Enlarged prostate causes many uncomfortable symptoms.  But what causes the prostate to enlarge? This is not  an area of medical research that is settled.  The following article reports on some of the firmer knowledge about the condition.

Enlarged Prostate: Causes. There are speculative associations between the condition known as benign prostatic hyperplasia and its causes.  The condition has been around for centuries.  It is commonly understood that BPH is a condition affecting older males.  There is evidence to support the theory about men who had their testes removed for medical reasons as children, that they do not develop enlarged prostate glands.  What this extreme example suggests to researchers is that enlarged prostate glands are affected by age and the testes’ functions.

Hormonal Compounds as Probable Enlarged Prostate Causes.

Testosterone is a hormone produced throughout the male life cycle in varying amounts.  Perhaps the highest levels are found in pre-pubescent, pubescent and adolescent males.  Testosterone production begins to wane in the mid-30s and tapers off to much lower levels by the late 40s and early fifties age brackets.   A primary female hormone, estrogen, is also part of the male endocrine system, with concentrations increasing later in life due to decrease testosterone production.   Research studies on the effects of heightened estrogen concentrations in male laboratory animals have suggested a high correlation between prostate enlargement in adult male humans due to the cell growth enhancement qualities of estrogen concentrations in animal populations.

Another cell growth enhancing hormone is known as dihydrotestosterone or DHT.  This compound is produced from testosterone within the prostate gland itself.  Studies suggest a high degree of correlation between DHT and prostate enlargement or prostate growth.  The normative trend among mature male animals is a decrease in DHT production with age.  There have been studies where a small amount of DHT added to a male’s bloodstream had stimulating effects on the system’s productive capacity to make more DHT than it was without the stimulating drop in the blood testosterone level.  Further research is being done to track males in the adult human population with enlarged prostates who may be producing higher levels of DHT than their counterparts of the same age and similar physical characteristics.  It is suspected that the kind of cell growth stimulated in the prostate by DHT causes enlarged prostate.  There has been significant evidence trending toward confirmation of the theory which holds that adult male humans who do not produce DHT in statistically significant amounts, those males do not develop benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Genetic Enlarged Prostate Causes. Cells receive their instructions on how to complete their specific life cycle functions from the host animal’s genetic code.  Growth patterns in young animals are executed early in life during periods of high growth of the entire organism.  The growth cycle may taper off later in life as normally would be expected.  However, the cells throughout the body still carry the instructions.  One theory of prostate enlargement holds that cells in the prostate are receiving some kind of hormonal trigger that would cause these cellular prescriptions for growth to be re-activated.  Hence, the prostate cells begin to grow again.  More research is being undertaken to test this reawakening theory.