One of the ongoing, pressing questions in our world is: What is the cure to cancer?  While some treatments and medicines have been discovered which may aid in the recovery process, there is still no known cure.  So, I decided to do some research on what other factors could possibly prevent cancer before it ever even strikes.  I was expecting to find that you should eat certain foods or something along those lines, but what I found is a theory that is a bit different than that.

Prostate cancer is the development of cancer in the prostate, which is a gland in the male reproductive system.  It usually is slow growing and can easily spread to other parts in the body such as the bones and lymph nodes.  Dr. David Samadi, the first surgeon in the nation to successfully perform a robotic surgery redo, gives his male patients a simple prescription to help lower their prostate cancer risks: “Have more sex.”

At first, a study was done in Canada which involved 3,200 men. Half of the men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, while the other half were a healthy, controlled group. The men were all questioned on their sexual history and how many women they have slept with in their life time so far.  The study found that men who had slept with 20 or more women had a 28% drop in the chances of one day developing prostate cancer.  The study was published in the journal, “Cancer Epidemiology.”  The study went on to say that the men who had reported to be virgins or have had only very minimal sexual experience were twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Don’t get too excited though, boys…As more research was done, it was suggested that frequent ejaculation was the more important key in the prevention of prostate cancer and that the number of women did not matter as much.  Frequent sexual activity was the key and would be just as beneficial with a single, committed partner.

Taking a closer look at the study, it is good that the participants of the study came in big numbers. 3,200 is a wide range of people and is large enough to hold pretty random.  It is also vital that there is a controlled group, which there was by the group of healthy men with no signs of prostate cancer.  While the large, controlled study definitely should grab some attention, there are third variables that could be playing a role which cannot be ignored.  Family history, exercise, genes, and daily diets could have caused the men’s likelihood of getting or not getting prostate cancer.

While these third possible variables are important to keep in mind, the sexual activity aspect should not be ruled out.  Looking a bit further into the reasoning behind it, it is found that men who do not ejaculate often can have inflamed cells which gather in the seminal vesicles.  The seminal vesicles are adjacent to the prostate gland.

After reading the results of the study, it got me thinking about how the study was geared towards straight men and their sexual activity with women.  Would the same results be found with men who are gay?? Is it simply the ejaculation that creates benefits like the study suggests or does the female body somehow play a role in it too?

According to researchers at the University of Montreal, men who slept with 20 or more other men increased their risk of prostate cancer by double and made an aggressive cancer five times more likely. While at this time there is little information explaining why sex with woman reduces prostate cancer, but male on male sex doubles it; it is an interesting experimental result that will need to be tested further.  Despite not knowing exactly why it is, it raises the question of the female body playing a role in lowering the chances of prostate cancer for their male partner.  Is it a bigger process than just lots of ejaculation? Looking at what we know with the gay sex results doubling the prostate cancer chances, it appears that it could be possible it is a bigger science than just frequent ejaculation.

This thought brought up the question then of, does frequent masturbation reduce prostate cancer chances? After researching this, it was incredible how opposite the results were.  Some resources claimed that frequent masturabtion did in fact lower prostate cancer.  According to one study conducted by Harvard Medical School on men in their forties, the ones who reported to masturbating 21 times or more per month had a 33% lowered risk of getting prostate cancer compared to the men who reported to masturbating only four to seven times per month. BBC News found the same results and summed up their findings by saying, “Men who ejaculated five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.”  However, other resources reported the exact opposite results. Overall, it can concluded that more time and research studies need to be done on this topic before anything can be proven.  In addition, as Andrew has taught us, the studies for this topic too need to be broad enough.  We do not know if the Harvard Medical study tested enough people to get a completely random result.  However, Harvard and BBC are both reputable sources which is always something worth considering when analyzing the results of a study.

While it is not proven that more frequent sexual activity is the direct cause of lowering prostate cancer chances, it certainly could be a factor.  Maybe next year in Andrew’s class more studies will have been done regarding gay men and prostate cancer correlational and this topic can be taken even further!

Work Cited:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3072021.stm

http://www.livescience.com/48858-link-between-sex-and-prostate-cancer.html

http://www.harvardprostateknowledge.org/does-frequent-ejaculation-help-ward-off-prostate-cancer