Peter Starr is a 13-year survivor of a prostate cancer diagnosis without conventional treatment, Founder of Healing Arts Education Foundation and the producer of the DVD set “Surviving Prostate Cancer without Surgery, Drugs or Radiation” www.survivingprostatecancer.org. Peter will be visiting the UK in July to show his iconic motorcycle film “Take It To The Limit” in conjunction with a talk about his experiences with prostate cancer at four motorcycle dealers:
20th July - GT Motorcycles, 10-12 Elburton Rd, Plymouth, PL9 8JQ
In June of 2004, at age 61, I received a diagnosis that changed my life in ways that I would never have forecast in my wildest dream, prior to that day. I want to tell you my story simply to show that no matter what some well meaning doctors might tell you, their advice regarding a chronic disease such as prostate cancer, might be more self serving that you can imagine and possibly not at all in your best interest. Particularly if you plan on maintaining a good quality of life into your old age.
My working life had been a great mixture of experiences in the entertainment industry as a rock and roll radio disc jockey, a documentary film maker and later a motorcycle stunt rider. In some ways I had managed to thread my way through some pretty amazing experiences and, except for one major motorcycle accident four years prior to my diagnosis, came through it all relatively unscathed. Or so I had thought. What I did not know at that time was the lifestyle I had been leading, coupled with some emotional baggage I had been carrying around for several decades, contributed greatly to the chance that I would at some point get a diagnosis of cancer.
My diet was typical Standard American Diet (SAD) consisting of boxed cereals hydrated with 2% milk, the usual fast food hamburgers, processed foods from the supermarket, frozen pizza, more alcohol than I should have been drinking and although not considered obese, I was thirty pounds over weight and exercise, other than what I was instructed to do as part of my rehabilitation from my motorcycle accident, was something other people did. One might have thought that if I had not been diagnosed with a cancer, I might well have keeled over with a heart attack. To a large extent my diagnosis was a wake-up call in so many ways. One for which to this day I am very grateful, because the alternative might have been to check out permanently and a lot earlier than I would have wished.
Equally important, in terms of the choices I had for my future was the situation brought about by the American Health Insurance system. It was a working (or lack of working) circumstance that placed me to where my health insurance was about to expire. Suddenly I was facing a cancer diagnosis and without insurance to pay for conventional treatments (surgery, radiation etc.). As shocking as it was at the time, and certainly it filled my time with unneeded anxiety, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise and caused me to have to rapidly look at what alternatives were available for me.
There had to be a better way was my predominant thought. Now it was up to me to find it. I read every book I could find on prostate cancer, and talked to one or two conventional doctors and soon realized that as long as these doctors new each other, they were most unlikely to contradict a treatment recommendation. One truly had to look beyond the immediate cadre of physicians and find others that truly could give a second or third opinion.
I was in the middle of that process when I read a book by Larry Clapp called “Prostate Health in 90 Days”, and I can honestly say it changed my whole way of thinking. Through a complete change in his diet and lifestyle, Larry had reversed his own prostate cancer and had not only written a book about it but had also been interviewed on national television. I planned a program for the restoration of my health based on what I had read in his book and my new adventure had begun. Not long into the program I met Larry, and started a friendship that lasted until his fatal heart attack some years later.
After five years of studying everything I could get my hands on that would give me some insight as to how to reverse my prostate cancer, putting it into practice, and witnessing progress to the point where my prostate cancer oncologist said that the only remnant of cancer he saw was likely scar tissue from the previous tumor. He further said, that whatever I was doing, continue to do it because he had nothing in his toolbox that could do any more that I had already done.
About that time, feeling confident about what I had learned and put into practice, I started production of a documentary that resulted in a 3DVD set containing the insight and advice from 56 doctors from 8 countries on 3 continents, including English doctors Julian Kenyon M.D. and Chris Astill-Smith D.O. It took almost three and a half years to complete including a sophisticated piece of animation to illustrate the prostate and it uniqueness, but finally it was brought to market and is available from our website in the US www.survivingprostatecancer.org. A truncated version was broadcast on American television last year. Although at the moment there is no distribution in the UK, we do ship copies direct from our US office.
I had spent over 20 years making documentary films for television so rather than write a book at that time, I made this documentary. To me, documentary production felt more natural and furthermore, I reasoned, since men are more “visual” in the way they absorb information, I thought I might get more of them to watch a DVD than I would to read a 300+ page book.
It is very easy to fall in line with conventional thinking, particularly since the business pattern for chronic diseases these days seems to value continued treatment rather than a cure. Also, if one looks carefully at the success rate(or lack of) of conventional treatments, one surely is compelled to question what they are being offered in the USA and the UK as opposed to many other countries such as Switzerland and Germany.
Although all of my motivation to look beyond the norm came from wanting to not be a victim of a treatment protocol that, in my layman’s opinion, was flawed, I cannot leave this article without relating one other reason that I was not about to accept what a doctor might tell me without significant personal research. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer at about age 69. The reason I am not sure is that when he told me, he was living in Solihull and I was living in Los Angeles and prostate cancer seemed so common it did not seem significant at the time. My father was given a drug called Flutamide, an androgen deprivation drug that cut he production of testosterone. At that time the medical standard of care was under the impression that testosterone either caused prostate cancer or exacerbated it. So if surgery or radiation was not to be prescribed, then by all means cut off the testosterone.
One of the direct effects, you will note that I do not use the term ”side effect”, of cutting testosterone, is that the other functions of testosterone, maintaining healthy muscles and bones, are equally affected. The consequence of which is the skeletal structure becomes brittle and shrinks, and the muscles weaken. The net result is that other reasons cause the death of the patient, such as not recovering from a fall where major bones were fractured, or, the most important muscle of all fails. This results in the term myocardial infarction being listed as the cause of death, not death by the treatment for prostate cancer, as is the case. This is what happened to my father under the English medical system but it was not until I was researching my own treatments tat I discovered this. And yes this provided more ammunition to continue and deepen my own research.
“Surviving Prostate Cancer without Surgery, Drugs or Radiation,” was the result of all that effort. At that time it was the most comprehensive production of its kind and still provides a very unique education for men and their partners about what I did in my own treatment and giving them confidence to not be intimidated by doctors, who, according to the author Richard Diaz, “are prisoners of their education and shackled by their profession.”
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