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(Web) Extra: Proton Beam Therapy (Part 5)
Tweet Share on Facebook April 18, 2008 CommentPart 5 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.
John Falvey on the cost of proton beam therapy
...I note with interest your remark about the added cost of this type of treatment. As a retired business school prof I would be interested in seeing a comparative analysis of costs of various types of treatment that respond to this disease. You may be interested in knowing that apart from out-of-pocket travel and local living arrangements, all of the medical costs associated with two months of treatment at Loma Linda were entirely covered by Medicare and AARP.
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(Web) Extra: Proton Beam Therapy (Part 6)
Tweet Share on Facebook April 18, 2008 Comment (4)Part 6 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.
Rick Otey of Illinois on his proton beam blog
...I have been frustrated that more doctors aren't offering protons as an option and have received many calls from people after their own diagnosis. So many that I created a blog this year. Ricksprostatecancer.blogspot.com will get you to my site.
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How to Get Your Vitamin A
Tweet Share on Facebook April 17, 2008 Comment (1)Real men should eat liver (or carrot juice, or sweet potatoes), not vitamin supplements. That's because yet another study has come out questioning the value of megadoses of vitamins. The BBC, ABC, and Science Daily have versions of the story. The advice, as I suggested in an earlier post on this topic, is to get your vitamins and antioxidants from real food instead of pills when possible. Forgotten where vitamins naturally come from? Here's a quick refresher (foods are listed in order of decreasing vitamin richness):
Vitamin A
Organ meat (liver, giblets), carrot juice, sweet potato (with peel), pumpkins, carrots, spinach, collards, kale -
Prostate Treatment Raises Blood Pressure
Tweet Share on Facebook April 11, 2008 Comment (2)Men with enlarged prostates—also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH—who are considering an inpatient procedure called transurethral microwave treatment to control urinary problems received some worrisome news this week from a new study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The procedure, which involves snaking a flexible microwave antenna and catheter up the urethra and zapping overzealous prostate cells to death, unfortunately causes surges in blood pressure for many men, researchers have reported.
The study of 185 patients found that 42 percent of men experienced systolic blood pressure surges of more than 30 mm Hg, while 5 percent had surges of more than 70 mm Hg. "These surges may predispose patients to significant risk for cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke," says Lance Mynderse, the author of the study, in this podcast that explains the study in more detail. Mynderse emphasizes that this new information doesn't mean the procedure, which is generally safe and well tolerated, should be eliminated from the suite of treatment options for BPH. However, doctors should check blood pressure multiple times during the procedure and take other steps to make it as safe as possible, he suggests.
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Food for the Final Four
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2008 Comment (1)All the Cinderella teams have been squashed in this year's NCAA tournament, leaving us with four No. 1-seeded powerhouses in the Final Four. CBS's ratings for the games are down, and some sportswriters have groused that March Madness is downright boring this year.
Still, come this weekend, millions of us will be settling down in front of the tube for the Final Four with our buddies, beer, and some cheese-drenched slices of Domino's. Maybe we'll wolf down some wings, or a sub, too, for good measure. We know eating junk food is a nightmare for our health and guts, but it's pretty much an unwritten and mandatory rule that as men we must heap on the fast food when we watch sports.
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On Circumcision Debate, Studies Cut Both Ways
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2008 Comment (18)A New Zealand study published in the Journal of Pediatrics adds yet another wrinkle to the acrimonious debate over circumcision. The study found that circumcision doesn't appear to protect men living in the developed world from certain sexually transmitted diseases, Reuters reports. Researchers at the University of Otago found that of 499 men they have followed since the 1970s, the same percentage of circumcised men and uncircumcised men—about 23 percent—developed bacterial and viral STDs such as chlamydia, genital warts, and herpes. The researchers didn't collect data on HIV, which is comparatively rare in New Zealand.
Most news in the last few years about circumcision has been dominated by the results of three randomized trials in African countries that found the procedure considerably reduces a man's risk of contracting HIV. In one of the studies, the risk was reduced by as much as 76 percent. Since then, public-health officials in some African countries have been scrambling to develop large-scale circumcision programs. The implications for Americans, however, remain murky. There are differences between the African and North American HIV epidemics, and the CDC has emphasized that benefits seen in the African trials don't necessarily translate to America.
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Should Men Care That Male Birth Control Options Are Languishing?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2008 Comment (24)For decades, experts and pundits have been predicting that a male birth control pill or breakthrough men's contraceptive was just a few years away. This week, for example, the Washington Times is reporting on the latest supposed breakthrough that researchers published this week in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
The line this time is that a combination of testosterone and progestin holds the key to developing a male pill. Interesting, but don't hold your breath; there isn't much new here, and the researchers acknowledge there are still many kinks to work out. The study is actually a reanalysis of previously completed research—and there's nothing to suggest it will circumvent the problem that has previously stalled promising work in this area, namely the perception among drug companies that there's little money to be made in making a male contraceptive. In fact, that's one of the main reasons that the pharmaceutical firms Bayer and Organon jettisoned their male pill programs last year, according to Chemistry World.
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Plastic Surgery Makes the Man? Maybe Not
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2008 Comment (3)With cosmetic procedures as popular as ever among women, some experts are wondering whether the seemingly endless push toward aesthetic perfection has a downside. At least one even suggests that a "new anorexia" may be emerging among some women in their quest for everlasting youth.
Might men be succumbing to the same pressure? It certainly seems possible after reviewing recently released reports from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Both reports showed men have a growing appetite for noninvasive cosmetic treatments.
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Choosing a Prostate Cancer Therapy Just Got Easier
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2008 Comment (10)Many men must cringe when choosing among prostate cancer treatments. I know I do, at least, when reading about the various options available to cut out, fry, or freeze (a technique that recently got a boost from this research) the offending cells. Yet it's a choice many of us will have to make: 1 in 6 men gets the cancer, and it's no secret that going after the tumor aggressively with surgery or radiation can leave our plumbing malfunctioning permanently.
Obviously, then, it's a decision we should make armed with good data on the possible cure rates and side effects of treatment. But, for various reasons, that data have been largely unavailable. (I've blogged before about the confusing and muddled science that men face when it comes to choosing a treatment.) Well, this week, we got at least a glimmer of clarity. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a nine-center study that offers men some insight on what to expect as far as quality of life goes for three of the major treatments—prostatectomy, external-beam radiotherapy, and brachytherapy. Here are the percentages of men receiving the various treatments who reported worsened urinary, bowel, or sexual function after treatment.
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Why Men Are So Good at Dying
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2008 Comment (23)The National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Women's Health announced a new Web resource this week that should make it easier for women to get their hands on quality research about everything from pregnancy to breast cancer to hormone therapy. Might a similar resource about men's health issues benefit men? Possibly. But efforts like these are in the most nascent of stages—if they exist at all. And even if they existed, we probably wouldn't use them anyway.
Until about 15 years ago, it was women who lacked information; traditionally, the standard patient in all kinds of medical research on disease and treatments had been the white male. In 1991, the Women's Health Office was created in the Department of Health and Human Services to promote gender equity in research and raise awareness about conditions such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, and depression. Since then, men's activists have been grousing that it's men who aren't getting a fair shake from the federal government. A bill calling for the establishment of a Men's Health Office to tackle such urgent male concerns as prostate cancer, accidents, and suicide has been languishing in congressional committees for years.
