To understand everything else in this book, you need a map. That’s why we’ve started with anatomy. The prostate is a key component in two major body systems: the urinary tract and the reproductive system.
So here is a quick guide to the urinary tract:
We begin with the kidneys—the big, intricate filters that cleanse the body of toxic wastes, recycle useful materials and maintain the proper balance of water and minerals. Twenty-five percent of the blood from every single heartbeat flows through the kidneys. They’re also constantly refining water—processing about forty-five gallons a day. In the average man, they produce about two quarts of urine ever) day.
Each kidney empties its urine into a ureter, a long, muscular pipe that squeezes, or “milks,” urine from the kidneys like toothpaste through a tube. At the site where the ureter hooks up with the course—so it can’t flow back into the kidneys when you urinate.
Next, we come to the bladder, a muscular reservoir that, at its fullest, can hold about a pint of urine. Urine travels from the bladder through the urethra, which runs directly through the prostate to the penis, and then to the outside world.
The prostate is strategically located at the junction between the bladder and the urethra. It is a walnut-shaped gland whose main purpose is to produce 30 percent of the fluid for semen. Secretions from the prostate also may protect men from urinary tract infections.
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