Feb 2012 Home psa testing is the new word in men’s health – which, as we all know, has been experiencing something of a late renaissance in the last 20 years. Time was (and not too long ago a time, at that), men’s health meant little more than ignoring even the possibility of illness  “I feel fine,” went the logic, “so there can’t possibly be anything wrong with me.” With an unspoken footnote to the effect that ignorance is better than fear. Fortunately, this whole “leave me alone, I’m fine” attitude has dissolved with the onset of the 21^st century: home psa testing, the kind of thing that would have been laughed out of the pub 20 years ago (by men who probably ended up dying of prostate cancer) is here, and it’s giving us all a chance at a longer life.

Dramatic? Not really. Prostate cancer is a big killer in the male population, for two main reasons: one, it’s connected with the reproductive organs, which men seem incapable of talking about except within the crudest boundaries of playground humour); and two, it concerns a gland, which is effectively hidden deep inside the body. Not the easiest thing to check – certainly a home prostate exam be feel would be a lot harder to complete than a mammary exam. Home psa testing recognises this by giving men a simple tester kit that enables them to test a simple blood sample for early warning signs of prostate disorder – a process that takes a few minutes but can save a whole lifetime.

Enlarged prostate testing, which is basically what the kit does, looks for signs of raised psa levels in the blood (PSA – Prostate Specific Antigen, i.e., a hormone that can only be secreted by the prostate) – a sure sign that the gland has gotten bigger. Why? Because the prostate naturally leaks out pretty constant psa levels into the bloodstream, so raised levels can generally only mean that the gland has become enlarged.

Home psa testing shows the levels of PSA in the blood after (approximately) a 10 minute interval – that’s not just an early warning system, it’s a whole week of your life saved, whereby you didn’t have to go to the doctors and then wait for seven days before the results came back.

It’s important to note that the home prostate test does not definitively show that a person has cancer. There are several causes that can bring the effect of raised PSA levels, including naturally enlarged prostates (the gland gets bigger as men get older); a prostate infection; and even the use of certain prescription drugs. That, though, isn’t really the point. Home psa testing points out that something is going on with the prostate – and that should be more than enough to get a person down to the doctor’s for a proper checkup. Ultimately – with it, there’s a good chance of a life saved: without it, there’s none. And that would make no sense at all.

To complete your own home PSA testing click here now!