September is Prostate Cancer Awareness month

The prostate gland is an organ found only in men. It sits round the opening of the bladder where the urine passage begins like a ring around a finger. The gland is pea-sized in boys before puberty, but becomes marble-sized after puberty. It continues to increase very slowly over the next 20 years, to be the size of a yellow plum in the mid-30s. This is when you can begin to appreciate its size, if a rectal examination is done. This is also why so little is known of the prostate, because it is not easy to touch, like the ears, eyes or mouth.{{more}}

By the time a man is 50, the prostate is about the size of a Bequia plum (red plum) and most men are beginning to realize that they have one, as they are beginning to have urinary symptoms. A few men may have been told by their doctor that they have a swollen but non-cancerous prostate and even less may have had a prostate infection and the least a diagnosis of cancer.

By age 70, however, things have worsened with men experiencing more prostate events, like infections, difficulty passing urine, ‘stoppage’, blood in the urine, or have had a diagnosis of cancer.

What causes prostate cancer? There are many reasons why people develop prostate cancer; rarely does a person develop prostate cancer because of one reason only. The factors are older age, a diet rich in animal fat, a sedentary lifestyle, black men, a lack of certain vitamins, sexually transmitted infections and genes or heredity.

I will briefly discuss these, but I will also state that prostate cancer has no symptoms, as you cannot really know that you have it based on how you feel. Too many men, when asked how long since they had a “check-up” for their prostate, mention that they are fine and they are “not having any pain”. They erroneously assume that they have to have pain when they have cancer and on the flip side of the coin assume that if they have pain, then it must be “cancer”, so they do not come for fear of it being diagnosed as cancer. It’s only when the pain does not go away after several courses of “herbs”, antibiotics and painkillers that they eventually resort to seeing a doctor.