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As men get older they commonly experience BPH - benign prostatic hyperplasia, or an enlarged but benign prostate. I have had this problem for some time. Imitially they treated it with a cauterization-type surgey, then with a urinary hormone analog known as desmopressin acetate. But after you pass a certain age neither option is available.
The lifestyle problem with BPH is that it causes the enlarged prostate to press against the bladder, negatively impacking its ability to hold the amounts of urine that we handled without a problem when we were younger. This results in waking in the middle of the night to urinate, then trying to get back to sleep. The net effect of this is accumulating loss of sleep, which is bad for your health.
Since the full bladder sensation is pain, I did a Google search for 'urinary anesthetic.'. What came back as AZO, the trade name for a dark red azo dye phenazopyridine. This is available in most pharmacies & grocery stores. It is most often used to treat symptoms of UTIs. I had a package on hand so decided to give it a try.
The net effect on me was increasing my sleep time before a necessary BR trip by 45-90 minutes.
I'm not recommending that anyone with this nocturnal problem try this. I am not in a position to prescribe this as long term use could have negative health results. I am only passing on my recent experience for those who might benefit from this.
As a footnote, azo dyes are often found to result in negative health effects like cancer. So caveat emptor.
The lifestyle problem with BPH is that it causes the enlarged prostate to press against the bladder, negatively impacking its ability to hold the amounts of urine that we handled without a problem when we were younger. This results in waking in the middle of the night to urinate, then trying to get back to sleep. The net effect of this is accumulating loss of sleep, which is bad for your health.
Since the full bladder sensation is pain, I did a Google search for 'urinary anesthetic.'. What came back as AZO, the trade name for a dark red azo dye phenazopyridine. This is available in most pharmacies & grocery stores. It is most often used to treat symptoms of UTIs. I had a package on hand so decided to give it a try.
The net effect on me was increasing my sleep time before a necessary BR trip by 45-90 minutes.
I'm not recommending that anyone with this nocturnal problem try this. I am not in a position to prescribe this as long term use could have negative health results. I am only passing on my recent experience for those who might benefit from this.
As a footnote, azo dyes are often found to result in negative health effects like cancer. So caveat emptor.
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