Gat Goren Method part 2

Links added.

Hi All,
Have been following ( well mostly ) the information stream with the hope of improving my own - pun intended.
Thanks to Andy and others for their insightful contributions.
The debate goes on which method to choose, hope the feedback continues from both camps.

Look out... I'm still here....... I had an idea that may help some people.. Not a savoury idea, but I think may
be of benefit to those who are deciding which way to go.....

Before the Gat Goren procedure. I could hardly pee. 10 minutes minimum, dribbling out and no power to control. (and all the rest)

Today, 11 months on from G/G, a not bad flowing stream..... ok, not like when I was sixteen but I'd say close to 60%. So, I wondered whether it may be of benefit if I film my current stream (no naughty bits shown).

This should give people an idea of what the G/G is capable of and perhaps help them in their decision.

Obviously I cannot post it here, but feel free to email me or send a private message and I will send a real time vid through Adobe sendnow.

Post Edited (andyaction) : 2/28/2013 4:09:00 PM (GMT-7)

Hansi - Gat Goren is the best.

That's 'very' convincing.

Hi All,

At the suggestion of another member I will ask if there is any interest/need by members to share information on the problem of 'prostatitis'.
This is a condition affecting the prostate and make life rather tough for the sufferer.
It is quite often that people of a certain age might have both BPH and prostatitis.
I have been one of those and the condition went on for a very long time. In some discomfort I went on the internet one early morning to seek some assistance. This I found via a web site inquiry.
The therapy was somewhat confronting, particularly at first but I did get my life back to a large degree.

If some more information is wanted I am happy to provide it.
My next odyssey will be to Gatgoren to deal with BPH.

Regards

Hi " Martin " ,

I think that 5 hours sleep at night without a 'pit' stop is sufficient cause for celebration although that would depend on when you stopped fluids before going to bed.
What about post 'pee' - cut off and stop or some dribble ?
Not getting any worse must also offer some comfort.

I am planning a visit to Israel soon. Also not on medication specific to BPH.

Regards

Hi!

Wow! There’s a great big thread on this board devoted to the Gat-Goren procedure. That’s quite a change from two years ago, when there were few informed postings about it anywhere on the Internet. I’ve experienced a lot of improvement in the almost two years since I had the procedure, and I thought my observations might be of interest to readers of this website.  Bottom line: I would definitely recommend this procedure to anyone with BPH.  Pardon me for the long post, but I wanted to get my story down in one post rather than spreading it across many posts.

Before the procedure, I was already taking Rapaflo, a powerful alpha-blocker.  It changed my symptoms from “agonizing” to merely “terrible”.  It felt like parts of my lower abdomen were "cramping", which lasted much of the day.  It really dragged down my "quality of life."  Naturally, I had the usual BPH urinary symptoms of frequency, slowness of starting, weak flow, and dribbling—even with Rapaflo.

I had the procedure on May 30, 2011.  I had my initial consultation with Dr. Gat (we had been in email correspondence for months) the Monday after arriving in Tel Aviv. Dr. Goren performed the procedure the following day—May 30, 2011, and I had my final visit with Dr. Gat that Sunday. The procedure itself is painless, but for me was uncomfortable—but only because my abdomen has always been very tender.  I followed my progress on a video screen, with Dr. Goren describing some of the action. A male assistant helped Dr. Goren, and Dr. Gat was also there the entire time.  It was fascinating watching the catheter thread its way though one intra-spermatic vein and then the other: it seemed that there was always a bottleneck at the topmost valve.  The procedure took about 2.5 hours, somewhat longer than the usual 1.5 hours.  I went directly back to the hotel room and slept very soundly the next day--and part of the next. 

My symptoms have improved greatly in the 22 months since the procedure.
Interestingly, the improvement hasn’t been linear and gradual, but rather stepwise and fitful. After each improvement, there would be a long plateau period of no discernible change that would yield suddenly to another round of improvement. I didn’t notice any improvement at all until September 2011, 3.5 months after the procedure. I can vividly remember my surprise that day, when sitting in a bookstore, I realized that I hadn't visited the restroom in almost two hours.  I had further rounds of improvement: 6.5 months post-procedure, 10 months, 17 months, and most recently 20 months in February 2013. Each round of improvement was preceded by an aggravation of symptoms lasting about ten days. The aggravation wasn’t that bad, but it never failed to worry me. I’d usually email Dr. Gat to relieve my anxiety.

Nowadays, 22 months after the procedure, I typically pee every two to three hours during the day, though one day I held out for seven hours on limited fluid intake. The abdominal cramping is almost completely gone, and my flow starts immediately and is much stronger with no dribbling.


Here are answers to questions you might have:

Q: Have you noticed any improvements other than in prostate function?
A: Yes—around 18 or 20 months after the procedure, my mood improved a lot. This was a nice gift. My testosterone levels are still low, but show some modest improvement. It’s hard to tell because they were extremely variable before the procedure. Dr. Gat has published data saying that the average improvement in Total Testosterone is 40 percent and in Free Testosterone 70 percent.

Q: Have you been able to discontinue the Rapaflo?
A: I am still on Rapaflo, 8mg once day, which I had been on for almost a year before the procedure. I tried discontinuing it six-and-a-half months after the procedure, but after two or three days cramping returned. I will try again sometime this year.

Q: Has the procedure allowed you to get up less often at night?
A: I don’t know—I never get up at night. Before the procedure and before I started taking Rapaflo, I would get up five times a night; I didn’t get much sleep. But the Rapaflo reduced almost all night-time bathroom calls. This was almost a year BEFORE I had the procedure: there wasn’t much room for improvement. My interpretation of this is that the night-time urges were a relatively easy-to-treat symptom at least for me.

Q: What would you do differently if you could do it all over again?
A: I’d have the procedure many years earlier, before the symptoms got so bad. I have probably suffered from varicocele for at least 30 years—when I first noticed some symptoms I would now call “irritable bladder”. (Dr. Gat says that varicocele can also affect the bladder, which is also exposed to high levels of testosterone.) Twenty years ago I experienced a sudden bout of prostate problems and falling Testosterone levels. I never saw the connection between the two until stumbling upon Dr. Gat’s research.

Q: Has your prostate shrunk since the procedure?
A: Apparently so. Pre-procedure, it was 51 grams according to a radiologist who measured it with a painless trans-abdominal ultrasound procedure. A year after the procedure, my local urologist measured it at 23 grams using a different ultrasound procedure (TRUS: painful). He asked me if I was taking Proscar (I wasn’t). “Your prostate is the size of a young man’s,” he said, right before scooting out of the room. Interestingly, even though my prostate was already small, I continued to notice major improvements in my symptoms in the nine months since my visit to the urologist. My personal physician has also told me that my prostate no longer feels “boggy.”

Q: What persuaded you to have the procedure?
A: I was very skeptical at first. Dr. Gat sent me emails with his papers, which I avidly read and tried to follow, even though the fluid dynamics theories went over my head. I found them fascinating, but was discouraged by the two urologists I spoke with. Both guys curtly dismissed Dr. Gat’s theories; one called them “crazy” or something like that. They also disagreed with Dr. Gat over whether or not I had varicocele. The urologists, and several other doctors who had examined me in person, had unanimously told me that I definitely did NOT have this condition. But Dr. Gat—after merely reading my emails describing my symptoms and history—had insisted that I definitely DID have it. While visiting Costa Rica, I had a chance to test this. A Doppler ultrasound test, performed by a radiologist who never heard of Dr. Gat, proved that I DID indeed have varicocele. The radiologist classified it as Type 2, which means it is palpable (diagnosable by touch). With that independent confirmation of Dr. Gat’s theories, I went ahead with the procedure, which was done about three months later. The episode showed me that physicians—who are taught that varicocele doesn’t have any severe health implications—aren’t good at diagnosing it. (Unless perhaps it’s Type 3 varicocele, the visible variety sometimes appearing like a bag-of-worms. Presumably, they will notice this.)

Q: What other oral medications have you tried?
A: I took generic Hytrin twenty years ago to treat a bout of “prostadynia,” whose major symptom was a cramping feeling, similar to what I felt more recently. It worked great. I began to take it very occasionally (a couple of pills a month) several years ago. But as my symptoms worsened I needed to switch to a stronger alpha-blocker. I found that Rapaflo worked well. I had good luck with one brand of high-dose cranberry herbal capsules, too. But other products I tried had no effect, including saw palmetto, pumpkin seeds, zinc, beta-sitosterol products, Chinese and Indian traditional medicine, American herbal medicine, whatever.

Q: Did you take special supplements or drugs or change your diet in any way after the procedure?
A: No, I continued with my Standard American Diet of junk food, high fats, whatever. (It probably would have helped if I had altered my diet, but I didn’t.) I have been taking supplemental Vitamin D since 2008 under a physician’s direction, and I take occasional vitamins, as I have for years.

It’s your choice, so choose carefully. I’m a grateful patient of Dr. Gat’s. I’m not compensated in any way for this post, other than the thanks of Dr. Gat and hopefully one or two readers. My email is davidZmgardnerX (at) gmail.com. (Please remove the anti-spam “Z” and “X”, and put “Gat-Goren” in the subject line to keep it out of my Spam folder.)

-Dave

Martin,

Please hang in there and give the recovery more time. You are only eight months post-procedure. At that point in my own recovery, I had noticed some undeniable improvements, but they fell far short of anything approaching satisfaction. I wasn't really satisfied until after 20 to 22 months.

Also, as I said in my posting, I experienced several long plateau periods with *no* discernible improvement whatsoever. You might be on such a plateau.

-dave

Watch Chicago Dave.

BANG ON!

I must agree with Dave's comment "Interestingly, the improvement hasn’t been linear and gradual, but rather stepwise and fitful. After each improvement, there would be a long plateau period of no discernible change that would yield suddenly to another round of improvement". That's a great summibng up of how it is. Look at it logically, your prostate isn't a balloon - make a hole in it and it'll deflate, it's had years of growth and after the G/G it makes sense that reduction of the Testosterone in the prostate will be gradual.

I have found the same as Dave... there are times when you appear to regress, but after a couple of days, blow me, you see an improvement. I'm now a year and a few weeks in and I still feel i'm improving.

AND, like Dave and Hansi I'm glad I didn't mess around, i'm glad the procudure has improved my lot and it was worth every penny...

Well. Certainly some more substantial recommendations than when I was here last.

Thanks to all those persons who underwent the procedure and are satisfied with the results and have taken the time to post here to encourage skeptical persons like myself.

Interesting the plateau effects noticed.

Seattlexp posted this on an unrelated thread.

Dear everyone,
I am new member. I am impressed by everyone here trying to help each other. I am very interested in Dr. Gat and Goren's treatment for enlarged prostate. Last week when I contacted the clinic they said they did not accept new patient and no definite date when they would take new patient. They said something like the doctor to perform the procedure went out for long research. Dose any one have any information about this? Thanks.

Andy,
If a picture is worth a thousand words a video ought to be worth 10,000. Can you put the video on youtube and post a link? If it's explained as a proof of result of Gat Goren and just shows the stream and bowl, I can't see that it would be objectionable.

.................

Just caught up on the rest of the posts here and if Gat Goren are not taking patients then the issue may be moot until they start taking them again...

It's funny, but almost a decade of trials in the US have shown both the injection of botox into the prostate to kill prostate tissue, and several years of trials of injecting a protein called Nymox 1207 into the prostate to kill prostate cells, have both shown positive results in reducing prostate size comparable or better than medication, with less side effects. But neither method ever got approval in the US.

For whatever reason, the standard procedures are the only ones available. I think all the procedures help most people to a greater or lesser extent, but for many, not to the extent advertised or hoped for. I've had three procedures in the last 3 years, a TUMT, a Greenlight, and the cutting off of scar tissue after the GL. I am better off than I was but nowhere as good as I'd like to be.

I've thought a lot about the model of an enlarged prostate blocking the urethra as the cause of urinary retention, frequency, urgency, etc. At least in my case I have concluded it's part of the cause but not the whole cause. So removing the obstruction only partly improved the symptoms.

If urinary problems were solely caused buy an enlarged prostate then why did I have good flow sometimes and weak flow or dribbling at other times and still do, even though 60% of my prostate was supposedly removed? Wouldn't a blockage cause by an enlarged prostate or prostate protruding into the bladder (I had both) be blocked all of the time? Why do women have all the same problems but they have no prostate?

Do muscles in the external urinary sphincter and/or internal urinary sphincter become weakened due to aging or due to nerve damage in the pelvic regions cause sporadic problems in maintaining a flow or emptying completely, and or to frequency and urgency issues? In my case I think this is likely.

For men, the eventualcourse of treatment seems to always lead to prostate reduction by some means. But when it doesn't bring the hoped for level of results (which I think may be the case for many people who have had a procedure or several) it's likely the other factors are also in the mix.

andyaction said...
Look out... I'm still here....... I had an idea that may help some people.. Not a savoury idea, but I think may
be of benefit to those who are deciding which way to go.....

Before the Gat Goren procedure. I could hardly pee. 10 minutes minimum, dribbling out and no power to control. (and all the rest)

Today, 11 months on from G/G, a not bad flowing stream..... ok, not like when I was sixteen but I'd say close to 60%. So, I wondered whether it may be of benefit if I film my current stream (no naughty bits shown).

This should give people an idea of what the G/G is capable of and perhaps help them in their decision.

Obviously I cannot post it here, but feel free to email me or send a private message and I will send a real time vid through Adobe sendnow.

Post Edited (Bob_NJ) : 5/10/2013 12:06:33 AM (GMT-6)