I just got done with a lecture at the National College of Natural Medicine here is beautiful Portland, Oregon. I’d like to thank Dr. Kristen McElveen, ND and every attendee for allowing me to speak at your Grand Rounds. Even the 7:30 am start time wasn’t as bad as I expected.
Here is the presentation I did in Powerpoint. If you use any of the slides, just tell everyone where you got it.
Toxicity talk from Bellevue, Washington
Here is the Powerpoint Presentation I did in Bellevue, Washington on June 26th, 2008 to the Puget Soung Functional Medicine group. Many thanks to Dr. David Musnick for inviting me to speak.
In America, thousands of men get prostate biopsies after getting a PSA (prostate specfic antigen) test that registers over 4.0. Problem is, 80% of the biopsies show no cancer which is means that the test was highly non-specific, which quite high for any type of procedure. Because this is an invasive procedure, having an 80% failure rate is unacceptable. There is an alternative.
If your PSA is between 4-10, and you are over the age of 40 a free-PSA is the next step and should become the standard of care. If you are under 40 and your PSA is over 2, all bets are off and there may be a need for a biopsy. PSA comes in two types, one is bound to proteins, the other is free.
The higher the percentage of free-PSA, the lower the likelihood that there is prostate cancer present. If the free-PSA is under 10%, then there is a high likelihood of cancer. If it is over 25%, there is a 5% chance that it is cancer if you are between 40-64 and 9% if you are between 65-75.
If your doctor insists on doing a biopsy before doing a free-PSA and you fit in the categories above, find another doctor.