Over the last century there were impressive developments in the field of medicine, which has advanced to the point where it’s really hard to find a health condition that can’t be treated effectively. Some people even state that the medical industry is actually making up new diseases just to be able to produce new drugs and make more money on it. While this statement can be argued about there’s simply no running from the fact that today’s medical assistance relies heavily on medications and doesn’t involve such professionalism of doctors as it was back in the day when they didn’t have many drugs to rely on. These days you simply go to your doctor, get a prescription and use the drug to treat the condition. Simple as that.

If you take the time to study the people around you there will definitely be people with hair loss problems. If operating with more precise figures it is estimated that about 30 million men deal with hair loss problems of various kinds in the US alone. Though it was usually believed that hair loss occurs in older men we see a lot of younger males with bald spots or even completely clear scalps on the street. So the problem is definitely not in the process of aging.

Now there were a lot of theories about the nature of hair loss in men, Starting from poor genetics that tried to link balding between generations through lines that you would never expect to poor nutrition and hair hygiene that seems very rare these days with the abundance of shampoos and the overall culture of being tidy. Apart from that there were many methods for overcoming male pattern hair loss offered by the industry, the most infamous of which would definitely be hair implants.

The procedure of hair implanting is very costly and complicated. If described simply, doctors take some hair from the part of the head (or the body) where it grows without problems and transplant them to the bald area through the means of surgery. This procedure requires high professionalism and experience, but what’s more important is that it doesn’t provide full guarantee on the results achieved. You may get an infection in the area of surgery or the implanted hair may simply fall off and you will end up with more bald spots on your head. So the popularity of this method has rapidly decreased after the initial wave of enthusiasm when many people found it ineffective.

These days doctors heavily rely on medications when treating hair loss in men. The most popular medication would be Propecia as it was the first to be actually approved by the FDA for treating male pattern hair loss in men. With this medication the approach to resolving the problem is much smarter than with hair implants, which strive to overcome the consequence but not the cause. Propecia, however, addresses the primary cause for hair loss in men – hormonal imbalance. By taking Propecia on a regular basis you can actually stop and reverse the process of hair loss and many people will tell you that the drug really works! So if it comes to the point when you will start to consider hair implants ask your doctor if Propecia might actually work better for you.

Over the centuries, men have been plagued by the steady drop of their hair. Let’s not make any sexist mistake here. In many ways, men are just as vain as women, particularly when it comes to displaying a full head of hair. Indeed, at various times through the ages, facial hair has been fashionable with sometimes extravagant beards considered a statement of superior strength and abilities. When you put the two together, actually seeing the face behind was a challenge, often making it difficult to get a precise grasp on whether the truth was spoken. Hence the special respect accorded to those with the ability to be barefaced liars. Except all this could be lost if hair was less than forthcoming. So men have experimented with every possible substance, hoping to discover the one magic ingredient that will restore them to their full glory. Sadly, there’s never been any scope for the placebo effect. When it comes to many illnesses of the body, a strong enough belief in the effectiveness of the “cure” will often produce the cure. But hairs are a law unto themselves. If it’s their time to fall, there’s nothing in nature that can do anything about it.

Except the myths have persisted. One of the more extraordinary is the power of the red pepper to kick-start healthy growth. Now let’s be very clear about this. There are some varieties of pepper that burn the skin when you handle them with unprotected hands. Those who work in the restaurant trade have a deep respect for some of these fierce spices, using broad-bladed knives for chopping and scooping up the results. The real danger lies in the seeds, of course. If you want to cook with them and are afraid of the results, the only “safe” course of action is to remove the seeds, wearing gloves of course.

Anyway, the myth says that if you cut open a red pepper and rub it over your scalp, this will encourage the roots of your hair to start growing again. The deranged who suggest this treatment justify this by pointing to the violence of the allergic reaction on the scalp. This is an attack on your body. The autoimmune system is triggered and sends its troops to your scalp to defend the skin. The roots of your hair are just under the surface of the skin and, as the blood supply is improved and healing antibodies are delivered, this can only be good for your hair. Well, medical science as practiced in the ERs can testify this treatment causes great pain, often lasting for days, and has been known to damage the roots of hair. So do not be tempted to try this, whether at home or more likely in the bar where your drunken “friends” are encouraging you to try it.

If you are convinced you have the first signs of male pattern baldness, Propecia is painless. While it’s also true that it only works slowly, taking months before you can expect to see results, you do have the consolation of avoiding the medical expenses likely to come your way should you actually rub really hot peppers on your scalp. So play safe and stick with the medical solution to your problem. Propecia is the best.

Every time we come to elections, you probably notice how attorneys are suddenly being debated. The GOP claims they are the spawn of the Devil. Their sole purpose in life is to put all businesses into an early grave. The theme is simple. Every mistake can be evidence of negligence and, without tort reform, we will all suffer. The Democrats sing the song that attorneys are the only thing standing between consumers and predatory businesses. This highlights two quite separate but important problems. First, we have become a very litigious society. If anything goes wrong and we have the money (or are insured), the first reaction to any loss is to blame others and sue them. Consequently, we have one of the most active court systems in the world. Second, there’s a real shortage of adequate laws to protect consumers. This encourages everyone to sue using the law of tort and there we get into long-running cases where attorneys make a lot of money.

Let’s move over to New Jersey where a case has just finished against Roche for their acne treatment. Three claims were heard together. They alleged the drug had caused serious ulcerative colitis. You probably read about this because several Hollywood celebrities were involved as plaintiff and witnesses. The result was a 2 to 1 win for Roche with two of the claims being dismissed by the jury. In reporting this, we can gloss over the fact there are some three-thousand similar claims outstanding. There’s a bandwagon effect. Once word goes around that there’s one claim, other plaintiffs suddenly appear. No matter what the merits of these claims, there are some instructive lessons from other countries.

In Europe, only a qualified dermatologist can prescribe this drug, and he or she is directly responsible for monitoring the progress of the treatment. Patients are usually required to attend the clinic or hospital once a month for a check-up. This ensures a lower risk the drug will be abused by the patients. There’s evidence US patients want the cure now and not tomorrow, so they decide to increase the dosage or extend the period of treatment. Without proper supervision, the drug can therefore cause more damage. The fact there are warnings in the literature given out with every prescription is not helpful. Few people ever read them from start to finish. In New Zealand, there’s very clear research evidence showing low dosages are safe and effective. Such evidence is unlikely to affect the behavior of our teens who are determined to have perfect skin no matter what the cost.

There are always risks of adverse side effects when people abuse drugs. Accutane is a powerful drug and it can damage your body if you take too high a dose or take the recommended dose for too long. Unfortunately, we blame others when we injure ourselves. The fact Roche gives a warning about intestinal and bowel risks is brushed aside. We should only be limited in our claims if the manufacturer can show we actually knew of the risks. Now you see why the GOP thinks attorneys should be locked away. They confuse a simple truth. Accutane is safe so long as you follow the rules.

One of the fascinating things we can do as human beings is put information in little boxes and pretend that’s all there is to know. It’s like when you’re at High School and, for the next test, all you need to know is [insert information]. Once you pass on to the next level, you can often forget whatever you learnt for all those tests. The lid has closed on the box and, unless there’s a crisis, you need never try to remember it again. Well, it’s like the world decided it wanted a smaller box for all the information on sexual problems. In the bad old days, we used to talk about impotence and that included quite a lot of different stuff. Now we only seem to talk about erectile dysfunction and there’s not much to say about that. All the other stuff about an inability to have an orgasm or to ejaculate, low levels of sperm or infertility has disappeared. It’s like we’re not supposed to think about anything like that now we have the erectile dysfunction dugs.

Yet, if you ask the doctors who specialize in this area, they’ll tell you that about two-thirds of the men with severe erectile dysfunction also find it difficult to reach an orgasm, and about 60% find it difficult to ejaculate. To understand what’s happening, we have to understand how drugs are marketed. When a pharmaceutical manufacturer comes to market with something new, it’s vitally important to establish a connection between the brand name and the specific condition it treats. To make this drug stand out, the other diseases and disorders in the same part of the body have to be minimized. The important problem has been solved. The marketers prefer you not to ask about the others.

So, because of this manipulation of the general discussion about sexual problems, the only one we focus on is erectile dysfunction and we do that because we have an effective treatment. Where does that leave us with all the men who cannot ejaculate or no longer have an orgasm? Well, when we do go to the doctor, we fail to report these other problems, and the doctors fail to ask us because there’s no treatment currently available. Yes, sadly, the erectile dysfunction drugs only treat the named condition. They have no effect on the other problems.

When you go back to the original statistics, two-thirds of men with severe erectile dysfunction have no remedy for the secondary problems. They could therefore find hard erections return, but they are still not able to have full sexual intercourse. For older men, children are no longer on the agenda, so their inability to produce children will be less important. Nevertheless, the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find treatments for these other problems is disconcerting.

The message to take away from this article is to be realistic. If your only problem is the ability to produce a hard erection, Viagra is the best and most reliable drug on the market. In the majority of cases, it will give you back what was lost. But don’t expect Viagra to solve any other problems. It does nothing for fertility, nor does it treat the missing orgasm or the ability to ejaculate.

As a result of steady government pressure, the physical safety of the vehicles on our roads has been rising steadily. When crash and rollover test results name and shame manufacturers, they act to protect their brand image. They have invested in new designs to reinforce the shell to protect the driver and passengers. Now add in the crumple zones where parts of the body collapse and absorb the impact. Finally, you make the car more easily controlled with better suspension and braking systems. All these innovations have seen the number of deaths and serious injuries falling steadily over the last ten years. But there’s little to be pleased about when more than 32,000 people die in crashes every year. The number of people merely injured is frightening. In some age groups, more people die on the roads than through disease. When driving becomes a leading cause of death, something should be done.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently issued a policy document suggesting how changes in the law might improve safety. Proposals to change the law, particularly to use the criminal law, to force people to act in particular ways is always controversial. There’s a strong libertarian culture that objects when freedom of action is limited. Their knee-jerk response is to argue many of these laws make victimless crimes or where the only people injured are the ones labeled criminals. So let’s take the first proposal to force every state to make safety belt laws primary and to make enforcement high-profile. The libertarians might say they should get to chose whether to wear safety belts. It’s their bodies at risk so their decision. The statistics say that states with effective enforcement consistently have lower fatalities. It’s the same with making motorcycle helmets mandatory. The statistics show hundreds of lives a year would be saved if laws were put in place and enforced.

Now let’s talk about increasing the age at which teens can be licensed to drive. States where the age of licensing is 17 show up to a 30% drop in the number of accidents and a real drop in the number of deaths. Now how about reducing the speed limits? Again the evidence is absolutely clear. Speed kills. It also increases the amount of pollution and burns more oil at a time we should be aiming to use less. Curiously, some states have recently been removing red light cameras as infringing the privacy of drivers, yet they also significantly reduce the accident rates. In 2009, almost 700 people were killed running red lights. Research also shows accidents fall where you replace stop lights with roundabouts. Finally, we need active policing to take the drunk and incapacitated drivers off the roads.

If all the states took this action, the total number of accidents would fall, fewer people would be injured and a lot less would die. If the volume of claims falls, the next round of auto insurance quotes also falls. Fewer payouts in smaller amounts need less premium income. So get on the phone to your local lawmakers. Tell them car insurance rates are the next big political issue and, if they don’t pass some new laws, they will be voted out at the next election.

One of the fascinating things we can do as human beings is put information in little boxes and pretend that’s all there is to know. It’s like when you’re at High School and, for the next test, all you need to know is [insert information]. Once you pass on to the next level, you can often forget whatever you learnt for all those tests. The lid has closed on the box and, unless there’s a crisis, you need never try to remember it again. Well, it’s like the world decided it wanted a smaller box for all the information on sexual problems. In the bad old days, we used to talk about impotence and that included quite a lot of different stuff. Now we only seem to talk about erectile dysfunction and there’s not much to say about that. All the other stuff about an inability to have an orgasm or to ejaculate, low levels of sperm or infertility has disappeared. It’s like we’re not supposed to think about anything like that now we have the erectile dysfunction dugs.

Yet, if you ask the doctors who specialize in this area, they’ll tell you that about two-thirds of the men with severe erectile dysfunction also find it difficult to reach an orgasm, and about 60% find it difficult to ejaculate. To understand what’s happening, we have to understand how drugs are marketed. When a pharmaceutical manufacturer comes to market with something new, it’s vitally important to establish a connection between the brand name and the specific condition it treats. To make this drug stand out, the other diseases and disorders in the same part of the body have to be minimized. The important problem has been solved. The marketers prefer you not to ask about the others.

So, because of this manipulation of the general discussion about sexual problems, the only one we focus on is erectile dysfunction and we do that because we have an effective treatment. Where does that leave us with all the men who cannot ejaculate or no longer have an orgasm? Well, when we do go to the doctor, we fail to report these other problems, and the doctors fail to ask us because there’s no treatment currently available. Yes, sadly, the erectile dysfunction drugs only treat the named condition. They have no effect on the other problems.

When you go back to the original statistics, two-thirds of men with severe erectile dysfunction have no remedy for the secondary problems. They could therefore find hard erections return, but they are still not able to have full sexual intercourse. For older men, children are no longer on the agenda, so their inability to produce children will be less important. Nevertheless, the failure of the pharmaceutical industry to find treatments for these other problems is disconcerting.

The message to take away from this article is to be realistic. If your only problem is the ability to produce a hard erection, Viagra is the best and most reliable drug on the market. In the majority of cases, it will give you back what was lost. But don’t expect Viagra to solve any other problems. It does nothing for fertility, nor does it treat the missing orgasm or the ability to ejaculate.

The common sense answer is an unpleasant sensation caused by anything from a small broken bone to cancer. Obviously, the causes of pain are not the same. Doctors label some pain as acute where you will recover and the pain will go away naturally. So, after proper treatment, a broken bone will be strong again and you can move around like nothing happened. But cancer can be terminal. If you catch it early enough, the treatments can produce a remission and let you lead a good life. Unfortunately the more usual pattern is late diagnosis and treatment that fails to give anything more than temporary relief. Then it’s a painful decline. This is depressing, but it also points to a valuable lesson. With temporary pain, you can take a big dose of a painkiller for a short period. If you have no hope of survival, the priority is now making you as comfortable as possible. This also allows you to take large doses of the most powerful drugs. The problem comes with causes that will persist for years. This is called chronic pain and it requires a different approach.

So here’s a radical idea for you. Pain is a good thing! Indeed, any attempt to make pain go away is dangerous! OK, let’s back up a little. Think of pain as being like an alarm that goes off in your home if a burglar enters. This is a useful warning. If you are home and an NRA member, you can pick up your gun and defend yourself. Now change the burglar to bacteria or a virus that breaks into your body. Although your auto immune system is going to slow down the damage these invaders might cause, the pain is there to tell you to get some real help. Fortunately, medicine has been improving over the centuries. There are now surgeons in ERs to stitch you back together and give you whatever drugs are likely to cure you quickly. Wait, you’re complaining that once pain has done its job and you’ve got the treatment, you want to switch off the pain. Well, that’s not a good idea. Let’s say you take a massive dose of some really powerful painkillers, how are you going to know when the pain actually goes away? How are you going to know whether it’s spreading? One of the most important symptoms to help doctors give you the right treatment is to have a steady stream of information from you about how much it hurts, and whether the pain is going away or spreading. Obviously, if it’s spreading, a different treatment will be required.

So before you start complaining about pain, remember it warns you when you have a problem. The fact you might be receiving treatment for the first problem doesn’t stop you from getting a second problem. That’s one of the reasons why Tramadol is considered one of the best drugs. It reduces the pain to levels easily tolerated and still lets pain do its job, say by warning you about that hot pan you just touched. Until our medical researchers work out how to turn off just the one pain message, you will just have to learn how to live your life with some pain. Tramadol is the best in these situations.

In the good old days when men sold their souls to the company store for sixteen tons and even then only got deeper in debt, there was no technology to warn the miners if gas was building up. The first they might know is an explosion bringing down the roof. Being careful men, they experimented with different ways of testing the air for gas and canaries were the most reliable indicator they found. All they had to do was keep the birds in the mine. If they fell off their perches, there was too much gas around and it was time to evacuate. So much for the history lesson.

Every year, modern medicine directs a lot of money into basic research to look for ways of detecting serious health problems in their early stages. Sometimes, technology is the answer. So many women who go for regular mammograms detect breast cancer early and the treatment is more likely to save the breast and guarantee a long life. In other cases, there are early symptoms that may not, at first sight, have any connection to the more serious condition that appears later. In the case of heart disease, there’s now very clear evidence that erectile dysfunction in younger men is a very clear warning of a possible stroke or heart attack within the next five years.

The explanation for this is slightly complicated. Various types of cells line the walls of our blood vessels. The most sensitive of these are called endothelial. For reasons no one can explain, there are more of these cells in the penis than anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. If you eat a diet containing too much fat, there’s likely to be a build up of plaque on the walls of the arteries. This hardens the cells and prevents the arteries from dilating and contracting. Since the formation of an erection depends on dilation, anything preventing it in younger men signals high risk the same problem will spread to other blood vessels in the body.

If you’re under the age of 50 and you experience a consistent pattern of erectile dysfunction, you should ask a doctor for a full cardiology workup. Indeed, the younger you are, the more urgent it is you have the tests done. But if you’re older, there are fewer risks. It’s reasonably safe to buy Viagra online and rely on that to solve the problem. That said, we’re all aware of the so-called epidemic of obesity. That’s too many men carrying too much weight. No matter what your age, you should think about changing your diet. One of the most common causes of a plaque build-up is eating too much carbohydrate in your food. The evidence shows men find erectile dysfunction is less of a problem if they lose weight. This should not be a big deal. It’s just a matter of eating a low-fat diet in smaller portions. If you can add in a little exercise, so much the better. If this is too much of a challenge, there’s always Viagra but, if your weight does continue increasing, it may only be a short-term fix. Losing weight is better.

Let’s start off with a definition of a myth. Essentially, it’s a lie we tell ourselves to hide our fear. Suppose we’re frightened of lightning. No problem! We’ll invent a god who walks around the sky and, if he gets upset with anyone, he lets go a bolt or two. Why is this a good idea? As a priest in this new religion, all you have to do is keep the god happy by worshiping, giving me offerings and buying my comic books. So long as the god is happy, you will then be safe. No more fear! Thor rocks! Now let’s apply this to acne. As parents, we feel the need to prepare our children for all the bad stuff that’s likely to happen to them. So we tell them the story of acne. This is a disease so terrible that most affected end up looking like a toad with warts – obviously you want to keep the fear to Disney animation level so mention Princes turning into them and Princesse Fiona secretly being a green-skinned ogre at night. All this recognizes the new social reality. Only those with a perfect skin are acceptable. Everyone else is out of the magic circle in school and only allowed to mix with goths and nerds. To cushion the blow of having unattractive friends, we then tell them the really big lie – that they soon grow out of it and it will never affect them as adults.

The current estimate is that about 15% of the adult population suffers acne. That’s millions of people. Fortunately, the majority of sufferers are women and there’s a big market for selling concealer makeup, i.e. heavy foundation creams and a powder to put on top. Even metrosexual men are reluctant to wear obvious makeup. So why is acne affecting more adults? Here we get into yet more myths as self-appointed experts muscle their way on to television and radio stations to sell their miracle products or latest book detailing Obama’s acne and his loss of popularity. Their explanations range from too much stress in our lives to the diet we eat. This would be helpful if there was any scientific evidence to link either stress or diet to acne. Except there’s no such evidence. It’s all just more myths.

So what can or should we do as adults. For men, washing twice a day with an unmedicated soap is enough to clear the pores. If you want a cheap alternative to soap, use benzoyl peroxide in small amounts. Using too many products to clean your skin can dry it out and make acne harder to beat. For general health and the improvement of your skin, you should also drink less alcohol, quit smoking and avoid a smokey atmosphere. For women, using an oral contraceptive can reduce the hormone level. If this is not acceptable on moral grounds, then the usual self-help approaches to keeping the skin clean are the best. If all else fails and your appearance is so important, Accutane is available. As a woman, remember to take the strongest possible measures to prevent pregnancy. There’s very clear evidence Accutane does cause birth defects in the majority of cases. No one can pass this medical consequence off as a myth.

It might sound an odd way of starting off a discussion of pain, but could you solve a math problem if you didn’t know any math? Now we come to the point. If you had the right software on a piece of computer hardware, you wouldn’t need to know any math. You could just feed in the question and the answer would come out. Well that works great if you have the right software and the machine can give you the results you need. Hey, why did you need to solve the math problem in the first place? Was it for a class test? Does your school allow the use of math packages? Well, to avoid getting too complicated, let’s assume this is for some other purpose. Can you use the answer if you didn’t understand the question?

Now let’s switch words. Instead of math – a subject so unpleasant, only geeks like it – let’s talk about pain. What’s to understand? This is an unpleasant sensation and when it doesn’t stop, you take a pill. Well, yes, this may work well when the pain first starts, but is this the answer you want? You’re getting frustrated now. What’s to know or worry about if the pill makes the pain go away?

OK, we need to start again. One of the problems with most drugs is they work really well when you start taking them. Your body is surprised by the strange new chemicals in your blood and it does nothing to stop these chemicals from working their magic. But these chemicals are foreign invaders and your body’s auto immune system is designed to react when the blood is contaminated. Notice this is an automatic process. You can’t tell your body, “Hey, these chemicals are doing me good so don’t mess with them!” As time passes, you build up resistance. Doctors call this tolerance. No matter what the name, the effect is the same. The drugs slowly stop working. This leaves you with a choice. Either you increase the dose or you switch to a stronger drug or you find another way of dealing with the problem. Well, what’s the problem with just taking more pills? This can very quickly lead to dependence. As your body continuously adapts to these chemicals, you can find yourself trapped if you later want to stop. The withdrawal symptoms can be much worse than the original problem. Just as important, can you afford the cost of all these drugs over the years? Let’s assume $1 per pill and three pills a day. That’s $1,095 a year. Now start taking more pills or watch the retail price increase.

So there’s a place for Tramadol. For short-term pain relief, there’s nothing better on the market, even for severe pain. Equally important, it’s significantly less addictive than the opiate painkillers. At low doses, you can take Tramadol for quite long periods of time and still be able to stop without too many problems. But it’s far better to understand the questions posed by pain so that you can learn the answers without having to rely on a pill. Just as you cannot always rely on computer hardware to solve your math problems, you cannot always rely on drugs to solve your pain problems.