Prostatitis-Headache in the Pelvis

[Rod Hagen]

Great sympathies to all those dealing with Prostate Cancer.  I've had many clients in that boat.

Not nearly as terrible, anyone here deal with Chronic NonBacterial Prostatitis?  I've had it for 25 years, I never know when it's going to flare up.  First Line Treatment was, and for some doctors still is, antibiotics such as Cipro or the one I really hate, Levaquin, even though the pathology has NonBacterial in the name. 

I had one urologist who was a huge fan of super duper vigorous prostate self-massage, which is really uncomfortable but for me preferable to awful antibiotics. 

Now it seems the interventions shifted away from prostate massage, because it actually irritates it, which makes sense, or heavy antibiotics and focuses on gay-looking poses like happy baby to open up the pelvic floor, or close it, or whatever.  

What do you do for it?

Edited June 30 by Rod Hagen

[+ sniper]

I don't have it, but have you considered seeking out a pelvic floor physical therapist? They don't just work on women though most of them focus on that because their issues are more common.

[+ purplekow]

 

When I was in practice, I would be sure to check for chlamydia and some other bacteria which were less common causes of prostatitis.  On exam, if the prostate was tender, I would do gentle massage to get a prostatic discharge and send that for culture rather than urine as the bacterial load in percentage is lessened if you dilute it with urine and it may be more difficult to grow.  Sometimes the massage would indeed provide temporary relief as would a slight increase in the frequency of ejaculation.  So if men were abstaining from sex or having infrequent orgasms, I would suggest an increase in activity.  Some men, on the other hand,  were further irritating the prostate by having too many ejaculations with dry or nearly dry orgasm.  In those cases, I would suggest a slight decrease in frequency of orgasm or ejaculation.  Warm baths can be comforting or heating pad for a short period to the area may decrease the intensity of the aching discomfort.  

If this is a first or infrequent episode, an antibiotic might be of benefit.  Doxy was my choice. as it has activity against many of the bacteria known to cause prostatis. Kegel exercises may also help reduce the pain and have the added benefit of allowing better control of ejaculation and decrease in frequency and severity of urinary or fecal leakage.     

 

[+ SirBillybob]

Here’s a symptom scale. Each item has a baseline of 0, so just count up to the selection value that applies for you. Item maximum scores vary from 1 to 10 but you can see that when you tally them the maximum score, unadjusted weighting, is 43. Pretreatment research scores are in the 22 to 36 range. A reduction of about 6 overall is considered clinically meaningful. Obviously, general unstructured self-appraisal of degree of condition severity is important, but sometimes a standardized anchored measure is useful even individually for comparison over time, especially if embarking on a particular intervention. 

Item #4 should read “as much pain …”

Edited 39 minutes ago by SirBillybob