This is true even if there are no obvious symptoms of prostate enlargement. If cancer is present, most of the treatments described in this chapter will do little or nothing to slow its progress, but it is not known whether testosterone treatment would exacerbate it or not. This biochemical strategy has achieved a moderate degree of clinical success and a considerable degree of commercial success. If you believe this myth, of course, then Proscar is just what the doctor ordered. The problem, as we pointed out in Chapter 8, is that BPH is a lot more complicated than just too much DHT binding too many androgen receptors for too long.
Effective treatment requires a strategy that approaches the problem from several different angles.
Although saw palmetto extract is used widely in Europe, it is largely rejected by physicians on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, it is derived from a plant native to the pine woods and sandy dunes of South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. Saw palmetto seeds have a long history in Native American medicine as a treatment for irritations of the urinary bladder, urethra, and prostate. 2 Exactly how saw palmetto works is not certain. What is certain is that, unlike finasteride, it appears to have a variety of different actions, any or all of which may be beneficial for prostatic health.