The Impact of BPH on Quality of Life: Emotional and Psychological Considerations

Home > How BPH Can Interfere With Your Daily Life

Living with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) can extend beyond the physical symptoms it represents. As men age, the enlargement of the prostate gland can bring up various emotional and psychological challenges that significantly impact their overall quality of life.

In this article, we discuss the emotional and psychological considerations surrounding BPH, exploring how this condition can affect a man’s well-being, relationships, self-esteem, and day-to-day experiences.

BPH Can Interfere With Your Daily Life

It Disrupts Your Sleep

Living with BPH symptoms can have a negative impact on your quality of sleep. The symptoms associated with BPH, such as urinary frequency, urgency, and nocturia (frequent urination at night), can disrupt sleep patterns and lead to poor sleep quality.

Nocturia:
Waking up several times throughout the night to urinate can interrupt your sleep, leading to fragmented sleep patterns and decreased sleep quality. It could also disrupt your partner’s quality of sleep, causing you both to be fatigued the following day.
Urgency and Frequency:
The need to urinate urgently and frequently can disrupt your sleep cycle, particularly during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage, which is essential for a restful sleep. Consequently, you may experience difficulty falling back asleep after waking up to urinate, preventing you from achieving deep, restorative sleep.
Sleep Disorders:
Chronic sleep disruptions caused by BPH can contribute to the development of sleep disorders, such as insomnia, sleep apnea, or restless leg syndrome. These conditions further compromise sleep quality and overall well-being.
Daytime Fatigue:
Poor sleep quality due to BPH can lead to daytime fatigue, lack of energy, and reduced cognitive function, affecting your quality of work, productivity, mood, and overall quality of life.

It Limits Your Favourite Activities

The constant need to relieve yourself can even start to interfere with your favourite activities. These are just some examples:

If you are someone who loves to travel, you may find yourself starting to avoid long road trips due to the fear of not being able to find a bathroom in time.
You suddenly have to leave multiple times during a movie to find a restroom, causing you to disturb the people around you and making you miss several parts of the movie.
You have to excuse yourself from the dinner table at social gatherings to relieve yourself, disrupting conversations and missing out on discussions.

In general, these urinary symptoms are forcing you to always be preoccupied with finding the nearest bathroom and thus disrupting your favourite activities.

It Damages Your Confidence and Self-Esteem

Beyond the bothersome urinary symptoms, BPH can provoke feelings of frustration, anxiety, and embarrassment.

The symptoms that BPH causes can damage your confidence and self-esteem. You may start to feel anxious about always finding the nearest bathroom, or embarrassed that you have to relieve yourself more often than you used to.

Anxiety and embarrassment may also arise from challenges in the bedroom. In some cases, it is possible for BPH to cause a reduction in sex drive or sexual satisfaction. This inability to perform in the bedroom may damage your self-confidence, and may even lead to issues in your relationship with your partner.

Get the Latest Treatments for BPH

Overall, living with symptoms of BPH could hurt your quality of life and interfere with your daily activities, while also negatively impacting your confidence and self-esteem.

Thankfully, BPH is a treatable condition. At BPH Canada, we offer a variety of treatment options, including medication, minimally-invasive therapies, and surgical treatments.

You do not have to live in anxiety. Book a consultation today with our medical professionals. We will help you treat the symptoms that are causing you distress.