What are the cornerstones of prostate health?

In fact, the answer is very practical. The core is "daily care without deliberately overdoing it + age-appropriate early screening intervention without escaping". There are no magic dietary prescriptions or health care equipment spread online. All people who can maintain prostate health for a long time must do these two things.

Last week I met a 31-year-old game planner. When he was working on a version, he would sit there for 14 hours without moving. When he was thirsty, he would drink iced Coke and iced coffee. He would hold back his urine until he couldn't bear it anymore before running to the toilet. After finishing the project, he had perineal pain that made him unable to sit still. He was diagnosed with acute prostatitis, which took him three days to recover. He himself said that he had always thought that prostate problems were only suffered by middle-aged and elderly people, but he didn't know that young people are still affected by it.

When it comes to maintenance, there is a lot of controversy on the Internet. The most common one is whether to take additional supplements such as lycopene and zinc tablets. Some studies believe that long-term high intake of these nutrients can reduce the risk of prostate hyperplasia and cancer. However, there are also large sample follow-up data in the past 10 years. As long as tomatoes, nuts, and red meat are often eaten in the daily diet, the extra dose will hardly have any additional effect. On the contrary, many people spend a lot of money to buy imported supplements that are not pure enough and may increase the metabolic burden. In fact, the prostate grows under the bladder, just stuck in the pelvic cavity. If you sit for a long time, you will keep pressing it. Eating too spicy food, drinking too much strong alcohol, holding back urine for a long time, and frequent sexual stimulation will cause it to become repeatedly congested and edematous. This is the same as your skin being red, swollen and inflamed due to repeated friction. Stand and walk more often, don't always hold back your urine, and eat less irritating food. It is more effective than any supplement.

Many people think that they don’t need to get tested if they don’t have symptoms. In fact, this is the biggest misunderstanding. There used to be a 52-year-old uncle who skipped the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test every year during the physical examination at work. He said that he had no problems with urination. Last year, he started having back pain and it was found that it was bone metastasis of prostate cancer. If he had checked PSA three years earlier, the cure rate for early-stage prostate cancer would be almost 100%. There is currently no unified conclusion on the starting age for PSA screening. European and American guidelines recommend annual screening for those over the age of 55. Many domestic experts recommend that people with a family history of prostate cancer can start annual screening at the age of 45, without a hard age line.

There are also many people who believe that prostate massage can "detoxify". This is also very controversial. For patients who already have chronic prostatitis, regular massage performed by doctors in regular hospitals can indeed help drain accumulated prostate fluid and relieve the feeling of swelling. However, if you massage randomly by yourself or go to an informal health care institution, it will easily injure the prostate capsule, causing problems even if there is nothing wrong with it.

To put it bluntly, the prostate is really an organ that "eats the soft and not the hard". You usually follow its habits, and don't be lazy when it's time to get checked. Don't be embarrassed to go to the urology department if you really have a minor problem. This is the best way to protect it. If you wait until the pain is unbearable and urination is difficult to intervene, you will suffer a lot.