Prostate Gland Health

Avoid Prostate Cancer

Recent studies have found that frequent masturbation for men drastically reduces their chances of developing prostate cancer, Australian scientists have shown that the more men masturbate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop the disease that kills more than half a million men each year.

They suspect that frequent ejaculation has a protective effect against the cancer because it prevents dangerous carcinogens from building up in the gland.

Abstinence can cause Disease

If you're ejaculating only once a month or less as a regular thing, then you're setting yourself up for a painful condition called prostatitis.

It normally occurs mostly in older men who start having less sex than before, but it's also been noted in people (like sailors) who abstain from ejaculation for a long time (like while they're at sea) and then have lots of sex after those periods (like shore leave).

It is also questionable whether "saving it up" for as long a period of time as a month will do your athletic performance any good. The idea behind abstaining from ejaculation before an athletic event is not to do it right before the event. An optimum time might be five to six days a week. That's when most guys really feel the tension of not having had an orgasm.

A study published in the British Journal of Urology International in August 2003 found that males who masturbated daily from their 20s had the least chance of getting prostate cancer when they're older.

Do your Prostate a Favour

A Melbourne study has found that frequent masturbation may protect men against prostate cancer.

A team led by Professor Graham Giles, head of cancer epidemiology at the Cancer Council Victoria, questioned more than 2000 men on their sexual habits as part of a prostate cancer study.

The men, half of whom had prostate cancer, were aged between 40 and 69 and recruited from Sydney, Melbourne and Perth between 1994 and 1998.

The research, which will appear in the British Journal of Urology in August 2003, indicated that men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer.

"What we found was men who ejaculated most in their 20s, 30s and 40s had about a third less prostate cancer risk than men in the lowest category of ejaculation," Professor Giles said.

He said one explanation was that frequent ejaculation prevented semen from building up in the ducts, where it could potentially become carcinogenic.

"Semen is a very potent and strong brew of lots of chemicals which, because of their biological reactivity, could be carcinogenic if left to lie around," Professor Giles said.

The research was inspired by studies linking breast cancer with the frequency of lactation. The researchers reasoned that just as breastfeeding lowered a woman's risk of breast cancer, maybe liberal ejaculation could have beneficial effects for men. Masturbation could also have the same positive effect on a young prostate gland as pregnancy had on breasts.

"It might be rather like a first full-term pregnancy forces the breast tissue to fully differentiate and become grown up cells," he said. "Maybe intense sexual ejaculation at the time when the prostate has finished growing to maturity might actually help it bed down and become a fully developed gland, rather than having too many cells lying around in it."

However, while the study found benefits from masturbation, it was unable to replicate the evidence about frequent sex.

Professor Giles said that the findings of the study needed to be repeated by other researchers before they could be confidently claimed to be true. But he said: "I really think that masturbation is a quite normal human activity, and if the habit can also be shown to be healthy and beneficial, why not?"

A reader wrote about his problems:

"I actually tried to stop masturbating when I started college and was successful for several months. Then I started having painful urinations. I was still a virgin at that point, so I knew it wasn't an STD, and I immediately suspected something awful. I still don't know how that happened, but it turns out that I had managed to get a prostate infection!"

"In addition to the antibiotics, the doctor advised me to begin masturbating (again) if I hadn't already, and that would help clear things out, giving my immune system a fighting chance. Fortunately, between the antibiotics and masturbating with renewed vigor, I was able to beat the infection. It took two weeks."

Prostate Fluid

It is more likely to be thick and yellowish if you haven't ejaculated in a few days. That property of built-up prostate fluid is one of the reasons it is necessary for guys to ejaculate frequently. When prostate fluid gets old, it is not a medium that sperm can live in easily. So a guy who masturbates every few days keeps his semen fresh and healthy.