No Fear of Prostate Health This Friday the 13th!

Friday the 13th has a scary reputation, and the superstitious crowd might be especially wary. But when it comes to prostate health, we can work together so that men can live their lives without fear.

Knowledge is power so read up on the latest studies concerning prostate health and treatments to prostate related conditions. What are the side effect profiles? How effective is the treatment? Who sponsored the study? How many times has it been replicated, if it all? Is the risk worth the potential benefit?

Discussion and social gathering is another key. Men have feelings and shouldn't be afraid to talk about them. Confiding and talking to others rather than bottling it all up can be beneficial to both physical and mental health. Listening to the men in our lives and giving them a platform for their voice is important. Give men a comfortable space to be part of so they have the courage to open up about their symptoms, pain points, accomplishments, and help them relieve their fears.

With knowledge and power, Friday the 13th doesn't have to be filled with fear of prostate problems anymore!

Prostate Health in September

We're approaching the middle of September. Do you know someone with prostate health issues? You may have been diagnosed or you may know someone without realizing. How do we make the visit to the urologist less unpleasant? Having a welcoming environment for men (where they feel like they're at the doctor and more like they're in a safe haven) can help ease the mental uncertainty. Whether they're surrounded by sports memorabilia, cars and watch magazines, or any other popular imagery for men, giving them a space to feel relaxed, surrounded by brothers who can offer support is one way to tackle the stigma.

Hosting events and having the proceeds go to men's health orgs and research, health fairs that offer free screenings for men, and other reputable organizations in service of men's health is another idea to include men in a relaxing space while also supporting their health. Imagine playing a fun basketball charity game or a poker night for a cause.

The world has 7.5 billion people, so certainly even if only a portion of us came together for this cause, we can make a bigger impact than we think. Support the education and awareness of prostate health in your local circles!

Watch Out! Prostate Problems Will Occur Someday! Part 3 of 3

Welcome Back to Watch Out! Prostate Problems Will Occur Someday!

This week we are going to discuss surgery to resolve BPH and how adjust lifestyle to prevent BPH.

For patients with severe symptoms and less improvement by drugs, surgery is a must. The common practice is called transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). In short, it is to put a tube into the urethra via an endoscope, slowly push it until it is near the prostate, and then scrape off the hyper-proliferative prostate to improve the compression of the urethra and bladder.

There are three common surgical methods at present:

Monopolar TURP

Bipolar TURP

Laser prostatectomy

The main advantage of lasers is less bleeding of the wounds. In order to reduce bleeding and increase the safety of the surgery, people who have heart disease, abnormal blood coagulation or abnormal renal function are recommended to choose this method. However, according to research, using Bipolar TURP is not worse than laser surgery. It is important to find a doctor who is serious, skillful and considerate for the patient.

If you have mild benign prostatic hyperplasia there is no need for treatment, but the following adjustments to your lifestyle can slightly improve the symptoms:

Drink water but not excessively (you can drink 1500-1800 c.c. a day); try to drink during the day and drink less at night.

Train your bladder not to go to the toilet immediately when you want to urinate (distract yourself and try to accumulate up to 200 c.c. or more to improve urine storage function as best as you can).

Do Kegel exercises in your free time (try to purposely interrupt the urine when you are urinating as part of the exercises).

Avoid drinking or eating spicy things; avoid stimulating the sympathetic nerves or cause the symptoms to worsen.

Eat more fruits and vegetables; avoid constipation (the rectum is behind the prostate, so constipation will suppress the prostate).

Pay attention to drug use: some drugs may cause symptoms to worsen (such as antispasmodic drugs).

Many people wonder if there is anything they can eat to improve prostate hypertrophy. Currently there is only evidence that lycopene can improve symptoms slightly. The human body cannot synthesize lycopene by itself, so we can only intake lycopene from food. The content of lycopene in red and yellow vegetables and fruits is relatively high (for example, tomato, papaya, watermelon, etc.). These fruits and vegetables can be taken in moderation. Lycopene is also a good antioxidant, which is somewhat helpful to the human body.

In sum, we hope everybody can understand this common situation well. Prostate hypertrophy is not a taboo disease, and it is a disease that most people may face. Thanks to the advancement of modern medicine, there are already many cheap and effective treatments. Don’t be shy; take good care of your health so that you can have health and happiness in your life.

References:

Berry, SJ, Coffey, DS, Walsh, PC, et al. The development of human benign prostatic hyperplasia with age. J Urol 1984;132:474.

台灣良性攝護腺前列腺肥大症臨床診療指引

Medical treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia, UptoDate

Clinical manifestations and diagnostic evaluation of benign prostatic hyperplasia, UptoDate

Transurethral procedures for treating benign prostatic hyperplasia, UptoDate

Medpartner.club-benign prostate hyperplasia cause treatment

Watch Out! Prostate Problems Will Occur Someday! Part 2 of 3

Good to see you again.
Last week we talked about whether you have benign prostatic hyperplasia or not.
Let's look at the picture:

The prevalence of benign prostatic hyperplasia is high, so there is an international questionnaire to find out if you have benign prostatic hyperplasia or not.
If the answers don’t get a score of 0 then by default the score is 5. The maximum possible score is 35 points.
If the result is moderate or even worse, we suggest you see a doctor.

Generally, the doctor may arrange a physical inspection:
Urine routine examination (to exclude the possibility of infection)
Digital rectal exam (because the prostate is in front of the rectum, it can be touched when diagnosing.)
Ultrasound inspection (to observe hypertrophy of the prostate more clearly)
Urodynamic examination (to evaluate the condition of urination)
These examinations are not only to determine whether there is a problem with hypertrophy of the prostate but also to rule out other possible diseases by arranging other blood tests.


Benign Prostate Hypertrophy treatments include oral medication, extracorporeal shockwave therapy and surgery.
If the prostate gland is so big that it affects quality of life, it is necessary to treat it for BPH.

There are two types of commonly used drugs. The first is to inhibit male hormones which can reduce the size of the prostate gland but the side effect is that it may affect sexual function. The second is to inhibit alpha-adrenergic receptors which can improve symptoms but the side effect is hypotension. Which drug should be used depends on the physician’s evaluation and discussion with the patient. If you are really worried about the impact of sex, you should avoid the first drug. If you have high blood pressure, you can use the second drug to reduce blood pressure due to its side effects.

Please look forward to the next article.

We'll talk about surgery for BPH.

See you next time~

Watch Out! Prostate Problems Will Occur Someday! Part 1 of 3

Do you know your risk for developing benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH)? You should read carefully and share this article.

Let’s look at following graphic first. 

More than half of men over the age of 50 have benign prostatic hyperplasia. However, it turns out that around 8% of men between the of age 30 and also have this condition, and if they live over the age of 80, up to 80% of them may have trouble with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Don't think that this issue is irrelevant to you. According to this graphic, it is statistically and highly likely that you may have this problem someday if you are male.

In 2011, a European study surveyed 1,161 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. They found that these patients put off seeing a doctor for 23 months on average after experiencing BPH symptoms. Research in Asia also indicated that 76% of men believe that benign prostatic hyperplasia (patients with a velocity of urine stream less than 15 ml/s) will not affect their lives. Many elderly men don’t understand it or perhaps are too shy to see a doctor. Please continue to read more and you will understand why the idea that ‘’Benign prostatic hyperplasia won’t affect my life’’ is not totally true.

Causes, Symptoms and Screening of Prostate Hypertrophy

The prostate is a gland that surrounds the upper part of the urethra and secretes prostatic fluid. It injects fluids into the urethra during ejaculation and mixes with sperm and secretions from the seminal vesicle to become semen.

With age, the prostate may enlarge, which means the number of cells in the prostate increase gradually. It sounds horrible because cancer also happens this way. However, don’t forget the “B” in BPH stands for benign. As long as you follow your doctor's instructions, you do not have to worry too much. Up to present, the mechanism of action for prostate hypertrophy is not clear, but there are some relevant factors, such as genes, age, androgens, inflammation, obesity, and increase of waistline. As you can see, not all of these factors can be controlled or prevented. In fact, managing weight is probably the only one we can have some control of. The normal prostate is about 20 grams, but the prostate of a patient with BPH can grow twice as big in size, sometimes even bigger.

Let's look at the prostate from a different angle. Because of its position, once the prostate grows it does not affect sexual activity for men, but it will cause many urethra-related symptoms. That is because of the compression of the bladder and urethra. These symptoms can be divided into two conditions: storage and expulsion of urine.

The reason is simple: a hypertrophic prostate narrows the urethra and produces urinary expulsion symptoms. For example, standing up for longer periods to urinate, interrupted urination, urinating for a long time, slow urination, frequent urination and other conditions. If the prostate presses upward on the bladder, symptoms of urinary storage will occur, like frequent urination, acute urination, nocturnal urination, or even worse, acute urinary incontinence. Urinary symptoms may also lead to urethra infections. Urinary storage symptoms often lead to a decline in quality of life. If you have to pee five times a night or even accidentally experience incontinence outside of the restroom, that can be a nightmare.

You can see the effects of BPH when you go to a public restroom (but keep a low profile or you’ll look like a pervert). Young men go to the urinal, splash, zip, and leave,  but elder men often stand for a long time without urinating. In addition, when they finally do it, urine drips down to their shoes.

The prevalence of benign prostatic hyperplasia is high, so there is an international questionnaire to find out if you have benign prostatic hyperplasia or not.

Come back next week, we will tell you the way to inspect if you have benign prostatic hyperplasia or not. See you then.

SunJour Healthcare News: Golden Biotechnology Corporation Will Change Cancer Treatment in the Near Future

It is currently impossible to immediately cure any type of cancer. Chemotherapy drugs such as Taxol and Gemcitabine are highly effective in killing cancer cells, but because of their drug resistance and strong side effects, they can only be used for short-term treatment. This is the basis for the first line of medication. Drugs for targeted therapy can be used to treat specific tumors, but they still produce drug resistance. There is no anti-cancer drug on the market that can treat respiratory diseases and metabolic syndromes at the same time, so the current treatments against lung cancer have all failed in the end. It is also important to maintain the efficacy of the respiratory system and treat metabolic syndromes. This issue is also of concern for the US FDA. 

Cancer patients who have many diseases are common worldwide. Therefore, it is extremely important that the drug used to fight cancer has a broad spectrum so that the patient has a chance to recover. Finding a basic drug that not only has the effect of inhibiting cancer but also has no side effects is the most urgent goal at present.

Golden Biotechnology Antroquinonol®

A. [Concurrent therapy]:

Maximize the therapeutic effect of chemotherapy drugs. After 4 to 8 cycles, drug resistance disappeared. Supporting the immune system and uninterrupted treatment allowed chemotherapy to achieve the desired results of continuous treatment.

B. [Intermittent treatment]:

Only use Antroquinonol® for therapy when the patient cannot tolerate chemo and when time permits, the patient can re-attempt chemo. Antroquinonol® can be used as an add-on adjuvant therapy.

Purpose:

1. Maintaining the patient's quality of life (QoL) without the need to interrupt chemotherapy or develop resistance and deterioration.

2. Chemotherapy intervention is conducive to short-term results of the poisoning of solid tumors.

3. Maintaining results and repairing damage to organ function, such as liver, kidney and cardiovascular inflammation so that damage and inflammation can be alleviated.

Antroquinonol® will surely become “the standard of the SOC (standard of care).”

SunJour Healthcare Supports Prostate Health Awareness, September 2019

September is a big month for men and men’s health, and 2019 is no different. 

Are you or someone you know reluctant to get prostate health support? We at SunJour Healthcare want to tell you that it’s time to remove the stigma of going to the urologist or talking to someone you trust. In order to encourage men to get their prostate checked, some clinics and health fairs have resources to provide prostate care (some for free) this month. You may have concerns about screening so it is best to speak with your urologist or get a second opinion if you are still uncertain. Educating oneself on the topic is important, and be sure to ascertain that the sources you are looking at are providing accurate information and avoid harmful misinformation. Men have different treatments that worked or didn’t work for them, so it’s important to see the side effect profiles of any treatment options if you are diagnosed with a prostatic condition or disease.
Support groups are a great contributor to holistic treatment of men's health and even for preventative care. Although there’s the old stereotype that men don’t talk about their feelings, it can be very beneficial to talk about your fears, hopes, accomplishments, unpleasant episodes or pain points. You may be able to dismantle some preconceived notions when surrounded by positive people. You can find communities online and offline for men’s health support. Like a pair of shoes, it’s not guaranteed that one group will fit, but rather than go barefoot and be alone, try another group where you may feel more comfortable. 

Know that it’s not always going to be as serious as going on medication or undergoing surgery, because it depends on how mild or severe the symptoms are. What you should note, though, is that a positive change in lifestyle and natural options can be viable forms of complimentary treatment when there is enough scientific evidence. Your friends might even give you recommendations from word of mouth, but as with everything, instead of impulsively jumping to your shopping cart, give yourself the knowledge about the steps you take and weigh the pros and cons.
We hope you can join in on the conversation about raising awareness about the prostate in 2019. What steps will you take to spread awareness for yourself and others?