Practicing family physicians from the UNC Department of Family Medicine have teamed up with The Carrboro Citizen to bring you a weekly feature responding to your questions about health and medicine. Send your questions or comments to yourhealth@unc.edu
This week we respond to questions about prostates and Coumadin.
Dear HOUSE Calls, I was just talking to my father, who is in his early 60s, about prostate screening. His doctor ordered a PSA. What exactly is a prostate?
The prostate is a gland that sits below the bladder and in front of the rectum. It forms a ring around the urethra. Because of this, if it gets too big it can cause trouble with urination. It can also be a place where cancer can occur. Only men have prostates. The prostate makes about one-third of semen, and it is important for protecting the sperm and increasing fertility.
Dear HOUSE Calls, I am on Coumadin, and I was wondering if I’m allowed to eat green leafy vegetables.
Let us remind readers that Coumadin is a blood thinner most commonly used for abnormal heart rhythms (e.g., atrial fibrillation) and blood clots in the lungs and legs. We monitor a clotting parameter at least monthly in people on Coumadin, and one of the reasons for that is that the effectiveness is sensitive to dietary vitamin K. We do not generally recommend avoiding green leafy vegetables, but encourage people to be fairly consistent in their dietary vitamin K. So if you are usually all meat and potatoes, a binge on five servings of mustard greens may be a problem.
House Calls is a weekly column by Dr. Adam Goldstein, Dr. Cristy Page and Dr. Adam Zolotor on behalf of Your Health and the UNC Department of Family Medicine.