How To Reduce Prostate Enlargement And Improve It's Health With Exercise?

 Regular exercise is one of the best ways to take care of your prostate gland. Prevention is the best medicine and exercise can definitely help here. Exercise has also been shown to help treat various prostate-related conditions. Over the years there have been a growing amount of research showing how exercise can help to prevent problems such as prostate enlargement, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction . 

It is important to remember that the quality of your life is equally important to its length. With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the physical exercises that can help to improve your prostate health.

When should I start exercise?

If you’re going to have surgery for prostate cancer or an enlarged prostate, it’s a good idea to start doing the exercises before the surgery. This will help you to do them properly after your treatment. It might also help you to stop leaking urine sooner.

After surgery, you’ll have a tube called a catheter to drain urine from your bladder. If you’re having surgery for prostate cancer, the catheter is usually removed after one to three weeks.

After surgery for an enlarged prostate, the catheter is usually removed after two to three days, once your urine is clear of blood and you can urinate properly.

You can start doing pelvic floor muscle exercises as soon as your catheter has been removed. They’re safe to do, and won’t hurt or cause any damage. But like all muscles, pelvic floor muscles can become tired so try not to overdo it.

If you had your surgery a while ago but still have urinary problems, starting the exercises could still help. You should also speak to your doctor or nurse, as there may be other treatments that could help.

How do I do the exercises?

Make sure you’ve found the right muscles and you know what it feels like to tighten them before trying these exercises. There are two sets of exercises – slow and fast. You can do them while sitting, standing or lying down – whichever you prefer.

Slow pelvic floor muscle exercises

Slowly tighten the muscles as hard as you can so you feel a lifting sensation.

Try to hold this lift for 10 seconds. Keep breathing normally.

Slowly relax the muscles and rest for 10 seconds.

Aim to repeat the lift and rest up to 10 times.

You might find that you can’t hold the lift for 10 seconds to start with. Just hold it for as long as you can and try to build up to 10 seconds. It’s more important to do the exercises properly than to do them for the full 10 seconds.

Fast pelvic floor muscle exercises

Repeat the same action but this time, try tightening the muscles as quickly as possible.

Hold the lift for one second and then let go.

Try to do up to 10 of these short, fast lifts.

Try to concentrate while you’re doing the exercises. If you don’t do them properly, they might not help.

Biofeedback

This is a way of monitoring your pelvic floor muscles while you do the exercises. Your continence advisor or specialist continence physiotherapist might suggest biofeedback if you’re struggling to find the right muscles or to do the exercises. But many clinics don’t offer biofeedback.

If you’re offered biofeedback, your continence advisor or specialist continence physiotherapist will insert a small probe into your back passage. Tightening your pelvic floor muscles puts pressure on the probe. This pressure is displayed on a screen and shows if you’re doing the exercises correctly.

Your continence advisor or physiotherapist will show you how to use biofeedback and help you do the exercises. They may lend you a biofeedback unit to take home.

How often should I do the exercises?

There’s no fixed advice on how often you should do pelvic floor muscle exercises. Speak to your doctor or nurse to see what they suggest.

You may want to try doing a set of slow and fast exercises three times a day. And try to make them part of your daily routine.

Don’t overdo it. Pelvic floor muscles are like any other muscles – they can get tired if you do too many exercises. You might notice that you leak more urine towards the end of the day, as your muscles get tired. This should get better with time as the muscles get stronger.

It might help to tighten your pelvic floor muscles at certain times.

When you leak urine. Tighten the muscles strongly before and during activities that cause you to leak urine – for example, when getting up from a chair, lifting, bending, coughing or sneezing. Tighten the muscles for as long as you can. Over time, this might help to prevent urine leaking.

After urinating. Tighten your pelvic floor muscles strongly after you urinate. This should get rid of any urine that’s left in the urethra (the tube you urinate through) and avoid any dribbling afterwards.

It’s important to be patient and keep doing the exercises. It takes time to see an improvement – it won’t happen overnight. You might see a small improvement each week, but it can take up to three months before you notice a real difference. The exercises might not work for some men, but there are other things that might help if they don’t work for you.

You’ll need to keep doing the exercises for the rest of your life, but once your pelvic floor muscles are strong, you should be able to do fewer exercises. Keep doing some exercises each day – otherwise the muscles will get weaker again.

Sources: Prostate Cancer UK