It takes a braver man than me (my wife says that means just about anyone; I'd tell her off, only I'm too scared) to contradict something doctors have been doing for years, but that's exactly what some authors did in an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
These folks looked at something called chronic abacterial prostatitis (CAP), in which the prostate is inflamed but tests do not detect a bacterial culprit, a condition that's not well known (a survey found that 85% of men had never heard of it), even though nearly half of all men will eventually suffer some form of prostatitis - but then, as we all know, men hear only what they want to hear.
And men certainly don't want to hear about CAP because first, we don't know the cause, second, it often turns into a chronic, long-lived condition, and last, a young man unlucky enough to be told he may have CAP (it often hits men between the ages of 30 and 50) is subjected to tests that are less than pleasant. In fact, most men would rather be stuck for months on a desert island with only Richard Hatch as company than get their prostate massaged - by some stranger, no less - to obtain prostatic fluid.
So, if we don't know the cause, how do we treat CAP? Well, there's the rub, if you pardon the expression. We treat it with long-term antibiotics (on the assumption that even though we couldn't detect bacteria, there must have been some there at one time), anti-inflammatories, and antispasmodics (for pain).
But after reviewing the literature, these researchers concluded that there is no good evidence that antibiotics or the other medications are of much use in CAP.
Before all this bums you guys with CAP out too much, however, let me tell you that the researchers penned an addendum to their report. Apparently, just before their study was published, they came across another small study that concluded that quercetin, a compound said to have antihistamine, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory powers (you ante up once for 3 anti's, you might say) and which is found in small amounts in foods such as onions and apples, led to significant improvements in men with CAP when compared to placebo.
So if you are ever diagnosed with CAP, you might consider loading up on Granny Smiths and Walla Wallas. How you combine them, though, is up to you.
