Men's Health: Keep Your Pipes Clean

— -- It’s no coincidence that “physicians” are only a few flips away from “plumbers” in the yellow pages. Your body isn’t a temple; it’s a four-story brownstone, complete with intake pipes, drainage pumps, a sewage system, and even a few secret passageways.

Keeping your plumbing up to spec is a lot more important than cleaning the bathtub drain. If one of your hoses springs a leak or clogs up with sediment, the consequences could go way beyond a four-figure bill. The following is a plan to keep the most important conduits flowing freely.

Your Brain

Your brain relies on a network of tiny pipes to stay alive. If any one of them cracks or becomes clogged, a large region can run dry. That’s a stroke. You already know the commonsense stuff that’ll keep your cerebral arteries gushing: Stay thin, exercise for at least 30 minutes daily, and don’t let your total-cholesterol count run into the 200s. Your doctor may also tell you to take a daily aspirin if you’re over 40 and have a family history of strokes.

Furthermore, you rarely see gorillas in wheelchairs, and one reason could be their fondness for potassium-loaded bananas. An 8-year study at the Harvard school of public health suggests that eating a diet rich in potassium can cut your risk of stroke, especially if you have high blood pressure.

What’s more, studies have found that a combination of caffeine and alcohol helps brain tissue recuperate from injury. We’ll meet you at O’Callahan’s at 5:30.

Your Ears

You’ve known the 11th commandment since second grade: Don’t shove anything in your ear that’s sharper than your elbow. Of course, after drinking all that Irish coffee, you ignored it. Here are smarter ways to tend to the holes in your head:

Throw away the cotton swabs. They only ram the wax in deeper, says Richard T. Miyamoto, M.D., otolaryngologist at the Indiana University school of medicine.

Instead, flush your ear with mineral oil or buy a drugstore eardrop kit, says Dr. Miyamoto. If one home session doesn’t work, see your doctor. He can irrigate your ear canal to clear any clogs.

Ask the flight attendant for coffee. When you have trouble popping your ears on a plane, avoid cold drinks. The chill slows down the mucus-clearing movement of your cilia (hairlike structures in your nasal cavity). This causes your eustachian tubes to become blocked, so you can’t equalize the pressure in your ear canals.

Be a gentle popper. Pinching your nostrils and inflating like Dizzy Gillespie can damage your eustachian tubes. “Keep it to a nice, easy yawn,” says Murray Grossan, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Your Nose

Quit blowing. Your nasal cavity was carefully designed to allow mucus to trickle down into your throat. Blowing the snot out of your nostrils sets back the whole operation. Worse, it forces mucus into your sinuses, which can worsen your cold symptoms, says Owen Hendley, M.D., of the University of Virginia school of medicine.

Program the thermostat to hit 75 degrees F at 6 a.m. You usually have the worst sneezing fits in the morning. Why? Because your body temperature is low, and sneezing is your body’s way of raising it, says Dr. Grossan. You can help by slugging down coffee as soon as you rise. And pull on a bathrobe; the twins love it when Hef does.

Shower before bed. Your hair is a nifty air filter; it traps airborne pollen, dust, and St. Bernard fur. Then you transfer these irritants to your pillow, so allergies can literally attack you where you sleep. That’s a good reason to wash your hair before bed.

Your Esophagus

There’s a valve, unavailable at Home Depot, called the lower esophageal sphincter. It connects your esophagus and stomach, and it’s the first of your sphincters to feel the punishment of those acid-producing hot wings. If excess stomach acid repeatedly bubbles back through this valve, it can stop sealing properly. Then that acid bums the living hell out of your esophagus, usually sometime around 4 a.m.

Stop eating like Kirstie Alley. Devouring large meals is the quickest route to acid buildup. Eat smaller, more frequent meals if you’re prone to heartburn, says David Peura, M.D., a gastroenterologist at the University of Virginia school of medicine.

Take a walk after dinner. Or surf porn sites. Just wait an hour before you nap on the couch or lift weights. Lying down with a full stomach lets stomach acid gurgle upward, explains Dr. Peura. Intense exercise can also force acid into the esophagus.

Your Coronary Arteries

Quit having nightmares about the hard chunks of fat in your coronary arteries that slowly grow to the size of pig’s knuckles. They’re probably not going to kill you. Instead, it’s the tiny, soft plaques that are the real devils, says Steven E. Nissen, M.D., a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. While the large buildups are relatively stable, those soft little plaques often rupture and cause dangerous clogs.

Consider drugs. If heart attacks run in your family, go a step further than just getting daily exercise and eating a diet with less than 20 percent fat. Ask your doctor if you should take cholesterol-lowering drugs as a preventive measure, says Dr. Nissen. In studies, he found that drug therapy can help eliminate these insidious little blockages.

Your Intestines

If you took an adult human’s intestines and laid them out in a straight line, you’d be looking at a 30-foot waste pipe that’s particularly prone to clogging. Everyone has a different evacuation rate, so don’t be comparing bowel-movement frequency with coworkers. Save that for the retirement home. To keep things moving …

Develop a drinking habit. A high-fiber diet won’t help unless you wash down that roughage with water, says Michael D. Crowell, Ph.D., a professor of gastrointestinal physiology at the Johns Hopkins school of medicine. It gives the fiber something to soak up, which softens your stool. Cola doesn’t count, by the way. The sodium in it draws water out of your bowels. And lay off alcohol when the train won’t leave the station. Booze slows down gastric emptying — which is why drinking wine with dinner makes you feel full, says Dr. Crowell.

Don’t hold it in. Researchers in Germany found that “voluntary prolonged suppression of defecation” can significantly slow down your bowel movements.

Be consistent. Settling onto the john at the same time each day can help you stay regular, and after breakfast is best, says Dr. Crowell. Your gastrocolic reflex — your stomach’s signal to the large intestine to start squeezing — is strongest in the morning, after breakfast.

Your Penis

The pain that surpasses all understanding. The male equivalent of childbirth. For all the improvements in treatment, descriptions of kidney-stone pain haven’t advanced much. The little calcified rocks block your ureters (the tubes that connect your kidneys to your bladder), causing a stretching and spasm of the urinary system — and a pain like being set on fire. About 90 percent of stones pass on their own, says Joseph W. Segura, M.D., a urologist at the Mayo Clinic. The other 10 percent can send men to the hospital screaming. To protect yourself …

Measure your pee. If you’re at risk for stones and you’re not peeing at least a half gallon of urine a day, you’re not drinking enough fluids, says Stephen W. Leslie, M.D., a urologist. So keep a bottle handy and make regular deposits at the urinal.

And have it analyzed. Your doctor can test your urine’s calcium and acid content to see if you’re prone to developing stones, says Dr. Leslie. If you are, diet changes and medication can reduce your risk. And always save any stones you pass; they’re great keepsakes, and they provide prevention clues, too.

Drink more beer. In a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers calculated that each daily glass of beer men drank lowered their kidney-stone risk by 40 percent. The hops may help keep calcium from accumulating in your kidneys.