Gabor Maté on Prostate and Testicular Cancer

In his seminal work When the Body Says No, physician and mind-body health expert Dr. Gabor Maté explores the hidden emotional factors contributing to chronic illness, including cancer. His insights into prostate and testicular cancers offer a powerful challenge to conventional views on diagnosis, treatment, and the emotional dynamics of men's health.

This article offers a personal summary of some of Maté’s ideas. It is not medical advice, and readers are encouraged to refer directly to When the Body Says No and other health resources for more detail and depth.

Prostate Cancer: Diagnosed to Death?

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in men, but Maté highlights a paradox: for many, detection leads not to longer life but to greater suffering. Studies have shown that most prostate cancers grow so slowly that men often die with them rather than because of them. Despite this, aggressive testing and treatment regimes are widespread, often leading to surgeries and therapies that cause significant side effects—such as impotence and incontinence—without clear survival benefits.

One striking piece of evidence Maté cites is the increased incidence and mortality of prostate cancer among Japanese men who migrate to the US. In Japan, prostate cancer rates have historically been low. However, after moving to the US and adopting more Western lifestyles and healthcare practices—including more frequent testing—the rates of both diagnosis and death rose sharply. This suggests that factors like diet, emotional expression, and healthcare culture (especially aggressive screening) all play a role.

Importantly, Maté discusses how the very act of diagnosing can create psychological stress. Being told you have cancer—even a low-risk form—can unleash profound fear, helplessness, and anxiety. These emotional stresses can, in turn, affect immune function, promote inflammation, and possibly worsen outcomes. Thus, sometimes it may be the diagnosis itself that contributes to the progression of disease.

How Prostate Cancer Is Usually Detected

Unlike testicular cancer, early prostate cancer rarely causes symptoms.
Patients usually don’t feel anything wrong—no swelling, no pain, no warning signs to hide. It’s not a matter of embarrassment or denial; it’s that they simply don't know.

Detection typically happens in two ways:

• A PSA blood test (Prostate-Specific Antigen test) done as part of a routine health check, often around age 50 or older.

• A digital rectal examination (DRE) during a general physical exam, where a doctor may detect abnormalities.

If either the PSA or DRE is abnormal, the doctor may then recommend a biopsy to confirm a diagnosis.
Thus, in prostate cancer, the doctor—not the patient—is usually the first to raise a concern.

Only when prostate cancer advances do symptoms like difficulty urinating, blood in urine, erectile disfunction, or pelvic pain sometimes appear.

This detection pattern contrasts sharply with testicular cancer, where the patient often notices something first.

Testicular Cancer: A Case for Early Action

Testicular cancer presents a different and more urgent story.
Unlike prostate cancer, it is typically aggressive and fast-growing, primarily affecting younger men between the ages of 15 and 40. Early detection is crucial, and when caught early, survival rates are very high.

Here, the tragedy is that men often do notice early signs—like swelling, a lump, or discomfort in the testicles—but many delay seeking medical advice. Embarrassment, fear of bad news, and a cultural reluctance to appear vulnerable can all lead to dangerous delays.

Thus, while prostate cancer often sneaks by unnoticed until a doctor flags it, testicular cancer's symptoms are frequently felt first by the man himself—but are then kept quiet, often with fatal consequences if ignored for too long.

Mindset Matters: Stress, Denial, and Action

Maté’s analysis reveals how mindset—the often unconscious beliefs and emotional patterns we carry—shapes health outcomes just as much as genetics or environment.

• In prostate cancer, the cultural mindset of "test and treat everything" leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, sometimes exposing men to greater risks than the disease itself would have posed.

• In testicular cancer, the mindset of "deny and delay" leads men to ignore warning signs until it's too late.

Both mindsets are born from the same cultural soil: a deep unease with male vulnerability. Men are conditioned to prioritize toughness, stoicism, and denial over self-awareness and emotional openness. In the case of health, this conditioning manifests as either a rush to excessive action or a tragic reluctance to act at all.

Moreover, Maté emphasizes that chronic emotional suppression—particularly the long-term silencing of anger, grief, and fear—undermines immune function and resilience. Over decades, this creates the biological conditions in which serious illnesses like cancer can take root.

Healing Requires More Than Medicine

Maté is clear: he is not arguing against medical treatment. But he insists that true healing must include emotional authenticity. Without confronting the patterns of stress, repression, and self-neglect that lie beneath physical disease, medical interventions alone are unlikely to restore full wellbeing.

In prostate cancer, healing may involve resisting fear-driven over-treatment and instead embracing a nuanced, personalized approach to health decisions.
In testicular cancer, it involves honoring the body’s early warning signs and seeking help without shame or delay.

Healing, in Maté's view, means reclaiming permission to be vulnerable—to listen to the body when it says no, before it has to shout.

Conclusion: Listening When the Body Speaks

Prostate and testicular cancers teach us different but related lessons about men’s health.
In one case, fear drives overreaction; in the other, fear drives paralysis.

Dr. Gabor Maté’s work reminds us that illness is not merely a mechanical breakdown. It is often the body's last desperate attempt to tell the truth that the mind has refused to acknowledge.

Ultimately, true health demands not just biological interventions, but a cultural and emotional reckoning—a new permission for men to listen, to feel, and to heal.