5 - MINE'S BIGGER THAN YOURS!

© copyright JW 2023

A healthy prostate in boys and younger men is about the size of a walnut though it grows bigger as you get older. The smaller your prostate the better. Unlike the penis you do not want to have a big one! It's nothing to be boasting about if you do ... but if you really feel the need you can still compare it with all your mates' behind the bike shed! The only way to check its size though is by sticking your finger up your bum - and then up all your mates' bums and having a good feel around. Good luck with that!

The prostate's function is to create and secrete prostate fluid, an important component of semen - the stuff we men contribute to the human reproductive process. Only males have a prostate. Females don't need one, but who knows how long that will last!?

© copyright JW 2023

A male's prostate can be fully removed if it's damaged or diseased. However it isn't like the seemingly useless appendix or tonsils. It has a specific and important function in the production of semen and without it you can become infertile and erections and ejaculations can stop. So no prostate = no more how's your father!?

The prostate contributes up to 30 pecent of the total semen volume. The remainder comes from the seminal vesicles and the testicles. 

Prostate fluid is a potent thick white mix of enzymes, citric acid and zinc, tasty components that make it ideal for carrying semen out of the body in to its intended target - or a handy tissue!

It's a compact little gland but far from perfect. It doesn't age well and stops functioning properly in around 50% of males over the age of fifty and 90％ of over eighties. That isn't the sort of reliability you'd want under the bonnet of your car!

© copyright JW 2023

If you were ever inclined to start taking intelligent design seriously as an alternative to evolution look no further than the prostate for the ludicrousness of the idea. Intelligent designers argue that planet earth and everything on it is so perfectly 'created', so intricate in its 'design' that it couldn't have come about without the help of the beardy man in the sky. For them evolution didn't happen .... oh and of course fossils aren't old either!

Perhaps however I'm wrong and God just designed and installed the prostate on a Friday when he was in a hurry to get Adam done and dusted down on planet earth so he could skip rush hour and get back to his forever home in the universe - a long commute. That would go some way to explaining the very poor plumbing job he did.

It's a plumbing disaster waiting to happen. Your prostate is positioned between your bladder and your penis. It wraps around the urethra - the tube that feeds urine to the end of your knob. You just couldn't pick a worse place to put it. 

When you're young and it's small and healthy everything's tickety-boo. You can pee for Ireland!

However as you get older and your prostate starts to enlarge it puts pressure on the delicate pee-carrying tube (the urethra) running through its core. The flow through the urethra is then restricted and so too is your ability to pee. Less pee flow with more effort to pee starts to make your peeing life notably uncomfortable and there begins the downward descent towards pee-less-ness. Where once it was just a matter of a quick trip to the loo a few times a day peeing becomes a more regular, more painful and less successful affair.