Men who make it into their late middle-aged and senior years are going to have something unpleasant in common, a health condition that might be embarrassing and can drastically affect their quality of life.  But now a quick procedure can turn this prostate condition around.
Seventy-five year old Lloyd DiGiovanni stays fit, keeping up his workout routine for 40 years. But several years ago a common problem for men his age was keeping him up at night.

"You'd lay back down and maybe an hour later you'd get up and go again  and you lay down and you get up and go again," says Lloyd DiGiovanni. So how did not getting a good night's sleep affect his life?

"It really up set me because I didn't rest properly."

The same condition made it hard for him to make it across the 24-mile Causeway.

"There's no place, so once you get to the other side, the south shore, and you've got to stop and go to the restroom," Mr. DiGiovanni adds.
It was an enlarged prostate. After men become 50, it begins to get bigger. Fourteen million men in the U.S. have the condition.

"The prostate gland is a walnut-sized organ at the base of the bladder which surrounds the urethra, which is the tube that allows the urine to exit the body. So when the bladder contracts, if the prostate gland has grown, it is constricting or compressing the urethra, retarding the flow of urine outside of the body," says Touro urologist Dr. Neil Baum.

The symptoms include: A poor urinary stream, getting up at night to urinate, urinating frequently, needing to urinate immediately without the ability to wait, dribbling, a difficult time starting the flow and, in rare cases, about 5 percent of the time men won't be able to urinate at all.

"One night, I was exercising and after exercising I went home. When I got home, I couldn't urinate and my whole body just felt horrible," Mr. DiGiovanni adds.
"That's an emergency and he has to get to the emergency room or see a doctor immediately to get relief that is terribly, terribly painful," says Dr. Baum.
"Urologist Dr. Baum says there are medications that shrink and relax the prostate but they stop working after a few years, so Lloyd turned to a microwave machine that many men don't know about.
"It applies heat to the prostate tissue.  The prostate tissue shrinks and contracts, (so) the (urine) stream can go easily through the urethra and the men have a reduction in symptoms and they can go home the same day. The procedure takes a half-hour and it's done under local anesthetic and the results are just incredible," adds Dr. Baum. 
The microwaves are delivered through a catheter and only one procedure is needed. Lloyd says he now sleeps through the night.  It changed his quality of life, making each day easier and he would recommend this to other men.
"It's wonderful!" he says. 

 It is important to note that men who have an enlarged prostate are not more likely to get prostate cancer.