Month 22

October 31, 2025

Hi Everyone. Just wanted to report out that my liver enzymes have been normal throughout my 2 years of AS/Veganism/Supplements. In case you haven’t been following the conversation, I got an email from another ASer about his liver enzymes being moderately out of the normal range. I just happened to have my annual checkup last week, so it was easy for me to check with my doctor directly. I am breaking in a new doctor. Three of my PCPs have retired over the years. They get younger and younger !

In fact the couple of my out-of-range numbers from 2 years ago, including cholesterol and glucose scores, have left red, and now reside in the green. Have a great day !

October 28, 2025

For a while now, I have been creating a learning environment about taking the Active Surveillance route to PCa treatment. As a Gleason 3/4, I didn’t want to have my prostate removed at age 68, having recently remarried in an active relationship that I wasn’t prepared to give up right away or perhaps never.

This website was my first effort. My daughters set it up for me, and made it a blog-style site, probably so I could easily maintain it myself. (And therefore, I didn’t need to bother them on an on-going basis for support.) 🙂 They have supported me insofar as congratulating me for “committing myself” to the effort. I have learned a lot myself, mostly through email conversations with other ASers. It clarifies my thinking, and creating blog posts about my experiences has been cathartic as well as helpful to others according to their feedback.

My next project was publishing a book which chronicles my initial efforts to drive down my PSA score. It created a static source of information that someone can download on their Kindle device and can access it offline. Kindle forces me to set a price for it, but they also allow me to give it away every so often for a short period of time, and I try to take advantage of that.

My third project involves creating a second, more capable, blog format. I wanted to create an environment where others could post their own primary threads to share information they discover or ask questions of their own. The engine that drives this blog does not allow for that, and so I created the subreddit ProstateCancer_AS. It’s now official launched ( according to Reddit) since a welcome post has been created and the subreddit qualifies as ‘being a thing.” So have a look ! Tell me what you think. Encourage me. And feel free to post content or questions there, especially if just responding to one of my posts here feels like less of a contribution to the AS community than you are looking for.

Punicic–acid-induced ferroptosis in prostate cancer cells

Here is yet another research article about Punicic Acid ( from Pomegranate Seed Oil ) killing PCa cells (through an iron-based death process knows as ferroptosis) as well as preventing or slowing migration of PCa cells. Was this the mechanism that broke down my first lesion? For now there is no way to know for sure.

Here is the publication. I will continue to scan it closely to see if I can produce a decent summary with more details than above.

October 27, 2025

COVID mRNA vaccines help trigger the immune system to fight all sorts of cancers.

So says the following research summary article that I ran across this morning. I find it a very promising idea that mRNA vaccines of apparently various sources can help fight a wide variety of cancers.

After a first read of the summary article, mRNA vaccines, when combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors, trigger the immune system to kill cancer cells by preventing the proteins produced by cancer from blocking immune cell’s natural ability to detect and kill cancer cells.

This information, along with phytochemicals found in the various antioxidant supplements I am taking, encourages me to dig deeper into this line of research to learn more about how what I am doing can be combined with mRNA vaccine technology to fight my PCa.

October 26, 2025

Another ASer who I frequently communicate with via email has been charting his own course, tangential to mine. As we have become friends, I have learned that he is doing a fair amount of what I am doing, as well as other things I am not. For example, he drinks pomegranate juice and takes elegiac acid supplements like I do, but is also a fan of drinking stinging nettle tea and taking green tea supplements which I do not do.

Anyhow, this friend has been experiencing a couple of blood test numbers that are concerning and since he shared them with me, I will mention them here.

Alanine Aminotransferase 90 (should be <50)
Aspartate Aminotransferase 50 (should be <36).

These are liver enzymes, the the levels are moderately high, and it’s my understanding that it warrants further medical attention to investigate what is going on.

Here is what Google AI had on Alanine Aminotransferase 90 (should be <50)

Here is Google Scholar research paper on Alaine Aminotransferase which I am reviewing now. After a quick examination, it’s not easy to just extract a threshold number that is commonly used in Liver Enzyme tests. I continue to examine the paper more closely.

Here is what Google AI had on Aspartate Aminotransferase 50 (should be <36).

Google Scholar had what looks like an interesting article this discusses Aspartate Aminotransferase as will as Alanine Aminotransferase with respect to their ratio. I’m in the process of deciphering both papers.

I appreciate this information being brought to my attention. Fortunately, I have my wellness medical annual this upcoming Wednesday, and I can ask my doctor if I have been getting what I have learned as fairly common liver enzyme levels tested and can I have a retest. I expect to report out here after I get some answers.

In the meantime, I have cut my tumeric supplement to once a day as a precaution. My friend is taking his concerns to his doctor soon.

Everyone have a great day !

October 19, 2025

On Overcoming the Negative Thought Processes

I receive questions from time to time about how I manage to maintain a positive outlook despite knowing the difficulties I face, that we all face. Well, previous to May of this year, I might have said, “I’m told that I’m a natural optimist.”, and left it at that. And then this May, at the school I work at part time, as part of my annual performance review, I received a book, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, as did every member of the staff I later found out.

I started reading. The structure was my kind of book — Individual pages that could be read one at at time, where some pages were only half-filled with words. I pretty quickly learned after reading a few pages, that these daily life philosophies, transformed past just idea and states of mind into actionable advice for daily living, in many cases confirmed my general approach to life. Today will be a beautiful day in NJ, I don’t want to miss it, and I have a fair amount of plans already in place: a gym workout, some virtual reality fencing with my wife and daughter, and hopefully a short picnic during the warmest part of the day.

Here are links to the Stoic Philosophy as well as the book. Happy reading — get the Book. Read a page or two. It’s a quick way to get immediate results and experience some positive life feedback. You will be glad you did.

I expect to address aspects of the book as it relates to my PCa AS life as we go forward. I just can’t do that right now, because you know, a beautiful day. But stay tuned and have a great day.

October 17, 2025

After my exciting Google News feed post from a couple of days ago, I became interested in examining the latest research found in Google Scholar. Lo and behold, I came across what was to me an encouraging summary analysis and a link to its associated research paper published in April 2025.

Summary Analysis

This research paper represents secondary research which combed through 27000 patient PCa database comprised of Active Surveillance (AS) patients that started collecting data in 2000. Focusing on low and intermediate risk PCa, 14623 patients’ histories were followed over 6 and 10 year spans.

The research paper, entitled. ” Has Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer Become Safer? Lessons Learned from a Global Clinical Registry ” seems to come to the conclusion that the answer to this is a resounding ‘Yes.” ( 1 )

“Patient summary: Active surveillance (AS) has evolved into a widely applied treatment
strategy for many men with prostate cancer around the world. In this report, we show
the long-term safety of following AS for men with low- and intermediate-risk prostate
cancer. Our study confirms AS as a safe management option for low- and
intermediate-risk prostate cancer. New diagnostic modalities may improve the acceptability of follow-up using individual risk assessments, while safely broadening the useof AS in higher-risk tumours.(copyright 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of European Association ofUrology. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).” ( 2 )

It appears to me that while in the past, crossing over into intermediate PCa was the point to move to invasive remedies, this research sets the new bar is at higher risk tumours, and even there, some AS was in use. I interpret these results to say that as of now, AS used in intermediate PCa cases has become not so out-of-the-ordinary.

It goes on to conclude that ” Our study confirms that AS was a safe management option over the full duration in this large multicentre cohort with long-term follow-up, given the 84.1% OS [Overall Survival] and 99.4% MFS [Metastasis-Free Survival] at 10 yr. The probability of treatment at 10 yr was 20% in men with initial low-risk tumours and 31% in men with intermediate-risk tumours. New diagnostic modalities may improve the acceptability of follow-up using individual risk assessments, while safely broadening the use of AS in higher-risk tumours. ” ( 2 )

For me, with intermediate PCa (Gleason 3+4, confined to the prostate) this is very encouraging, since I am also consuming naturally made plants as foods or supplements, all shown to slow the spread or actually kill PCa cells. This study does not address that, making me feel one step better off than what this study shows.

It feels great that the field continues to advance in a way that for me, staying on AS for a while, longer, or forever seems like a reasonable decision. Share your thoughts in the comment area below, or post your own PCa AS content on this subreddit.

Another great day of positive news that chases away my negative thoughts.

My best to everyone.

October 15, 2025

Hot off my Google News feed I find.

News Article

This is a very recent news article that summarizes research collaboration between Australia and China. It describes that two enzymes—PDIA1 and PDIA5—play a crucial role in helping prostate cancer cells grow, survive, and resist treatment. It discusses the identification of the two enzymes that help PCa grow, and then while testing methods to stop them, discovered mechanisms that do just that. It’s initial, basic research, and I’m hoping to uncover more information that turns this into an actionable thing.

“These enzymes act as molecular bodyguards for the androgen receptor (AR), a protein that fuels prostate cancer. When PDIA1 and PDIA5 are blocked, the AR becomes unstable and breaks down, leading to cancer cell death and tumor shrinkage in both lab-grown cells and animal models.

The team also found that combining drugs that block PDIA1 and PDIA5 with enzalutamide, a widely used prostate cancer medication, significantly boosted the treatment’s effectiveness.” (1)

Research Paper

Here is a link to the actual published research paper. It’s quite scientific, but I read and re-read it in an effort to get something useful to do out of it.

The research paper identifies PDIA1 and PDIA5 as “Protein disulfide isomerases (that)regulate androgen receptor stability and promote prostate cancer cell growth and survival” (2)

So these two enzymes help PCa live and spread through 3 separate mechanisms: 1) keeps androgen receptors a live, 2) help PCa alive, and 3) help PCa to grow.

Androgen receptors grab testosterone generated products that drive PCa to live and grow. The second and third aspects go to creating malfunctions within the PCa cells themselves which drive the cell to self-destruct.

As first glance, I see this research as a chemotherapeutic method, where the current method to disable PDIA1 and PDIA5 also harms other cells besides PCa. So finding a way to inhibit the solution from killing off good cells is the current challenge of this research.

This is different than what most of this site talks about, which is consuming naturally made plants as foods or supplements. Naturally made plants appear to be a less extreme way to both inhibit PCa activity, but at the same time, doesn’t appear to be so directly harmful to non PCa cells as well, with the same mechanisms.

The article set off my spidy-senses, so I intend to focus on it as news develops. Stay tuned, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comment area below. You are also welcome to post your own content on this subreddit.

My best to everyone.

October 6, 2025

Hi Everyone. September was a very busy month for me as I returned to work after a fun summer. It was difficult to post anything because I was commuting so much, but that should slow down for a while. So here I am, eeking out a post before I start a remote class (requiring no commute !)

I have had some emails from those interested in what I am doing, but somehow, they didn’t find out from this site. That was interesting. I’m feeling better than ever. I did shed a few pounds, and have restarted my seated bike leg training. I’m still not experiencing any negative side effects associated with my PCa. The diet and supplements for almost 2 years now has me thinking very clearly, and my sense of touch has noticeably improved. I can feel things more intensely than I was feeling two years ago, and my body is functioning normally, even though I stopped testosterone supplements two years ago. Oh happy me.

Nothing more to report at this time. My best to everyone, and I hope what you do gives you the best possible outcome !!