Many men are interested in (or are already taking) supplements and vitamins for their prostate cancer. How effective are these alternatives compared to traditional medicine and treatments? Sifting through the massive amounts of information on supplements and natural medicine is no easy task. PROSTATE PROS examines current trends and explores which supplements may help men with prostate cancer and which they should avoid. Dr. Scholz: [00:03] We’re guiding you to treatment success and avoiding prostate cancer pitfalls. I’m your host, Dr. Mark Scholz. Liz: [00:09] And I'm your cohost, Liz Graves. Dr. Scholz: [00:13] Welcome to the PROSTATE PROS podcast. Liz: [00:20] Alternative, natural therapies appeal to many people, but when it comes to prostate cancer, how much of this is just hype and how much is rooted in science? On this episode, we'll dive into supplements, minerals, and other natural options as they apply to prostate cancer. Dr. Scholz: [00:37] Liz, at the beginning, I think we ought to give credit to a good friend of mine and professional colleague, Mark Moyad, who wrote a wonderful book called The Supplement Handbook. I am using some of the clinical trials cited in that book as we go through our discussion today. It is an excellent book, you can get it at Amazon, of course. It covers more than a hundred different conditions and prostate cancer is a small portion of it, but people are always interested in supplements and how they affect a wide variety of issues. Liz: [01:09] We see this a lot with our patients. I would say you get at least an email a week from a patient asking if they should try the latest, this or that. We recently had a patient email about using mushrooms to treat prostate cancer. What do you reply when you get these emails? Dr. Scholz: [01:26] Well, one thing I'm excited about is that they're testing the concept. So much of what's out there is based on someone saying “I felt better,” or some company has a strong marketing program. Supplements, if they're effective, should show an effect in randomized, placebo controlled trials. There's a big placebo effect. We're all susceptible to positive thinking, which is a wonderful thing, but you can give people a sugar pill and 25% to 30% of people improve. So when you do a test, you have to check the new substance against the placebo and you have to show a better outcome than the placebo accomplishes. Otherwise you're just giving another placebo. Liz: [02:11] So in judging the efficacy of these supplements and minerals, you suggest trying to find studies? Dr. Scholz: [02:18] Either to try to find studies, if you want to participate, but more importantly, know the studies or find supplements that are backed up by clinical trials that have been shown to be efficacious. Liz: [02:30] Now, let's talk about some popular trends for your patients. One of those is a vitamin C infusion. Dr. Scholz: [02:37] Vitamin C infusions have been around for a long time. Linus Pauling popularized this 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Vitamin C has been shown to shorten the duration of colds, it's been shown to improve healing after surgery, and it has been tested as a treatment for cancer. I've had a number of patients that have come to me wanting to do vitamin C infusions. And because I haven't seen convincing evidence that it works, I've been unwilling to do it in my own office. But they have gone to other offices and we check their PSA monthly. I asked them to stop their other treatments so we can tell what's working without any confusion. So far in over a half a dozen men, I have not seen a single case where the PSA has stabilized or dropped. It's been disappointing. Vitamin C is well tolerated, so they're not having any side effects, we're just not seeing results. Liz: [03:36] So how long are people getting vitamin C infusions? Is it three weeks or five weeks? Dr. Scholz: [03:41] Because prostate cancer tends to react slowly, if you look at