Funnyman Ben Stiller was deadly serious when he revealed that he was recently diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer.
Stiller, known for his work in films like “Zoolander” and “Tropic Thunder,” said he was diagnosed two years ago following some atypical results from a yearly physical.
“If I hadn’t gotten the test, my doctor started giving it to me at 46, I still wouldn’t know,” the 50-year-old actor said on “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday. “I wanted to talk about it because of the test, because I feel like the test saved my life.”
The test Stiller referred to was the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test, a blood test that measures the amount of a type of protein created by cells in the prostate in a person’s body. An elevated PSA level can often indicate that a man is suffering from prostate cancer.
“The controversy about the test is that once you get treatment for prostate cancer, things can happen: incontinence, impotence,” he said. “It’s the second most deadly cancer, but it’s also one of the most survived cancers, if it’s detected early.”
Stiller also wrote an op-ed piece about his experience for Medium, in which he encouraged others to get a PSA test for their own safety.
“I am not offering a scientific point of view here, just a personal one, based on my experience,” he wrote. “The bottom line for me: I was lucky enough to have a doctor who gave me what they call a ‘baseline’ PSA test when I was about 46.”
According to the Center for Disease Control, 176,450 American men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2013 — the most recent year in which data was available. Of those, 27,681 died as a result.
For more information about prostate cancer detection and treatment, visit the American Cancer Society.