The Importance of Prostate Health

The prostate gland is a walnut-sized organ located beneath your bladder and in front of the urethra (which runs down your penis). It produces urine while transporting semen.

Doctors can assess your prostate with a digital rectal exam, which involves inserting gloved and lubricated fingers into your anus and feeling for any bumps or hard areas that might indicate cancer.

Symptoms

The prostate gland is a walnut-sized organ located at the top of the urethra (tube that transports urine out of bladder). It produces most of the semen used during ejaculation and typically features soft, smooth texture.

Prostate cancer symptoms typically include pain in the penis, testicles or perineum (the space between scrotum and rectum). You may also have difficulty peeing, weak or interrupted urine flow or difficulty peeing; cancer in the prostate may irritate urethra resulting in blood in urine or semen production.

Digital Rectal Exam (DRE). A doctor can examine your prostate using a digital rectal exam (DRE). Wearing protective gloves, the doctor uses their finger to feel your rectum for size and firmness of the prostate gland. Your physician will also discuss any symptoms or health history you are experiencing before conducting blood tests that measure prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels in your blood – high PSA levels have been linked with prostate enlargement as well as possibly being an indicator for cancer development.

Diagnosis

The prostate gland is part of your reproductive and urinary systems, roughly the size of a walnut and located just below your bladder in front of your rectum. It also surrounds part of the urethra which transports urine from your bladder as you pass urine through and also delivers sperm from testicles when you ejaculate.

Your doctor performs a digital rectal exam (DRE) to check for lumps and hard areas on your rectum, while a PSA blood test measures your PSA levels, which may rise if you have prostate cancer or benign prostatic hyperplasia, otherwise known as BPH.

A biopsy takes a sample of prostate tissue for laboratory analysis. After receiving their report, pathologists will analyze and grade (the sum of two numbers indicating how aggressive your cancer is). Your physician then uses Gleason scores and staging systems to help decide on treatment.

Treatment

Treatment depends on how fast and where the cancer grows; its location; and whether or not it has spread. Most early stage prostate cancer cases can be treated successfully with surgery, radiation or hormone therapy; otherwise you may require regular screenings and biopsies (known as active surveillance) in order to monitor it as it progresses slowly in just the prostate without symptoms being displayed.

Under a microscope, biopsy involves taking samples from your prostate cancer cells in order to ascertain what material they’re made up of and grade them accordingly – with higher numbers signifying more aggressive cancer cells.

Surgery to remove your prostate may be an option if the cancer has grown so large as to be pressuring on the urethra, though there may also be procedures such as catheter removal of extra prostate tissue with microwaves or electrical current that vaporizes it. Furthermore, pills called 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors may help by restricting conversion from testosterone into dihydrotestosterone which then becomes part of its byproduct dihydrotestosterone production by your body.

Prevention

Prostate cancer may not be entirely preventable, but lifestyle choices can reduce your risk. Eating less red meat and other sources of saturated fat may lower risks associated with prostate health risks. Furthermore, regular physical exercise, water consumption and limiting alcohol consumption should help lower this risk.

Researchers still do not fully understand what causes prostate cancer to appear in some men, but certain genetic variants can increase your risk.

Additional factors that increase prostate health risks include age (your chances of prostate cancer increase with age), family history and race – men of African descent tend to experience more advanced cases of the disease than other races. If there is a history of prostate cancer in your family, speak to your physician about screening options; regular checkups can also detect conditions other than cancer that need treating, like an enlarged prostate or prostatitis that could develop into serious problems later.