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Industry Profile
Ronald E. Wheeler, M.D.
By Jeff Morris
Ronald E. Wheeler, M.D., Medical Director of the Prostatitis and Prostate Cancer Center in Sarasota, FL, has a message
for you:
Please don't send me your patients! I'm not looking for referrals; I'm looking to help all doctors care for their
patients.
This may seem like an odd, and rather presumptuous, request. But before you ask, "Why would I even want to send my
patients to Dr. Wheeler?" consider this: There's a new case of prostate cancer diagnosed every three minutes in the U.S
making this an epidemic if not pandemic disease; nearly 35,000 men die of prostate cancer each year. And SEER data shows
that by the year 2045, no longer will that figure be 35,000. "The data projects nearly 100,000 men will die each year
from prostate cancer if the path we are on is not altered," warns Dr. Wheeler. "The lifetime risk that an adult male
will get prostate cancer is one in every five or six. We may die of other causes before prostate cancer gets to us - but
in 2045 prostate cancer will reign supreme."
But Dr. Wheeler has some interesting - and much more promising - figures he'd like to share with you as well. Here they are
in a basic outline:
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Traditionally, we generally look at PSA as a marker of prostate
cancer. The PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) blood test, available commercially since 1988, has revolutionized our
ability to detect prostate cancer, has increased the proportion of early stage cancers detected, and is at least
partially responsible for the recent decrease in prostate cancer mortality rates in the United States. |
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PSA is actually a poor marker for prostate cancer; it has well known
false negative and false positive rates, and 70% of biopsies performed as a result are negative or not indicated. But
PSA is an excellent marker as a barometer of prostate health. PSA is driven primarily by prostatitis - also an epidemic
disease, and associated with virtually all cases of prostate cancer. Prostatitis & Prostate Cancer Center data showed
unequivocally and convincingly that a PSA of greater than or equal to 1 translates 100% of the time to prostatitis, so
a PSA of greater than or equal to 1 is abnormal and unhealthy. And the lower the PSA, the healthier the prostate. |
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Cellular oxidative changes and free radical formation result from
chronic inflammatory states. It is well known that chronic disease such as colitis, cervicitis, gastritis, and
esophagitis lead to cancers of their respective organs. The inability of epidemiologists to establish a cause and
effect from a correlation, noted with large numbers of patients with prostatitis and prostate cancer, does not
mitigate against that relationship. The association of prostatitis to prostate cancer is highly suspected by David
Bostwick, M.D., Tim Moon, M.D., the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) and others. Factors that may
influence the likelihood for a cause and effect phenomenon may include, but are not limited to, prostatic
intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), zinc levels, the presence or absence of glutathione-s-transferase at the basal cell
layer, and/or altered endorphin activity. |
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A PSA of greater than or equal to 1 minimally indicates a less than
healthy prostate. Therefore, in this regard, PSA now serves as a barometer to prostate health, and is a more
meaningful marker. Data suggests that a new normal for PSA testing be recognized as less than 1. |
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In a study group of 20 patients, utilizing a nutritional formula Dr.
Wheeler developed and patented that combines antioxidants, immune boosters, anti-inflammatories, and beta sitosterols,
prostate cancer was suppressed or stabilized in all study participants. Among these participants, 90% reduced their
PSA by 48% - an unheard of result. There was a 40% drop in PSA among all men in this study. |
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After one year on his own formula, Dr. Wheeler's PSA had dropped 40%;
most important, it has remained at .3 for seven consecutive years. "That's unheard of in medicine," says Dr. Wheeler.
"I'm in my 50s. Most men do not have a PSA of .3 in their 40s, much less their 50s. My goal is to get all men back to
the health they had when they were teenagers." |
Whoa - let's back up here. Maybe we need to start the story at the
beginning. "I am a urologist of 20 years," recounts Dr. Wheeler. "Medicine was always something I had a great deal of
interest in. Many people say, generically, that they want to help people and stop their suffering, but I truly wanted to
make a difference by going into medicine." Dr. Wheeler graduated from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in 1979,
and completed his Urologic Surgical Residency training at Louisiana State University Medical School, New Orleans in 1985.
"Before you go into alternative medicine, you have to understand the standard that represents traditional medicine. I
couldn't have scripted it any better than to become a traditional urologist. It's the failure in medicine that has driven
me to look beyond what I was taught." What he was taught, and what he sees as failure, is related to the number one health
risk that men face: prostate disease. "Look at what we do with prostatitis," says Dr. Wheeler. "Ninety-five percent of all
cases are non-bacterial; despite this, 80% of all urologists and 90% of all doctors will write the patient a prescription
for antibiotics - so they are doomed to failure."
"I looked at things back in the mid 90s, after 10 years in practice studying what we thought was gospel," continues Dr.
Wheeler. "All men, if we live long enough, are going to get prostate cancer. Based on failure, after failure, after
failure to be able to control (cure) prostatitis in all those waiting on my doorstep, I realized that there had to be
something beyond that - that there had to be further thought.
So in 1996 I started looking at natural remedies, studying what had been tried over the years, what results had been
achieved, how they validated that result. I decided to take a significant amount of money I had put away and to invest in
a new path. I developed PEENUTS ® - when people hear that name, the first thing they do is smile or chuckle. I like that,
because many men don't want to face the reality of getting older and having their body age. PEENUTS
®, stands for ‘Power to
Empty Every time while Never Urinating Too Soon.' So what it really stands for is normal, healthy bladder function. I
wanted a name that stood on its own, had just a bit of controversy to it, didn't sound racy, and didn't sound like any
other prostate product." Because, says Dr. Wheeler, the product is different - and it proved itself versus a placebo in a
double-blind study.
"We had about 40 people in the study, a pretty good sized group that matches most studies of this type. And we proved with
this particular formula, when we evaluated flow curves, peak flow and average flow, and urinary symptoms, that we had
validated our results to be statistically significant vs. the placebo.
While I was pleased with the statistical significance, I was most excited that my data was clinically significant; meaning
that the patient could see the difference. This information is not published; as the amount of time it takes to publish is
unbelievable, and if I'm going to do something that difficult I want it to ‘shake the world'."
What led Dr. Wheeler to believe he was ready to shake the world? "Lo and behold, I found out I could decrease the PSA by
almost 50% just based on the use of this formula. I now had a solution for urinary symptoms, and improvement in urinary
flow.
And I knew if the PSA was going down, and it's not going down due to something hormonal, that we should look at
EPS - expressed prostatic secretion as the most likely reason.
Historically, EPS is a very old concept; scientific information from Stamey and Meares some 40 years ago showed that EPS
was the diagnostic test for prostatitis. So now I'm evaluating the results not only from a urinary standpoint, and not
only the PSA, but also EPS. Specifically, I'm looking for 10 or greater white cells per 400x of microscopic amplification;
giving us the diagnosis of prostatitis, 95% of which is nonbacterial. And I was able to show that we could suppress the
level of inflammation in the prostate by 66%. At that point I knew I was on to something, and I applied for my U.S. patent
for the formula. The patent was issued specifically as a treatment for prostatitis."
Dr. Wheeler showed in a presentation to the NIH in 1999 that if men have urinary symptoms, that 80% of them did not have
prostate enlargement, which urologists think to be the case, but that these men had prostatitis. "Additionally if your PSA
is 1 or greater than 1, we can use PSA as a surrogate marker for prostatitis. We already know that prostatitis is a
precursor to prostate cancer based on data from the American Association of Cancer Research. And the only way to prevent
the scourge of disease that is prostate cancer is to lower the PSA, thereby improving the health of the prostate while
halting the aging process. So I've patented a formula that does just that." Part of this data, plus more, is going to be
part of Dr. Wheeler's presentation in West Palm Beach at the Integrative Medicine for Anti-Aging Conference. The
connection, he says, is simple: "Cancer epitomizes the aging process. A cancerous organ process is the worst thing that
could happen to you; it is the antithesis of health." Conversely, "the absence of disease is consistent with anti-aging.
But anti-aging has to start early; it can't start late when the disease hits you. There are no Band-Aids for the aging
process. It's my hope that all doctors leaving this meeting will understand the importance that prostate health has on
male health. It is the number one male health risk." It is obvious that Dr. Wheeler is not simply preening when he says,
"This presentation takes place at the end of the conference - but it is clearly worth staying for. It could be the most
significant presentation." It's clear that he honestly believes this, with a passion.
"This is clearly my life's work," he attests. "I've spent a lot of time on this. I am a scientist; that's what separates
me from my colleagues. There is absolutely no urologist that believes what I believe. I hope the doctors will look upon me
as an ally, look at me as a 'lean on me' resource. I am not about selling PEENUTS ®,. Yes, I make a couple of dollars when a
bottle is sold. What I am really about is changing the lives of all the males I encounter."
"I couldn't be who am I today - there wouldn't be the level of excitement I present - without having experienced what the
traditional doctors teach," concludes Dr. Wheeler. "You have to have a healthy appreciation for what traditional medicine
stands for before you can truly say it needs to be healed. I'm fortunate I went through traditional medicine and saw its
shortcomings. That opened my eyes. It's the failure that is implicit in any medical treatment dictum that is the point we
must grow from; the failure that allows us to reach beyond the walls of the institution where we learn. We have to know it
well so we can criticize it appropriately. This is about a realization that what we do and what we accept as a standard of
care is deeply flawed.
"What's good for one person with a disease is not necessarily the best for another person with that same disease. The body
must be looked at as a whole. And there is no disease men have that is more compelling or more worthy of anti-aging than
the prostate."
So don't send your patients to Dr. Wheeler. But do go and learn from him on how to empower your patients to avoid disease.
Dr. Wheeler's 6 basic tenets to health:
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Proper diet |
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Adequate exercise |
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Appropriate validated nutrition |
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Stress reduction |
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Awareness |
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Education |
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