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Prostate Health Male-related prostate health is a hot topic amongst older (and some younger) men, and rightly so. All of us should try to maintain the health of our prostate glands, as they not only play an important role in our sexual life but can also affect our lifestyle if e.g. we suffer from prostatitis or enlarged prostate, and even cause our premature death if prostate cancer occurs.
We deal with some of these other questions like the diagnosis and treatment of enlarged prostate and prostate cancer, and whether health supplements are useful on other pages of this website, here we'd like to ask the question "what is a healthy prostate, and what can I do to keep it that way?"
Prostate problems including Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) or enlarged prostate, prostatitis and cancer are actually extremely common. In fact, eight in 10 men will eventually develop an enlarged prostate and one in 10 men will develop prostate cancer. But in spite of this prevalence of prostate disease, most men tend to ignore their prostate health or are reluctant to seek treatment.
Myths about prostate disease – e.g., that it only affects older men, that most prostate problems are cancer-related, that few treatment options are available – tend to either frighten men or lull them into a false sense of security; in both cases the need to actively maintain their prostate health is ignored or put to one side.
Prostate problems do tend to increase progressively with age - while the prostate grows slowly during the 20s and 30s, it grows faster and gets larger as a man approaches his 40s. So to some degree the symptoms we associate with prostate problems are often an inevitable corollary of our ageing.
Screening is checking for cancer before your symptoms develop. This can help find cancer at an early stage. When abnormal tissue or cancer is found early, it may be easier to treat. By the time symptoms appear, cancer may have begun to spread.
Although evidence-based guidelines recommend that physicians inform men about prostate cancer screening, nobody has yet worked out the most effective way to do this. Currently many authorities within Australia and other countries recommend against PSA testing; the reasons include a lack of confidence that current possible treatments materially improve the prognosis for the patient, and that the surgery or radiotherapy are associated with a fairly high frequency of impotence and incontinence - a high price to pay in the absence of proven benefit.
Whatever age you are and whatever symptoms you may be encountering, there are many patient-friendly treatments available for common prostate problems, and in addition, there are many ways men can maintain prostate health. Some people swear by Ayurvedic, holistic healing, and a myriad other approaches, but the basic way to stay healthy is to keep it simple and go the natural way: