Health Center - Men's Health
If you're like many men, you probably delay going to the doctor until you're sick or have an injury. Improve your vitality and help prevent health problems down the road by learning about important screenings, common conditions, questions to ask your provider and other essential health tips.
Prostate Health
As men age, it is not uncommon for them to experience prostate problems. Prostatitis (inflammation of the prostate gland) is most common in men under 50. Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate that can cause urination problems, is more common in men over 50. Prostate cancer, which is less common than BPH, primarily affects men over the age of 65.
Prostatitis symptoms include urinary and genital pain. Symptoms can vary in intensity from mild to severe. In diagnosing prostatitis, your health care professional may decide to perform a digital rectal exam (DRE) and urinalysis.
BPH symptoms include a frequent need to urinate in short intervals, a feeling of little warning when urge of urination develops, a need to urinate during the night, a weak urine stream, delay and difficulty in initiating urination, a feeling of incomplete emptying of the bladder and stopping and starting of urination several times during voiding.
BPH diagnostic tools include: urinalysis; digital rectal exam; prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, which measures the level of PSA in the blood; transrectal ultrasound; and urine flow study.
