Entries by Janet

ADT and Prostate Cancer: Who Really Needs It?

Part One of Four The only people who really like androgen  deprivation therapy (also called ADT, or hormonal therapy) are the drug companies that make billions of dollars a year selling the drugs.   Doctors don’t like it, and men don’t like being on these drugs.  So why do it?   There are few specific situations when […]

Gene-Targeted Treatment for Prostate Cancer

In a matter of weeks, Mark Meerschaert went from being an athlete to someone who could barely walk; metastatic prostate cancer had come from nowhere and spread like wildfire throughout his body. A highly respected mathematics professor and researcher – the kind who fills up the blackboard in his classroom with labyrinthine calculations to answer […]

Prostate Cancer Treatment and Erectile Dysfunction

Take Back Your Sex Life! Here’s How to Make it Happen.  It’s the side effect that men fear most: Erectile dysfunction (ED) after surgery or radiation treatment for localized prostate cancer. As urologist Patrick Walsh, M.D., the great Johns Hopkins surgeon and my coauthor on several books about prostate cancer, always says: The first thing […]

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Surviving Cancer and Beyond

I had the privilege of meeting Paul Calobrisi through my work with the Prostate Cancer Foundation.   He is a prostate cancer survivor, and also a bladder cancer survivor. Basically, he is someone who has seen way, way too much cancer – in himself and in his family. He is also a remarkable person who has […]

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Gout Hates Your Joints

If an illness can have a stereotype, gout has one: its poster boy is a portly, wealthy gentleman who drinks too much red wine and eats too much rich food. In literature, gout is an Epicurean affliction, the runoff of opulence and “disease of kings.” In fact, gout attacks the poor as well as the […]

How RA Begins: A Detective Story

What causes rheumatoid arthritis? The search, by scientists around the world, has been exhaustive, and the prey surprisingly elusive – but in breakthrough Johns Hopkins research, scientists Maximilian Konig, M.D., and Felipe Andrade, M.D., Ph.D., believe they have pinpointed one culprit: a kind of bacteria that lives in the mouth and is present in gum […]