posts.

My complementary-medicine MD put me on a form of iodine called iThroid. It comes in capsules, and is probably more expensive than the liquid forms of iodine that Grizz and his friends suggest. I haven't quizzed her on its advantages. I doubt it's any more effective than the cheaper liquid forms. I worked up to 12.5 mg/day but am having trouble bumping up the dose to 18.75 mg. Not sure what this means, but I suppose it is probably a detox reaction with fluoride and bromide.

Iodine might directly act as an antibiotic for some microbes, or might help stimulate the immune system to take action. Either way is good.

Folks on this board have been surprised to discover pathogenic bacteria in prostates with BPH or other chronic conditions. The assumption has always been that such bacteria are absent from healthy prostates. But I would put money that such bacteria are present in healthy prostates, too--but only in tiny amounts. No one would ever bother to look for bacteria in a *healthy* prostate; they look for bacteria in only *diseased* prostates. My hunch is that when a prostate is compromised by high T levels or other factors, the immune system can no longer hold the usual bacterial load in check, and it proliferates. This is purely my own theory based purely on armchair reasoning. But if it's true, then anything that is done to improve the health of the prostate (e.g., reduce T levels) should reduce the bacterial load too.

Martin, thanks for the brand names and dosages of the probiotics you are taking. You know, I've tried probiotics before, but the yogurt-style probiotics gave me diarrhea. I stopped taking them because it never occurred to me that the diarrhea might be related to the dying off of the current "toxic" flora. I might have been too hasty in dismissing probiotics. I would love to find an all-natural way to treat constipation (other than milk of magnesia and fiber like psyllium husk, which I've relied on for almost 20 years). It's odd that my constipation developed at about the same time, 1991, that I developed my first symptoms of prostate disease. Coincidence?