Ben Stiller Advocates for Prostate Cancer Testing After His Own Cancer Diagnosis

Ben Stiller is a cancer survivor and he says its due to early detection.

Stiller was dignosed with prostate cancer at age 48, but credits his remission to a test his doctor administered early on, PEOPLE reports.

The 50-year-old actor revealed his deadly diagnosis two years earlier on the Howard Stern Show Tuesday morning.

“If I hadn’t gotten the test, my doctor started giving it to me at 46, I still wouldn’t know,” he said. I wanted to talk about it because of the test, because I feel like the test saved my life.”

Stiller has no history of prostate cancer in his family so his chances of getting the disease were lower. But his doctor began administering the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test at yearly physicals.

The diagnosis was spurred on by test results from the PSA that were abnormally high, so they readministered it six months later and found they were even higher. This led to more tests and an early diagnois.

Stiller said, “The controversy about the test is that once you get treatment for prostate cancer, things can happen: incontinence, impotence.”

“It’s the second most deadly cancer, but it’s also one of the most survived cancers, if it’s detected early.

This story first appeared at Womanista.