If you ask men about their top 5 health fears, high cholesterol and prostate cancer will probably be on that list.

These 2 health issues shouldn’t be a worry for most men.

High cholesterol does not cause disease – although it can indicate underlying health problems.

Forcing cholesterol levels down with statin treatments doesn't improve outcomes because cholesterol isn’t the problem.

Statin treatments can also have very troublesome side effects.

And in the case of prostate cancer, it’s massively overdiagnosed and massively over treated.

But there are some rare cases of “high-grade” prostate cancer which can be worrying.

A number of studies have shown that taking statins increases the risk of being diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancers.

The human research was carried out at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings are published in the European Journal of Cancer. (PMID: 25727881)

A number of different treatments have been proposed to alter prostate cancer risk.

This study was designed to analyze some large datasets to see if the researchers could find any relationship.

The researchers used data from Swedish public health records.

In the dataset, over 185,000 Swedish men had presented for a PSA test.

The PSA is a blood test which looks at a protein related to inflammation of the prostate.

Of these men, a further 18,500 men’s PSA test results identified them (probably incorrectly) as at risk of having prostate cancer…

…so they went for a prostate biopsy.

The PSA test identifies many men who are not at risk of having prostate cancer as targets for further investigation.

The prostate biopsy can cause infection of the area – leading to hospitalization and other serious repercussions.

The prostate biopsy samples were analyzed in a standardized way.

Researchers look at them under a microscope to see if there’s any changes in the growth of prostate cells which could indicate cancer.

These biopsies analysis are then rated on something called a Gleason scale.

The samples which look more cancerous receive a higher score.

Most diagnosed prostate cancers are extremely slow-growing.

Men with these diagnoses will almost certainly die of something else if the cancer is untreated.

But for some men, men with a high Gleason score, prostate cancer can sometimes be a problem.

The study found that some treatments like aspirin were associated with a slightly lower PSA score.

Statin treatments were associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer diagnosis.

Low-grade prostate cancer is usually completely harmless…

But the diagnosis itself can lead to some very harmful and unnecessary treatments.

“Men using statins had a 16% increased risk of prostate cancer diagnosis.”

But most importantly, statin treatments are associated with a significantly higher risk of high-grade prostate cancer…

The rare, aggressive prostate cancer which can be a health risk in itself.

“Men using statins had a 25% increased risk of high grade prostate cancer.”

A significant increase in the risk of high-grade prostate cancer can be added to the list of problems caused by statin treatments.

Statins are used to force down blood cholesterol levels. Cholesterol has been associated with cardiovascular and other diseases.

But cholesterol has never been shown to be a cause of these diseases.

Quite the opposite – cholesterol is usually a protective factor in the context of another health problem.

Low thyroid hormones and low-grade bacterial infection are common causes of high cholesterol.

These underlying health problems are the cause of cardiovascular disease and other health problems which are linked to cholesterol.

The increase in prostate cancer diagnosis and high-grade prostate cancer in statin users underlines the importance of properly assessing the causes for high cholesterol…

…rather than simply treating the symptom by beating down cholesterol levels with statins.

-Matt Cook

Hey, Matt Cook here, and you probably already know that older people are more susceptible to infectious disease…

Younger people might catch the bug – but they rarely get as sick as older folks do.

And in the last few decades, we are starting to learn the reasons why this is so.

One factor I’ve written about before is the influence of zinc.

Zinc is essential for the functioning of the thymus gland – the master regulator of immunity.

**Older people tend to have lower zinc levels.

But another emerging factor is the role of hormones like DHEA, androstenediol, and androstenetriol.**

These hormones are higher in younger people, and they promote stronger immune function.

The animal experiments were performed at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. The paper was published in Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Everyone knows that stress increases the likelihood of people getting sick.

One of the reasons for this is an increase in cortisol – a corticosteroid which suppresses immune function.

The same thing happens with glucocorticoid (cortisol-like) medications.

“The anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive functions of corticosteroids have been well established and characterized.”
The authors of this study were interested in a number of hormones which they believe may act in the opposite way…

Increasing immune system function and protecting against immune suppression by glucocorticoids.

“DHEA and two of its metabolites, androstenediol (AED) and androstenetriol (AET), up-regulate immune response against infections and counteract stress-induced immunosuppression.”

In experiments, these natural hormones have been shown to protect against various different types of infections…

…showing an all-round immune protective effect.

“DHEA and particularly, AED and beta AET, have been shown to protect mice from viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections.”
The experiments showed that they protect against the immune suppressing effect of glucocorticoids.

The natural glucocorticoid in humans is cortisol.

Older people tend to have higher cortisol and cortisol is increased by all types of stress.

But many people also use glucocorticoid treatments to treat inflammatory conditions.

This research shows that these hormones could help prevent the immune suppression caused by these treatments.

“These hormones are in opposition to immunosuppressive action of glucocorticoids, suggesting a possible new immune regulation mechanism.”
DHEA is the first of these hormones.

The other two mentioned in this article are made from DHEA and they are intermediate hormones between DHEA and testosterone.

All of these hormones have specific beneficial effects on immunity.

“DHEA suppressed the proliferation of cultures activated with bacterial fragments in a dose-dependent manner.”
The authors were particularly interested in the protective effect against glucocorticoid treatments like hydrocortisone.

They found that DHEA and androstenediol had little effect.

“Moreover, the classic immunosuppressive effects of hydrocortisone were unaffected by being co-cultured with DHEA and only minimally counteracted by AED at high doses.”
But androstenetriol (AET) prevented the immune system suppression caused by hydrocortisone.

If doctors implemented this knowledge correctly they could save a lot of lives by preventing unnecessary infections in people using this treatment.

“AET significantly counteracted the immunosuppressive effects of hydrocortisone on lymphocyte proliferation and cytokine production.”
Androstenetriol looks particularly effective at improving the vitality of a weak immune system.

“Only AET could markedly potentiate the cellular response by increasing lymphocyte activation and counteracting the immunosuppressive activity of hydrocortisone on lymphocyte proliferation and cytokine production.”
Androstenediol and androstenetriol are relatively understudied hormones.

But they are made from DHEA, and we know a lot about that.

DHEA decreases with age, and this decrease in DHEA could explain much of the decreased immunity we see in older people compared to younger people.

It is possible to increase your DHEA levels by taking a DHEA supplement.

We need to be careful not to take too much, otherwise it can increase estrogen – causing unwanted side effects.

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