I was just wondering, is there any practical purpose for the prostate apart from turning cancerous? I suppose there must be so could one of you biology smart dopers enlighten me?
Thanks.
BTW - If this sounds like a really obvious question then it probably is but bear in mind I haven’t done biology since I was 15 and even then we didn’t do about prostates.
Is secretes a liquid that helps sperm to make babies.
Oh, and it gives you lotsa pleasure when you poke it with your finger.
What? What?
I am Karl’s prostate.
Or just type prostate into any search engine, skim through the gazillions of ‘prostate cancer’ pages that will return, and look for the obligate intoductory section in each on “what does the prostate do?”
“turning cancerous”
That doesn’t happen for a long time, its an old mans disease.
I don’t believe the prostate has ever been shown to be essential for any human function, including making more humans, though it does have a role in creating seminal fluid. It outranks even the appendix in terms of being ineffectual and potentially deadly.
I guess you could say its prime function is buying BMWs for urologists.
Oh, and while most prostate cancer hits men in their late 50s and older (and may advance slowly enough so that many will die of something else), it does occasionally hit younger males.
And if you’re planning a career as a eunuch, be aware that this will almost certainly save you from both prostate cancer and urinary blockage due to prostatic hypertrophy (something the guidance counselor in high school never told me).
However, IIRC, removing it as a preventive measure is likely to cause all sorts of difficulty with one’s ability to achieve and maintain an erection.
Why is that?
~~Baloo
It’s not so much that the prostate is necessary for an erection. No. But, very often, surgery to remove the prostate damages the nerves responsible for achieving an erection. Impotence results.
handy, you have a habit of making unsupported statements in this forum. So far, I have refrained from remarking on that bad habit.
Here, I draw the line. In the future, please refrain from making unsupported statements when they are so patently incorrect that believing them might cause premature death.
Thank you.
Luckily for us, a prostate exam can pinpoint the problem before it gets worse. Then, medicinal treatment and, if necessary, a small surgery (that doesn’t REMOVE the prostate, it only cuts the swollen part) can lessen, and even avoid serious problems in the future.
Prostate cancer IS a serious problem, but it CAN be prevented if you’re wise enough to see a doctor in time.
Yes, they’re going to stick a finger up your arse to check your prostate. So what? Does that makes you gay? I don’t think so. Besites, it’s better than dying like Frank Zappa.
manhattan, ‘it’s an old mans disease’ is exactly what my doctor told me when I went to see him & asked him. He was probably around 60 himself. Try webmd.com (http://my.webmd.com/content/dmk/dmk_article_1460970)
"Prostate cancer occurs almost exclusively in men over the age of 40 and
is still rare until age 50. Almost half of all men under 70 have at least
microscopic prostate tumors. By age 80 to 90, 70% to 90% of men have
such signs.
“But, very often, surgery to remove the
prostate damages the nerves responsible for achieving an erection.”
When you say things like this, unsupported, you really spook guys from getting tested. That may have been true before, but these days, doctors are much more accurate & the rate is around 90-95% potency after the operation. As long as your surgeon spares the nerves.
There is a blood test, called the PSA (prostate specific antigen ?), which can detect how the prostate is doing. I had the test done. The doctor was quick to point out that the test isn’t 100% accurate.
One other note - the surgery that’s commonly done to relieve urinary obstruction from prostatic enlargement (transurethral resection of the prostate or TURP) rarely detects cancer and is not a good way of treating it. That’s because cancers usually develop in the outer part of the prostate not reached by the TURP procedure.
Check out this review article (even the abstract). I’d say that rates of 61.5 to 79.6 percent for impotence qualify as “very often”.
I have never posted an unsupported medical statement on this board.
The link isn’t straightforward. You must click on the author’s name: Potosky.
Jackmann, what, if anything, do you know about the appendix?
What evedence do you have that the prostate is “non-essential for making babies”? What other organs are “non-essential” to you? Less that 50 years ago we thought that the lymph nodes were “non-essential”. What are your thoughts about the spleen, professor?
Yeah, right Karl, from that abstract:
“… these outcome differences
reflect treatment delivered to a heterogeneous group of patients in diverse health care settings.”
Probably backwoods surgeons using hunting knives.
Hey, don’t be so harsh on my poor friend Manhattan!!! Just because he’s a moderator doesn’t mean that he knows all about everything, or that he’s better than anyone of us. He’s only human, dammit!
Do you really believe that such a term applies to the National Institute of Health (NIH)?
And, the statement “… these outcome differences reflect treatment delivered to a heterogeneous group of patients in diverse health care settings” is a strength of the study, not a weakness as you seem to be implying. Let me translate: It doesn’t matter where you have these procedures done - the outcomes are will be similar to those described in this study, i.e. a 61.5 to 79.6 percent rate of impotence.
If this was the pit I would hurl an epithet at you. But it’s GQ so I’ll simply ask: Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?
Medical care here in the backwoods is pretty good. We also now our limits and send the complicated cases to the big city. Don’t mock us, we work much longer hours than city doctors and all in all we do a hell of a job.
Prostatism usually is an old man’s disease. But benign prostate hypertrophy is more common than prostate cancer. This form of cancer is very highly treatable. It remains the fourth leading male cause of cancer death, as I recall, since not enough people get their prostates checked. You do not need surgery if your prostate growth is detected early. So please do yourself a favour if you are older than 50 and have your prostate checked yearly.
On the whole, I think the moderators around here do a reasonable job. I don’t agree with absolutely everything they do. Bt I also don’t have the responsibility they have, nor do I have to contend with the crap that the moderators put up with. If a moderator gave me a very clear warning that I was behaving like a jerk, I would consider it closely before dashing off some reflex rationalization.
No offense, but your doctor is an idiot who doesn’t deserve to practice medicine, assuming that he really told you that.
First of all, neither 40 nor 50 is old. It is young.
Second, I scored a seven (thank you very much) on my PSA at age 34. They still don’t know why (biopsies were negative). But to catagorize prostate cancer as “an old man’s disease” is incorrect to the point of malpractice.
Excellent point about the scaremongering about erectile dysfunction, though.
“Second, I scored a seven (thank you very much) on my PSA at age 34”
If you read that web page at webmd.com, they explain why sometimes you get a high PSA reading that is okay. One of the reasons was having an ejaculation within 48 hours of the test, but lets not go there 
Im still waiting to find out if HPV #16 or #18 plays any role in the prostate abnormalities. As far as I know, there is still no test for HPV in men (might be one just recently that came up; but its real expensive), so I don’t know how they would be able to make any conclusions.