Traditionally, when men have complained to their doctor about pain in the pelvis, anus or genitals, urinary frequency and urgency, post-ejaculatory discomfort, or sitting pain or the sensation of a ‘golf ball’ in the rectum, they are usually diagnosed with prostatitis. With this diagnosis, they are given antibiotics and told to avoid caffeine, alcohol and spicy foods, ejaculate more frequently, and take hot baths.
Most conventional advice about treating prostatitis, including diet modification and increasing sexual activity, is confusing and sometimes makes symptoms worse.
Most of our patients report to us that the dietary advice they have been given about caffeine, alcohol, spicy foods is confusing as they did not understand its basis. Furthermore, following this kind of dietary advice has little effect on their symptoms. In fact, many men who have come to see us for the Wise-Anderson Protocol for prostatitis have reported that alcohol often improves their symptoms and does not hurt them.
Bạn đang xem: Symptoms of prostatitis and pain in the pelvis typically don’t respond to conventional medical treatment.
To add to the confusion, increasing sexual activity makes symptoms worse in a large majority of men. We have described the post-ejaculatory discomfort as a ‘pleasure spasm’ in our book, A Headache in the Pelvis. When a man’s pelvis is chronically constricted, instead of orgasm relaxing the pelvis, it actually increases its tension level and causes significant discomfort or pain in the pelvis that can last from a few hours to weeks.
Hot baths can temporarily relieve the symptoms of prostatitis.
One piece of conventional wisdom given to men diagnosed with prostatitis is to take hot baths. Most men report that hot baths temporarily relieve their symptoms. Hedelin and Jonsson in the Scandinavian Journal of Urology and Nephrology report that cold tends to aggravate symptoms of prostatitis and heat tends to ameliorate it (Scand J Urol Nephrol. 2007;41(6):516-20). This is common knowledge among urologists and is quickly learned by patients.
Regular baths tend to be more effective than sitz baths for prostatitis.
Patients are often told to take a sitz bath, a bath in which only the buttocks and hips are immersed in water. Patients have reported to us that taking a regular hot bath is more effective than simply immersing the pelvic area in a small tub of hot water. The sitz bath is often uncomfortable and does not allow for the kind of relaxation of the muscles of the pelvis and the reduction of the arousal of the nervous system that a regular hot bath affords. It is the central reduction of nervous arousal as well as the local relaxation of the pelvic muscles that is therapeutic for those suffering from what is diagnosed as prostatitis.
The heat of the hot water (and not what is put into the bath’s hot water) is what relaxes pelvic muscles.
We often hear of men putting Epsom salts or other bath salts into the bath water in an attempt to help calm down their symptoms. In our view, it is the heat of the bath that is therapeutic and not what is put into the bath. Saunas, steam baths, and hot showers help calm symptoms as well. Most cases of prostatitis, as we have discussed extensively in our research and in our book, are caused by chronically tightened pelvic muscles and not a prostate infection, inflammation, or prostate pathology. Getting into a hot bath is a remarkably fast reducer of muscle tension in the pelvis as well as a strong reducer of anxiety and autonomic nervous system arousal. We have often said that if there were a medication that offered the side-effect free benefit of hot water, it would be a major drug used in medicine.
Hot baths help symptoms of prostatitis but offer no permanent solution.
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Heat and hot baths are palliative and can make the very distressing symptoms of what is diagnosed as prostatitis momentarily more tolerable. However, the hot water does not offer a permanent solution to these symptoms. Men will typically report that their symptoms feel better when they are in the hot bath but the effects of the hot water fade soon after they get out. Nevertheless, hot baths are a gift to those suffering from pain in the pelvis as the reduction of symptoms for any length of time is very welcomed by patients.
Hot baths help because most cases of prostatitis are caused by muscle contraction in the pelvis, and not by prostate pathology.
In our experience, most men diagnosed with prostatitis do not suffer from a pathology of the prostate gland but from chronically contracted muscles of the pelvic floor that form a cycle of tension, anxiety, pain in the pelvis, and protective guarding. This is the focus of our book, A Headache in the Pelvis. Once initiated, this cycle has a life of its own.
The Wise-Anderson Protocol (popularly known as the Stanford Protocol) has been developed to teach patients to effectively rehabilitate chronic pelvic floor contraction and lower the nervous arousal that feeds it. The success of our protocol in doing this has been documented to significantly reduce the symptoms of those whom we have treated who were diagnosed with prostatitis. Hot baths can help take the edge off of the pain in the process of this rehabilitation.
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