About half of all men with enlarged prostates experience symptoms. They notice that their prostates have grown and they experience problems.
These symptoms are mainly due to the prostate growing against the urethra, which means that the urethra is constricted. This can make it hard to empty your bladder, to keep urine in your bladder and to hold your water.
Emptying problems
- Difficulty starting to pee
- Weak urine flow
- Feeling that your bladder has not been completely emptied
- Your bladder is not completely emptied after urination
Trouble holding water
- Need to urinate often
- Need to urinate at night
- Severe urgings that lead to urine leakage
Sometimes these emptying problems can lead to a complete stop and hard to treat UTIs. Because these symptoms also can be due to other illnesses in the lower urinary system, you should always consult your doctor to find out the cause of these symptoms.
Thick bladder walls are a problem
When the prostate grows, it becomes more difficult for your urine to pass through the urethra. The pipe simply becomes narrower. Your bladder needs to work with high pressure in order to get the urine out of your bladder. This leads to the bladder walls becoming thicker, less flexible and less elastic. This in turn means that the bladder cannot pull itself together as well as it used to, which means that all the urine can't be squeezed out. The urine that is left is called residual urine and can be the breeding ground for bacteria.