How Ben Stiller Survived Prostate Cancer

picture of Ben Stiller How Ben Stiller Survived Prostate Cancer Talking about a cancer diagnosis is tough. Talking about prostate cancer for men is really tough. But talking about protate cancer when you are a public figure in the prime of your career is off the charts scary. And courageous! So, a huge “Thank You” to Ben Stiller for taking the time to write an essay about his recent prostate cancer experience and to urge men to talk with their doctors about prostate cancer and their risk. Over the past 10 years men in America have been caught in the middle of a disagreement within the medical community about the value of the PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test in beating prostate cancer. Half of the medical community believes the test is worthwhile and half don’t. The United States Preventative Services Task Force even recommends that men don’t ever test for prostate cancer. But here are some facts and statistics that men and their families should know and consider . . . 240,000 men every year are diagnosed with prostate cancer 24,000 of those new cases will be aggressive, early onset prostate cancer about 28,000 men die every year from prostate cancer – more […] read more

U.S. Rep. Mark Takai dies after a nine month battle with pancreatic Cancer

picture of former Representative Mark Takai. U.S. Prepresentative Mark Takai dies from pancreatic cancer. Early detection is critical in all cancers. read more

Bicycling Helps Keep Cancer In Check

picture of Cancer Journeys Foundation Founder Robert Warren Hess Bicycling Helps Keep Cancer in Check by Robert Warren Hess In this post, I’m going to tell you how I began cycling and how it plays a key role in my cancer recurrence prevention plan. My goal with these posts is to give cancer survivors tools and encouragement you can use on your cancer journey. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer just over 13 years ago. At that moment, I joined the ranks of 14 million other Americans who are ‘cancer survivors.’ The picture at right is me working with my prostate cancer awareness program at the 2016 California Senior Games. You’ll read in a moment why I’m in a bicycling outfit. I read all of the statistics about prostate cancer stages and survival statistics. I was surprised when I could only find 5 year survival statistics. Those statistics were good. 98% of prostate cancer survivors lived for 5 years after their treatment. But, I thought, what happens after those 5 years? How about statistics for 10 years? 15 years? And what could I do to prolong my survival because once my treatment was completed there wasn’t much guidance or interaction. I decided to read everything I could from those […] read more

The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving

The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving Robert Warren Hess I’ve now gone through the process of losing four members of my family to cancer. My last experience was with my favorite aunt, who passed away from melanoma after a lengthy period of illness. My aunt lived in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia while I live in Los Angeles. So, the caregiving burden fell to my younger sister. This caregiving period lasted just over 3 years, and it was a highly emotional event for my sister, and we had many telephone conversations over that time. The excellent article below by Paula Spencer Scott talks about the emotions that inevitably come and some suggestions on how to deal with them. These are great insights and I hope they help you as much as they helped my sister and me. The 7 Deadly Emotions of Care Giving by Paula Spencer Scott Nobody would ever choose a smiley face as the perfect symbolic emoticon for a caregiver. Caregiving for an ailing loved one is just too stressful — often triggering damaging emotions that can not only undermine your good work but harm your health, as well. Here’s how to cope: Caregiver Emotion Trap #1: […] read more

4 ways to halve cancer death risk

4 ways to cut your cancer death risk by Robert Warren Hess A study published recently in the journal JAMA Oncology showed that simple lifestyle changes can reduce lung cancer and colorectal cancer in women by 85% and 60% respectively, and 90% and 50% for men. That’s a huge reduction. Some of the needed changes are pretty easy and others will take some dedication. Here’s what you need to do . . . Stop smoking – Hard, but not impossible. I went through the process 17 years ago. It seemed impossible at the time. Now I don’t even remember I ever smoked. Get down to a healthy weight. I went through this process, as well. I found that it was just a matter of having the right foods in the house and retraining my tastebuds, which, incidentally, completely renew themselves every 10-14 days. Most of us can do anything for 14 days. Drinking less alcohol – This may be easier than you think. A full 30% of Americans don’t drink at all, and 80% have less than one drink per day [Click here to see how you measure up] Changing these first three habits may seem impossible, but it’s really […] read more

Prostate Cancer: To Treat or Not to Treat – That is the Question

PCAP Founder Robert Warren Hess taking a PSA blood test More men with prostate cancer are choosing active surveillance - waiting to see if the tumor grows - instead of having immediate treatment. It's possible that trend will result in more prostate cancer deaths. read more

My Cycling Stats

One Simple Way to Keep Motivated to Exercise Cycling is my key cancer prevention exercise. Cycling and walking with my number one best friend, my wife. For some people, turning the cranks on a bicycle is just really fun; while for others, it’s pure boredom. I fall into the ‘fun’ category but I’m pretty competitive and I like to compete. I don’t, however, like to ride in big groups on the road so I use a tool called Strava.com to track my mileage and how well I do over routes I ride regularly. The really fun thing about Strava.com is that it lets you measure yourself against others in your gender and age group. I’m a numbers guy so I track pretty much everything. The widget below shows my week’s cycling mileage on Strava. This is a pretty busy week for me, so there aren’t many miles. Strava has free and paid plans. Give it a try, it may just help your motivation like it does mine. Allez-y! read more

How Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer Can Fail

nurse encouraging an annual PSA test How Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer Can Fail Since the introduction of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test in the early 1990’s, the medical community has struggled with the issue of over treatment of prostate cancer. The PSA test detects many low-risk prostate cancers that do not immediate treatment.  The treatment protocol for these cancer is called ‘active surveillance (AS).’  The introduction of AS alleviated a good deal of the over treatment but, as the article below shows, men and their doctors need to follow the treatment regimen. When there’s no treatment, it’s easy to forget and the cancer might just turn aggressive. If you are following an active surveillance program, we suggest that you personally track your PSA test with ProstateTracker.  Once you create your ProstateTracker account, you will receive an email reminder every 12 months that it’s time for your next PSA test. This reminder serves as that proverbial ‘string around your finger.’ Read the full article below: Prostate Cancer: ‘Active’ Surveillance Is Often ‘Not’ by: Kate Johnson May 09, 2016 SAN DIEGO, California — Only 1 in 3 men with low-risk prostate cancer receive appropriate follow-up when assigned to active surveillance (AS) of their disease, a new study suggests. The findings […] read more

How to handle prostate cancer recurrence

Cancer cell How to handle prostate cancer recurrence Prostate cancer recurrence is the most common question we receive here at the Prostate Cancer Awareness Project. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. The chances of your prostate cancer returning depend on your particular prostate cancer and the circumstances of your diagnosis and treatment.   The article below, from the Harvard prostate knowledge center, provides a great deal of insight. I found it personally very helpful. Marc B. Garnick, M.D., discusses what biochemical recurrence means and what your options are “Am I going to die?” This is the first question a patient usually asks me when a follow-up blood test reveals that his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level has risen after he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer (usually a radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy). The fear is understandable: When PSA levels rise to a certain threshold after prostate cancer treatment, the patient has suffered what is known technically as a biochemical recurrence, sometimes also referred to as a biochemical relapse or stage D1.5 disease. Whatever term is used, it means that prostate cancer remains within the prostate after radiation therapy, that it survived outside the excised area after radical prostatectomy, or that it […] read more

New test may diagnose prostate cancer more accurately

PCAP Founder Robert Warren Hess taking a PSA blood test New test may diagnose prostate cancer more accurately By Robert Warren Hess Prostate cancer can be defeated if it’s found early.  But only if it’s found early! The PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test has been the gold standard for screening since the early 1990’s and has been credited with both reducing prostate cancer deaths through detection at earlier stages and with unnecessary treatment because of the difficulty in telling which cancers are aggressive and which won’t need treatment. A new test, STHLM3, is being used in Europe and promises to more effective in finding aggressive cancers than the PSA test. Read more about the test at Harvard Men’s Health Watch. However, the test is not yet approved for use in the United States, so the best thing men here in the US can do is to continue to have an annual PSA test and consult their doctor immediately if they see a rise in PSA values from one year to the next. How to Have a PSA Test for Just $35.00 Many men may not have medical insurance or their HMO won’t prescribe the test. If that’s your case, you don’t have to give up on testing for prostate […] read more