Category: Other

Snippet from the article:

By the age of 35, two-thirds of American men experience some degree of measurable hair loss, and by the age of 50, approximately 85 percent have significantly thinning hair, according to the American Hair Loss Association.

Given those numbers, finding a cure for baldness has become the holy grail among scientists everywhere.

Read the rest — Hats Off to These 4 Potential Baldness Cures

ABC News goes over 4 potential balding treatments, once again throwing the word “cure” around. The methods they explain (in slideshow form!) are still in the research phase.

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In a small pilot study of patients displaying signs of cognitive decline, researchers at the McKnight Brain Institute Center for Smell and Taste and the University of Florida (UF) found that peanut butter can help identify those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disorder often accompanied by a loss of smell.

Working with 18 patients with probable AD, 24 with mild cognitive impairment, 26 with other causes of dementia, and 26 matched controls, graduate student Jennifer Stamps and her UF advisor Kenneth Heilman measured the distance from the nose at which a patient (whose eyes were closed) could smell a tablespoon of peanut butter. They ran the test one nostril at a time and found that early-stage AD patients had dramatically different smell sensitivity between the right and left nostrils, with the left regularly being more severely impaired. The other patients tested displayed no such difference in smell sensitivity.

Read the rest — Sniffing out Alzheimer’s

What is believe by the researchers, is that areas of the brain responsible for smell may be the first areas impacted in dementia. Could this be a simple, mild cognitive impairment test for patients with early dementia or Alzheimer’s disease?

I want our readers to know that I have been sniffing peanut butter with each nostril and I am pleased to report that both nostrils work equally.

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Escalated-dose radiation therapy for localized prostate cancer did not significantly affect the frequency of biochemical or clinical failure compared with a standard protocol, a randomized trial showed.

Men treated by the standard radiotherapy protocol had a 5-year rate of combined biochemical and clinical failure of 21.43%, whereas the escalated-dose, or hypofractionated, protocol was associated with failure rate of 23.3%.

The incidence of late toxicity did not differ between protocols, but hypofractionated therapy worsened urinary function in men who had urinary problems at baseline, Alan Pollack, MD, PhD, of the University of Miami, and co-authors reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Read the rest — Higher Radiation Dose No Help in Prostate Cancer

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By now, the words have become a permanent part of the national lexicon: “For erections lasting longer than 4 hours, seek immediate medical assistance,” warn ads for various erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs.

But what of the patient whose ED treatment consists not of a drug but a penile implant — someone whose erection lasts not 4 hours but 8 months? What does this patient do? Well, if he’s 44-year-old Daniel Metzgar, of Newark, Delaware, he sues his doctor for medical malpractice.

Read the rest — Eight-Month Erection Gives Rise to Malpractice Suit

This patient had a prolonged erection from a penile implant, and because of complications of swelling and eventual extrusion of the implant, he sued his doctor for medical malpractice. The patient received a three piece inflatable implant and had it surgically implanted. He developed scrotal swelling but did not report it to his doctor, though did go to the hospital after 4 months.

In 2010, tubing punctured his scrotum, so he had the initial device taken out and a replacement instrument put in by another doctor. He sued his initial doctor for not putting in the device correctly claiming regular embarrassment and told the jury that he could not ride his motorcycle, wear normal cloths or participate in family events. “I could hardly dance, with an erection poking my partner” the patient said, “It’s not something you want to bring out at parties and show to friends”.

When the jury award came in, the patient lost following the defense’s logic that that sometimes “bad outcomes occur”, even when nobody is at fault.

Snippet from the article:

The average height of European males increased by an unprecedented 11 cm between the mid-nineteenth century and 1980, according to a new paper published online today in the journal Oxford Economic Papers. Contrary to expectations, the study also reveals that average height actually accelerated in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression.

Timothy J. Hatton, Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and the Research School of Economics at Australian National University in Canberra, examined and analysed a new dataset for the average height (at the age of around 21) of adult male birth cohorts, from the 1870s to 1980, in fifteen European countries. The data were drawn from a variety of sources. For the most recent decades the data were mainly taken from height-by-age in cross sectional surveys. Meanwhile, observations for the earlier years were based on data for the heights of military conscripts and recruits. The data is for men only as the historical evidence for women’s heights is severely limited.

Read the rest — Average Height of European Males Has Grown by 11 Centimeters in Just Over a Century

Researches theorize it could be due to better living conditions, better nutrition education, and better health systems, along with a decline in infant mortality rates.

Hi Dr. Rassman,

My question is simple, yet I need to have some advices on how to handle it. I am worried for my man. He’s turning 24 in a month and is having some, let’s say, noticeable hair loss on the side of his head. I’ve always thought it was just the way his hair was but his hairdresser told him lately that she felt his hair was not as thick as it was before and that he might be losing it. The problem with that is, even though he recognizes having a problem, I don’t feel like he’s ready to do anything about it. I’ve told him to talk to his doctor, but he haven’t done it yet and doesn’t seem to be willing to.

I know there’s not much I can do if he’s not willing to help himself but, what can I possibly say, on a medical side, to convince him to at least see a doctor? I know the younger you are, the better are the chances to have great results. In the end, all I want him to understand is that i love him and I don’t want him to suffer in the long run, like when he’ll be 30 and bald. What are the facts about losing hair at a young age that you could tell me, so that if he decided not to do anything about it, he at least knows where it would lead?

Thank you for your support.

Honestly, it is up to him to decide if he wants to treat his hair loss. If you can’t accept his thinning hair, I think the problem may be yours. Treating hair loss with medication when it is early will provide the most optimal results, but it isn’t your place or mine to convince someone to seek out treatment that they don’t want or aren’t ready for.

If your boyfriend wants to do something about it, he will. This is a cosmetic issue, not a medical issue.

Snippet from the press release:

Survey results released today by the ROGAINE® brand, in partnership with Men’s Health, reveal the extent to which hair loss psychologically impacts men. In a survey of over 900* Men’s Health readers, one-third of men experiencing hair loss admitted to feeling “helpless” and over 66% used negative language like “victim,” “defeated” or “unavoidable” when describing the condition.

Read the rest — The ROGAINE Brand Reveals New Insights About The Psychological Impact Of Hair Loss

This is basically just a press release for a new marketing campaign by Rogaine with some buzzwords that caught my eye (it worked!), but I found the negative language used by the surveyed men to be interesting. Hair loss is treatable with medication if caught early enough, and other treatments such as surgery or SMP are also available.

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It’s no secret that paying attention to diet, exercise, stress levels and getting social support may extend your life. But a new study shows healthy living may even reverse aging deep in our cells.

A small study shows that positive lifestyle changes lead to longer telomeres, which are protective caps at the end of chromosomes that help protect a cell from aging.

Telomeres are made of DNA and protein, and they work as a shield for chromosomes and help keep them stable. Over time they become shorter and weaker, leading the cells to age quicker and eventually die. Scientists have compared telomeres on chromosomes to protective plastic caps at the end of shoelaces. Telomere length has been linked to risk for diseases including some cancers, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes and even the common cold.

Read the rest — Healthy lifestyle may slow aging in our cells

The study was very small, tracking 35 men with “localized, early-stage prostate cancer for five years”. If the findings can be validated in a large-scale study, it could reduce the risk of a wide variety of diseases.

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Small enough for injection without leaving a wound, new microrobots could revolutionize the way modern medicine treats certain hard-to-reach areas of the body. The eyes and brain are extremely tricky places for surgeons, and a non-invasive solution to certain ailments has long been sought. The impediments to this are numerous, however, and range from producing to controlling to excreting any tiny agents that might be up to the job.

Now Chinese University researchers say they’ve created a working microbot for internal use, a cage-like structure just 100 microns long by 40 microns wide. Its inventors coat the cage shape in a thin layer of nickel, giving it the magnetic properties they require to guide it through to body after insertion. The electromagnetic field used to guide the little “robot” can push them through the body with extreme accuracy. In tests, the researchers were able to show that their robot successfully delivered a drug payload to the predetermined target cells.

Read the rest — Cell-sized micro-robot will carry drugs in your bloodstream

They are testing with rabbits and mice for now, but hope to have human trials soon.

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In a new meta-analysis of 10 studies in patients with type 2 diabetes, taking cinnamon supplements improved fasting blood glucose and cholesterol levels, but not glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels.

HbA1c likely was not affected because the studies were too short, and they were also very small and diverse, making it difficult to draw any clinical implications, caution Robert W. Allen (then a PharmD student at Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California) and coauthors in their paper published September 9 in the Annals of Family Medicine.

Based on this meta-analysis, “I wouldn’t recommend cinnamon instead of [diabetes] medication,” and long-term effects are unknown, senior author Olivia Phung, PharmD, from Western University of Health Sciences, told Medscape Medical News. However, small doses of a cinnamon supplement could be used along with traditional diabetes medication, she conceded.

Read the rest — Will a Spoonful of Cinnamon Help the Diabetes Meds Go Down?