Jul
7
HOW TO COPE
WITH EARLY BPH
Living with the early stages of an enlarged prostate isn’t all that hard:
This is true. Remember, you had BPH for eight to ten years before it caused you any problems at all. You might have had some mild symptoms for another two or three years before you realized it and found out what was causing them. Now you know.
Now is no time to panic. So these problems caused by BPH area small inconvenience, they are something you can learn to live with. The alternative is not a happy thought.
Let’s go back to our typical case history. This gentleman is the one who is sixty years old and has the three most minor of BPH symptoms: a brief hesitancy when urinating, a slower, less forceful stream, and he usually gets up once a night to urinate.
The secret here is that you know what the cause is of these minor problems, which means you can learn to manage them. You have managed a lot of things in your life, right? First the other kids in your family, then a wife, then your own kids, then that business and all the people you had under you. Compared to that, managing early BPH is a breeze.
First the worry. The experts say again and again that BPH is not cancer, has no connection with prostate cancer, does not lead to cancer and is an entirely separate ailment. So get that out of your mind.
You don’t have prostate cancer, it’s only BPH.
Urologists fight this misconception all the time and gradually they’re winning. They point out that cancer of the prostate is almost always on the outside of the prostate lobes. The enlarged prostate grows inward and outward. There is absolutely no casual relationship between the two.
Now, one more concern with prostate cancer. When surgery is needed for BPH, usually at a much later time than in a man’s fifties or early sixties, there is a finding that about ten percent of the BPH prostates will be found to have a cancer.
Remember, cancer can strike any part of the body at any time in life. It has no connection to BPH. When these cancers are found they are not in the usual places where they could be easily diagnosed during your regular BPH exams. So in reality the BPH surgery is a stroke of luck since most of these cancers are just beginning and are caught quickly so they can be eradicated more easily.
So, from here on we don’t worry about BPH causing or being tied in with prostate cancer in any way. Clear?
LIVING WITH BPH
Urologists point out that the minor symptoms of BPH, often the initial ones, may be the only troubles a man suffers with BPH for as much as ten to fifteen years. That means you shouldn’t even be thinking about or concerned with any worry about prostate surgery or other treatment now. Dump it right out of your computer memory hard disc. Why worry about something that isn’t going to happen for ten to fifteen years? You’ll have plenty of time to fret and stew about it and discuss it with your urologist when the time comes. By then some even better treatments undoubtedly will be developed.
Concentrate on today, and how to make your life pleasant and interesting and fulfilling, right now! in spite of BPH.
We know that there is no “cure” for BPH. You can’t take a pill and like a headache your BPH will just go away. It isn’t that kind of a problem. Even with our miracle modern medical cures, there is nothing even on the drawing boards that will magically cure BPH. So we practice positive thinking and forget about that and move on to areas of behavior that we can and should do something about.
Plain old fashioned horse-sense. With the decline of the horse as the basic transportation unit of Americans, not much is heard anymore about horse-sense. Too bad. Horse sense has shaken down to “common sense”, which is almost as good.
For example, it makes no sense to drink two gallons of water a day when you know you’re going to have to urinate most of that water the same day. Don’t overload your urinary system. The less you drink the less you’ll have to urinate.
Don’t carry this to extremes. The body is at least 1,259 percent water. You need water, fluids, to survive. But there is a happy medium. Some doctors say a man should drink eight, eight ounce glasses of water a day. That’s half a gallon. Actually what they mean is that the body should intake that much fluid a day: coffee, water, milk, soup, colas, juice, any fluid should count.
Many other doctors say this is much more fluid than the average man needs. Your body will tell you when it wants a drink. As a common sense living-with-BPH, start cutting down on your fluids a little at a time. You’ll be urinating less, but still enough. Talk to your urologist or doctor about this and find out what the minimum daily need is for intake fluids for a man of your size and activity. It may be much less than you suspect.
If you do manual labor in the hot sun all day, you’ll need more water than if you’re in an air-conditioned office where you work on a computer. Your doctor will be able to help you here.
TIME YOUR FLUID INTAKE
If nocturia bothers you, and you’re getting up three times a night to urinate, try limiting your fluid intake in the evening. One doctor suggested not to drink any fluids for four hours before retiring. That way your body will have processed your fluids, and passed them well before your sleeping time.
Using a modified system such as this (some men have one small drink at dinner and nothing after that) many BPH patients can cut to once their nocturnal urination. Now that is a real blessing if you can go from three risings to only one a night. This is a prime example of how you can manage your own life to reduce the interference of BPH with your normal activities.