Men's Guide To Prostate Problems

The prostate is an important segment of the male reproductive system. It is a land that is located in the lower abdominal cavity, just below the bladder, in front of the rectum and behind the pubic bone. It partially surrounds the urethra. The urethra is the channel that carries urine to the penis from the bladder and it runs right through the prostate. A healthy prostate is about the size of a walnut, weighs approximately 1 ounce and is shaped similar to a donut.

Symptoms Of Prostate Problems

Enlargement of the prostate is called benign prostate hypertrophy, or BPH. While this growth is usually considered a nuisance, if a man experiences problems with burning, or difficult urination at any time, the prudent course of action is consulting a urologist.

Other symptoms may be:

* A feeling of having to push out urine

* A sensation that the bladder is not emptying

* Increased urinating, especially at night

* Intermittent starting and stopping of the urinary stream

After a diagnosis of BPH, many men will just continue to live with the symptoms and subsequent discomfort. It is not a life threatening condition, and there are treatments. In some cases surgery might be considered if the enlargement is significant.

Ignoring BPH can be extremely dangerous and lead to other disease such as kidney infections or damage as the urine can back up into the kidneys because of the blockage of an enlarged prostate. There can also be an occurrence of bladder infections.

There is a huge difference between BPH and prostate cancer. BPH is a normal part of aging. Prostate cancer is a condition where prostate cells grow exponentially and out of control. These cells create tumors that may spread to any part of the body.

Numerous health organizations report that 1 in 6 men will experience prostate cancer. However, if the condition is diagnosed early, approximately 99% of

them will survive. The key is early detection.

Prostate Cancer Are Men Their Own Worst Enemy

The commonest form of cancer in Nigeria today in men is  prostate cancer making it the most frequently seen type of cancer and results in some 10,000,000 deaths each year. So just what is prostate cancer?

The human body starts its life as a single cell which divides repeatedly to form new cells. As cell division continues so the newly created cells, acting as the building blocks of the human body, form themselves into walls of tissue creating the various parts that we recognize as the human body. This is not however the end of the process as, throughout our lives, our bodies change constantly with old cells wearing out and dying and other newer cells continuing the process of division to replace them.

Occasionally however this process of division does not follow the pattern that it should and a cell divides incorrectly, forming two cells which do not carry the correct information to function normally. At the same time this frequently sets off a chain reaction so that these cells in turn begin to divide, forming further faulty cells.

This, in simple terms, is the basis of all cancers and, where faulty cell division takes place in the prostate gland, then the result is prostate cancer.

The prostate gland, which is about the size of a walnut, sits between the bladder and the rectum and partially surrounds the urethra (the tube which carries urine from the bladder) and its main function is to produce and store a clear fluid which makes up about thirty percent of male semen.

Although we tend to think of cancer whenever the prostate is mentioned, there are in fact numerous other problems that can affect the prostate gland, many of which can be quite easily treated.

Prostate cancer is rarely seen in men under the age of 40 and, although cases are seen between the ages of 40 and 65, the vast majority of prostate cancer cases arise in men over the age of 65.

In many cases however the progress of the disease is slow and early stage prostate cancer often carries few if any noticeable symptoms. For this reason many men can suffer from prostate cancer for years before it is diagnosed and the average age at which diagnosis is made in the United States is currently 70.

If caught in its early stages prostate cancer can be successfully treated either by surgery or radiation therapy (radiotherapy) and, while such treatment can often leave its mark in terms of ongoing problems with urination or a degradation or loss of sexual function, the cancer will often not return.

Problems arise however if prostate cancer is more advanced at the time of diagnosis and has already spread into neighboring tissue and bone, or has been carried to other parts of the body, usually through the lymphatic system. Here a combination of surgery, radiation therapy and possibly hormone therapy can certainly help in treating the problem but the cancer will often reappear.

Perhaps the biggest problem lies in the fact that, in terms of their general health and sexual health in particular, men have traditionally suffered in silence and will only venture into the doctor’s surgery when they are at death’s door.

This fortunately is starting to change in our modern society, even if only slowly, and as an increasing number of men turn to their doctor when they first suspect that something might be wrong, rather than waiting until they know something is wrong, then perhaps the early diagnosis of prostate cancer will result in fewer deaths each year from this treatable disease.

Men's Killer Disease (Prevent Prostate Cancer)

8 Steps to Prevent Prostate Cancer

By: Matt Bean 

• 
  Overview
• Love Thyself
• Be Happy You're Going Bald
• Wine and Dine
• Lower the Bar
• Calculate Your Risk
• Hit the Spice Rack
• Use a Computer-Assisted Doctor
• Rehab Your Erections

It's one of those weird anatomical-arboreal coincidences: The human prostate is about the size and shape of a walnut. But what if it really were a walnut? For one thing, you'd never get prostate cancer. Which sounds great, until you realize that you could get "walnut curculio" or "walnut-husk maggot" instead. Better to deal with the devil you know.

And what a devil it is. Last year, 221,000 men (one of them Robert De Niro) were diagnosed with prostate cancer; that's more than lung, colon, and brain cancers combined. And nearly 29,000 men died of it last year. These are grim statistics, but there's reason to be optimistic.

Make that eight reasons. Here is the latest, hot-out-of-the-lab research on how you can prevent, detect, and treat the disease. Putting this science into action (read: more sex, more wine) won't confer absolute immunity, but it will make your prostate one tough nut to crack.

-->