Encouraging Health

Men: getting circumsised lowers risk of HPV, Herpes and Aids

Circumcision not only protects against HIV in heterosexual men, but it also helps prevent two other sexually transmitted infections, a large new study found.

Circumcised males reduced their risk of infection with HPV, or human papillomavirus, by 35 percent and herpes by 28 percent. However, researchers found circumcision had no effect on the transmission of syphilis.

Landmark studies from three African countries including Uganda previously found circumcision lowered men’s chance of catching the AIDS virus by up to 60 percent. The new study stems from the Uganda research and looked at protection against three other STDs. The findings are reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine

An international team of researchers who conducted the study said circumcision, the surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis, should be an accepted method to reduce sexually transmitted infections among heterosexuals.

“It must be emphasized that protection was only partial, and it is critical to promote the practice of safe sex,” they wrote.

HPV can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. Herpes greatly increases the chances of infection with HIV.

The American Academy of Pediatrics previously said there was not enough evidence to recommend routine circumcision of infants. The doctor’s group is reviewing its position based on recent studies. About 2,800 herpes cases in newborns occur in the U.S. every year transmitted from mothers to infants that can lead to disability or death.

From CNN health: Eighty-year-old Margie Graf is a health care success story, representing the kind of disease-preventing, cost-saving treatment the Obama administration envisions as it seeks to expand Americans’ access to doctors.

Maggie Graf, 80, was home the day after doctors removed a precancerous polyp found in a routine colonoscopy.

During a routine colonoscopy, Graf’s doctor discovered a large, precancerous polyp. Not wanting to undergo major surgery, Graf went to University Hospital, part of University of Missouri Health Care, where the polyp was removed using a tiny needle knife in a procedure new to the United States.

“I just thank God every day that I did, and that it was OK,” said Graf, who lives in Barnett, Missouri, and works as a Wal-Mart greeter.

Doctors charged Graf $595 for an endoscopic submucosal dissection, or ESD, less than half of the typical doctor’s fee for a hemicolectomy, the traditional surgery for a polyp like Graf’s.

Graf was also able to go home a day after her ESD. In a hemicolectomy, a surgeon removes half the colon, a much more serious procedure requiring a longer, far costlier hospital stay and a higher risk of complications.

“I had an opportunity to take care of this lesion, discharge her home next day and bring her back to her normal life,” said Dr. Mainor Antillon, who performed the ESD on Graf. “From an economical point of view, ESD is a very cost-effective technique.”

A 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a three-dimension spiral CT screening for lung cancer was ineffective because it did not reduce lung cancer deaths. It was also potentially harmful because it found many more abnormalities, resulting in unnecessary surgeries.

The American Cancer Society, initially enthusiastic about spiral CT screening, now concludes “no lung cancer screening test has been shown to prevent people from dying of this disease.”

Welch said the choice to be tested for disease is a personal one, although he does recommend cancer screenings for people in high-risk groups, such as those with a family history.

Even though Graf’s precancerous polyp may never have caused a problem, Graf said she could not ignore it. Graf’s husband of 57 years, Oliver, died of colon cancer in 2005.

“I would have worried myself silly,” she said.

Next time you get a nagging headache, try a little fingertip therapy. You might feel better more quickly.

In their latest book, YOU: Being Beautiful, RealAge experts Mehmet Oz, MD, and Michael Roizen, MD, recommend massaging these key acupressure points to ease the grip of a tension headache.
Your temporalis muscle: With your index and middle fingers, apply pressure to your temporalis muscle. It’s that tender spot where you feel a muscle move when you clench your teeth.

Behind your ears: Using your thumbs, massage in a circular motion the spots just underneath the large bones behind your ears.

Between your eyes: With your middle finger and thumb, gently pinch the skin just above your nose and press upward so you feel the pressure around your eyebrows.

The web of your hand: Use your thumb and index finger to squeeze the fleshy pad of skin between the thumb and index finger on your opposite hand.

And over on Headaches.about.com, Mark Foley, D.O., suggests
Pranayama, or yogic breathing, is a good way to learn to breathe. Begin by sitting quietly without any distractions. Take a nice, slow, continuous breath in through your nose. Hold it for a few seconds without making any other movements. Then slowly exhale through your mouth. Again, like during inhalation, your exhalation should be smooth and continuous. Once you’ve exhaled, take a short, deliberate pause before starting the cycle again. It sounds simple, but even simple tactics can help you deal with tension headaches.

Using natural methods to get rid of headaches is best, rather than pumping your body full of medications.

If you’ve ever crawled into bed with a box of tissues, you won’t sneeze at this possibility of preventing another bout of the common cold.

To help keep those little viral critters from settling into your respiratory system for days on end, you may need some bacteria.

How to Be a Pro
Yep, certain live and active bacterial cultures — known as “good” bacteria, or probiotics — may be a secret weapon in cold prevention. People in a study who took a twice-a-day supplement of one particular probiotic strain — Lactobacillus fermentum — had less than half the number of sick days as the people who did not supplement. Probiotics may have benefits for people with allergies, too.

Where to Get Yours
Because to date there’s been little study of L. fermentum, don’t expect to find store shelves lined with products containing this particular probiotic strain. But more and more research is showing that probiotics in general are immune-system enhancers. You can find probiotics in yogurt, in some fermented milk or juice products, and in miso, tempeh, and other fermented grain or soybean products — as well as in supplements. Just one caveat to keep in mind: It may not always be clear which strain you are getting, or how much. Current food-manufacturer labeling leaves a little to be desired on this front.

And here are a few more ways to help give sniffles and sneezes the cold shoulder:
Be positive. Being a Little Miss Sunshine helps keep you healthy.

Wash your hands.

Start moving. Staying active is good for your immune system.

A Hallucinogenic Tea, Laced with Controversy: Ayahuasca in the Amazon and the United States, 168 pages from Praeger Publishers (July 30, 2008). Authors MARLENE DOBKIN DE RIOS and ROGER RUMRRILL discuss Amazon Shamans (Ayahuascaros, among other terms that have slightly different meanings) use of a tea made from the Ayahuasca plant, native to the Amazon.

There are few true Shamans left, according to the Shamans de Rios interviews for the book. Training takes two years and requires many hardships, such as forays into the forrest, severe diets, celibacy: so much so, that the Amazon youth prefer city life to taking up tribal customs, such as Shamanism.

That’s not to say they don’t produce their own brand of Shamanism to tourists, offering Ayahuasca Tea (without the proper prayers, chanting, etc) to tourists. This is called “Drug Tourism” and the authors detail what Drug Tourism is and how it is harming Tribal life and how it affects how the plant is disappearing from the Amazon.

This is a great book that discusses the manners in which Shamans train, believe, go about their vocation, administer to local tribes (mostly women and children). With drinking the tea, a Shaman ‘communicates’ with spirits (not as we in the West describe them) then help whomever comes to him. In it’s proper respect, Ayahuasca Tea helps the proper Shaman delve into the problem, thus helping his ‘customer’.

Improper use of the tea has skyrocketed, and many false Shamans have sprung up around the Countries. Countries don’t seem to mind, as the ‘drug tourism’ brings in much needed capital. Although Shamanism is dying out, the religion it professes has spread to many Western and Industrialized Nations, including the United States.

And there was the problem, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency here in the U.S. When the religion started, the U.S. placed the tea on their list of forbidden substances. After many years and lawsuits later, the religion won their right to use the tea for their services.

The book is enjoyable, as the authors discuss conversations with Shamans, details religious rites, reasons for using the Hallucinogenic Tea, their use of psychology, biology, counseling, consultation of spirits, etc., the authors do repeat themselves quite often.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone interested in Cultural Anthropology, Shamanism, Amazonin Influences, Religions.

People who have paraplegia have a ray of hope coming this summer.

The first human trails of stem-cell treatments will start with a few patients who have paraplegia. My mother was a paraplegic and how I wish she could have been a part of this study.

A U.S. biotech company says it plans to start this summer the world’s first study of a treatment based on human embryonic stem cells — a long-awaited project aimed at spinal cord injury.

The company gained federal permission this week to inject eight to 10 patients with cells derived from embryonic cells, said Dr. Thomas Okarma, president and CEO of Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif.

The patients will be paraplegics, who can use their arms but can’t walk. They will receive a single injection within two weeks of their injury.

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation has long been a proponent of stem-cell research for those with spinal cord injuries. They would have been delighted and excited to see the United States finally use the might of their scientific knowledge to combat devestating spinal cord injuries.

Animal studies suggest that once injected, the cells will mature and repair what is essentially a lack of insulation around damaged nerves, and also pump out substances that nerves need to function and grow.

Apart from assessing safety, investigators will hope to see some signs of improvement in the patient, Okarma said. The idea is “not to make somebody … get up and dance the next day,” he said, but rather to provide some level of ability that can be improved by physical therapy.

Not just a BMI (body mass index) calculator, this one calculates BMI and Body Shape.

Your measurements may come as a shock. Mine certainly did! The new twist here is body shape. WebMD’s calculator give Your Waist-to-Height Ratio, recommended below .50. Mine was .43 and my BMI is 22.9, so i’m healthy (but still have belly fat to lose).

This is a great new tool for people to find out how their exercise and dietary guidelines are helping them. If anything is off, they give tips and hints on how to tweak your lifestyle, with their other interactive items like the Food & Fitness Planner, Diet Health Check and even has a Diet Buddies section to help you find someone to commisserate…er…support you in your quest for a more healthy lifestyle.

Health takes hard work, determination and dedication. Lately I’ve become complacent and need to crack that whip on myself. Would be nice to find some walking buddies here in Seattle, I must admit. Love walking along the waterfront and around downtown Seattle. So much to see and do. I know, there’s no excuse.

What are the risks of belly fat? Read on!

How Does Belly Fat Harm You?
Belly fat doesn’t just lay idle at your beltline. Researchers describe it as an active “organ” in your body — one that churns out hormones and inflammatory substances.

“Abdominal fat is thought to break down easily into fatty acids, which flow directly into the liver and into muscle,” says Lewis Kuller, MD, DPH, professor and past chair of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

When these excess fatty acids drain into the liver, they trigger a chain reaction of changes — increasing the production of LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol and triglycerides. During this time insulin can also become less effective in controlling blood sugar, so insulin resistance sets in, he explains.

Blood sugars start to get out of balance. Fats and clots get into the bloodstream, and that sets the stage for diabetes, heart disease, and more.

And research shows that abdominal fat triggers a change in angiotensin, a hormone that controls blood vessel constriction — increasing the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack, Kuller explains.

From Greenwood ebooks:

Krishnan, Shobha S. The HPV Vaccine Controversy: Sex, Cancer, God, and Politics: A Guide for Parents, Women, Men, and Teenagers. Westport, 2008. Greenwood eBooks.

In The HPV Vaccine Controversy, Shobha Krishnan covers quite a bit of ground. At the very beginning, she reminds the reader that this book is a reference guide for Parents, Doctors and Teenagers. It’s a dense read; one that is well-researched, well-presented and well-covered. The book covers three main areas: What HPV is, who it’s for and what should be done about it.

In the first area, What HPV is, Shobha Krisnan devotes quite some time to discussing what the HPV virus is, what it isn’t, its forms and what parents should be concerned about. The HPV virus, says Shobha, is widely and readily passes from person to person, in its many different forms, via sexual or nonsexual means. It may cause simple warts to cervical and anal cancer, and may come and go on its own or require surgical excision and therapy. Since some strains of HPV may cause cervical cancer, an outline of what cancers they may cause is vastly discussed and may be beyond the reach of the lay reader who is not familiar with medical terminology or issuance.

The second area, who the HPV vaccine is for goes into quite a ‘sell’. What that means, is that an extraordinarily amount of the book is spent trying to persuade the reader (parents) why the vaccine is needed (and before their daughters are sexually active) in order for the vaccine to work properly. Since the main purpose of the book is to prevent cervical cancer via HPV vaccinations, there must be an explanation why parents need to vaccinate their young daughters when the outcome will not be seen for many decades. A point is brought up that boys should be vaccinated, as there is early proof that men infect others with the more serious strains of HPV virus that cause cervical and anal cancer. (So far, in the US, only Gardisil is approved for HPV vaccinations and only for girls and women up to age 26).

The last area, what should be done about the HPV vaccine, is, more or less, a reiteration of the first parts of the book. International, developing and underdeveloped countries are touched upon, as cervical cancer rates are much higher than in developed countries. Doctors and health care workers ‘in the field’ ask that the vaccine cover more than just those HPV strains that lead to cervical and anal cancer and to bring the cost down to a dollar a shot, compared to the three-shot requirement of over $120 per shot.

The book is a good resource and recommended for those parents and caregivers of young girls (and boys) who are concerned about HPV.

If echinacea and vitamin C don’t help, how can you fight the common cold?

For years, at the first sign of the approach of cold season, John Musumeci would break out the zinc and vitamin C tablets.

But this year, like many other Americans, he’s decided his money might be better spent elsewhere.

“I just didn’t see that they did any good,” says the 57-year-old hardware store owner from Quinton, N.J. “I know when I drink chamomile tea I sleep better. And when I drink mint tea it settles my stomach. But with zinc and vitamin C, I figured why spend the money if I couldn’t see or feel any difference.”

Musumeci’s got plenty of company. The percentage of Americans using alternative, or complementary, therapies for head and chest colds dropped from 9.5 percent in 2002 to 2.0 percent in 2007, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decline in popularity of alternative cold meds comes in the wake of numerous studies over the last few years that have shown that some of the so-called immune-boosting supplements, such as echinacea or high doses of Vitamin C, really don’t do much good. In addition, government agencies have been increasingly cracking down on unproven claims from supplement manufacturers. Just this month, Airborne Health Inc. agreed to stop running ads claiming that its over-the-counter pills could help prevent colds and boost the immune system, after being sued by consumers and the Federal Trade Commission.

That’s very good news, says Dr. Ronald Glick, medical director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh-Shadyside. “It means that people are reading about the science and it’s making sense to them and they’re responding appropriately.”

Unfortunately, this the cold and flu season and I caught a light cold having lunch and shopping with friend on Friday. So, in this light, today’s post is timely. There are countless products out there that claim to make you healthier, some going as far as promising to raise your immune system so you don’t catch that common cold or flu circulating around the office.

But beware of over-the-counter products containing vitamin C and echinacea that claim to prevent a cold or reduce how long a cold lasts. These products have not been proven to do anything for the immune system, said Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist and FOX News Channel contributor.

“They are myths,” Siegel said. Even so, I pop vitamin c and echinacea when I feel a cold or allergies come on strong. True, the cold isn’t gone overnight, but there is a slight lessening of symptoms (or, at least, i’d like to think so).

So the next time you feel a cold coming on, instead of popping pills that may not do you any good, Siegel recommends these five ways to boost your immune system:

1. Get some shut-eye. “Sleep boosts the immune system,” Siegel said. “A lack of sleep increases the stress hormones that break down the immune system.” Sleep! I’ve been getting about ten hours sleep a night the past two to three nights.

2. Break out the sweats. “Exercise increases hormones that promote immune function,” Siegel said. “Stress worsens immune function, so any anti-stressing strategies you can do, will help.”

3. Pucker up. “Touch therapy has been proven to strengthen the immune system,” Siegel said. It can be as simple as hugging or kissing a loved one, or even going to the spa for a well-deserved massage.

4. Download some music. Siegel said a study involving the effects of music therapy on a pregnant woman’s immune system was recently conducted, since pregnancy is often a period of immune deficiency.

“It improved the outcomes of pregnancy,” Siegel said.

5. Eat more fruits and veggies. “Obese people are less likely to fight off infection,” Siegel said. “So, you should aim for your ideal body weight and eat a diet full of minerals, vitamins and protein. This includes vegetables and fruit.”