Category: Other

Snippet from the article:

A three-year-old Italian boy who suffers from a rare and incurable degenerative disorder called Krabbe disease received a stem cell injection last Saturday. It was his sixth dose, and according to the person who developed the treatment, Davide Vannoni, the boy has obtained “very good results.” Under normal circumstances, any claims of improvement in this boy’s ability to move around and develop mentally would be more than welcome. But Vannoni’s assertions — that his stem cell injections can reverse the effects of any number of fatal diseases — aren’t supported by peer-reviewed studies or clinical trials. And he isn’t backed by a drug company or a university either.

In fact, outside of his small circle of associates, he has received very little support from the scientific community. Yet his organization, a nonprofit called the Stamina Foundation, has treated more than 100 patients since 2007 — and at least 14 of those treatments were paid for by the Italian government.

“They claim that they are able to isolate mesenchymal stem cells from the bone marrow of patients simply by using a drill,” says Elena Cattaneo, a pharmacologist and the director of UniStem, the University of Milan’s Centre for Stem Cell Research. “And then they have been claiming that they’re able to transform these mesenchymal stem cells in 20 minutes into neural stem cells,” to restore a person’s neural functioning. This is impossible, she says, adding “I spent my life generating neurons from stem cells. All this makes no sense.”

Read the rest — Meet the con man selling fake stem cell treatments to children

Stem cell clinics are seemingly appearing everywhere. Why? The answer is plain and simple MONEY. I was just invited to join such an organization and of course, I declined. Let the buyer beware!

Hi doctors,
I appreciate your taking the time to read this. I have a seemingly unique issue that I need your advice about. My hair stopped growing just after my 40th birthday. I’m 42 now and I havent seen hair loss but I also havent had to go to the barber even once. This seems really unusual and I don’t know whether this is worth seeing a doctor about. It isnt a “problem” really since I am saving money by not getting hair cuts but I just want to know if this is somethng you have heard of before. Why would my hair just stop growing and should I expect hair loss to follow in the near future??

What you’ve described isn’t something I’ve encountered before.

Hair cycling occurs in everyone and it usually cycles each hair in about 2-4 years. Hairs grow in the anagen phase of the hair cycle. Could it be that your hair cycle is just extremely short? If that were the case, new hairs are continuing to grow and fall out like normal, but just not achieving any length because of a very short cycle (and thus appearing that it’s staying exactly the same).

It’s possible that some underlying health issues could be the cause of this, but I really don’t know. Are you using any chemicals or high heat to style your hair? Sorry, but I’m stumped on this one.

Snippet from the article:

Guys, a loving spouse may save your life, U.S. health officials say. But living with a significant other doesn’t appear to confer the same health benefits as marriage.

Single and married men are more likely to see a doctor regularly than those living with a partner out of wedlock, according to a new U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) study.

And compared to husbands or other single men, cohabiting men are also the least likely to report having undergone preventive screenings such as cholesterol and blood pressure tests in the previous year, the researchers said.

Read the rest — Marriage boosts men’s health. Living together? Not so much

The article goes on to say that, “about 71 percent said they’d been to the doctor at least once during the past year. For married men, the number was 76 percent, the study found. It fell to 65 percent for single men and 60 percent for men who lived with a partner.”

It doesn’t prove that married men are healthier, just that those surveyed spent more time in a doctor’s office than those men that just lived with their partner.

I don’t buy into this false notion that women look at balding men and see their hair loss as a sign of virility. Do you believe that women who have bald fathers are more accepting of bald mates than women who have fathers with full head of hair?

Bald men aren’t more virile (we posted about it late last year), and actually, bald men can be just as virile and sexually appealing as hairy men.

I don’t think Jason Statham, Yul Brynner, Bruce Willis, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, LL Cool J, Patrick Stewart, Andre Agassi, Kelly Slater, Michael Jordan, Vin Diesel, Tyrese Gibson, etc have issues with virility or attracting a mate. Besides, I can think of plenty of hairy men who have negative sex appeal.

Women see deeper than men do when it comes to the outer shell of a person. They see the attributes of the personality and make the determination of attractiveness based upon far more factors than us men do. I don’t have actual scientific research on the topic, though I sense that women with bald fathers who have a good relationship with them, probably accept balding men better than women whose relationship with their father is not good.

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Eating nuts could help protect against the development of type 2 diabetes in individuals who are already at high risk for the disease, 2 new studies suggest.

Researchers from Spain and the United States reported on the potential benefits of pistachio nuts and almonds, so-called “tree nuts,” here at the 2014 European Congress on Obesity. Mònica Bulló, MD, of the human nutrition unit at Virgili University, Reus, Spain, and senior author on the pistachio study, told Medscape Medical News: “I would advise people to eat a handful of nuts whenever they can.”

Her study, conducted in 49 overweight or obese prediabetic subjects, showed that 57 g of pistachios daily for 4 months significantly reduced fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance. Importantly, there was no change in body weight after eating the nuts.

The other trial, presented in a poster by Sze Yen Tan, PhD, of department of nutrition science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, reported on 137 adults at elevated risk for diabetes who were randomized to consume 43 g of almonds per day — either with meals or as a snack — or to no almonds, for 4 weeks.

Read the rest — Eating Nuts May Help Pause Path to Type 2 Diabetes

Clearly a small study, but the results are promising. A second trial of 137 adults were given almonds, but the full results were not published yet.

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The number of Korean men seeking treatment for hair loss is seeing an annual increase of approximately 4.8 percent, according to the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service in Seoul.

The institution said the number of patients increased from 180,000 in 2009 to 210,000 in 2013. They spent 12.2 billion won ($11.88 million) for their treatment in 2009, and 18 billion won in 2013.

About 30 percent of the patients are in their 30s and 40s. “Hair loss can have many causes,” officials of the organization said in a statement.

Read the rest from InsideKorea.com- More men treated for hair loss

This is great news for our branch in Seoul, Korea.