Hey guys

With all the recent talk about our prostate both here in our tribe and in the press, it appears not many of us know what it actually does ...so I thought you might like to get an overview of what this tiny organ actually does and this article is a good introduction. BTW I have granted permission to reprint this article here, from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Lacking a scanner I have typed out the article so any typos is probably my fault rather than the paper from which I copied it from.

[THIS ARTICLE WAS COPIED FROM THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD’S 29 August 2009 edition “Good Weekend Supplement” and was written by DR Karl S Kruszelnicki ]

Back when I was practising medicine, I was a regular at Sydney Long Bay jail, teaching the prisoners some basic anatomy and physiology relating to sexual matters. At first, I was a bit taken aback by how little the guys knew. But then I remembered how little I knew about my own body before I studied medicine.

That said, you’d still think that an organ that gets as much publicity as the prostate does these days would be familiar to the half of the population that owns one.

In fact, according to a 2008 survey of 503 men aged 40 to 80 in WA, 80% didn’t have a clue what the gland did. And this was despite the fact that 75%of them had had a previous prostate related examination, and that about 50% of them had had dealings with prostate cancer (either through personal experience or when a friend had it).

So here are some basic facts. The prostate gland was first described in 1563 and its cancer identified in 1853. In the US and UK, cancer of the prostate is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men , after lung cancer.

In Australian men, it’s the second most common cancer after skin cancer and is the No 2 cause of cancer deaths.

Most prostate cancer sufferers do not have any symptoms, do not get any treatment, and end up dying from other causes. This is because cancer of the prostate can grow very slowly, and most sufferers are more that 50 years of age.

Indeed, in studies of men who died from other causes, autopsies show that cancer of the prostate was present in 30% of men in their 50’s and in 80% of men in their 70’s.

The prostate gland is about 3cm long, and weighs about 20 grams. It is usually said to be the size of a walnut or chestnut. It’s located deep in the pelvis directly under the urinary bladder, and immediately in front of the rectum. The urethra, after leaving the bladder on its way to the outside, passes through the middle of the prostate gland. So as the prostate gland enlarges with age, it can both constrict the urethra (interfering with urination and sexual ejaculation) and bulge upwards into the bladder (giving a false sense of bladder fullness).

The tissue of the prostate gland is about 5% non-glandular (with fibro-muscular components and 95% glandular (from which cancers of the prostate arise). In the glandular part, there are some 30 to 50 little glands secrete various fluids (collectively known as prostatic fluid) into pipes the eventually lead to the urethra. Prostatic fluid is a clear, slightly alkaline liquid with a rather characteristic smell. The alkalinity is thought to improve the survival rate of the sperm in the vagina.

Prostatic fluid makes up about 10 to 30 % of the volume of the semen, with about 10% coming from the vas deferens, and the remainder coming from the seminal vesicles.

The prostate gland makes prostatic fluid but also has a muscular function. During ejaculation, it provides exquisitely timed waves of muscular contraction to help propel semen to its final destination.

Now that the prostate is increasingly a media darling men might become increasingly aware of its purpose. [end of reprint]

Hope it helps you....

Regards...


Jim