Signs you may have a prostate problem
September 21, 2011 in Health and wellbeing
The prostate gland may be small – about the size of a walnut – but it causes problems for millions of men in the UK.
The most common sign of prostate disease in men is problems with urination, although this can also be caused by other medical conditions such as diabtetes.
Problems urinating can be caused by an enlarged prostate, an inflamed prostate or even prostate cancer.
As these three conditions often have symptoms in common, men should always get them checked out by their doctor.
All men should visit their GP if they experience:
- Difficulty passing urine
- Needing to urinate often, especially at night
- Having a weak flow of urine
- Straining to pass urine
- Feeling your bladder has not emptied properly
- Needing to rush to the toilet
- Dribbling urine
Other less common symptoms include pain when urinating; pain when ejaculating; problems getting and maintaining an erection and blood in urine or semen.
Both an enlarged prostate and prostate cancer are more common in older men.
An enlarged prostate, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, is a benign condition that affects more than three million men in the UK, and it’s thought that over a third of men in their 50s has symptoms of the disease.
Prostate cancer is the biggest cause of cancer in men in the UK, and the second biggest cause of cancer death. Each year, around 37,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 9,000 men die from it. Six out of ten cases occur in men over the age of seventy.
Prostatitis, an inflammation of the tissues of the prostate gland, is sometimes caused by an infection, but in most cases the cause is unknown. It is most common in men aged between 30 and 50 years, but men of any age can be affected.
Millions of women are beaten brutally each year, and every fifteen seconds a woman is being abused in her own home. On a national scale, domestic violence has become the number one cause of death amongst women. Research and statistics validate the fact that women, men and children are all being affected by this shocking social illness. And it is hard to believe that 1 in 5 victims think domestic violence is justified; this misconception needs to be addressed and it must be clarified that the victim is never to blame for domestic violence.
