It was through listening to his patients that urologist Aaron Katz, MD, found a new career direction, one that put him at the leading edge of research on botanical medicines for prevention and treatment of prostate cancer.
As director of the Center for Holistic Urology at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Dr. Katz has been exploring ways in which herbal medicine and other holistic interventions can improve outcomes in prostate cancer, sexual dysfunction and genitourinary disorders. His current research endeavor is on a novel botanical combination that inhibits cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), thus reducing prostate cancer cell growth and angiogenesis.
"I'm a board certified urologist, and I had gone through conventional training. I was doing a fellowship at Columbia, studying urinary tract cancers," he told Holistic Primary Care in an interview. "I started really listening to the patients, some of whom had been referred to Columbia by Dr. Robert Atkins (recently decceased) here in New York. Many were already taking herbals that seemed to be controlling their prostate cancer. Others were using herbs to manage urinary complaints like urine stream interference or incomplete bladder emptying. The herbs seemed to be helping, and that was news to me. So we started looking at some of these compound in the lab."
Fast-forward a decade and a half, and you'll find Dr. Katz heading a center that sees more that 1,000 patients each year, offering them nutritional counseling, acupuncture, botanical medicine, exercise classes and training in mind-body techniques. "A lot of patients who come to see us are already on bontanicals or nutritional supplements and antioxidants. Some are using these in conjunction with conventional therapies. Others come for advice on whether or not to use or stay on herbals, or whether they should opt for conventional therapies."
