Hormone Therapy
Starving hormone-driven cancers — breast and prostate endocrine therapy.
Endocrine Therapy for Breast Cancer: Starving a Hormone-Driven Tumour
About seven in ten breast cancers carry oestrogen receptors — they don't just tolerate the hormone, they depend on it to grow. That single fact turns a cancer into a target we can hit without chemotherapy: block the oestrogen signal and the tumour stalls. But every lever we pull — a receptor blocker, an oestrogen-synthesis switch, an ovary shut down — carries its own price. This is the logic of denying a tumour the fuel it lives on.
Prostate Cancer and Androgen Deprivation: Cutting Off the Fuel
Some cancers make their own fuel; the prostate borrows it. Prostate cancer grows on testosterone the same way breast cancer grows on estrogen — which means you can starve it without a single dose of chemotherapy, simply by switching the hormone off. This is the mirror image of breast endocrine therapy: same logic, opposite hormone. Learn the four ways to cut the fuel line, the paradoxical 'flare' that can hurt before it helps, and the quiet price a man pays for living without his main hormone.
