(HealthDay is the new name for HealthScoutNews.)
FRIDAY, July 18, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- First came word Wednesday that scientists have discovered a baldness drug can prevent prostate cancer, making it the first medication to reduce the risk of the tumors.
But the drug, finasteride, may soon have some big-time competition that doesn't cost a cent.
Frequent masturbation, especially during the young adult years, can lower a man's chances of developing prostate cancer, a new study claims.
It's not clear why masturbation may help men avoid prostate tumors. One theory is that purging the gland regularly clears it of cancer-causing substances. Another suggests it allows cells in the organ to become more cancer-resistant.
But the study, by Australian researchers, says that the more and the earlier, the better.
Several doctors who were asked to comment on the study declined to do so, saying they hadn't read it yet.
They included Dr. Ira Sharlip, a San Francisco urologist and sexual medicine expert, who urges caution on interpreting the Australian research. But he calls the possible connection between self-gratification and better health potential "dynamite."
If doctors could tell young men that they're less likely to get prostate cancer if they masturbate, "that would be one hell of a message," Sharlip says. "That's going to give everybody a license to have a lot of sex."
The study, reported July 17 in the New Scientist, compared the sex habits and cancer risk in 2,338 Australian men, of whom 1,079 had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Those who reported ejaculating more between the ages of 20 and 50 were less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Men who masturbated more than five times a week while in their 20s had about two-thirds the risk of developing prostate cancer, compared to men who did so infrequently.
"It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis," study leader Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria, in Melbourne, told the magazine. "The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."
The findings appear in BJU International, a European urology journal.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men, trailing only skin cancer. This year, nearly 221,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with the disease, and 28,900 will die of it, according to the American Cancer Society.
More information
Try the American Urological Association, the National Prostate Cancer Coalition or the University of Michigan.
