PROSTATE CANCER: CHAIN OF HORMONAL INTERACTIONS THAT AFFECT THE PROSTATE.
Remember the car trying to cross the border, and all the roadblocks set up to stop it at various points along the way? This is the key to how hormone therapy works. Each therapy targets a different link in the chain of hormonal interactions that affect the prostate.
This is a long and complicated chain; put together on paper, it’s a confusing jumble of letters, mostly consonants, that looks like alphabet soup. And if you’re like most men, just thinking about this muddle will make your eyes glaze over. But, stripped down to its essential steps, this code is not so tough to crack—you can do it! (And, you need to master this information, so you can not only understand what your doctor’s talking about, but help choose the treatment option that’s best for you.)
To understand this hormonal chain, let’s start at the beginning—the brain, where the hypothalamus makes, among other things, a substance called LHRH (luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone), which acts as a chemical signal. It’s dispatched in pulses, like Morse code or flashes of light, to the nearby pituitary gland. Its message? “Make LH and FSH” it tells the pituitary.
LH (luteinizing hormone) and FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) are other chemical signals, and they bring us to the testicles, or testes, where LH motivates certain cells (called testicular Leydig cells) to make testosterone. (FSH has its major effect on sperm production.)
*168\201\8*
