A recent study in the British medical journal, Lancet, tells us why. A team of researchers in Paris, France showed that radical surgery for cancer of the prostate causes cancerous cells to spread through the bloodstream. So, surgery itself may cause cancers to spread to other parts of the body. There's a much higher recurrence and death rate from breast cancer when doctors operate at the time a woman's estrogen levels are high and progesterone levels are low.
Estrogen stimulates the breast and uterus to grow, while progesterone blocks the stimulation.
A woman's body produces progesterone only after an egg is released during the last half of the menstrual cycle. So, in the first half a woman's menstrual cycle, her breasts are stimulated by estrogen and have no progesterone to stop the stimulation. This recent research shows that the disappointing results produced by prostate cancer surgery may be the result of it spreading cancer throughout the body and that the best chance for a cure for prostate and breast cancer may occur when the surgery is done after prostate cancer is quieted by giving hormones to block the male hormone, testosterone, and breast cancer is blocked by giving hormones to block the female hormone, estrogen. I'm Dr. Gabe Mirkin on Fitness. Eschwege P et al.