Natural Prostate Healers

Women and men have different thresholds for consulting physicians. Women schedule doctor appointments regularly. I am told this is less a matter of choice than necessity. Regular peaks under the hood are a requirement for getting refills of birth control pills, and later, hormone replacements. Lacking this motivation, men see doctors only if they can't stop the bleeding after cutting themselves or they are unconscious. As they age many add a third reason: their prostate has begun acting up. Problem prostates cause many of the problems that make old age a less than glorious time, including painful urination, difficulty in maintaining an erection, frequent nighttime urination and the general inability to write your name in the snow. Realizing that the baby boomers were about to hit the problem prostate years, a cottage industry has developed to convince men to have their prostates examined on a regular basis. Following the proven formula of scaring people with statistics, the authors of these "public service" brochures have focused on prostate cancer. It is the perfect disease for shocking headlines. If you live long enough, you develop prostate cancer, period. What these well meaning attempts at educating men usually fail to mention is that prostate cancer develops very, very slowly. What they almost never mentioned is how much you can do to reduce the discomfort of prostate problems and cut dramatically your risk of prostate cancer. By putting an emphasis on these positive themes Mike Fillon's Natural Prostate Healers: A Breakthrough Program For Preventing And Treating Common Prostate Problems provides a refreshing look at an important men's health issue. What I like best about Fillon's book is that he has taken the approach of a journalist surveying new terrain. The result is that important facts that tend to be minimized in more medically-oriented books rise to their proper perspective. Two points stand out. First, Fillon stresses the lack of a cause-and-effect linkage between common prostate problems and prostate cancer. There is a presumption -- largely created by public service ads -- that 2 a.m. visits to the toilet are nature's idiot light for warning you of prostate cancer. Fillon debunks this notion, and goes on to suggests common sense ways of managing these problems, chiefly through minor changes in diet and exercise. Fillon's second contribution is to change our view of prostate cancer from being inevitable to becoming avoidable. The basis for this claim is the extreme global variation in prostate cancer rates, between 3.5 cases per 100,0000 in Singapore to 49.8 cases in Sweden. The rate in America is 32.2 cases. Rather than let this statistic hang in the air as some sort of X-file mystery, Fillon seizes upon it to suggest ways in which minor modifications of your diet to move you toward the favorable end of the statistical scale. Prostate problems will eventually pose some d