A few of you have asked about this, so here it is without the jargon. Prostate cancer grows on testosterone, that's not all of it, but it is a primary driver. Hormone therapy takes the testosterone away, or stops it reaching the cancer. That is the whole mechanism. It is not a chemo drip. Usually a tablet once a day, or an injection that lasts a while. Dr Laura Graham at the University of Colorado said something in a piece this week that I thought was the most honest line I have read on the subject: "Most men are not enthusiastic when we tell them that we're going to be taking away their testosterone." No. We are not. She tells men to expect menopause. Her word, not mine. Hot flashes, fatigue, mood changes, being more tearful or more irritable than usual. Over the longer run she keeps an eye on bone density, heart risk and blood sugar. And her instruction to her own patients: half an hour that gets the heart rate up, five days a week, plus resistance work twice a week. She does not present that as optional. I am not a doctor and none of this is advice for anybody's particular case. Your oncologist knows your numbers and I do not. For those of you who are on it, or who have been: what did nobody warn you about? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Something out of Harvard this week that I have been chewing on, and I want to know whether it matches what you have seen. Lorelei Mucci, a professor of epidemiology there, says men who are married or partnered get screened for prostate cancer at higher rates than men who are single. Which sounds obvious for about four seconds, and then it is not obvious at all. Because almost everything we do in here is aimed at partners. The wife who noticed. The daughter who asked. That is the strongest lever we have and I am not giving it up. But it only works if there is somebody in the house. Think about the man who lost his wife three years ago. The one who has been divorced since his forties. The one who never married and lives perfectly happily on his own. Nobody is going to mention his prostate over breakfast, because there is no breakfast conversation. Mucci also says a lot of men still think the check is the physical exam. It is a blood test. One sentence fixes that, if anybody bothers to say it. I keep landing on the same thought. Most of us have a man like that in our lives and we do not think of ourselves as his person, because we are not his wife and we are not his kid. So we assume somebody else is handling it. Nobody else is handling it. So who is yours? And have you ever actually said it to him? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

This is a common topic here, but5 I wanted you to know that even a spouse who is a physician cannot make the man go and get checked. A man in Illinois, Donald Dotson, 59. Getting up more at night, flow had changed. His wife told him to get screened. She is a physician. He put it off anyway. When he finally did go, his PSA was up and there was cancer right through the prostate. Surgery, then six weeks of radiation. He is back on the basketball court with his son now, and he speaks to men's groups about it. His father had it. Several uncles had it too. He still assumed it would miss him. His own words on why he waited: embarrassment and fear. I find that oddly comforting, and I mean that. Every partner in here who has been told she is nagging, or has quietly wondered whether she pushed too hard or not hard enough, can put that down. The man had a doctor in his own kitchen. Information was never the thing that was missing. And for the men reading this: he was doing everything right. Walking. Playing ball with his kid. Feeling fine. Feeling fine is not evidence. So, honestly, and this stays in here - what was the actual thing that stopped you, or stops you now? Not the reason you gave out loud. The real one. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Samuel Martin is the publisher of a newspaper in Alabama. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer just over five years ago after a routine physical. Only his wife, his daughters and a few close friends knew. Nobody else. Not for five years. The whole time, he carried on telling other men to go and get checked. He wrote this about it. "Sometimes I am sure they may have wondered why I knew so much about prostate cancer." That line made me laugh, and then it stopped being funny. He has now written the whole thing down in public for the first time, and his reason is the one I keep coming back to. He said that silence can unintentionally suggest that serious illness is rare, distant, or somehow incompatible with an ordinary life. That is it. That is the damage, in one sentence. Every man who keeps it quiet makes the next man think it does not happen to people like him, or that he should be ashamed to talk about it. And I want to be fair to the men who stay quiet, because he was fair to himself. He did not say hiding it was wrong. He said he had wondered whether the secrecy protected him or isolated him, and that it did a little of both. Both can be true at once. I believe that. So, a question for the room, and no need to name anybody. Who in your life is telling everybody else to look after themselves while saying nothing at all about their own health? It might be a brother. It might be a mate. It might be you. What would make it easier to say it out loud? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Roy Johnson is a journalist in Alabama. He was 11 when his father died, and nobody told him what of. That was how it was done then. Children were not told. His brother went most of the way through his life believing it had been lung cancer. Years later, as an adult, Roy found his father's death certificate. It said prostate cancer. He had been carrying a family history he did not know he had. He has prostate cancer himself now. Found in 2025 after his PSA went up. His brother was diagnosed about a year after him and is having radiation five days a week. Roy prays for him at 8:45 every morning, because that is when his brother has to report for it. I sat with that one for a while yesterday. We talk a lot in here about men not talking to their sons. This is the generation before that. Our fathers were not told either. The silence is older than us, and it has been handed down like a set of tools nobody wanted. So, a question for the room, and I would rather have a straight answer than a polite one. Do you actually know what your father died of? Not what you were told at the time. What the certificate says. I do know my father died old, but no prostate cancer that I am aware of. My brother did have prostate cancer 5 years ago, that I was unaware of until earlier this year. So nobody is immune from not knowing. And if you do not know, say so. That is the useful answer, and I suspect there will be more of us in that boat than anyone expects. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about