> Screening for this disorder is simple: use a thermal camera and compare testicular temperature sitting up (or standing) versus lying down, in each case waiting five minutes or so for temperatures to equilibrate, and taping the penis up so that it does not affect the measurement.
Interesting. I wonder how many how many other issues we could screen for using such simple, low cost tools. Some scales can already detect reduced blood flow in the feet (which can be a sign of all sorts of nastiness).
Stethoscopes are pretty cheap and versatile. Human doctors in general have lots of senses which they (in some medical systems) use for diagnosis before reaching for lab tests and MRTs.
If they bother. The vast majority of appointments I’ve had, in recent memory, are the provider typing a bit on their laptop, then sending me to someone else.
The text brushes over the importance of healthy muscle motion for venous blood flow against gravity. Staying physically active, including pelvic floor exercises into the routine and correct belly breathing utilizing the diaphragm are probably the best options for preventing issues with reduced venous blood flow from the testicles passing by the prostate back to the heart.
Please also mention how easy those exercises are:
Once per day, when peeing, do it differently.
1. Release the stream during the in-breath. 2. Stop and hold the stream on the outbreath. 3. If not yet bored or tired go back to 1. Else - finish peeing normally.
That's it.
And note that for most people, a week to few weeks of the exercise give stronger orgasms and ability to delay the ejaculation.
Huh. So that “happiness through clenching your butthole daily” or whatever-it-was copy-paste troll that was so common on Slashdot back in the day, was… very close to being excellent advice?
> And note that for most people, a week to few weeks of the exercise give stronger orgasms and ability to delay the ejaculation.
I've experienced all those benefits when I started walking two times a day, 8-10 thousands of steps a day continuously for several weeks. I haven't performed any other exercises.
But it's really boring and you need to do it every day. I do it only because I need to walk a dog.
Two ways I’ve made walks less boring:
- I started carrying a camera
- I started using the Merlin Bird ID app
Photography has made me realize how much I was previously ignoring. There’s so much to see, and even when walking the same route over and over, there’s an astounding amount of change over time. Often little things.
The Bird ID app made me realize just how many unique birds were making up the sounds I was hearing. As I learned to distinguish between them, I found myself fascinated in a way that I’d never been before.
Walks became almost meditative over time, and the sights and sounds a kind of salve for my often tired brain.
I often feel like I can think more clearly when walking as well, and thought processes kind of just sort themselves out as I go.
I highly recommend making walks more than just a way to move your body. They can be much more, and getting the benefits of movement almost feels like a happy side effect.
Walking is considered by einstein and pretty much all thinkers to be critical to deep work. It's also covered in Cal Newport's book "deep work" briefly. Which is a short audiobook worth reading.
One such prescription would be to do deep work early in the day then walk after and walk again 2 hours before bed. Another would be split the deep work with a 1 hour walk and do the 2nd walk after the 2nd block.
It may be more fulfilling with lots of interesting ideas rattling around. YMMV
I don't find walking to be boring at all! Especially when I'm working on something new, I will walk as many as 10 miles a day while thinking through all of the design corners.
Even when I'm not working, I like taking long walks to think about family, friends, video games, etc.
Its a great way to get into your head without the distraction of a phone or feed or forced message.
Thank you.
Issues like these reflects an evolutionary blind spot: selective pressure drops off after reproductive age, allowing defects like prostate dysfunction to persist. It's the same reason late-onset neurological diseases remain prevalent.
Shouldn't kids with grandfathers have an evolutionary advantage?
Hmm. If we engineer late-life reproduction, that might create evolutionary pressure for healthy old age.
Hides long list of ethical problems with the concept
We missed the boat for that a few million years ago. If we're engineering anyway, we might as well engineer for healthy old age directly.
We just have to get the media to portray geriatric men as sexy, and we'll be well on our way to living to 200!
Dawkins suggested this might be viable (In an abstract; not politically practical) way in The Selfish Gene.
[deleted]
The main problem is that evolution is just not a thing at our modern civilizational time scale.
And I don’t see any problems with late-life reproduction, assuming we can make it reliable and healthy. If anything, some countries desperately need it.
From my reading this is wrong in principle.
Evolution is really slow on average, but locally it moves quite quickly and probably explains the large variation between members of a species.
Add strong selective pressure to that high local speed and you can change a good part of the genotype within a couple of generations. See: animal husbandry. You can breed a new race of dog within 5-10 generations.
Ethics aside we could probably breed people who can sniff out Alzheimer's in less than 250 years.
Our current late reproduction style will very likely influence future generations health at older ages.
It's probably a wash. Sure people are reproducing later, but it's also more likely that they have recieved some major medical intervention to allow them to make it to that stage. For example, it could be stuff like freezing eggs before starting chemo.
We lucked out compared to other species, octopus develop dementia soon after breeding.
So widen the reproductive age (men only)
Why men only?
I think OP was alluding to the fact that risks of complications with pregnancy increases with age.
what? so are you implying that prostate dysfunction makes you less wanted as a father if it presents itself in “the reproductive age”?
I read the comment as insinuating people stop taking care of themselves as much after children and develop unhealthy habits.
So where's the temperature, pulse/pulseox and orientation monitoring jockstrap with linked smartphone app?
Oura ring comes in many sizes. /s
I’ve been reading till…I don’t know 40% of the article? Is there some sort of conclusion besides surgery?
> It’s odd for there to be such an easily-removable design flaw in the human body; evolution tends to remove them.
I wouldn't say so at all. Poor eyesight carries on smartly. Baldness. I enjoy both.
But an old story about the controller code for a surface-to-air missile comes to mind.
Someone looking at the memory allocator spots an obvious resource leak: "This code is going to crash."
The reply was that, while the point was theoretically valid, it was irrelevant, since the system itself would detonate long before resource exhaustion became an issue.
So too prostate cancer back in the day: war, famine and plague were keeping the lifespan well below the threshold of every man's time bomb.
Evolution selects for one thing and one thing only, reproduction.
The answer to every "why hasn't evolution done x" question is selection pressure.
An enlarged prostate is something that people get in their 60s and later. Most people are done with reproduction long before that event. There is simply very little and very low selection pressure.
It's pretty much the reason why most humans have peak health into their 40s.
Don't expect evolution to "fix" anything for humans that doesn't commonly impact 20yos.
Weird that you pull the one quote but ignore the rest of that paragraph which is about how being the leading cause of infertility is exactly the kind of thing evolution normally fixes.
"It’s odd for there to be such an easily-removable design flaw in the human body; evolution tends to remove them. Since it strikes at advanced ages, BPH doesn’t make a big impact on a man’s ability to pass on his genes. But being the leading cause of male infertility sure does. Their explanation is that evolution hasn’t had much time to work on the problem; in animals the spermatic vein is horizontal, and doesn’t have or need one-way valves. It’s our standing upright that yields the problem; in evolutionary terms that’s a recent development."
Not only is it recent in terms of human history; back to my point, it is only in the last few centuries that men in gneral have reached ages that expose the posture shift as a flaw.
Baldness and grey hair are indicators of male maturity. In many primate species elder males look different than younger ones, which guides their social dynamics. Similar reason why our kids stay small for their first 12 years or so - it's hard to teach someone who can physically overpower you.
There's also your back, your joints, your teeth, GERD. Everything starts getting flimsy in your late forties.
It would probably take too long, but a human breeding program centered around the healthiest still fertile old men we can find and young women with spotless genetic heritage would uplift our whole species.
Sounds like the end of Dr. Strangelove.
Older fathers increase the chance of autism, schizophrenia et al.
Obviously you would use sperm harvested while they were still young, and kept frozen for 60 years.
> It’s odd for there to be such an easily-removable design flaw in the human body; evolution tends to remove them.
Your appendix and gallbladder would like a word with you ;^)
Wisdom teeth too.
And tonsils!
Speaking of, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed as a child due to chronic ear infections.
What's up with those things?!
Poor eyesight is evolutionarily recent (not enough sunlight exposure in childhood, rare to find in hunter-gatherer societies). Baldness won't kill you.
> not enough sunlight exposure in childhood
Do you have any source for this? As someone born in the summer to a farming family with poor eyesight, I find it hard to believe that happened because I wasn't exposed to enough sun as an infant or child.
Interesting study. Myopia can definitely be caused by focusing too much on nearby things.
I just so happen to have Hyperopia with astigmatism, neither of which came from a lack of outdoor exposure. (If anything, I needed less time outside).
That's a bit of the issue I have with such a broad generalization. It's true that for some, a lack of time outdoors damaged their eyesight, it's not universally true that all or perhaps even most poor eyesight is a result of staying indoors.
> I wouldn't say so at all. Poor eyesight carries on smartly. Baldness. I enjoy both.
What is the problem with baldness other than having a cheap excuse for not being successful in life? I actually enjoy looking a bit like Larry Fink.
So there is a cure for BPH?
You can use 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors like finasteride.
One of the primary causes of BPH is from androgens, specifically the conversion of testosterone -> dihydrotestoerone via the 5-ar enzyme.
The prostate is an androgen-sensitive tissue, and DHT causes enlargement.
It's not guaranteed to fix it, but it's one option.
Sounds like it reoccurs, but potentially the procedure is repeatable. I didn't see a frequency.
I wonder how many potential answers to such problems are out there, known to a few but not acted on by the masses.
Not a cure but Tadalafil works very well as a treatment.
It does. I suffer for almost 20 hours of I miss a dose. I’m very sure that doesn’t happen.
We already have one solution to the problem.
Finasteride or dutasteride. They control BPH perfectly, while also treating male pattern baldness. Combine with daily tadalafil to offset any chance of the dubious sexual side effects, while also reducing gynecomastia (it's also an aromatase inhibitor!). Make sure to have regular 5ari-aware PSA screenings to make sure high grade cancers are caught and you are golden.
fin/dut + tad are my favorite medications to keep men fresh for many more years than intended by nature.
Have your children before you start though, as dut will probably make you sterile eventually.
Two lifelong medications + frequent screening does not sound like "a solution" to me.
That being said, the article does state that its proposed treatment doesn't last forever, though I couldn't find any numbers on how long it is expected to last.
I‘ve been holding off on fin because of some people developing post-fin syndrome. Is Tad addressing this hazard in your view?
Giving 90% of the gender that looks actually great with hair on their head MPB is easily one of the biggest sleights evolution has committed against our species.
I've personally had very little luck with official channels there. Most won't prescribe anything for hair loss, several dermatologists said to just get used to it, one would prescribe fin pills, i.e. systemic - which did eventually give me pain in the breast tissues (so I ceased using it), but not topical, citing that it's too new on the market. I was unable to find anyone who would or even could look at serum DHT. I eventually settled on just paying one of these apparently legal telemedicine vendors 20 bucks per topical fin prescription.
Serum DHT is not useful at all.
> which did eventually give me pain in the breast tissues (so I ceased using it)
You already decided to take one hormonal disruptor, so why not go all the way? Find a private andrologist that prescribes you fin/dut + an aromatase inhibitor. Daily tadalafil also acts as aromatase inhibitor by the way. Should be enough to offset the estrogen increase from finasteride. It's worth a try.
I personally don't really believe in topical min/fin/dut: You are probably just getting the same effects and side effects you'd get from a lower oral dose.
The studies on topical finasteride support this. You just believe it's not in your blood and thus there is no nocebo effect to give you ED but it very much is.
daily Taladafil in combination with daily Finasterid?
Good luck :)
I do not know about Finasterid in detail, but the small-printing for Taladafil says clearly its _not_ for daily use.
Finasteride and Taladafil are very commonly prescribed for daily use for hair loss prevention and ED (Taladafil is also marketed to bodybuilders / gym-goers for better blood flow for workout pruposes). Both are generally well tolerated with a minimal side effect profile.
There are a plethora of online doctors in the US willing to prescribe both with no more than submitting an online survey of symptoms.
Daily use of cyalis (tadalafil) is officially marketed.
> Screening for this disorder is simple: use a thermal camera and compare testicular temperature sitting up (or standing) versus lying down, in each case waiting five minutes or so for temperatures to equilibrate, and taping the penis up so that it does not affect the measurement.
Interesting. I wonder how many how many other issues we could screen for using such simple, low cost tools. Some scales can already detect reduced blood flow in the feet (which can be a sign of all sorts of nastiness).
Stethoscopes are pretty cheap and versatile. Human doctors in general have lots of senses which they (in some medical systems) use for diagnosis before reaching for lab tests and MRTs.
If they bother. The vast majority of appointments I’ve had, in recent memory, are the provider typing a bit on their laptop, then sending me to someone else.
The text brushes over the importance of healthy muscle motion for venous blood flow against gravity. Staying physically active, including pelvic floor exercises into the routine and correct belly breathing utilizing the diaphragm are probably the best options for preventing issues with reduced venous blood flow from the testicles passing by the prostate back to the heart.
Please also mention how easy those exercises are:
Once per day, when peeing, do it differently. 1. Release the stream during the in-breath. 2. Stop and hold the stream on the outbreath. 3. If not yet bored or tired go back to 1. Else - finish peeing normally. That's it.
And note that for most people, a week to few weeks of the exercise give stronger orgasms and ability to delay the ejaculation.
Huh. So that “happiness through clenching your butthole daily” or whatever-it-was copy-paste troll that was so common on Slashdot back in the day, was… very close to being excellent advice?
> And note that for most people, a week to few weeks of the exercise give stronger orgasms and ability to delay the ejaculation.
I've experienced all those benefits when I started walking two times a day, 8-10 thousands of steps a day continuously for several weeks. I haven't performed any other exercises.
But it's really boring and you need to do it every day. I do it only because I need to walk a dog.
Two ways I’ve made walks less boring:
- I started carrying a camera
- I started using the Merlin Bird ID app
Photography has made me realize how much I was previously ignoring. There’s so much to see, and even when walking the same route over and over, there’s an astounding amount of change over time. Often little things.
The Bird ID app made me realize just how many unique birds were making up the sounds I was hearing. As I learned to distinguish between them, I found myself fascinated in a way that I’d never been before.
Walks became almost meditative over time, and the sights and sounds a kind of salve for my often tired brain.
I often feel like I can think more clearly when walking as well, and thought processes kind of just sort themselves out as I go.
I highly recommend making walks more than just a way to move your body. They can be much more, and getting the benefits of movement almost feels like a happy side effect.
Walking is considered by einstein and pretty much all thinkers to be critical to deep work. It's also covered in Cal Newport's book "deep work" briefly. Which is a short audiobook worth reading.
One such prescription would be to do deep work early in the day then walk after and walk again 2 hours before bed. Another would be split the deep work with a 1 hour walk and do the 2nd walk after the 2nd block.
It may be more fulfilling with lots of interesting ideas rattling around. YMMV
I don't find walking to be boring at all! Especially when I'm working on something new, I will walk as many as 10 miles a day while thinking through all of the design corners.
Even when I'm not working, I like taking long walks to think about family, friends, video games, etc.
Its a great way to get into your head without the distraction of a phone or feed or forced message.
Thank you.
Issues like these reflects an evolutionary blind spot: selective pressure drops off after reproductive age, allowing defects like prostate dysfunction to persist. It's the same reason late-onset neurological diseases remain prevalent.
Shouldn't kids with grandfathers have an evolutionary advantage?
Hmm. If we engineer late-life reproduction, that might create evolutionary pressure for healthy old age.
Hides long list of ethical problems with the concept
We missed the boat for that a few million years ago. If we're engineering anyway, we might as well engineer for healthy old age directly.
We just have to get the media to portray geriatric men as sexy, and we'll be well on our way to living to 200!
Dawkins suggested this might be viable (In an abstract; not politically practical) way in The Selfish Gene.
The main problem is that evolution is just not a thing at our modern civilizational time scale.
And I don’t see any problems with late-life reproduction, assuming we can make it reliable and healthy. If anything, some countries desperately need it.
From my reading this is wrong in principle.
Evolution is really slow on average, but locally it moves quite quickly and probably explains the large variation between members of a species.
Add strong selective pressure to that high local speed and you can change a good part of the genotype within a couple of generations. See: animal husbandry. You can breed a new race of dog within 5-10 generations.
Ethics aside we could probably breed people who can sniff out Alzheimer's in less than 250 years.
Our current late reproduction style will very likely influence future generations health at older ages.
It's probably a wash. Sure people are reproducing later, but it's also more likely that they have recieved some major medical intervention to allow them to make it to that stage. For example, it could be stuff like freezing eggs before starting chemo.
We lucked out compared to other species, octopus develop dementia soon after breeding.
So widen the reproductive age (men only)
Why men only?
I think OP was alluding to the fact that risks of complications with pregnancy increases with age.
what? so are you implying that prostate dysfunction makes you less wanted as a father if it presents itself in “the reproductive age”?
I read the comment as insinuating people stop taking care of themselves as much after children and develop unhealthy habits.
So where's the temperature, pulse/pulseox and orientation monitoring jockstrap with linked smartphone app?
Oura ring comes in many sizes. /s
I’ve been reading till…I don’t know 40% of the article? Is there some sort of conclusion besides surgery?
> It’s odd for there to be such an easily-removable design flaw in the human body; evolution tends to remove them.
I wouldn't say so at all. Poor eyesight carries on smartly. Baldness. I enjoy both.
But an old story about the controller code for a surface-to-air missile comes to mind.
Someone looking at the memory allocator spots an obvious resource leak: "This code is going to crash."
The reply was that, while the point was theoretically valid, it was irrelevant, since the system itself would detonate long before resource exhaustion became an issue.
So too prostate cancer back in the day: war, famine and plague were keeping the lifespan well below the threshold of every man's time bomb.
Evolution selects for one thing and one thing only, reproduction.
The answer to every "why hasn't evolution done x" question is selection pressure.
An enlarged prostate is something that people get in their 60s and later. Most people are done with reproduction long before that event. There is simply very little and very low selection pressure.
It's pretty much the reason why most humans have peak health into their 40s.
Don't expect evolution to "fix" anything for humans that doesn't commonly impact 20yos.
Weird that you pull the one quote but ignore the rest of that paragraph which is about how being the leading cause of infertility is exactly the kind of thing evolution normally fixes.
"It’s odd for there to be such an easily-removable design flaw in the human body; evolution tends to remove them. Since it strikes at advanced ages, BPH doesn’t make a big impact on a man’s ability to pass on his genes. But being the leading cause of male infertility sure does. Their explanation is that evolution hasn’t had much time to work on the problem; in animals the spermatic vein is horizontal, and doesn’t have or need one-way valves. It’s our standing upright that yields the problem; in evolutionary terms that’s a recent development."
Not only is it recent in terms of human history; back to my point, it is only in the last few centuries that men in gneral have reached ages that expose the posture shift as a flaw.
Baldness and grey hair are indicators of male maturity. In many primate species elder males look different than younger ones, which guides their social dynamics. Similar reason why our kids stay small for their first 12 years or so - it's hard to teach someone who can physically overpower you.
There's also your back, your joints, your teeth, GERD. Everything starts getting flimsy in your late forties.
It would probably take too long, but a human breeding program centered around the healthiest still fertile old men we can find and young women with spotless genetic heritage would uplift our whole species.
Sounds like the end of Dr. Strangelove.
Older fathers increase the chance of autism, schizophrenia et al.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect
Obviously you would use sperm harvested while they were still young, and kept frozen for 60 years.
Wisdom teeth too.
And tonsils!
Speaking of, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed as a child due to chronic ear infections.
What's up with those things?!
Poor eyesight is evolutionarily recent (not enough sunlight exposure in childhood, rare to find in hunter-gatherer societies). Baldness won't kill you.
> not enough sunlight exposure in childhood
Do you have any source for this? As someone born in the summer to a farming family with poor eyesight, I find it hard to believe that happened because I wasn't exposed to enough sun as an infant or child.
I've worn glasses since I was 2.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6678505/
Interesting study. Myopia can definitely be caused by focusing too much on nearby things.
I just so happen to have Hyperopia with astigmatism, neither of which came from a lack of outdoor exposure. (If anything, I needed less time outside).
That's a bit of the issue I have with such a broad generalization. It's true that for some, a lack of time outdoors damaged their eyesight, it's not universally true that all or perhaps even most poor eyesight is a result of staying indoors.
> I wouldn't say so at all. Poor eyesight carries on smartly. Baldness. I enjoy both.
What is the problem with baldness other than having a cheap excuse for not being successful in life? I actually enjoy looking a bit like Larry Fink.
So there is a cure for BPH?
You can use 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors like finasteride.
One of the primary causes of BPH is from androgens, specifically the conversion of testosterone -> dihydrotestoerone via the 5-ar enzyme.
The prostate is an androgen-sensitive tissue, and DHT causes enlargement.
It's not guaranteed to fix it, but it's one option.
Sounds like it reoccurs, but potentially the procedure is repeatable. I didn't see a frequency.
I wonder how many potential answers to such problems are out there, known to a few but not acted on by the masses.
Not a cure but Tadalafil works very well as a treatment.
It does. I suffer for almost 20 hours of I miss a dose. I’m very sure that doesn’t happen.
We already have one solution to the problem.
Finasteride or dutasteride. They control BPH perfectly, while also treating male pattern baldness. Combine with daily tadalafil to offset any chance of the dubious sexual side effects, while also reducing gynecomastia (it's also an aromatase inhibitor!). Make sure to have regular 5ari-aware PSA screenings to make sure high grade cancers are caught and you are golden.
fin/dut + tad are my favorite medications to keep men fresh for many more years than intended by nature.
Have your children before you start though, as dut will probably make you sterile eventually.
Two lifelong medications + frequent screening does not sound like "a solution" to me.
That being said, the article does state that its proposed treatment doesn't last forever, though I couldn't find any numbers on how long it is expected to last.
I‘ve been holding off on fin because of some people developing post-fin syndrome. Is Tad addressing this hazard in your view?
Giving 90% of the gender that looks actually great with hair on their head MPB is easily one of the biggest sleights evolution has committed against our species.
I've personally had very little luck with official channels there. Most won't prescribe anything for hair loss, several dermatologists said to just get used to it, one would prescribe fin pills, i.e. systemic - which did eventually give me pain in the breast tissues (so I ceased using it), but not topical, citing that it's too new on the market. I was unable to find anyone who would or even could look at serum DHT. I eventually settled on just paying one of these apparently legal telemedicine vendors 20 bucks per topical fin prescription.
Serum DHT is not useful at all.
> which did eventually give me pain in the breast tissues (so I ceased using it)
You already decided to take one hormonal disruptor, so why not go all the way? Find a private andrologist that prescribes you fin/dut + an aromatase inhibitor. Daily tadalafil also acts as aromatase inhibitor by the way. Should be enough to offset the estrogen increase from finasteride. It's worth a try.
I personally don't really believe in topical min/fin/dut: You are probably just getting the same effects and side effects you'd get from a lower oral dose.
The studies on topical finasteride support this. You just believe it's not in your blood and thus there is no nocebo effect to give you ED but it very much is.
daily Taladafil in combination with daily Finasterid?
Good luck :)
I do not know about Finasterid in detail, but the small-printing for Taladafil says clearly its _not_ for daily use.
Finasteride and Taladafil are very commonly prescribed for daily use for hair loss prevention and ED (Taladafil is also marketed to bodybuilders / gym-goers for better blood flow for workout pruposes). Both are generally well tolerated with a minimal side effect profile.
There are a plethora of online doctors in the US willing to prescribe both with no more than submitting an online survey of symptoms.
Daily use of cyalis (tadalafil) is officially marketed.
https://www.hims.com/blog/daily-cialis-costs-benefits
https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...
It's superior to taking it on an as-needed basis because it has positive long term effects on your cardiovascular and penile tissue.
I'm in the EU; i tried this casually several times already - the Doc always says, do not throw them daily?
Apart from that: I do not expect the skeletal pain after D2 to be less when dropping it daily? :-D
EDIT: Or i'm mixing up Sindenafil and Taladafil? Im not a medic :-D
[dead]