Urgent warning over little-known symptoms of ‘silent killer’ that affects 40k men each year – and when to see your GP
BRITS are being warned of the little-known symptoms of a “silent killer” that affects 40,000 men every year.
Prostate cancer is very treatable if caught early and survivors are now urging Brits to be aware of the signs in order to stop the illness in its tracks.
In most cases, the illness doesn’t have any symptoms until the growth is big enough to put pressure on the urethra – that tube you pee through.
Many men’s prostates get larger as they age because of the non-cancerous conditions, prostate enlargement, and benign prostatic hyperplasia.
In fact, these two conditions are more common than prostate cancer – but that doesn’t mean the symptoms should be ignored.
Jim McDonald, 73, started having symptoms in November 2021 – but thought they were just age-related.
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But by December he was having to go to the toilet up to five times a night.
He eventually went to the doctor and was immediately sent for biopsies and scans.
Two months later he was told he had prostate cancer – and it spread to his pelvic bone.
The grandad-of-four is now urging Brits to look out for symptoms – with the most common being difficulty urinating, weight loss, and back or bone pain.
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He told The Liverpool Echo: “I read an article about Bill Turnbull passing away with prostate cancer.
“He’d been preaching to men that they need to get tested, but the sad truth is, I’d never have read that article had I not been diagnosed with it, and that’s one of the problems.
“It’s maybe through fear or anxiety, I don’t know, but men don’t want to even read about it.”
What are the symptoms every man needs to know?
In most cases, prostate cancer doesn’t have any symptoms until the growth is big enough to put pressure on the urethra – that tube you pee through.
Symptoms include:
- Needing to urinate more often, especially at night
- Needing to rush to the toilet
- Difficulty in starting to pee
- Weak flow
- Straining and taking a long time while peeing
- Feeling that your bladder hasn’t emptied fully
Many men’s prostates get larger as they age because of the non-cancerous conditions, prostate enlargement, and benign prostatic hyperplasia.
In fact, these two conditions are more common than prostate cancer – but that doesn’t mean the symptoms should be ignored.
The signs that cancer has SPREAD include bone, back, or testicular pain, loss of appetite, and unexplained weight loss.
In January 2020 it was revealed that prostate cancer had become the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK and that’s though to be due, partly to the fact that more men have been having PSA tests – a type of test offered by GPs that looks for signs of the disease.
The prostate is a small, walnut-sized gland, that only men have.
It sits around the urethra – the tube a bloke pees and ejaculates from – between the penis and the bladder.
The main point of the prostate is to produce the fluid which mixes with sperm to create semen, making it pretty vital for reproduction.
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But, like all organs in the body, it can be invaded by cancer – when cells in the gland start to grow uncontrollably.
The survival rate falls from 100 per cent if caught early to 50 per cent if it’s spread into nearby organs.