I remember The Feeling, even five years after it washed over me quite unexpectedly.

Picture this: I’m in my bed in the darkened hospital room, trying to get to sleep. Less than six hours before, doctors had removed my cancerous prostate—and announced my cure rate was 90 percent over my lifetime. My parents, two best friends and assorted visitors had left.

The only light in the room entered through the slit at the bottom of the closed door and from the Dallas skyline just outside my window.

Maybe it was the morphine, but as my mind wandered over the day’s events, this incredible, unexplainable feeling struck: You have been cured of cancer, but there’s a catch: you must, in turn, help others who are walking in your shoes.

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Recent studies of medications, diet, and the understanding of prostate cancer on a molecular level are defining potential prevention strategies for the disease. In fact, they may herald a new stage in the management of the cancer that strikes 230,000 men a year, killing about 30,000 of them.

Of course, that’s an awfully big “potential” and “may.” Nothing concrete so far, just promising signs.

Dr. Neil Fleshner and Dr. Alexandre Zlotta from the University of Toronto say available medications, such as 5-alpha reductase inhibitors and selective estrogen receptor modifiers, show promise in reducing malignancies.

In addition, in the latest Cancer, they point to strong evidence that dietary fat significantly affects disease development and other compounds, such as soy, selenium and green tea, offer additional possibilities for disease prevention.

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