IT'S AN ILLNESS that brings chronic discomfort, pain, and sometimes shame. It's causes aren't entirely clear, and it's treatment is so elusive that doctors often advise sufferers to 'learn to live with it'. But in Xian, one doctor believes that he's developed a technique that will bring relief to sufferers of chronic prostatitis. So certain is he of the power of his treatment that his website declares that through his unblocking treatment, 'Chronic Prostatitis has met its Waterloo.'
In an unassuming office on the 21st floor of an office building in Xian's industrial technology zone is a small clinic dedicated to researching a problem that few understand - prostatitis, a non-lethal ailment sometimes called 'the forgotten prostate disease'.
Yet prostatitis is the most common urilogical problem among men younger than 50, and to those who suffer its symptoms (ranging from frequent urination to chronic lower back pain to sexual dysfunction and painful ejaculation), it's non-lethal quality comes as little consolation. Treatment is uncertain. A course of antibiotics might provide temporary relief to one patient, but not another. One man might swear by herbal medicine while another might spend a small fortune on specialty supplements such as raw palmetto and stinging nettle for months without finding relief.
One of these is Dr George Yuan Lu. A graduate of Zhejiang Medical University, Lu is a urologist who has spent the last decade treating patients suffering from chronic prostatitis. For the last decade, his clinic has attracted patients from around the world willing to endure more than just a trip to central China in hope of curing their problems.
Lu is the originator of 'unblocking', a series of treatments mixing Chinese medicine and intense prostatic massage that he claims can both help patients to be free of their symptoms and to return an enlarged prostate to its former healthy size.