More on urinating

A thought crossed my mind recently, remembering a trip to the north (of England) a couple of years ago where I happened to be in a public toilet  and spotted a sign suggesting that if you'd a number of symptoms similar to those that I described in my post the other week then you were advised to go to your Doctor/GP for a check-up as these were symptoms which could indicate prostate cancer.

So, I had a look on the NHS website and found:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Cancer-of-the-prostate/Pages/Symptoms.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Prostate-enlargement/Pages/Introduction.aspx

My conclusion is therefore, that if you've got any of these symptoms then a trip to the doctor is in order. It would be silly to self-diagnose and assume that its all HSP....

Symptom	HSP	Prostate Cancer
Urinary urgency	72.4%	Yes
Urinary frequency	65.5%	Yes
Urinary incontinence	55.2%	Yes
Urinary hesitancy	51.7%	Yes

Indeed the list is also "yes" in every line for prostate enlargement.

The risks are as follows:

Prostate Cancer: Prostate cancer is quite rare in men under 50. More than half of all cases are diagnosed in men over 70. Age is the most significant risk factor of all for prostate cancer. The older you are, the greater the risk. In old age, up to 8 out of 10 men have prostate cancer cells in the prostate. No one can give you an exact figure of risk. In the UK, about 1 in 9 men will get prostate cancer at some point in their lives. Remember, this is lifetime risk and involves men who get prostate cancer at any age, up to 85 or more. Your risk when you are younger is much lower than 1 in 9.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-help/type/prostate-cancer/about/prostate-cancer-risks-and-causes

HSP: Unfortunately the abstract of the HSP paper in my previous post doesn't give details on age. 80% of HSP patients appear to have some kind of issue.

Prostate Enlargement:Prostate enlargement is a common condition that is associated with ageing. Around 60% of men who are aged 60 or over have some degree of prostate enlargement.

Pes Cavus - Arched/High Foot

In part of my reading around I realised that I've spotted many references to "Pes Cavus" in HSP articles, and I didnt know what it was, so time for a quick trawl.

Pes Cavus has a range of other names: high instep, high arch, talipes cavus, cavoid foot, and supinated foot.  It's translation from latin is hollow foot.

Normally, when you stand up your foot flattens. If you've got pes cavus then it doesn't (or at least doesn't as much). This is the opposite of flat feet, and in the general population  pes cavus is much less common than flat feet. Diagram: http://docpods.com/high-arched-feet-pes-cavus-inverted-foot-types

Unlike flat feet, highly arched feet tend to be painful because more stress is placed on the section of the foot between the ankle and toes (metatarsals). This condition can make it difficult to fit into shoes. 

The high arch shape is either due to a tight or contracted plantar fascia (the tough sheet of fibrous tissue that runs along the sole of the foot) or due to a weakness in one muscle group causing unopposed action of the other, resulting in fixed plantar flexion of the foot (think pressing your foot on the accelerator or standing on tip-toes). I suspect that for HSP-ers it's the former of these. 

The symptoms are:

• Shortened foot length
• Difficulty fitting shoes
• Foot pain with walking, standing, and running (not everyone has this symptom)

The majority of this info came from here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002241/

There's a picture of someones feet laying in bed in a Google image search where their feet are pointing more along the bed rather than up in the air. I'm finding that my feet are tending to go in the same direction, so perhaps I'm heading for pes cavus myself.

Using my papers search I find from 1981:

Heel deformity in hereditary spastic paraplegia, by Rothschild H, Shoji H, McCormick D, in Clin Orthop Relat Res. 1981 Oct;(160):48-51. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=7285436 


Varus deformity of the heel is often associated with, and may even precede the development of pes cavus. Clinical and radiographic examinations of the feet of members of three kindreds of hereditary spastic paraplegia, suggested that the autosomal dominant form manifests a significantly higher incidence and degree of heel varus deformity than the autosomal recessive  form of the disease. 



Various other web sites were mentioning pes cavus in realtion to Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) and to Friedreich's ataxia, which come up in many of the HSP papers I've found.

Of course, I now have to look up Varus deformity as well, and I saw in passing several mentions of "hammer toe".....

...My-my-my-my music hits me so hard....