Prostate health guidance content

Don’t sit for more than 90 minutes at a time, don’t hold your urine for more than 15 minutes if you feel the urge to urinate, and have your prostate-specific antigen (PSA) checked regularly once a year after the age of 40. The rest of the health care methods are just icing on the cake, so don’t worry too much.

To be honest, the number of young patients encountered in the outpatient clinic recently has increased by 30% compared with previous years. Most of them are young men in their early twenties. They either stay up all night for three or four days in a row playing games, hold in their urine until their bladders are about to explode before going to the toilet, or they sit in the office typing codes and do not move from work to get off work. Last week, there was a 32-year-old man named Zhang who drove an online ride-hailing service. He traveled long distances for three days in a row to meet orders for the long holiday. He even skipped drinking water and went to the bathroom. As a result, he went to the emergency room in the middle of the night with pain and sweating. He had a catheter inserted for three days before he recovered. When he left, he patted his thigh and said that he would never trade his body for money again.

Some people have asked me before whether the popular lycopene and pumpkin seed oil on the Internet are IQ taxes. There is actually no unified answer to this. The American Urological Association's guidelines mention that this type of plant extract is about 30% effective in improving the symptoms of nocturia and poor urination in mild prostatic hyperplasia. However, there are indeed many people who have taken it for half a year and have no effect at all. I once had an old patient who took two capsules of lycopene every day and still had nocturia three times a night. Later, he listened to my advice and reduced the amount of water he drank after 8 pm to half a cup, and he got better within half a month. ； There is also a 62-year-old man who took pumpkin seed oil for three months. He used to have to wait half a minute each time to urinate, but now it is much smoother. To put it bluntly, this kind of supplement is just an auxiliary. It doesn’t need to be deified or beaten to death with a stick. If the financial conditions permit, you can try it. If it doesn’t work, just stop. There is no need to spend a lot of money to buy the so-called "imported special effects".

Let’s talk about the sitz bath issue that everyone is arguing about. Traditional Chinese Medicine andrology often recommends warm water sitz bathing to relieve the swelling sensation of chronic prostatitis. This is indeed very useful for men who have given birth. Soaking in warm water at about 40 degrees for 10 minutes will improve the pelvic blood circulation and the pain will disappear quickly. But if you haven’t given birth yet, don’t take baths every day. Exposure of testicles to high temperatures for a long time will affect sperm motility. I once had a young man who was preparing for pregnancy. I heard someone said that sitz baths protect the prostate. After taking baths for a month, my sperm motility dropped by 20%. I regretted it. There are also people who do random prostate massage at home. This should be done with caution. Western medicine generally only recommends that patients with recurring chronic non-bacterial prostatitis do it under the guidance of a doctor. If you do it yourself carelessly, you will injure the glands and even cause the spread of infection in severe cases. Patients with acute prostatitis must not touch it.

In fact, many people are anxious about the prostate because they are frightened. Occasionally, they drink too much wine or eat spicy food, and they experience frequent urination for a day or two. There is no need to panic. Just drink more water and urinate twice. Don't search Baidu to label yourself "prostatitis". The more anxious you are, the more severe the symptoms of frequent urination will be. There is no need to deliberately abstain from this or that. If you usually eat spicy food and drink ice, it will be fine. There is no need to restrict food at all. Only if you feel uncomfortable after eating, just control it appropriately. Oh, by the way, if there is a direct relative in the family who has had prostate cancer, PSA screening can be done as early as 35 years old. For a dozen dollars, the accuracy of early screening for prostate cancer can be over 90%, which is more useful than any health care products.

As for the "prostate exercises" and "Kegel exercises to protect the prostate" posted on the Internet, they are useful, but only if you persist. If you do them for two or three days and then give up, it is better to get up every hour to get a glass of water and stand for two minutes to move. It is much more effective than buying a prostate cushion worth hundreds of dollars. In a word, don't make things up, don't make up for it, go to the urology department of a regular hospital if you feel uncomfortable, don't believe in the "prostate detoxification" and "glandular perfusion" of private hospitals, they are just a waste of money. The prostate thing is really not as complicated as you think.