I have a Family History of Cancer Risk
If you follow this blog, you know that I am just a few weeks short of being a 10-year prostate cancer survivor. I was diagnosed in December 2002, shortly after I learned that my older sister was going into surgery for pancreatic cancer. Looking at my family history revealed that both my father and mother, lifelong smokers, died of lung cancer and lung cancer-related disease.

Reduce your Risk with ProstateTracker
I was lucky that my prostate cancer was detected early when is was very treatable. I’m just about to hit my 10-year survival anniversary and I owe those years to an accidental discovery of my prostate cancer.

But 30,000 men every year aren’t that lucky and die of prostate cancer. We all give back to society in some fashion and my giveback is the creation of ProstateTracker; a simple tool that provides men with prostate cancer a way of detecting it as its earliest stages when it is treatable.

ProstateTracker is free and anonymous. Men (or their significant others) create an account, enter the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test data and ProstateTracker plots the values and shows if these is a rise, which can indicate prostate cancer. [Create your free ProstateTracker account here.]

My Latest ProstateTracker Report
My most recent ProstateTracker report is shown below.

The high points are when my prostate cancer was detected and the sharp drop is the decrease to undetectable following my surgery in May of 2003.

You can also see that my PSA came back somewhat about three years ago and now varies between .01 and .08. Prostate cancer recurrence generally is assumed when the is a PSA level of .2 or greater over a period of 12 months. So, for the moment I seem to be in good shape.

I’ve asked why I have a residual amount of PSA if the prostate has been removed. I’ll talk about the answers to that question in future posts.

Cholesterol – a Good System Health Indicator
Again, I’m not a physician but a person’s overall cholestoral, HDL and LDL, are good indicators of overall general heath. ProstateTracker tracks these values as well.

You can see below that my total cholesterol is down (and in the very good range), which is good, but my LDL (bad cholesterol) has increased since over the past six months while my HDL (good cholesterol) has declined. Why these changes?

Well, it’s pretty simple. I started eating more dairy and meat again and work has slowed by exercise routine. My cholesterol numbers are visual proof of how my eating habits are impacting my overall health and how fast those changes occur.

What’s a Guy To Do?
Well, it’s time to energize that discipline I learned during my Army career and make some serious changes. Follow this blog and you can watch what I do and see the outcomes in my ProstateTracker reports.

PS:  Did you catch the hint that it’s time to create your own ProstateTracker account?  Do it now.  Click here!

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