The way I understand it, ADT essentially drastically lowers your testosterone production thereby making the cancer cells weaker and reproducing at a much slower rate (if at all). This weakens the cancer for the radiation treatment which we hope will kill it. So for my money, yes, starting before would make sense. I started about two weeks before radiation.

Does it work for people your age? I would think it would work for most men I don't believe age is that much of a factor. You're trying to get those testosterone numbers very low. You will read that there are some folks who this doesn't work for, but I think it's somewhat rare.

In the paragraph below, this is not how testosterone is measured, I'm using this scale for comparison based on the way I'm perceiving the question.
Say the scale is 1-10, a 20 year old being ten. It seems to me your asking this because the average 83 year old might normally be around 5 anyway. The docs are trying to get it to 1 or less.
Hopefully I understood the question!
Best of Luck to you!