With the current push for women’s health clinics and practitioners, it is easy for men to feel left out. After all, you’ve no uterus to become cancerous, and although you do have vestigial breasts and it is possible to get breast cancer, I don’t suggest you go looking for breast lumps every month after your non-existent periods.
However, there are some specific male areas, and these centralize around the genito-urinary systems. In the medical business, Urologists are sometimes called the hewers of stone and drawers of water, because much of their work deals with kidney stones and assisting men to be able to pass water adequately. We men do suffer at times, it’s not only the ladies who have ‘specific’ problems!
Your urinary system is a remarkable collection of organs, beginning with the kidney, the “super filter”. The kidney filters the blood and allows the important stuff like blood cells and nutrients to continue waltzing around your circulation, but taking out the nasties, and at the same time helping balance the acidity/alkalinity of the body. Clever little organs, the kidneys!
To keep your kidneys in top shape does not require special kidney exercises, you will be pleased to know. In fact, there is nothing you can do ‘physically’ to make the kidneys perform, but fortunately there are some things you can do to keep them in top condition.
The first is to drink plenty of water every day. And by ‘water’, I mean the plain and simple H2O style water, not the stuff that has been mixed with hops, distilled with grain or left to age in oak casks. Making the kidneys exercise, to filter and regulate the circulating blood volume, is simply carried out by drinking several liters of water every day. Yes, it is that easy. On your desk at work keep a glass of cold water beside you and empty it every 30 minutes.
The advantages you get from this are enormous. First off, you have immediately lowered the chances of forming kidney stones, a potentially dangerous (and always painful) condition. Being a card carrying coward, I have always preferred the drinking water option to the lying in bed groaning with pain alternative. In fact, around 15 percent of people will experience stones in their lifetime (especially in the hot climates) and men outnumber women between two to three times. We also know that if you do not change your lifestyle, you are very likely to develop another stone within two years after the first episode. I repeat, we men do suffer at times, it’s not only the ladies who have ‘specific’ problems!
The kidneys drain to the bladder by two tubes called Ureters. These do not do much, other than connect the kidney to the collecting vessel (bladder). However, if a piece of stone gets stuck, you will soon know about it. Renal colic sorts out the men from the boys! Ultimate pain!
From the bladder, the urine gets introduced to the outside world by another tube called the Urethra. This is short in ladies and is the reason that women get Cystitis (bladder infections). It is longer in the men folk, allowing us to stand up to pee and become obsessed with how long or short it really is. After the age of 40 give up the ‘Who can pee the highest’ competitions.
However, we chaps have another problem in that region, as far as getting the urine from the bladder to the far wall of the urinal. This is called the Prostate, and it encircles the Urethra and when enlarged, closes down the internal diameter of the pee tube. This makes it difficult to pass water and you dribble on your shoes. The prostate can also become cancerous, an even less pleasant state of affairs. Finally, we men do suffer at times, it’s not only the ladies who have ‘specific’ problems!
Yes, you can have a check-up for this area too. Just ask to see the hewers of stone and drawers of water!
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