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Prostate Problem Guide
Prostate Cancer Symptoms That Are All Too Often Ignored
It's a sad but true fact that this year well over 30,000 men in the United States will die from prostate cancer despite the fact that, in many cases, the warning signs of a developing problem will have been clearly evident and simply ignored.
Like many cancers, prostate cancer can develop with very few if any cancer prostate symptoms in its early stages. Most men will however also develop another prostate problem during their middle and later years known as an enlarged prostate, or benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which will display a range of symptoms. There is no connection between the two conditions and one will not cause the other, although both will commonly be present at the same time.
What this means in simple terms is that the vast majority of men will develop a range of symptoms in their middle and later years which point to a problem with the prostate gland and which could be simply a benign enlarged prostate or prostate cancer or both. And what do they do? Well, in most cases they simply ignore the symptoms as a sign of the normal ageing process.
Most of the symptoms of a developing prostate problem are associated with your ability to urinate and will include an increasing difficulty in starting urination (a need to strain in order to begin urinating), a weak or slow flow of urine once urination begins with a tendency for that flow to stop and start and a taking a long time to finish urinating. In addition many men experience a need to urinate frequently with difficulty in waiting and often a need to get up regularly during the night to visit the bathroom.
At this stage all too few men will pop in to see their doctor who will diagnose the problem as simply being an enlarging prostate and the patient will be happy to live with the minor inconvenience, knowing that it is not serious, or may be prescribed medication to relieve the symptoms. More importantly, in making his diagnosis, the doctor will also run a couple of simple tests to check for the presence of prostate cancer and, where this is found it is often at a very early stage and can be effectively treated.
For the majority of men who simply ignore the symptoms (or diagnose themselves as simply having an enlarging prostate) it will be the arrival of additional symptoms such as increasing tiredness, pain in the back, hips and thighs and an unexplained weight loss that will eventually force then to consult their doctor. By this time their prostate cancer will almost certainly have spread and is quite probably beyond the stage at which it can be cured.
The vast majority of prostate cancer deaths could be avoided if men would simply consult their doctors when signs of a developing prostate problem appear, rather than simply ignore then.
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