- And now I want to introduce, um Dr. Joseph Sugar who is our special pre-lunch lecturer. I've known
him for a long time and he has a long-standing board member for California Prostate Cancer
Coalition. In all the prostate cancer conferences and meetings that I've ever been to they have
never ever had a primary care provider talk about the role of the primary care provider in prostate
cancer. So we're really thrilled today to have him address that subject. He is an outstanding family
physician at the Eisenhower Health Center in La Quinta, which is near Palm Springs for those of
you not familiar with Southern California. An MD MPH, he's faculty for the Eisenhower
family medicine residency program, and a clinical professor at U.S.C's Keck School of Medicine in
Los Angeles. Also he has a special interest in nutrition and healthy lifestyle living so that
ties in with the rest of our afternoon as well. And a very detailed bio of Dr. Sugar appears in
our prostate cancer conference brochure. And by the way the agenda is in this brochure, I
heard some of you asking where the agenda is. A long detailed bio of Dr. Sugar is in there.
So I urge you all to read it, and he has given over 1100 special invited presentations. Today
will be over 1100 and one and I'd like you all to thank Dr. Sugar for his special pre-lunch lecture.
Well thank you Merrill. It's a tremendous honor for me to be here. I have learned a ton this morning.
what a privilege and and very impressed work. So I congratulate all of the speakers. I'm gonna get
you to lunch on time, I promise. Because you know I can condense what I think the most important
things I'd like to say. First of all I hope all of you have a personal primary care physician.
I hope it's someone, who is you're not only a person who can coordinate your care, treat all
your common health problems, be a health coach and an advisor as you navigate the complicated
health care system. There were so many times this morning where I heard patient preference, patient
preference, and I'm just imagining most patients who haven't gone to medical school sitting there
with these deep knowledge experts who all have different tools in their tool house to offer you.
And how do you make that kind of a decision by yourself, or with your family, and it's very very
frightening. And I think your personal primary care physician, not a deep knowledge expert by any means,
but someone that you can bounce it off of and and I think do a much better job coming to a decision.
Now you want to know your primary care physicians. They don't all come the same way. First of all make
sure your primary care physician is supportive of diagnosing breast cancer or prostate cancer.
Believe it or not, in the world of primary care there's been this backlash against even diagnosing
prostate cancer. There's the old common saying you don't die of prostate cancer you die with
prostate cancer. And and of course there is some truth to such a statement but it's not a statement
of health when you've got 30,000 Americans, men dying every year of prostate cancer. That is a
condition to be taken seriously. But you have to sort it out because we diagnose almost 200,000
men with prostate cancer every year. So it's a it is a complicated thing to sort out where
you're at, your overall health otherwise, what's your life expectancy with respect to cardiac
disease and other factors, will all go into your decision. I was impressed with the clear
delineation of active surveillance for 3 plus 3 Gleason prostate cancer as the right way to
go. And so your use your primary care physician. The primary care physician will also coordinate
other aspects of your care. When you have prostate cancer, it's not like the rest of your body goes on
hold. You need a primary care physician to work with while you work with your prostate cancer
treatment team. Besides that I just wanted to say that getting prostate cancer is a wake up call to
taking your overall health seriously. Prostate cancer is one of the 12 cancers that have been
clearly identified with overweight and obesity, and that's an epidemic. You know there's a very
smart Harvard Oncology, when he was a fellow, Siddhartha Mukherjee who about nine years ago
wrote an entire biography of cancer called The Emperor of all Maladies. And he traced in that
tremendous book which was turned into a series on PBS, that cancer actually used to be kind of rare. It
was not a dominant form of disease like it is now. It is increasing and it's not increasing because
our genetics have changed. It is increasing because we have a cancer generating lifestyle. And and
getting over cancer, beating cancer isn't just staying the same and throwing your lot with these
tremendous combination therapists. You want to do your part. Like June Chen's talk, maybe the most
important talk you're going to hear this afternoon, about what you can do to become healthier. Because
if you're gonna beat cancer, you need to eat right, you need to realize that sugar feeds cancer. There
are nutritional methods of starving cancer. A Harvard Dr., William Li and that's spelled Li just
published a book called Eat to Beat Disease going over more than 200 food products that you can use
to to strengthen five of your defense systems that help you beat disease including cancer. So besides
going along with all these important therapies, and it isn't a matter of - okay I'm not gonna get cancer
treatment I'm just gonna do healthy lifestyle. Well that's a foolish decision. Very nice study in the
last year showed that people who did not want to be treated for their cancer and just use healthy
lifestyle died at twice the rate of people who were willing to undergo good treatment. So it's
a combination, but do your part. I was observing that it appeared to me that every one of our
speakers this morning looked pretty healthy. It looked pretty lean. Okay there's a message there.
I think they know something. Take good care of yourself. Work with your primary care physician.
I can imagine that if you've been diagnosed with prostate cancer and you're plugged in to
a treatment program, one of the things you can do with your primary care primary care physician is
say - get me healthy. What can I do to improve my own health so I can increase my chances to beat this
disease? So having said that I'm going to send you off to a healthy lunch. Thank you for having me.
you