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One In Six
June 19th, 2009 | Dean Arrindell
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Last year, I made the decision to run in the Father’s Day Race Against Prostate Cancer. It's a five-mile run that raises awareness and funds to fight the disease. It's been ten years, though, since I've been in an organized race. So, why am I waking up early on Sunday morning to participate in this run?
First, as I wrote last week, I needed a goal. It's getting harder and harder to go to the gym. I value my health, but going to the same gym and doing the same workouts has gotten boring. I needed to change things up and have another reason to stay fit. But once I started reading the statistics on prostate cancer, this race became much more to me than being able to run five miles in a decent amount of time.
One in six American men will get prostate cancer. As with all cancers, diet and obesity are factors (that's another reason to stay in shape), but genetics and ethnicity are factors, too. If you have a father, brother or son with prostate cancer, you are more likely to get it. African-Americans are 2.5 times more likely than white men to get prostate cancer. And whites are statistically more likely to be stricken with the disease than Asian and Latino men.
One in six American men will get prostate cancer.
Considering those statistics, self-interest is another reason I'm running. I'm African-American and have a have a family history of prostate cancer. I'm not only honoring my relatives who fought this disease, I also want to stay healthy, do what I can to prevent from getting it, raise awareness and raise money for research and treatment.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion in those areas. Even though a lot of men get prostate cancer, it can be a slow-growing cancer. Because of that, some believe surgery to remove the prostate or radiation to shrink the cancerous cells may not be a proper course of treatment. Incontinence and impotence are possible complications with surgery, while diarrhea and painful defecation are problems with radiation. For those patients in which the cancer isn’t spreading, some ask why risk having those side effects? What's worse, a study recently showed the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test commonly used to test for prostate cancer doesn't save a lot of lives. In fact, that study showed that results from the PSA test would statistically cause many men to pursue unnecessary surgery or radiation. Even though more research is needed, there are obstacles to it getting done. Advocacy and awareness is low compared to some other cancers, and finding men to participate in trials is proving difficult.
Those are a lot of reasons to run five miles on Sunday, and I’ll be thinking about all of them over the course of the morning. But with all those heavy reasons, I still want to finish with a good time. For me, that’s under 45 minutes.
For more information about prostate cancer, check out the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society.
To help me raise funds to fight prostate cancer, please go to my fundraising page. Any amount will help.
Related Topics: exercise, health, Prostate Cancer
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Dean Arrindell | 2 Comments »
One In Six
(via Facebook, MySpace, Digg, email and more)
June 19th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Good luck with the race!!!
June 20th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Thanks!