PSA Anyone?

Fellas, as soon as you hear the word or see the word …’prostate’, you will be traumatised all over again, remembering the twang of your doctors silicone glove just before he parts your cheeks!

Whether you’re owning that prostate, once had one, never had one, or are just here for the truth, pull up a chair, sit on your prostate or the space it once occupied... and become a true Minister of Health!

Today’s reminder is simple. A number is not a diagnosis.

Nope...It’s a clue.



PSA. Cholesterol. Blood sugar. Hormones. Inflammation markers. They’ve all been promoted as crystal balls, when in reality they’re more like mood rings, highly sensitive, easily influenced, and prone to drama!

Let Us Take PSA.

Prostate specific, not cancer specific.

It rises if you’re inflamed, infected, cycling uphill, stressed, ageing, or frankly… alive. Yet men are still being funnelled from “routine blood test” to biopsy to lifelong consequences, often for something that would never have harmed them.

That’s not medicine. That’s marker worship. Markers should be read and read in context

Alongside symptoms

With history

With imaging

With common sense

And with the ‘patient’ fully informed. If you are a bloke...that's you!

Instead, they’re used like tripwires. Step on the number and cue panic, protocols, profit.

And ladies , don’t switch off. This applies to you too.

CA-125. Cholesterol. Bone density. Thyroid numbers.

Same game, different organs.

And Us…. Over here? We don’t heal spreadsheets. We heal people. Come and be a minister of health on my website and round table on a Thursday night at 8 pm GMT. The Natural Army Recruits will welcome you.

Just purchase a membership here. It’s £5.99 a month.

https://kateshemirani.com/shop

Back to those tests….Before you fear a marker, ask what it’s actually marking.

Before you consent to a pathway, ask who benefits from it.

Before you accept a label, ask whether it changes outcomes or just billing for the NHS or Private health Provider.

And why sovereignty starts with understanding your own body not surrendering it to medical algorithms...hence the digital ID!

Eat well. Cut down on the red wine, meat, diary and sugar fellas for starters. Hydrate properly

Stretch like the cat and dog when you wake and before the walk

And remember, you are not a lab value nor a lab rat!

Now you know what to do...share the love!

Kate xx

Now read on.

The Four Fundamental Arguments Against PSA as a Diagnostic Test for Prostate Cancer

1. PSA Is Prostate-Specific, Not Cancer-Specific

Prostate-specific antigen (PSA), first characterised in the 1970s, is produced by all prostate tissue, including normal prostate cells, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), inflamed tissue, and cancerous cells. PSA elevation therefore does not diagnose cancer.

PSA levels can rise due to multiple non-cancerous factors, including

Recent ejaculation

Prostate inflammation or infection

Benign prostate enlargement

Mechanical stimulation such as cycling or prostate examination

These confounding factors are rarely explained to patients, yet they significantly affect PSA values. As a result, PSA testing lacks diagnostic specificity and produces misleading signals that are routinely interpreted as cancer risk when they are not.

2. There Is No PSA Threshold That Reliably Detects Prostate Cancer

There is no PSA level at which prostate cancer can be reliably confirmed or excluded. Men with very low PSA levels may harbour aggressive cancer, while men with very high PSA levels may have no cancer at all.

Clinical reality demonstrates that

Prostate cancer has been diagnosed in men with PSA levels below 1.0 ng/mL

Many men with PSA levels above 10–11 ng/mL have no malignancy

Biopsy thresholds were set arbitrarily and later lowered, not because of improved diagnostic accuracy, but to increase cancer detection rates. This practice led to a surge in biopsies and overdiagnosis, particularly of slow-growing tumours that would never have caused harm.

PSA therefore cannot function as a diagnostic discriminator, and its use leads to unnecessary investigations, anxiety, and invasive procedures.

3. PSA Cannot Distinguish Indolent From Aggressive Cancer

PSA testing is incapable of differentiating between

Indolent, non-lethal prostate cancers

Aggressive, fast-spreading prostate cancers

This limitation is often illustrated by the “turtle versus rabbit” analogy

The turtle represents slow-growing cancers that may never threaten life

The rabbit represents aggressive cancers capable of rapid spread and metastasis

PSA detects both equally, without distinction. As a result, large numbers of men are diagnosed with biologically insignificant cancers and subjected to surgery, radiation, or hormone therapy, while the test fails to reliably identify which cancers pose real danger.

This inability to distinguish biological behaviour renders PSA unsuitable as a diagnostic tool.

4. PSA Screening Does Not Reduce Overall Mortality and Causes Net Harm

Despite decades of widespread use, population-wide PSA screening has not been shown to extend life expectancy. Large studies and expert reviews have failed to demonstrate a meaningful reduction in prostate cancer mortality attributable to PSA screening.

What PSA screening does demonstrably cause is

Overdiagnosis

Overtreatment

Surgical complications such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction

Psychological distress

Harm to elderly and medically frail men unlikely to benefit

Notably, studies of US Veterans Affairs Medical Centers showed that large numbers of men over 85 years old, many with multiple serious illnesses and limited life expectancy, were still being screened with PSA tests, despite guidelines advising against this practice.

In effect, PSA screening becomes a randomised detection exercise, likened by senior urologists to “flipping a coin,” producing harm without clear benefit.

The Consolidated Conclusion?

PSA testing… and what it does & does not do….

Does not diagnose prostate cancer

Has no reliable diagnostic threshold

Cannot distinguish harmless from lethal disease

Does not reduce population mortality

Produces significant and measurable harm

As such, PSA fails the basic criteria of a diagnostic screening test and its continued use represents a structural failure in modern preventive medicine.

Bibliography

The Great Prostate Hoax – Richard J. Ablin PhD, Ronald Piana

Stamey TA et al. Prostate-specific antigen as a serum marker for adenocarcinoma of the prostate. New England Journal of Medicine.

Walter LC et al. PSA screening among elderly men with limited life expectancy. Journal of the American Medical Association.

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Screening for Prostate Cancer Recommendations.

Andriole GL et al. Mortality results from a randomized prostate-cancer screening trial. New England Journal of Medicine.

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