morning-time-alarm-bell This will be a starting point for a series of blogs on the symptoms related to BPH, or enlarged prostate.  Symptoms can vary, and symptoms that seem to be from the prostate can be from other things, so the situation is not always clear.  Common symptoms often attributed to the prostate include frequency, nocturnal (waking up at night to urinate), fashion-man-wristwatch-modelslow stream, urgency to urinate, and not feeling empty. Additional complaints include double voiding, (having to urinate 2 or 3 times in succession to feel empty), straining to urinate, split stream and recurrent urinary infections (UTI). Part of what makes the symptoms so variable is that the direct victim in a way, of an obstructing enlarged prostate is the bladder. The bladder normally pushes the urine through the prostate before the urine enters the urethra and then exits the body through the penis.  The bladder initially responds to being stressed by its muscles thickening and strengthening and being able to push harder. However, the muscles inside the body such as the bladder, (and the heart is the same way), do not have unlimited capacity to strengthen like we might think. It’s not like skeletal muscles such as the biceps when exercised. At some point when stressed enough the muscles become very irritable, or may even get stretched and weaken, sometimes severely. We will discuss how this interaction between prostate and bladder affects symptoms in the next blog and how Las Vegas Urologists like Dr. Newman can help you.