The Prostate: Its Diagnosis and Treatment

Imagine a little bucket sitting inside your belly -- that's your bladder. Now picture, right below the bucket, a tiny chestnut -- that's your prostate. There's a tube running out the bottom of the bucket, right down through the middle of the chestnut, top to bottom -- that tube is your urethra. Water continually collects in your bladder (bucket). Every so often the muscles at the bottom of your bladder open up, while the muscles surrounding the bladder contract, squirting the urine into the urethra (tube) which runs through the prostate (chestnut) and continues through the penis, all the way to the tip and out of the body.

The chestnut-shaped prostate sits right below the bladder and is wrapped around the urethra, but it has nothing to do with a man's urinary apparatus. The prostate happens to be where it is only because it's needed for ejaculation, and the ejaculate passes through the same urethra as the urine does. That's why the prostate sits below the bladder, and that's why prostate problems interfere with a man's ability to urinate and to have sex.

Figure 2-1. Male anatomy

Next Page