Gat Goren Method part 2

Marshall:

I'll check out your PowerPoint presentation when I get a chance, but it might be a couple of days. It's good to meet so many resourceful guys on this board who are comfortable thinking "outside the box"!

If I had to treat my "BPH" again, without access to GG, I think I would start with plasma button or iodine, assuming that drugs didn't work. (My impression is that drugs eventually stop working in most guys though it might take many, many years.) I've grown quite jaded about companies that offer BPH treatments, whether medical devices, lasers or drugs.

I have not had a reason to investigate PAE therapy, so I don't know much about it. I wish that our PAE guys would report the theoretical basis in more detail. And I'm still wondering if we lost Ross.

-dave

Hi Dave,

Great discussions here.

Regarding changes in your disposition, maybe you are high on iodine? I had a similar reaction when I tried juicing fresh fruits, vegetables and greens a couple of years ago. I was high as a kite, like I was drinking quarts of espresso, quit after a week, and gave my juicer away. A good friend had a similar reaction, but he was also blessed with loose bowels. He gave his juicer away too. Then last year, good friends of his in Florida who joined a juicing/detox group (sounded like a sales pyramid to me) got very sick from it and both were hospitalized. They were both in good health, and bought the hype, and it nearly killed them both.

I'm very careful with supplements. I know people tend to think they are safe because they are natural but so is arsenic and hemlock.

Yesterday I had a cup of natural tarragon tea that someone on a gardening forum said helped bph. It was about the third or fourth time I tried it. I put two fresh sprigs (about a dozen one inch long leaves on the two stems) in a large mug of boiling water and let it sit for 10 minutes. Last night I got up from bed 19 times to pee. (I have one of those golf clickers to keep count in the dark).

You mentioned your IPSS score improved from 8 to 7. Ouch... mine improved from 35 to 30. I've often thought my symptoms after two years of treatments were worse than most people's were when they sought treatment. My wife says it's my own fault for living with bph for 15 years, but who knows?

Regarding Nymox 1207 injections. They have been having FDA trials for NYMOX for more than a decade with all trials achieving great results. But they appear to be no closer to FDA approval then they were on day one. I wonder if it's just a giant scam to sell Nymox stock? Nymox is supposed to be a protein that eats prostate cells, thereby reducing the prostate size. People who participated in trials and posted online have claimed several years of symptom relief equivalent to taking flomax from a single round of injections. Similarly, botox injections into the prostate received great reults in European trials. Botox also kills prostate cells to reduce prostate volume. Like Nymox, a round of injections is supposed to last a year or more. But in the US and Canada, botox is approved for injections into the bladder for nervous bladder but not into the prostate.

Regarding the Thermatrix microwave therapy (also known as TUMT - Trans Urethral Microwave Therapy), I had this procedure 28 months ago. A microwave is inserted in the urethra and raises the nearby surrounding prostate tissue to 53 degrees C for about 40 minutes. It basically singes the edges of the prostate near the tube, and that prostate tissue sort of gets crispy and is supposed to slough off after a period of months. It was not painful, but the 8 weeks following the procedure were very painful. The TUMT was the first line of procedures my urologist offered, and generally doesn't last a year for anyone. While I was having the procedure done, the tech told me it wouldn't last and expect to have a Greenlight. The tech was correct. 14 months later I had the Greenlight XPS 180 watt laser, the next offer from my urologist, and had 70g. of a 120g. prostate removed. Very painful 8 week recovery, followed by 4 good months followed by 8 months of poor results again. An improvement, but from an IPSS score of 35 to 30.

Incidentally, I know the button turp and the holmium laser get better reviews in forums than the GL, but I have seen postings by people who had these "better" procedures, with essentially the same outcome as me a year post surgery.

Regarding prostate supplements, I tried a bunch and all had good effects for a few weeks, then the symptoms and retention got worse than when I started. Flomax only worked for me for a few months prior to the TUMT and the GL, and not at all after the GL.

All of the esoteric procedures help SOME people, but that doesn't mean they will help MOST people. I wouldn't be willing to travel to Manilla or Hong Kong on a chance of saving my life, never mind to improve my bph symptoms. It reminds me of all the celebrities who traveled the world in desperation to get their cancer cured, but none did. A year or so ago I saw a great documentary on spontaneous cancer remissions on people who were verified to be terminal then verified to be totally cured. One guy said after all his conventional treatments he was told he was out of options and since he was dying, he decided to drink the best liquor, smoke the best Cuban cigars, eat the tastiest food and desserts, indulge in all the pleasures and travel his money could buy. He was one of 7 people (out of millions) who had a spontaneous cure and no trace of cancer when the documentary was filmed. But I don't think wine, women, and Cuban cigars cured him. But who knows?

Regarding prostatitis, I guess I had that too. It was never diagnosed by urine tests, but after my GL surgery my urologist told me that in addition to having had the largest prostate he had ever worked on, my prostate had been "full of pus" when he was vaporizing it with the laser.

Regarding the median lobe. Mine is bigger than most prostates. I have seen it on a sonogram before and after the GL, and it is still about a 2" x 2" 40 g. mass that protrudes completely into my lower bladder just to the right of the bladder opening. When I cath every two weeks to keep scar tissue from the GL from obstructing the internal or external sphincter areas of the prostate, I can feel the protruding median lobe stop the cath about an inch inside my bladder opening. My urologist said he is afraid to take more off the median lobe for fear of puncturing my bladder with the laser.

One thing I haven't heard mentioned at all in these forums is proteinuria (protein in the urine). I have had proteinuria my whole adult life, and have also had frequency and urgency issues my whole adult life (I'm going to be 67 in a few weeks). I wonder if there's a connection?

Another thing I wonder about is if most people's symptoms are worse at night than during the day. My main problem that led me to the GL was complete retention once or twice a night from around 3AM to 6AM, that lasted about 10 minutes after I awoke to pee. It was very painful. It was like my nerves in my bladder fell asleep and wouldn't function until I walked around and had a whiskey to loosen them up. Now I still notice my flow is much more restricted and takes longer when I wake up to pee then during the day when I am doing things.

What all of these discussions point out is that bph symptoms involve a large prostate, but reducing the prostate size won't necessarily remove all the symptoms. From that point of view, the procedure you choose, whether GL or GG, etc. are no guarantee of the level of symptom relief you will get. Like my wife says, we are getting older and none of our bodily functions are going to be what they once were. I have to keep reminding myself I'm in relatively good shape and although it's very annoying, these symptoms are not life threatening. It could be (and someday may be) so much worse.

Chicago Dave said...
Marshall:

I'll check out your PowerPoint presentation when I get a chance, but it might be a couple of days. It's good to meet so many resourceful guys on this board who are comfortable thinking "outside the box"!

If I had to treat my "BPH" again, without access to GG, I think I would start with plasma button or iodine, assuming that drugs didn't work. (My impression is that drugs eventually stop working in most guys though it might take many, many years.) I've grown quite jaded about companies that offer BPH treatments, whether medical devices, lasers or drugs.

I have not had a reason to investigate PAE therapy, so I don't know much about it. I wish that our PAE guys would report the theoretical basis in more detail. And I'm still wondering if we lost Ross.

-dave

Hi Dave,

Everything you said makes good sense. You are right about my varicocele. It's been pronounced since I was a teenager. I'm not much of a traveler. The furthest north I've been is Montreal, and the furthest south is Guadalajara. I've never been off the North American continent. But when I was a child growing up in Staten Island, there were people then who were my age now who had never been off Staten Island!

I probably have posted more on the Topix Greenlight Laser Complications forum than most people wanted to hear. But there's not much left for me to say there except to answer questions once in a while that no one else has answered. It seems that forum is divided among people who have had good experiences with the GL (a minority), people who are dealing with complications (the majority) and people who have found a better alternative for themselves, be it an old fashioned TURP, the button turp or the holmium laser. I think you ought to post there to let people know about GG as an alternative. The forum etiquette is a bit different there so no one introduces anyone. That forum is like a filled lecture hall while this one is more like a seminar.

Best Regards,

Bob

Dave: Many thanks for the information on iodine relating to BPH. I am very familiar with iodine and thyroid problems given the large amount of iodine present in the thyroid. I used to take prolamine iodine from Standard Process Labs to deplete flourine, chlorine and bromine in the body. I used the iodine patch test to see results. (tincture of iodine applied on skin in a one inch square). If it is absorbed rapidly, the body is in a dire need for iodine. I never knew about the iodine BPH connection. I find it interesting and will start purchasing iodoral. It's double benefit includes sound sleep. Here is a website called the guide to Supplementing with Iodine.... http://home.comcast.net/~jocy1/junk/The%20Guide%20to%20Supplementing%20with%20Iodine.pdf

Martin,

Are you saying that iodine supplements will shrink the prostate if a person is deficient in iodine?
Do you know of any any reliable home test kits to accurately test iodine levels?

When I was younger I was hypothyroid, but then grew out of it. My T3 and T4 levels have been within acceptable levels as an adult.

Bob

Post Edited (Bob_NJ) : 8/29/2013 1:48:51 PM (GMT-6)

Bob: Chicago Dave bought this to my attention. Check out his posts. Whether iodine/iodide shrinks the prostate is an interesting hypothesis. Maybe it does work.

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/natural_prostate_treatments/conversations/topics/25144

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/natural_prostate_treatments/conversations/topics/25265

http://home.comcast.net/~jocy1/junk/The%20Guide%20to%20Supplementing%20with%20Iodine.pdf

Bob: You can take iodine in pill form. This gentleman whose info appears in my posts.... called Grizz really knows his stuff. I am impressed. He posts mainly on the marksdailyapple board. He seems to be an authority on health issues. You might wish to ask him some questions on how he has fared with iodine and BPH. I wonder if he had ever done a before and after measurement of the size of his prostate.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/member25232.html

Hi guys!

I've tried to start a new thread for iodine and prostate problems on the Curezone board:
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=2099907

I hope that we'll see some replies, positive or negative, within a few days .

I thought it best to try to move this discussion off this Gat-Goren thread. For several years on Curezone, there have been a lot of folks claiming success with high-dose iodine as a treatment for diverse conditions. I count that as a very good sign: Fads usually burn out after two or three years, but if the thread keeps on going with new recruits, it's a sign that something real is happening. Having said that, supplementing with high-dose iodine is a hairy subject in many ways. Bob is right that's it's difficult to separate truth from fiction in this area. I think iodine supplementation deserves its own very large board, which is already has over at the Curezone. Now there will be a little thread over there just for us.

For any lurkers out there, I am NOT recommending iodine as a treatment for prostate diseases. I am merely suggesting, as an uninformed observer, that it might be worthwhile TO LEARN about it, taking the usual precautions. I consider myself a lay expert on the Gat-Goren procedure, having (1) researched it, (2) talked with Dr. Gat at length and with some of his patients, and (3) undergone it myself two years ago. My knowledge of iodine therapy is in no way comparable! I just want to put that disclaimer up front in case there was any doubt.

High-dose vitamin therapies and other alternative medicine approaches usually don't offer the sort of well-defined theories and hard evidence we are used to in standard medicine. The field tends to be very squishy. You will read of many conflicting theories each with their own adherents and anecdotal success stories. Eventually, I would expect the science to catch up, but that is far in the future. By contrast, Gat-Goren is a standard medical theory with a well-elaborated theory and peer-reviewed papers with success stories. It's not that squishy, really: it's either true or not. There's no test for iodine levels that is as reliable as the color doppler ultrasound used to diagnose varicocele.

If you guys intend to experiment with it, you MUST spend time investigating it. Don't start just taking iodine tablets.

Martin: Grizz is a helpful, knowledgeable and opinionated observer. He is the foremost champion of iodine among the posters on his boards, but sometimes he pushes the boundaries of civility. He's had trouble with one board because of this. I can vouch for his bona fides, but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of his information and their appropriateness in particular cases! No one can. As I mentioned above, I'm trying iodine now, and maybe in two more years, I'll be a lay expert on this, too. The GG procedure has taken me 80-90 percent of the way to where I want to be, but I would not be unhappy to find a way to take me the remaining distance.

Marshall: It turns out that thyroid medication is not a cut-and-dried issue. There has always been a lot of discussion on the Curezone board regarding it. It is especially a big issue for women, who suffer thyroid disease at 5 times the rate of us guys. Many Curezone old-timers have recommended iodine over prescription thyroid meds. There are many anecdotal reports of interest there. And many interesting though conflicting theories too. Please move slowly and deliberately before changing your meds, hopefully with your health-care provider.

Bob: There's a lot of discussion on Curezone about thyroid tests and iodine. Many of the posters over there do not think that the standard thyroid tests are good indicators. I am agnostic on this issue, but I think their case is very plausible.

Now, if you guys want to read about another interesting alt medicine topic, check out vitamin K2. It's believed to affect calcium metabolism. Some have even gone so far as to postulate that widespread K2 deficiency is the real cause of heart disease.

-dave

Post Edited (Chicago Dave) : 8/30/2013 7:57:27 AM (GMT-6)

Dave-

Thanks for your input. I have done a lot of research on Thyroid since my wife and I both are taking supplements, and most of our friends. There seems to be 2 primary causes, at least in Europe where I live.

1.Radiation- Chernobyl ukraine radiation releases which covered all of Europe with Fall out. It was in everything including milk. Also Depleted U (the most dangerous chemical on the planet) which the USA/NATO has used in bombs all over the ME. The testing of H-bombs during the the 50's-60's is another big factor in Thyroid destruction. It never goes away. This stuff has been circling the globe for years, and coming down on us 24/7. Now we have the Japanese radiation equal to 300 X Chernobyl.

2. Hashimoto disease- caused by possibly GMO's, pharmaceuticals in the water, plastics, tin-can linings, soil mineral depletion and pesticide poisonings, and many other environmental factors, that cause auto-immune diseases that trick the body into destroying its own thyroid.

I had Hashimoto's in the 90's and somehow was able to get rid of it my making a rife type pad device which ran at 19K hertz. It had a couple of IC's and a battery and a meter. I adjusted the current to 40 ma. I treated myself 6 minutes a day for 2 months and then got tested. It was gone. I don't know why it worked exactly. I did a lot of research on Rife/Beck and was member of a group whose really intelligent engineers rebuilt the original equipment from Rife and corrected all the frequencies that were in his original documents. My small device was based on Dr. Becks theories.

I don't see how supplements can replace a gland that has been destroyed and to the best of my opinion, the body can't regrow it. I am interested in anyone else's opinion on this. Stem cells maybe?? My Thyroid has been pretty much stable and T3 T4 in mid normal ranges. TSH at .90. So they do work well.

best

marsh

Bob: I haven't had headaches on K2-MK4, but I'll monitor this. Which Vitamin K was your friend taking? There is Vitamin K1 for clotting and Vitamin K2 for calcium metabolism. K2 is further subdivided into K2-MK7 (long lasting, low dose) and K2-MK4 (quickly absorbed, high-dose). I'm taking MK4 since my Internet research suggested that, and my alternative-medicine MD okayed it for me.

Marsh: I'm not an expert on any of these issues. I've seen lots of discussion on the Curezone Iodine board about Hashimoto's and its treatment and/or aggravation with iodine, but never paid much attention. There are folks who say iodine worsens Hashimoto's and others who say it helps. A mare's nest of opinion there.

Martin: On your point (3), I agree it's very strange and suggestive that BPH is often accompanied by pus. There could be many explanations for this. It could be (in some/many cases) that pus is a sign of an underlying infection that is causing the enlargement. But there are other explanations too. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. It could also be that the 100-fold elevated levels of testosterone found in ISV valve failure enlarge and weaken the prostate, rendering it susceptible to infection.

You already know the point (2) is correct in some people, and you have seen some slight improvement in yourself. So it's possible that the Saw Palmetto (and similar Rx drugs) mentioned in point (1) might simply be another method of reducing the testosterone exposure of the prostate. I already mentioned that in veterinary medicine the treatment of choice for canine BPH is castration. Very effective in reducing prostate size quickly...and inexpensively!

Regarding your point (4): There are many possible explanations for the effect of high-dose iodine on prostate disease. But I'm not sure iodine really CAN treat prostate disease, though I would be delighted if it could. (I'm taking it mostly for its detox effects on halides.) We have one person's testimony (Grizz's) but I'd like to find other guys too. That's why I opened that thread on the Curezone Iodine Supplementation board. I doubt Grizz has measured his prostate size before-and-after, but it doesn't hurt to ask him. If a treatment has a low downside-risk--this needs to be investigated in the case of high-dose iodine!--then I don't see the necessity of explaining exactly why the treatment works before using it. Carefully.

My own general approach is to find disinterested patients testifying to the positive effects of some treatment(s). Then I research the theories behind the success of those treatments, keeping in mind that the treatment itself could be effective though no one can accurately explain it. (Which won't stop everybody from putting forth their own definitive explanations.)

-dave

Dave: Thanks for your input. Regarding #3 and Gat Goren and his theory that varicocele & BPH are a mechanical problem resulting from gravity as men went to an evolutionary standing position.. One can thus surmise and agree with Dr. Gat that Orientals have less BPH and less prostate volume due to a smaller stature and shorter ISV's.

Yet, Perhaps a dietary factor could be at play. Figure in a Japanese and Chinese diet high in isoflavones with soy (tofu and tempeh) which inhibit BPH or perhaps a diet high in iodine (seaweed) to prohibit formation of halide (fluorine, bromine, chlorine) which crowd out iodine receptor sites in the prostate.

As for myself, I visit the bathroom once a night with intermitant flow, but excellent flow during the day. High T levels for my age at 71. It's been a year since the procedure. At 6 months post Gat Goren, prostate size remained much the same at 45 grams with diagnosis of mild to moderate BPH with midlobe extension into the bladder. I see slight improvement. Will take another rectal ultrasound after 18 months post GG.

Martin: I don't take drugs if I don't need them. I haven't popped a single Rapaflo pill in four months--I just haven't needed to. I had taken it daily for almost two years: It was a lifesaver that allowed me to go about my business, albeit in some discomfort. But I have no qualms with experimenting with them again if I feel like it. It is a powerful drug, and I would expect even a half dose to have side effects. I also have some terazosin (generic Hytrin) and I would take that if I thought I needed it. I haven't taken any for years, though. Terazosin has fewer side effects than Rapaflo and its powerful kin. I suspect that my bladder is quite thick already since I've had urinary frequency (and probably undetected varicocele) for 30 years.

I'm taking iodine to detox the fluoride and bromide. But I like positive side-effects: If it can help with my "BPH" symptoms, then I'm all for it. (How can I have true BPH with my 22.3-gram prostate? The typical size of a prostate in a healthy young man is just 20 grams.)

Post Edited (Chicago Dave) : 8/30/2013 10:08:24 AM (GMT-6)

Seems BPH is just one factor leading to LUTS (Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms). I think it may well be the reason that BPH procedures get such mixed results. They can reduce the size of the prostate but the person won't necessarily get all the improvements they desire with their LUTS. Unfortunately when you go to a urologist with LUTS, the first track is to do something to improve your BPH. When I first went to my urologist and explained about the frequency and urgency as well as the retention, he said we would tackle the retention first by reducing the prostate, then see about the rest. What I'm left with is "the rest" and he has not come up with anything for it, and neither have I. He basically told me to just live with it.
My wife says the same. Recently, "the rest" is going 20 times a day (10 of them at night - I've been using a golf click counter to keep track, it was a lot more than I realized) great urgency after sitting or lying down (literally a 4 second countdown to waterworks) and a lot of pressure and burning when the stream slows to a trickle before picking up again 10 or 20 seconds later. I don't have BPH. But I sure do have LUTS.

Post Edited (Bob_NJ) : 8/30/2013 5:33:41 PM (GMT-6)