I Never Thought I Would Get Old Enough To Have Prostate Problems

Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Symptoms

After a very hilly half-marathon in Boone, NC, with FitOldDog’s friend Warren. It’s too early to say whether my plant-based diet helped my performance, but first in my age-group (of 2) made me feel like it did. Photo by Alison (Thanks).

My prostate problems resulted in the desire to pee, all the time.

Even when I didn’t need to pee.

With painfully slow urination!

But I’m an Ironman-distance triathlete. This isn’t supposed to happen!

Then one friend had prostate cancer (treated successfully). Another had his prostate reamed with a laser. So he could pee. His story of ambulances in the night made me cringe!

What’s happening to us? Aging!

Then I went vegetarian, due to my desire to save the animals. No change in my nocturnal elimination patterns. Not that I was thinking about it in the context of animal rights! As part of my ‘You Can Save The Animals‘ research, I watched the movie, Cowspiracy. Did some background research on the issues, and went vegan. Much to my surprise and everyone else’s, I’ve stuck to it ever since, with no issues or struggles!

Been vegan for over six months; except for honey – don’t follow the logic of that one, yet!

Within two weeks of eliminating dairy from my diet, Deb said, “Kevin, what’s happened. You don’t seem to be peeing all the time. You sit through dinner. You don’t get up to pee during a movie. What’s going on?”

My plant-based, dairy-free diet was fixing my benign prostate hyperplasia. That’s what was going on. And all seems well in the prostate department ever since!

A plant-based diet seems to be improving my athletic performance, and it certainly fixed my old fart peeing problem, due to prostate trouble.

I learn new things everyday. I never imagined that removing meat, eggs and dairy products from my diet would fix my continual need to pee. I was often awoken in the night by a demand for emergency micturition, even though the yield was little or nothing. I went onto a vegetarian diet, for reasons related to my interest in animal rights and the reduction of animal abuse, with no change in my nocturnal elimination patterns.

My plant-based diet is improving the taste of everything I eat. About six-weeks ago, due to greatly appreciated encouragement from numerous sources, I bit the bullet and decided to go fully plant-based, with the exception of some honey in my Honey Stingers. To my complete surprise, it was easy to make the transition from Paleo to Plant-Based. I think it helps that we have a vegetable garden, and that I really enjoy cooking.

Cooking vegan food out of the back of my truck on the way to the latest race. Photo by FitOldDog

The real surprise has been complete the absence of those emergency, “I’ve got to pee NOW events.” It happened all the time!

Deb noticed the difference, too. What a gift, as I knew I had mild prostate trouble from my latest stent CAT-scan report. I wonder what we’ll find at my next scan in December.

Now that I’ve settled into this diet, I don’t crave meat, eggs or dairy, though I will prepare them for others if they want. The other day I cooked a piece of salmon for guests, but I had no desire to taste it.

Better to educate by example than demand.

Even though real vegans don’t eat honey, so as avoid abusing the bees (I will have to explore that), a friendly horse on my cycling route is always pleased to see that I haven’t changed that aspect of my diet.

Instagram is a great place to find wonderful vegan food ideas.

To fix your prostate problems.

Boy! What a relief. No laser reaming for me. Not yet, anyway.

Happy Trails,

FitOldDog