I read about a new trial this week called WOLVERINE. It is testing a treatment for an enlarged prostate that uses focused ultrasound to break up the overgrown tissue. No heat. No cutting. The sound waves do the work mechanically. The first men have only just been treated, so this is early days. It is not something you can go and ask for tomorrow. But that is not really the point I want to make. For years men knew an enlarged prostate meant one of two things. Live with it, or have surgery. That was the whole menu our my head. We were wrong. New options like this one are popping up all the time. The prostate sits around the tube you piss through, like your fist around a garden hose. When it grows, it squeezes that hose, and the flow slows down. There are now a lot of ways to unsqueeze that hose. Pills. Steam. Water jets. Little implants that hold the tissue open. Procedures that shrink it without a single stitch. And now, maybe, (pending approval), sound waves. The prostate is just a gland with a problem. Like the thyroid or any other. Glands have problems, and the list of ways to fix this one keeps getting longer and gentler every year. I am not a doctor, and I am not telling you to chase a trial. What I am telling you is that "surgery or nothing" is not the real choice, and it has not been for a while. If a doctor only offers you one option, that is your cue to ask what else is out there. Get that second opinion. So here is my question for the community: when you were told your prostate was enlarged, how many options did your doctor actually lay out for you? One? Or did they walk you through the whole menu? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

There is a gland most men will not say out loud. It sits low, near the plumbing, right next to everything a man ties up with being a man. Because of where it sits, he will not mention it. Not to his wife. Not to his doctor. Not even to himself. I read a piece this week in the Chicago Daily Herald. A patient advocate writing about the exact thing I built Prostate Paladin around: the gland guys do not want to talk about. He was writing about BPH, benign prostatic hyperplasia, which is the mdical name for an enlarged prostate. It comes on with age and hormonal changes, and it brings a set of urinary symptoms that creep up so slowly a man barely notices them. That was me. Sixteen years ago a friend told me in an airport that I had a few drops on my trousers. He said “it happens to all of us, it is your prostate.” I had no idea that I was letting a health problem slide for years. Here is the thing that article gets right, and the thing I want you to take from this email. The silence is the problem. Not the gland. The prostate is just a gland with a problem. Like the thyroid. Glands have problems and we deal with them. But this one sits next to a man’s sense of being a man, so he buries it, and burying it is what lets it win. If you are the wife, the daughter, the son, you are often the one who notices first. So here are the questions to answer about the man in your life: ● Is he getting up at night to piss, more than he used to? ● Is his stream slower, or does he stand there longer than he did? ● Is he suddenly planning trips around where the toilets are? ● Has he gone quiet about something you cannot quite name? If you are nodding, that is not “just getting older.” Those are the everyday signs of an enlarged prostate. I am not a doctor. I am the friend in the airport. So I am not telling you what is wrong with him. I am telling you it is worth a conversation, and then a PSA test and a chat with his doctor to find out what is actually going on. A PSA test is a simple blood test that can be added to any physical, or any blood work. BPH is common and very manageable. But its symptoms overlap with things you want caught early, and the only way to know which one you are dealing with is to look.

Please give a warm welcome to Sophie Katie to the prostate Paladin community. Sophie is interested in Good vibes, real conversations and endless curiosity. @sophie-katie We are glad you are here.Please dive in and begin your prostate awareness journey.

Most men ignore the friendly advice that they should go see a doctor about that, whatever that is. They say to themselves - "sure I will go when it becomes a problem, or I haven't got time for that, it is not bothering me, I will get it checked later." I know, because that is what we do, it is what I did, for a cold, a cut, or an ache. You just put it off until it becomes a problem. But your prostate deserves better. For sixteen years I have watched men wave off “you should get checked.” I used to think it was pure stubbornness. Maybe some of it is. But this study out of Kaiser Permanente made me think it is something simpler. They gave one group of men the general pros and cons of a PSA test. They gave another group their own personal risk - based on their age and background. The men who saw their own risk were more likely to go and ask for the test. The general washes over us. The personal lands. It is the same reason a friend telling me in an airport that I had a problem worked, when a hundred health articles never did. It was about ME, sitting right there. The thing about the PSA test is, until you have the test you won't know if you have prostate cancer, and if you wait until it becomes a problem - something you have to deal with - well then you probably have waited too long. Don't wait too long - read the stories out there, anybody who waited - wishes they had not. They are unanimous in this. Men are still dying of prostate cancer, of a cancer that is treatable when caught early. Trust me - they all wish they had the test sooner, when it was 98% curable. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about So I want to ask you - what finally got you to pay attention to your prostate? Was it a number, a scare, a person? My PSA number is below 1. What's yours?

This question haunts me. In today's world, there is no reason not to know. I understand the older generation not wanting to talk about it. We came from a time when you did not talk about your business, your family, or anything really. Men were supposed to be an island, and women were the bedrock of the family. Men sixty and older did not talk about their prostates because anything below the belt might lead to an uncomfortable conversation. People might think you were less of a man to admit you had an issue "down there." It seems ridiculous now, but it was a fact of growing up in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Nobody really talked. If you were lucky enough to find someone to share your life with, then you could open up. Today everyone shares everything. Publicly, proudly. Nothing seems sacred. So why do men still not talk about the prostate? Why are there still stories about men diagnosed with a cancer they did not know they had and did not see coming? Here is the truth. I did not know I had a prostate issue either. Sixteen years ago a friend pointed it out to me at an airport. Without him, I might never have known to look. Early detection is the key to prostate cancer. Caught early, men survive and go on for decades. Do not be one of those men. Do not let yours be the family where the cancer spread because nobody knew. Get checked. Remove the doubt. So here is my question for you. Vote in the poll below, then put your reasons in the comments. That is where the real conversation starts. Why do you think the man in your life will not talk about his prostate?