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Why Does Asthma Treat the Genders Differently?
Tweet Share on Facebook August 15, 2008 Comment (4)Asthma, which plagues about 20 million Americans, cuts a curious path across gender lines. During childhood, the disease is more prevalent and more severe among males. After puberty, the opposite is true: Prevalence tilts female, and women face the higher risk of severe cases. For many boys, in fact, asthma symptoms taper off as puberty hits, while for girls that's often when the problems first emerge.
Nobody has determined why this flip-flop exists, but intriguing theories circulate. A study published this week in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine touches on some of them. One school of thought: Changing levels of the hormones progesterone and estrogen make women more susceptible to attacks, while rising levels of testosterone among boys exert a protective effect. A second: Anatomical differences drive the disparity. Women, for example, are known to develop smaller airways in proportion to a given lung volume than males do. A third: Exposure levels to outdoor environmental triggers have an influence on the shift.
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9 Notable Findings From a Sex Survey of Men
Tweet Share on Facebook August 14, 2008 Comment (36)A large survey released Wednesday, funded by the National Institutes of Health, queried adults ages 57 to 85 about their sexual problems. Most media reports, such as this one from HealthDay, have focused on the finding that a healthy sex life can extend well into the 80s, emphasizing the importance of overall health to sexual health. I decided to look more closely at how men responded to the survey. What I found ranged from the predictable to the intriguing to the outright surprising. Here are three of each.
Predictable
1. Getting erections and having orgasms become more difficult with age. Men ages 75 to 85 were 2.4 times as likely to report being unable to orgasm and 1.9 times as likely to report difficulty maintaining an erection as men ages 57 to 64. The good news: The older men didn't report significantly less interest in sex or pleasure during sex.
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27 Erectile Dysfunction Treatments You Can Do Without
Tweet Share on Facebook August 11, 2008 Comment (2)Federal agents are on the prowl for dietary supplements that purportedly enhance erection function but may in fact pose health risks. Two weeks ago, U.S. marshals seized from a Florida warehouse some $74,000 worth of Xiadafil VIP tablets, which the Food and Drug Administration says were being marketed illegally and contain an undeclared ingredient similar to the active ingredient found in Viagra, a popular erectile dysfunction medication. Another company, with FDA prodding, has recently recalled its Viapro 375-mg capsules. July also brought a voluntary recall of Rize 2 The Occasion and Rose 4 Her brand supplements. And, earlier this spring, the FDA warned consumers not to use the supplements Blue Steel and Hero.
Regulators are concerned that people may view dietary supplements that are marketed as treatments for erectile dysfunction as safe and natural, even though some are laced with prescription drugs that can cause adverse reactions when taken with other medications. Some supplements, for example, contain substances similar to those found in Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra. These so-called PDE-5 inhibitors are known to interact with nitrates, which are widely used as medications for chest pain. "You simply don't know whether many of these supplements are laced with PDE-5 inhibitors," says Ira Sharlip, a spokesperson for the American Urological Association.
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5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Men and Car Crashes
Tweet Share on Facebook August 8, 2008 Comment (8)Corrected on 8/11/08: A previous version of this article misstated the interval during which rates of fatal crashes decreased. The decreases occurred between 1977 and 2001.
Morgan Freeman, star of The Dark Knight, has been released from the hospital after undergoing surgery to treat serious injuries he sustained in a crash last Sunday. Freeman, who was reportedly wearing his seat belt and was sober at the time of the wreck, is fortunate. Andrea Pininfarina, a famed Italian car designer, was not. He died Thursday in Turin when the Vespa scooter he was driving struck a car that hadn't stopped at an intersection. For all except the oldest men, motor vehicles accidents are the leading cause of accidental death. (Falls overtake crashes among men older than 75.)
Here are five facts you might not know about men and traffic accidents:
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What Eric Shanteau's Cancer Means for All Men
Tweet Share on Facebook August 1, 2008 Comment (8)It's hard not to admire the courage and composure of 24-year-old Eric Shanteau. A week before the Olympic trials, the swimmer from Lilburn, Ga., received staggering news from his doctor: Shanteau had testicular cancer and needed surgery.
He could have—some doctors have reportedly argued he should have—abandoned his Olympic dreams to aggressively pursue treatment. Instead, Shanteau chose to delay surgery, swam in the trials, and snared himself a spot on the American team with an upset second-place finish.
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Michael Savage, at Odds With the Science
Tweet Share on Facebook July 25, 2008 Comment (173)There's been plenty of outrage directed at Michael Savage since the talk radio host recently made his controversial remarks about autism. Parent groups of children with autism are calling for his head, and some advertisers have started dropping Savage as a result of his comments. Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Savage's show to more than 350 affiliates, is standing behind Savage. Here's what Savage, who's known for his incendiary style, said during the show:
Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.... What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' Autism—everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, 'Don't behave like a fool.' The worst thing he said—'Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry.' That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men.
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A Fix for One Cause of Male Infertility
Tweet Share on Facebook July 22, 2008 CommentHearing about varicoceles, or dilated veins in the scrotum, may make you cringe. But as many as 16 percent of men—even young men—have this type of varicose vein, a common cause of low sperm count. The condition can cause testicles to shrink and soften, and can feel, as the Mayo Clinic so delicately puts it, "like a bag of worms" above the testicle.
Pleasant, right?
While the enlarged veins are harmless in most cases, they can cause real trouble if you're aiming to become a father. Doctors have noticed that about 40 percent of men who are infertile have varicoceles. It's still a bit murky as to how exactly the condition damages sperm, but researchers speculate that the enlarged veins hamper the circulation of properly oxygenated blood.
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Men Are Victims of Domestic Violence, Too
Tweet Share on Facebook July 18, 2008 Comment (36)The spate of knife crime across the pond that has thrown the British press into quite a tizzy got me wondering about similar U.S. stats. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, knives were used in 14 percent of the homicides that occurred in 2005 (the most recent year for which data was posted). Handguns were used in about 55 percent. No surprises there.
What I didn't anticipate, however, was that my online search for information about knife violence would keep turning up sites about domestic violence against men. This post from the website batteredmen.com, for example, kept appearing, making the case that domestic violence against men—which not infrequently involves knives—is too often overlooked. That site looks a little rough around the edges, so I checked further into the peer-reviewed research.
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Does Global Warming Mean More Kidney Stones?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 15, 2008 Comment (38)Al Gore is going to love this one. A new study, released yesterday, suggests that it's not just polar bears, ice caps, and farmers who ought to be on edge about global warming. Rising temperatures may leave Americans with a deluge of kidney stones as well.
That might sound like voodoo scare science, but it's actually well accepted that kidney stone formation accelerates in warm climates. Sweating removes fluid from the body, which increases the salt concentration of the urine and the rate at which stones develop.
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Highlights of the Week's Men's Health News
Tweet Share on Facebook July 11, 2008 CommentObese Men Produce Less Semen
Hundreds of stories appeared in the media this week reporting on a study that found that being obese negatively affects a man's fertility. Fat men had a 60 percent higher chance of having a low volume of semen and also a 40 percent higher chance of having sperm abnormalities, the Associated Press reported. Different levels of hormones in obese men, overheating of the testicles, and diet all may contribute to lower sperm quality, researchers told Bloomberg. My colleague, Deborah Kotz, last year offered advice on ways that men can reduce a couple's risk of infertility. Stay slim, temporarily avoid soy, and steer clear of performance-enhancing drugs, she advised.Hormone Therapy May Not Help Elderly Men With Prostate Cancer
In a surprise finding, researchers reported this week that receiving surgical or medical castration—called hormone therapy—does not prolong survival for some men with prostate cancer. As the Los Angeles Times reports, hormone therapy is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with surgery or radiation for treating aggressive prostate tumors that have spread beyond the prostate. But for localized, less-aggressive tumors, the benefit disappears, particularly for older men who have other chronic illnesses. That's why it's crucial, I reported in this blog earlier this week, that men consider the downsides of hormone treatment before plunging forward. For more on prostate cancer, see these stories about proton beam therapy and how to weigh treatment options. The U.S. News Prostate Cancer Channel, developed with Johns Hopkins, offers additional information on the disease.
