Post Date December, 02 2023
In the United States, with the quiet rise of bicycle leisure. Many men will naturally doubt whether spending time on cycling will have a certain impact on their health. Research shows that in the past three decades, the male group has occupied almost all of the growing forms of recreation.
A recent study acquiesced in some of the most common concerns of men, mainly focusing on sexual dysfunction and infertility, and presented another frightening result. Studies have shown that long-term cycling may be associated with a high risk of prostatitis in men over 50 years old.
The study, published in the journal Men's Health, investigated more than 5200 men who rode bicycles between 2012 and 2013. Men were asked to report how many hours they spent on cycling every week, whether they had experience of erectile dysfunction (ED), and whether they were diagnosed as infertility or prostatitis by doctors.
The researchers analyzed the data of men's cycling time and found that men's cycling time varied from no less than 3.75 hours per week to more than 8.5 hours per week.
The results showed that compared with men who rarely ride bicycles, those who ride bicycles for a long time did not have a higher risk of erectile dysfunction (ED) or infertility.
So this result can appease those men who are scared because they love to ride bicycles, because no one knows before whether the narrow place of bicycle seats will cause compression damage to the sensitive parts of men.
But what is surprising is that the men who ride the most bicycles are more likely to be diagnosed with prostatitis than others. In the research report, the proportion of men diagnosed with cancer is only less than 1%, while the proportion of those who frequently ride bicycles suffering from prostate cancer is 3.5%, while the proportion of those who ride bicycles least is only 0.5%.
"How should we explain this threatening result? First of all, I must stress that this study does not prove a clear causal link. And I do not believe that cycling will increase the incidence of male prostatitis." said David Samadibos, director of urology.
One possibility is that cycling may affect the detection of cancer. Specifically, the contact between the place where the bicycle is riding and the perineum may cause certain compression, which may increase the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the blood, and an enzyme released from PSA prostate patients also shows high concentration.
When training new urologists, my colleagues and I often warned them that digital rectal examination should not be given before measuring the PSA level in patients' blood. Because the view at that time was that any manipulation would cause the fluctuation of these relevant data levels of prostate patients.
Therefore, the higher PSA level of male cyclists prompted more prostatitis to be detected during the study.
In essence, bicycles do not cause prostatitis, but this suspicion has aroused more public attention.
More specific research is also needed to sort out these potential links. But at the same time, I don't think this news should prevent men from spending more time on cycling.
We already know that, to a certain extent, good exercise and weight control can effectively reduce the risk of prostatitis and help many other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
At present, there is still no good research on the narrow and hard seats of bicycles. However, men should widely realize that a soft bicycle seat can play a good buffer role on the male perineum.
