Your Guide to Prostate Enlargement

30 percent of men over 70 will experience BPH. While common at age 70, men ages 40, 50 and 60 can experience symptoms as well. Men can notice erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation issues and even urinary problems afflicting their daily lives.

Understanding the symptoms and knowing how to combat each can quell secondary sexual dysfunctions while treating primary issues. Whether you experience high urinary frequency or trouble emptying your bladder, you’ll learn how to eliminate each symptom while understanding the severity of your BPH problems. 

BPH Symptoms

Frequency: You go often, sometimes multiple times in an hour. You cannot hold your urine stream or empty your bladder. Whether it’s holding or empting of the urine, frequency can lead to constant problems...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Pygeum and Lycopene
 
Incomplete Emptying: You experience heavy breathing, constant sighing and even frequent pain from the inability to empty your bladder. With small traces of urine lingering in your bladder, frustration can mount...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Pumpkin Seeds
 
Intermittency or Dribbling: Known as the stop-start issue, intermittency can make using the restroom a long-winded ritual instead of a quick in-and-out experience. You’ll start. You’ll stop. You’ll sigh. You’ll even roll your eyes...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Nettle and Nettle Leaf
 
Nocturia: Remember when you could sleep throughout the night uninterrupted? Those days seem like a distant memory. Nocturia is the symptom that causes you constant midnight trips to the restroom, leaving you with little sleep...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Saw Palmetto
 
Straining: You push and strain yourself to urinate. You even let out a little gas from the straining. After a few minutes, you either succeed or fail to empty your bladder...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Nettle
 
Urgency: Before BPH, you could hold your urine stream. Thanks to urgency, you need to go as soon as you feel the desire...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Saw Palmetto and Saw Palmetto Leaf
 
Weak Stream: You can go to the restroom, but going feels like the hose barely sprinkles out any urine. Instead, what should be a 30 second or less stream turns into a minute-long ordeal...(more)
Helpful Herbs: Beta-sitosterol

Common Sex-Related Issues Caused by BPH

Erectile Dysfunctions
Improper hormone ratio leads to an elevation of DHT, which binds to testosterone and inhibits the use of the hormone. Elevated DHT levels and low testosterone leads to erectile problems...(more)

Premature Ejaculation
An enlarged prostate disrupts the delicate balance of alpha-glucosidase associated with ejaculation control..(more)

Prostate Enlargement & Inflammation
Inflammation is caused by age and use. During an ejaculation, the prostate produces the white, alkaline solution used by semen. The more men exert pressure on the prostate, the faster the organ becomes enflamed...(more)

Urinary Pain & Overactive Bladder
Since the prostate sits a top of the bladder, prostate growth constricts the bladder and the prostate tissues, two issues that cause slow urination and urinary pain...(more)

Understanding Your Severity Level

For men with BPH, determining severity becomes the primary issue. Sure, you may have a symptom or two, but you think the issue is not too severe that you need to purchase something or speak to a doctor. Whether you experience one symptom or several, this severity guide will determine if you should seek help or not.
 
Instructions for understanding severity: On a scale of 1 to 5, answer each question and rate your severity level of each symptom. The higher your final score, the more severe the condition.

1. Frequency: How often do you use the bathroom within a two-hour time span?
2. Incomplete Emptying: How frequently do you feel your bladder remains full even after using the restroom?
3. Intermittency: How often do you stop and start your stream while using the restroom?
4. Nocturia: How often do you wake to use the restroom?
5. Straining: How often do you strain while using the restroom?
6. Urgency: How often do you experience trouble withholding your urine?
7. Weak Stream: How often do you notice a weak urinary stream?

Preventive & Helpful Tips
Prostate enlargement and its symptoms also need to be treated by making lifestyle changes.
Eliminate beverages in the evening an hour or two before bedtime to avoid overnight trips to the bathroom.

Limit bladder irritants, like caffeine and alcohol, that can also increase urine production.

Avoid decongestants or antihistamines, as they tighten the band of muscles around your urethra and constrict urine flow.

Waiting too long to urinate may overstretch the bladder muscle and cause damage, so be sure to urinate whenever you feel the urge.

Exercise to limit the retention of urine.

Maintain a warm body temperature to limit urine retention and decrease your urgency to urinate.

Avoid processed foods and limit the amount of refined carbohydrates you consume.  A disproportionate amount of refined carbohydrates in the diet leads directly to inflammation.