Update: visit to Integrative Medicine specialist at major hospital

I just wanted to give an update on my visit concerning the use of supplements and vitamins to benefit in fighting prostate cancer and managing some nasty side effects.

I'm coming up on 1 3/4 years after Sharp radiation treatment for high intermediate prostate cancer. My psa went down to .43 then .47....its been there for the last 4 months. I have had a case of chronic prostatitis i for almost a year when I saw the Integrative Medicine specialist(that's why I saw her...and she specialize in radiation induced prostatitis.)
after the infection was not cured by bactrim or doxy. Only 6 days on bactrim cause I was allergic.

She prescribed 1000 mg of saw palmetto and a few other supplements. All this did absolutely nothing to help with the prostitits symptoms, in fact the infection got worse.

So for me Saw Palmetto was doing nothing after two months.
I started taking flowmax and that helped. I stopped all the supplements including the saw palmetto.

Then I had my year and a half visit to the Dr. That performed the treatment. Excellent man at Sloan Kettering.
He said my psa was good where it was considering I have an infection. He prescribed Cipro after doing a DRE and said it felt slightly inflamed on one side, he said the prostate felt like there was no cancer and was not enlarged. So far its 9 days after 3 weeks of cipro and it has cured all symptoms.
(by the way...the doctor did say that he believed in using saw palmetto unlike most of is colleagues) But I stopped as I saw no benefit for me.

Sometimes I think an expert Dr. that has done thousands of DRE's can tell more with his hand than you get from a high tech MRI (mine missed several cancerous spots...but that's another thread)


I tried to avoid cipro but should have tried it the first place. No bacteria was found in my urine.
My doctor said I might not even have radiation induced prostitis....I could just have gotten the infection.

I still believe strongly that diet and exercise play a major role in complete cure from the cancer

as far as supplements go....they may help some...and I would much prefer to use natural medications.....but I've found that its sometimes the conventional drugs are the best medicine.

I did find that many of the supplements that the specialist suggested are found to help some by research on the internet....but not me.

I did find that the Integrative Medicine specialist that gave me the supplements...and there were several, was very vague on dosing instructions and when to take what with what. I basically had to pry this information out of her in a flurry of constant emails. I do think she has a lot of knowledge but was somewhat sloppy in the directions of taking the supplements.

Would I have gone to her in hindsight?

I guess not.....since it didn't work for me!

As far as diet goes she said the usual, no dairy, red meat...plenty of fruits and vegetables. Exercise is very important.

She said keep it to 3 servings of fruit a day. I really like fruit.
I'm wondering if others who are hoping to be cured without a re-occurrence eat more than 3 servings of fruit a day?

Sugar is not your friend...I know that much!

Well..hope this is helpful and wish me luck in the big picture and the end of this prostatitis nightmare!

Fuzzbox,
Seems like more major centers are adding Holistic staff. My cynic aspect wonders if this mainly for image. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't.

In any case, I'm glad you're feeling better and good luck!

I know that. They actually only have two doctors....and neither specializes in urology.
I went to one affiliated with Mt Sinai as her specialty was treating men with radiation induced prostititis.

Which I may not even have had.

As I said it didn't really help and I think the information as far as supplements and nutrition would be pretty much the same.

I appreciate the info but I am certainly not going to another one. I think information you can get on this forum is just as helpful for the most part. But its good to hear what they have to say.

Gary Deng MD at MSKCC is head of the integrative medicine department at MSKCC. My husband saw him and he treats many prostate cancer patients. I was with my husband at all visits with Dr. Deng. I was impressed with him. He gave my husband the anti-cancer diet that he follows and also gave him lifestyle advice. He prescribes supplements if a patient wants them. My husband does not take any supplements because we did not want them.

saw palmetto worked for me after two days . really quite miraculous. I recently added pygeum to the mix. I was surprised that my doctor recommended saw palmetto and I was skeptical but my conclusion after several months is it works for me and I much rather take it than Flomax.