8/16/2023 0 Comments Snl tiny ballsIn Raymond’s case, it took more than a year for his incontinence to show significant improvement - largely thanks to a daily routine of pelvic floor exercises recommended by a specialist. Some become a complete recluse as a result.’Īnother highly treatable cause of incontinence in men is an overactive bladder, which affects more than one in 12 adults in the UK, triggering an urgent and frequent need to urinate. ‘Some men worry that they stink or they feel wet all the time and have to change their incontinence pads five or six times a day. Often, we see men who have been dragged into the clinic by their partners who insist they tell us about how they are having to get up several times a night to go the bathroom. He adds: ‘Some men ignore symptoms of an enlarged prostate for several years before seeking help. ‘In some cases, they are often elderly men with no social support, or they have learning difficulties and did not realise the seriousness of their symptoms.’ ![]() ‘These patients usually end up on kidney dialysis for life, or on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. ‘We see roughly one male patient a month at our hospital who has suffered irreversible damage to his kidneys because he kept putting off going to the doctors with urinary retention,’ says Gordon Muir, a consultant urological surgeon at King’s College Hospital, London. Yet, caught in time, the problem can be easily treated with medication to relax bladder muscles or shrink the overgrown prostate laser surgery to destroy excess prostate tissue or an operation called transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP), where some of the prostate tissue is removed to improve urine flow. ![]() Long term, this fluid backlog causes severe kidney damage. Left untreated, this can cause urine to back up into the kidneys. ![]() This leads to symptoms such as wanting to urinate more frequently, but it also causes urinary retention, where the bladder never fully empties. ‘But it may have taken them considerable time to pluck up courage to get in touch.’Įxperts stress that needing to use incontinence pads at all is sign a man should see his GP, and warn that some men are risking permanent damage by ignoring incontinence-related symptoms until they become a crisis.Īnother main cause of incontinence in men is benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which affects half of men over 50 and occurs when the prostate - the walnut-sized organ that produces fluid for semen - enlarges with age, pressing against the urethra (the tube that carries urine out of the body). ‘Many men who call find it easier to talk over the phone than in person,’ she says. ‘A lot of men definitely find it more difficult than women do to talk about problems with their bladder,’ says Karen Powell, a nurse specialising in incontinence who runs a telephone advice line for the charity Bladder Health UK. A recent survey by Prostate Cancer UK of 5,000 men over 40 found that half reported experiencing urinary incontinence at some point. The true figures could well be higher, however. In fact, an estimated one in ten men (versus 40 per cent of women) are affected. It’s one of several causes of incontinence in men, but while urinary incontinence in women - commonly caused by childbirth - has a relatively high public profile, this isn’t true for men. In around 60 per cent of cases, radical prostatectomy, which around 2,000 men in the UK a year undergo after a prostate cancer diagnosis, can cause nerve and muscle damage that can lead to poor bladder control. I had such terrible problems at the beginning that it was difficult to look ahead to the future.’ ‘Even just going upstairs in the house left me soaked in urine. ![]() ‘Every time I coughed, sneezed or got up from a chair, I would leak and have no control over it,’ he says.
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