Prostate Cancer

What you should know about a Faulty Fuel Injector...

A man thing...

The prostate is a walnut sized gland that sits just under the bladder. Its job is to produce the bulk of semen to help protect and nourish sperm on their hazardous trip to the womb.

What causes it?

While nobody knows what causes prostate cancer, there are some recognised risk factors:

• Birthdays: Risk increases over the age of 50 years. Prostate cancer is rare in younger men. Either buy less candles for the cake or better still eat the candles and leave the cake as a high fat diet may also be a risk factor.
• Family History: If your father or brother had prostate cancer, your risk increases. If they had it at a young age, your risk is even higher.
• ‘Western diet’: High fat, lots of red meat. Countries with low fat and low meat diets
  have low levels of prostate cancer.
• Obesity: Being overweight is a major risk factor for all cancers.

Happy Birthday

As men get older, their urine flow can become slower and the bladder needs to be emptied more often. This is usually due to the prostate gland getting bigger and putting pressure on the bladder. If you need to pee more often, it does not mean that you have prostate cancer. But it is important to see the doctor and rule it out. With early discovery, prostate cancer can be treated very successfully. Watch out for:

• difficulty peeing with any kind of pressure;
• peeing more often than usual;
• getting up at night to have a pee
  only to get up again later on;
• a feeling that you haven’t quite got rid of it all when you pee;
• stop-start-peeing;
• discomfort or burning when peeing;
• blood in your pee or semen.

Getting it sorted

Get used to hearing the acronym ‘PSA’. It stands for ‘Prostate Specific Antigen’ and is a simple blood test. That’s about as simple as it gets though. A raised PSA level is usually not a sign of cancer. It can be caused by inflammation and a large but non-cancerous prostate. So before doing a PSA test with your GP talk about the meaning of the results in terms of possible treatment. Your doctor will usually carry out a physical examination as well as a blood test for PSA. If the levels are high your doctor may refer you for further tests. If further tests show that you have prostate cancer, the treatment you are offered will depend on your age, general health and the stage or grade of the cancer. Possible treatments include surgery, radiotherapy, hormone therapy and sometimes chemotherapy.