I’m a stage lll patient with a tumor out and against the rectum. 18 months of ADT lupron and zytiga with near 40 rounds of radiation.
I’ve been reading about a relationship between diabetes and prostate cancer. I was told that my treatment (reducing my testosterone) probably caused it to increase dramatically. I probably was pre diabetic for a long time. My first a1c was a year after my radiation treatment. It was 10+. Not good
Anyway I can tell you that a huge part of my fatigue turned out to be high glucose and controlling it woke me up. Check out the symptoms for diabetes. Same as low testosterone until the constant urinating starts and wakes you up to what’s really going on. Also breathing issues stopping me from doing anything. All diabetes not low testosterone. My T after 2 1/2 years is hitting 200 finally and I can really tell the difference between the 2 problems. Haven’t started the testosterone supplement for known reasons.
I’m now reading that diabetes is adding to the amount of reoccurrence and guys are more likely to die of the disease. Anyone out there have similar issues or seeing the articles. Kind of made me double down on my medication and diets.
Written by
lowT163
To view profiles and participate in discussions please or .
I know my a1c went up 1 whole point ..5.6 to 6.6....after 1 yr adt/ erleada.....it is known for that...the metformin i also take is supposed to HELP with pc ...but i was on it when i got this shit......so i debunk that with my own scientific proclamation....i was able to bring down a1c a lil by divorcing little debbie....she was a bad lay anyway....good luck....on you journey bw
My A1c must have been high going in to therapy but my energy level was not affected. Working 6 and 7 days a week. So I’m trying to tell myself to add a testosterone supplement to help battle the high glucose level.
Actually my doc wants me to push it above 300 but I’ve refused. Seems wrong. Spend 18 months driving it down just to pump it up. Now I’m reading that the higher your A1C the more likely you are to reoccur. John’s Hopkins says.
Have diabetes 2 and Prostate Cancer, twerp of a diabetes doctor specialist, whilst yearly blood urine, sugar too high, decided to up my metformin [actually something beginning with S, threw it out,], dramatic anal fissures, which did not help my PC treatment, decided as far as Diabetes treatment will do it myself until next November, yes heard that myself Metformin ok with PC, will keep on same dosage 😝 going nicely without his help🙄
I'll get checked next November, my diabetes 2 is not too serious🤞 if I'm still here? I KNOW there will be a lot of change in my bodily functions, by that time, maybe someone will have taken his place😝
I would, except, a broken skull in 2018, causing equilibrium, and lack of balance, although I have altered my own diet, simple and sugar free, it will help!👍
it’s the reoccurrence part that got my attention. I’m closing in on 3 years with no psa move. My tumor was way out of the prostate so I have a pretty good chance of of seeing adt again.
For sure. I wrote to post because I didn’t even think about diabetes. Your focus is so dedicated to fighting the cancer and you(me) are always exhausted you just don’t think about anything else. I’m doing the endocrinologist, high fiber, drugs of all kinds Now. Should have started it at the same time as the ADT. Of course we all should have a constant BMI of 24 and eat a high fiber low carb low protein diet. Just not the American way. Also no doctor in the 4 years of treatment ever mentioned it. Just hope this opens a few eyes.
I’m not sure what ‘breathing issues stopping me from doing anything’ means but if it means you have actually stopped moving you need to address that. Otherwise you will soon be in far greater difficulty than you are now.
As for the diabetes, ‘doubling down on diets’ is vague, what diets are you referring to? I would try minimizing or even eliminating carbohydrates from my diet for a while if I were you and see how it goes. Dramatic change for the better most likely, especially if paired with exercise.
when your A1C hits 10 like mine did you will have breathing issues. Feels like a weight sitting on your chest. Had a hearth cath, breathing tests by the pulmonologist that issues me my cpap. Nobody said hey dummy check your sugar.
I brought up the fact that my glucose was elevated after use of ADT (this month finishes 21 months) to my RO and he blew it off. But there is plenty of evidence that ADT use messes with blood chemistry in general and blood glucose specifically. This article came to mind and it points out what I have found; hard physical exercise reduces the impact of and severity from ADT side effects. Look at the impact that low card diets have on blood sugar; dramatic with very low 'p' values...all RCT's as well. See what you think...TNX
Perhaps get it checked by an endo. ADT is widely known to cause metabolic syndrome but RO might not care. Not sure why they do comprehensive care and expect patients to play their own doctor.
that’s exactly why I wrote the post. Wondering how many out there had the terrible (expected )fatigue just to find out half of it was type 2 diabetes. The once a month blood test I got was always around 130 during the 18 months of treatment. Never did an A1C until the constant urination started. Not very smart on my part, but all I wanted was to get back to work.
you are right about everything. The way it went for me was I had 8 months of lupron and Zytiga to shrink the tumor before the radiation. I was ok at that point. As the 39 rounds of radiation ended my fatigue wouldn’t let me out of my chair. Everyone said that the radiation damage had to repair itself and that made you tired. Ok. I still hadn’t checked my A1c. My last lupron shot was a 6 month shot I had never done before. It kicked my butt I thought. That must have been when my A1c hit 10. I just never knew what was going on. I start trulicity and my A1C foes to 6.5 and I wake up. Don’t be dumb as me. I changed family doctor and asked my MO about it and he said yes that happens. Cover your butt.
Nothing anecdotal, but fact tracked by blood testing throughout the course. Prediabetic at diagnosis, then elevated during short course ADT, was able to control with diet alone, then full blown with permanent ADT. Complicated by Oxalate Calcium kidney stone formation, so diet is a complex ridiculous minefield. Diabetes is a progressive disease, but there's certainly something afoot to the insulin resistance that occurs with the ADT. Absent mitigation, I'm sure also lends to increase co-morbidities for PCa patients. Problem is if it isn't "cancer" most oncologist don't swim in the pool, so you need to see other doctors to address the glucose issue. It is all a maddening disconnection from causation, not association! The main concept I guess is you're better off dealing with diabetes than cancer, no? If the drug works to control the cancer and elevated blood sugars are a side effect, but not one with acute impact, who's to say what is best? PCa tracking is ridiculously difficult due to the typical extended timeline of development for most patients. Add to it the average age of diagnosis and the crossover with typical life health events for aging population, well... I guess I can see why doctors would shy away from trying to put two & two together here.
As cancer patients, we face daily decisions not just in regard to the cancer that is looking for dominance over our bodies, but we become more aware of general health as well. We monitor a host of bodily function via routine blood testing that helps identify cancer triggers or markers in regard to it's activity, and also as an aside, can see how our bodies are responding otherwise. Again, even when other issues appear, the oncologist deflect, they have training in their specific field, and that's ok, I rather appreciate a doctor telling me something is outside their expertise. But the same doctor dismissing these things as being unrelated is not.
As an example, for a few years my scans had noted calculus in my right kidney, and never a word about it. Nothing... Not a "hey" you might want to see someone about this. Until it grew and became a problem. If course, that "Murphy" guy dictating that it became a problem right in the middle of my 6 chemo cycles when I could do nothing about it! Lol... Can't make it up! Can only guess how better things might have been had I mitigates that stone prior to other treatment
It's all good... We need to try and maintain general health while traveling this path. I find it interesting though how the PCa is not glucose driven, moreso by lipids, but does the ADT over a long duration drive it there? We are aware the glucose becomes involved in late stage PCa progression, we don't know why. It's all good, thanks for giving me another day of brain fodder to contemplate!
what woke me up this week was finding the study by John’s Hopkins saying diabetes causes more reoccurrence and more prostate cancer patients die from the disease than those that control their sugar. Good part for me was how much better I felt after I got it under control. Stay lean as possible.
And I'm left to wonder causation or association? Diabetes is already associated with a 10 year reduced life expectancy, how that data overlaps in regard to average age of diagnosis (PCa) with general OS and life expectancy is not something so simple to isolate. My opinion of course... And we can't remove the cancer to see if the person would also rebound with their diabetes! Cancer is incurable. So I'd like to see that link/study...
I was just looking on the internet and typed in diabetes and prostate cancer when I found the John’s Hopkins article. Check it out. Sounded like they had studied it
IMHO, prediabetes is a scam. (I am not a physician.) You're either diabetic or you're not. I have stage 4 prostate cancer and diabetes. Apparently the Lupron and Erleada had an adverse affect on thryoid production so now I take a large dose of Synthroid every day. That's the only tie-in with diabetes and cancer that I'm aware of.
Diabetes is a progressive disease. It gets worse over time. So blood glucose trending up, is not a scam. It's an indicator that you may wind up with less resistance as you age.
Controlling it early can help offset and delay the progression. The OP presents in interesting issue, if you examine the side effects of much of the drugs you'll receive for your PCa, elevated Blood Glucose is a noted issue. Now... Whether or not it is a natural progression in individual's age (associated) or actually caused by the drug... How do we know? Isolate the effect?
But being pre-diabetic isn't a scam at all. I guess the same then could be said for a person who has a 4+ PSA during a routine health examine? Lol
my psa at its highest was 4.2 and the tumor was out of the prostate against my rectum so standard psa numbers aren’t the best guide for cancer or no cancer.
I believe the relationship is the lowering of the testosterone which knocked me out. I was below 3 for 2 years and below 50 for another year. This last partial year it finally started to move. I hit 200 and have stalled again but way better. Weight has started to come off a little. My BMI is 29 and A1C near 7. No doubt low testosterone helps along the diabetes.
In a sense it’s true that ‘pre diabetic’ is analogous to the well known ‘a little bit pregnant’. Most Americans and other Western populations have huge numbers of diagnosed and undiagnosed ‘pre diabetics’. Certainly with age and no significant intervention it gets worse. Certainly it is a serious health risk, in the presence or absence of other diseases.
The negative synergistic effects of metabolic syndrome, which of course diabetes is a key component of, is well known and proven. Adding ADT to the mix is gas on the fire every time.
Coolone makes an important point about another synergy, that of multiple co morbidities and aging. What’s killing us?
Sleuthing the cause of health issues can cause diet and other factors to appear a ‘complicated ridiculous minefield’ as he put it. Indeed preserving good health as we age becomes the hardest job of our lives, greatly exacerbated by ADT. For this reason the first principles of exercise and diet should be well sorted before other considerations.
A healthy lifestyle slays all the ravages of aging! Until it doesn’t of course. Decay will do that. But it’s by far the best tool in our box. To that end, elevated glucose and even diabetes itself can always be strongly mitigated or even eliminated by exercise, eliminating carbohydrates and dietary restriction in general.
I still have less experience with dietary changes. Like many athletes I’ve always kept the furnace hot so I can eat what I want. Not sustainable past a certain age. Through either wisdom or stupid blind luck I gravitate towards a lower carb diet as I get older. At some point I started seeing high carb intake for what it is-just another addiction. And like most addictions, removal of the driver goes from a seemingly impossible and hideously unpleasant task to the relief of a ball and chain removal.
The longer we last, the harder the work for less result. Good times! Especially compared to the alternatives.
My husband's glucose level has been rising... it is now 188. He gets mad when I mention maybe he should try to limit his sugar and carbs. His father had diabetes. He told me his number was high because he didn't fast before the test. Your thoughts? Should I not worry?
no need to worry. The diabetes will take hold pretty quick and make him miserable enough by making him urinate constantly ,fall asleep after every meal and his vision will be blurry. That will be around the constant 180/200 mark. Higher than that bad stuff really starts. Get his a1c every three months at an endocrinologist. It’s scary stuff but completely reversible.
fighting high glucose much harder than quitting smoking. So figure out what he likes that’s low carb and no soda pop,beer,bread,pizza, all the good stuff. It’s just hard.
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
testosterone, following cancer, treatment with stable PSA
Sugar and Prostate Cancer 
Low testosterone & high-risk prostate cancer
Prostate cancer treatment and sexual mutilation 
Radiation for Advance Prostate Cancer?
