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Authors: Karl Kruszelnicki

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Another study looked at male mice that inhaled cocaine. As expected, they had memory problems. And yes, the baby mice also had memory problems. And again, the ‘rungs’ of the DNA were not changed, but methyl groups were added.

So Here’s the Buzz

It would be fun if royal jelly could add some buzz to your day—but unless you’re a bee, it won’t.

So if you’re seeking rejuvenation, why not follow the example of the worker bee and increase your exercise. It’ll do more good for you than a jar of royal jelly (and without any sting)…

Your Prostate

At one stage in my life, I found myself turning up at Long Bay Jail (in New South Wales) on a regular basis. No, it was not weekend detention. As a medical doctor, I was involved in teaching the prisoners some basic anatomy and physiology relating to sexual matters. I was at first a little taken aback at how little the guys knew. But then I remembered how little I knew about my own body before I studied medicine. So it wasn’t a big surprise to read that the vast majority of Australian men did not know what the prostate gland did.

There are some very good reasons for men to understand the prostate gland – after all, it’s somehow involved in sex, and apparently it can go wrong. And yet, according to a recent survey of 503 men aged 40-80 years in Western Australia, 80% of men did not know what the function of the prostate gland was. This was despite the fact that 75% of them had had a previous prostate-related examination, and that about 50% of them had experienced cancer of the prostate (either they had it, or a friend had it).

The prostate gland was first described in 1536, and its cancer first identified in 1853. In the USA and the UK, cancer of the prostate is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men, after lung cancer. In Australian men, it’s the second most common cancer after cancers of the skin, and, again, it’s the number two cause of cancer deaths.

Most men with prostate cancer do not have any symptoms from it, and so do not get any treatment for it. Indeed, they end up dying from other causes. This is because cancer of the prostate can grow very slowly, and also because most men with cancer of the prostate
are over 60 years of age. Indeed, in studies of men who died from other causes, autopsies show that cancer of the prostate was present in 30% of men in their 50s, and in 80% of men in their 70s.

The prostate gland is about 3 cm long, and weighs about 20 g. It is usually said to be the size of a walnut or a chestnut. It’s located deep in the pelvis, directly under the urinary bladder, and immediately in front of the rectum. The urethra, after leaving the bladder on its way to the outside world, passes through the middle of the prostate gland. So as the prostate gland enlarges with age, it can have two effects. First, it can constrict or squash the urethra, so interfering with normal urination, and sexual ejaculation as well. Second, an enlarged prostate can bulge upwards into the bladder, so giving a false sense of bladder fullness.

The tissue of the prostate gland is about 5% non-glandular (with fibro-muscular components) and 95% glandular (from which cancers of the prostate arise). In the glandular part, there are some 30-50 little glands that secrete various fluids (collectively known as prostatic fluid) into pipes that eventually lead to the urethra. Prostatic fluid is a clear, slightly alkaline liquid with a rather characteristic smell. The alkalinity is thought to improve the survivability of the sperm in the vagina. Prostatic fluid makes up about 10-30% of the volume of the semen. About 10% of the volume of the semen comes from the vas deferens, and the remainder comes from the seminal vesicles. (By the way, semen has about 90 calories – 378 kj – of nutritional value.)

So the 95% of the prostate gland that is glandular makes prostatic fluid. But the 5% of the prostate gland that is fibro-muscular has another function – a muscular function. During ejaculation, it provides exquisitely
timed waves of muscular contraction on the outside of the urethra to help propel semen to its final destination.

In the past, the prostate has not received a lot of attention in the media, but this situation has changed over the last decade. Messages about screening can be a bit confusing, but I guess that there’s nothing wrong with knowing more about any part of your body. So, boys, take care – the prostate gland could cause you a wee problem…

References

Dennin, Carina, ‘Epigenetics and disease: altered states’,
Nature
, 13 February 2003, pp 686-688.

Encyclopaedia Britannica
, 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD—‘Beekeeping’, ‘Honeybee’.

Fraga, Mario F., et al., ‘Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
(PNAS), 26 July 2005, Vol 102, No 30, pp 10604-10609.

Krell, R.,
Value-Added Products from Beekeeping
, FAO Agricultural Service Bulletin No 124, Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, 1996.

Kucharski, R., et al., ‘Nutritional control of reproductive status in honeybees via DNA methylation’,
Science
, 28 March 2008, Vol 319, No 5871, pp 1827-1830.

Lloyd, John and Mitchinson, John,
QI: The Book of Animal Ignorance
, London: Faber and Faber, 2007, pp 20-21.

Ornish, Dean, et al., ‘Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
(PNAS), 17 June 2008, Vol 105, No 24, pp 8369-8374.

Young, Emma, ‘Strange inheritance: it’s not just your parents’ genes but also their experiences that determine your genetic make-up’,
New Scientist
, 12 July 2008, pp 29-33.

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the hard work of (literally) millions of scientists around the world who do the original research, as well as the scientific journals that publish their research.

Several Real Scientists checked some of the stories—they include Dr David Fink, Professor Ron Trent, Professor Gareth Denyer, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, Professor Benjamin Oldroyd, Josh Dowling, Dr David Pyne, Dr Helen O’Connor and Professor Louise Bourke.

On the HarperCollins side, Lydia Papandrea and Janice Godwin edited my very late manuscript (but I did have 10 weeks holiday in less than a year), Shona Martyn and Amruta Slee were my wonderful publishers, Nicola Howcroft, Marie Slocombe and Christine Farmer worked very cleverly to make the general public aware of this slim volume, while Sophie Hamley most competently agented on my behalf. Dan Driscoll at the ABC in Sydney added his clever and irreverent puns, and reshaped the stories at an early stage in their lives. And Caroline Pegram did most of the above, as well as designing the concept for the cover.

Adam Yazxhi inked (on a computer) all the illustrations, and did the difficult (but very worthy) pics for ‘How to Measure the Distance to the Moon with a Coin’.

And bearing in mind that without Family and Friends one is a Rudderless Ship, Big It Up for My Family: Mary, Little Karl (who is now taller at just under two metres), Alice and Lola all provided the seeds of ideas for the stories; Mary also did the necessary (but brutal, yet essential) preliminary editing and structural re-arrangement and additions necessary to make these stories live; and Carmel and Max patiently and proficiently pored over the page proofs.

Finally, I would like to thank the individual stories themselves. Some of them were happy at around 1,000 words, while others just grew and grew until they were happy. But they all taught me something – and now I know How To Measure the Distance to the Moon with a Coin.

Other Dr Karl titles

HarperCollins
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First published in Australia in 2009

This edition published in 2010

by HarperCollins
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The right of Karl Kruszelnicki and Adam Yazxhi to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Kruszelnicki, Karl, 1948– .

Never mind the bullocks, here’s the science / Dr Karl Kruszelnicki.

ISBN 978 0 7322 8537 1 (pbk.)

ISBN 978 0 7304 0085 1 (epub)