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PROSTATE PROBLEMS AND ALCOHOL, BEER AND COFFEINE.
July 7, 2009 |
ALCOHOL AND BEER
You knew this was coming. Alcohol is not good for the human body. Alcohol is especially not good for men with BPH.
“Hell, give up beer and a few shots of bourbon and maybe a highball or two? Damn, I’d rather die!” Such typical comments by moderate and heavy drinkers is often answered with the assurance of: “You will die and probably sooner than you expected to.”
For years some urologists have said that alcohol irritates the prostate. It also can cause serious problems with the liver. Some of the flavorings in alcohol can affect the prostate to such a degree that it can cause a kind of chronic prostatitis
For a man with even early BPH, the sudden or overuse of alcohol can bring on a surprise attack of acute retention of urine. This condition results in a desperate need to urinate but it is impossible. A quick trip to a doctor’s office or the emergency room of a hospital for catheterization and draining the bladder follows.
Good old common sense dictates that a man with even early BPH should seriously consider his consumption of alcohol and its relation to his prostatic condition. At this point many men simply don’t want to take the risk or stand the pain and problems associated with alcohol and BPH and stop drinking.
Beer drinkers will be furious, but the pint-in, pint-out and the much used bathrooms at bars and taverns, indicate that it is well known that beer drinking is immediately followed by voluminous urination.
Here common sense leaps up again. Beer drinking in the afternoon may be easily tolerated by some men, but not by others. Late night beer drinking will almost surely trigger two or three additional night time trips to the bathroom that otherwise could have been avoided.
If you insist on drinking beer, use a little common sense so it doesn’t trigger more unpleasant BPH reactions.
COFFEE, COLAS AND CAFFEINE
Yes, caffeine is the big tiger on your back here. Caffeine is a stimulant to the urinary tract: it makes you urinate more and more frequently. For most well people this is no problem, not even a minor inconvenience. Over the years your body will adapt to the added caffeine.
But when you have BPH, it’s different. You don’t need any more stimulation in your urinary tract. Neither do you need any more volume.
The BPH coffee drinker who normally goes through twelve, eight ounce cups of coffee a day is going to have a much harder time living with his urinary tract, than the non-coffee drinker, or even the man who drinks twelve, eight ounces of non-caffeine fluids a day.
Ounce for ounce, coffee and tea contain twice the amount of caffeine that regular cola drinks do. Of course now most of the colas come in caffeine free types as well. This is one place where you can have your cola and not your caffeine.
In the same manner, there are many caffeine free coffee brands now on the market.
If you want to manage your body with a little more “smarts” give the caffeine free drinks a test in your own bathroom. You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised when you make the test.
Oh, the “Principle of the single differential”. When you make any of these intake tests, try to do everything else the same, except for the item you’re testing. If you have two differentials (variables) in your life style, you won’t be able to tell which one made the difference, if there is a difference. It’s an old principle from the physical sciences but it works.
If you drink caffeine fluids, take the test. Try the caffeine free types for a week, doing nothing else different. One BPH patient said it cut his nocturia risings down from two a night to one. After a few weeks you’ll even forget what the caffeine laced drink tasted like.
Don’t forget that many of the current pain pills for headaches, colds and hay fever also contain caffeine. While these aren’t taken often, you might look for some that don’t have caffeine in them, such as the ibuprofen medications.