Uploaded January 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
In medical school, Benny Gavi was taught all about prostate cancer.
How to diagnose it, and what medicines and procedures were available to treat it.
Years later, he found himself counseling men with prostate cancer, and realized that he had actually been taught only a fraction of what was important.
What had been omitted?
Well, what it's like to have prostate cancer. The life-changing (and not in a good way) side effects of common treatments, including impotence and urinary incontinence. And perhaps most important, how to prevent it.
Dr Gavi did a deep dive into the scientific literature, and was shocked to discover, right there in some of the best-respected and best-known research journals, hundreds of articles that pointed to the possibility of prevention.
Not through medical heroics, but through modest and simple lifestyle and dietary choices.
Like many doctors who eventually give up their nights and weekends to write books, Dr Gavi just got tired of telling the same thing to his patients over and over again - and typically when it was too late for prevention.
With med student and high-powered researcher Maya Eylon, an MD-to-be in her own right, Dr Gavi researched and wrote the book we talk about in this conversation: "Preventing Prostate Cancer: Reduce Your Risk with Simple, Proactive Choices."
One of the things I love about the book is how un-hype-y it is. There's no loud rah-rah cheering for dogmatic regimens. Instead, Gavi and Eylon share the research findings, and provide commentary and analysis that includes telling the reader how strong the evidence is for various claims.
Another great thing about the book is its comprehensiveness. It covers all the lifestyle and diet domains that have been linked to prostate cancer outcomes, and provides suggestions and pathways for each of them.
Finally, I appreciate the book's simplicity. While not stinting on the evidentiary base, with hundreds upon hundreds of citations, the authors share a few simple strategies that, combined, provide the greatest odds of avoiding -- or beating -- prostate cancer.
In our conversation, we talk about the book, the difference in medical education from Dr Gavi's time to Maya Eylon's, and their hope for the future of lifestyle medicine.
Enjoy!
In medical school, Benny Gavi was taught all about prostate cancer.
How to diagnose it, and what medicines and procedures were available to treat it.
Years later, he found himself counseling men with prostate cancer, and realized that he had actually been taught only a fraction of what was important.
What had been omitted?
Well, what it's like to have prostate cancer. The life-changing (and not in a good way) side effects of common treatments, including impotence and urinary incontinence. And perhaps most important, how to prevent it.
Dr Gavi did a deep dive into the scientific literature, and was shocked to discover, right there in some of the best-respected and best-known research journals, hundreds of articles that pointed to the possibility of prevention.
Not through medical heroics, but through modest and simple lifestyle and dietary choices.
Like many doctors who eventually give up their nights and weekends to write books, Dr Gavi just got tired of telling the same thing to his patients over and over again - and typically when it was too late for prevention.
With med student and high-powered researcher Maya Eylon, an MD-to-be in her own right, Dr Gavi researched and wrote the book we talk about in this conversation: "Preventing Prostate Cancer: Reduce Your Risk with Simple, Proactive Choices."
One of the things I love about the book is how un-hype-y it is. There's no loud rah-rah cheering for dogmatic regimens. Instead, Gavi and Eylon share the research findings, and provide commentary and analysis that includes telling the reader how strong the evidence is for various claims.
Another great thing about the book is its comprehensiveness. It covers all the lifestyle and diet domains that have been linked to prostate cancer outcomes, and provides suggestions and pathways for each of them.
Finally, I appreciate the book's simplicity. While not stinting on the evidentiary base, with hundreds upon hundreds of citations, the authors share a few simple strategies that, combined, provide the greatest odds of avoiding -- or beating -- prostate cancer.
In our conversation, we talk about the book, the difference in medical education from Dr Gavi's time to Maya Eylon's, and their hope for the future of lifestyle medicine.
Enjoy!
