Men's Health Series: Blood Urine

Blood in urine can occur to both men and women but in this blog post, I will focus on men.

Many men may experience blood urine in the early stages but often dismiss it or do not even know that they have blood in the urine.

Blood in urine can look red, pink or even brown. Sometimes people do not know if there is blood in the urine until a urine test is done.

Blood Urine in Men from a Scientific Perspective

For men, prostate enlargement can be a common cause for blood urine, especially for middle age and older men. Also any infection along the urinary tract can present itself as blood urine too. Injury from sports, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, family history of kidney diseases can be other common causes for blood urine.

Blood Urine in Men from a Traditional Chinese Medicine Perspective

As blood urine is usually caused by inflammation, we say that the factor of heatiness is there that damage one at the Blood system level. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), heat can be of an Excess Heat or a Deficient Heat nature difference. Read about what is Excess Heat and Deficient Heat here.

For Blood Urine due to Excess Heat, the onset of the condition is fast, blood in the urine is often bright red, the urethra has a burning sensation when urinating. For Blood Urine due to Deficient Heat, it usually occurs in people with weak body constitution or have a long term illness. The blood urine is usually light red in colour and there is no burning sensation when urinating.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the systems that can be affected may be Spleen, Kidney, Heart, Bladder, Qi system, Blood System. Therefore it is necessary that one needs to be assessed by a professional TCM doctor to know which kind of Blood Urine condition one is having.

Treatment of Blood Urine with Western Medicine

The treatment of blood urine with Western Medicine will depend on the cause of the blood urine. Usually a lab test will be done on urine sample to find out if the condition is due to infection, kidney disease or other problems.

If it is due to infection, the doctor may prescribe antibiotics. If it is due to enlarged prostate, the doctor may prescribe medicines such as Avodart (dutasteride) which is an inhibitor to reduce the enlargement of prostate.

However, with antibiotics and chemical drugs, the side effects that are often not mentioned in Western Medicine clinics are:

decreased libido (sex drive),
decreased amount of semen released during sex,
impotence (trouble getting or keeping an erection), and
breast tenderness or enlargement

Treatment of Blood Urine with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Herbs, acupuncture, various other treatment modalities and techniques can be used to treat Blood Urine upon TCM diagnosis of the kind of Blood Urine a person is suffering from, which organ system is affected and which kind of Heatiness is causing the Blood Urine.