Health tips for better life

With all the bad press that “cosmetic” drugs get these days, it’s nice to find one that is lauded for its medical abilities. While the hairless have long been persecuted by the haired, they have also called bald people vain for worrying about their appearance. It’s just hair right?
Surprisingly, it’s not just hair.
Prostate Woes

The same thing that causes male pattern hair loss and baldness plays a big part in the development of prostate cancer. The culprit is a hormone, dihydrotestosterone, which is common in all men, but comes in higher levels at certain times for some than for other men at other times. Dihydrotestosterone is an androgen, a class of hormones named so because they are essential to men and the development of male characteristics (andro is from the Ancient Greek for male).

While you can thank dihydrotestosterone for the development of the external male sex organs, because it is produced in the prostate, there are unwanted complications that come with it: namely, benign prostatic hyperplasia and prostate cancer. And, oh yeah, male pattern baldness.

Some of our knowledge about this androgen has come through research into pseudohermaphroditism, a condition in which the affected person is born with sex characteristics in between what is typically expected of males or females. These individuals are usually raised as female, but are technically male; they simply lack the necessary amount of dihydrotestosterone to develop fully. Interestingly and remarkably, these individuals do not seem to develop prostate cancer either.

As thousands of patients were studied later on in different research studies and clinical trials, the link began to strengthen, even if the data has not been exactly clear on what that link is. Some studies have shown that people without male pattern baldness are less likely to get prostate cancer. Others, however, have shown that people with early onset male pattern baldness are least likely yet to have problems with their prostate later in life.
A Cure for Both?

The connection between male pattern baldness and prostate disease was first discovered when doing research into the possibility of curing prostate cancer with a drug that stops testosterone from being converted into dihydrotestosterone. The subjects started to grow their hair back!

After testing the drug some more, they determined that it at least shrinks prostate tumors and, as further studies have proved, helps prevent prostate cancer in the first place.

Remarkably, studies testing its effect on hair loss and regrowth were also positive. In fact, 2 out of 3 people who take this drug grow hair back. Even the people that don’t regrow hair may at least stop their hair loss.

This has become so well known that some men, in order to save money on their prescription or perhaps to avoid the label of vanity, have been asking for the 5mg version of the pill, called Propecia, to prevent prostate cancer, then simply breaking it up into 1mg doses to fight baldness.

Of course, there is no need for this! You can get Propecia cheaply and safely right from your computer if you find the right online pharmacy.
If anyone asks and you’re embarrassed, just say you are taking Propecia for prostate cancer!

For some, there are threats everywhere. They fear the world is dangerous and, unless they stay in a constant state of vigilance, their lives will be at risk. In a small number of cases, this gets out of control and tips into paranoia and mental disorder. For the majority, it”s an exaggerated caution because they do not understand how modern technology works. They see how dangerous electricity can be and so are cautious when using powered equipment, particularly when that involves the use of “radiation”. Now there”s a word to get the conspiracy theorists into action. Yet, from a scientific point of view, you cannot escape the fact that television and computer screens give off electromagnetic radiation (EMR), handphones rely on microwave broadcasts, and then there”s light. In coherent form as a laser, it can potentially blind people. As it shines from the sun, we can see our way and, with appropriate protection from ultraviolet, live healthy lives.

The white light we “see” is in fact made up of all the colors blended together. Each color has a property of its own and you may have seen increasing publicity given to light as a treatment for skin problems like acne. When it”s projected from a TV or computer screen, you get both the EMR and light in the visible spectrum, often with a slightly bluish tinge. For the treatment of skin problems, blue and red are used. For the treatment of sleep disorders, blue and green are being used in a series of clinical trials. It”s perhaps slightly ironic, but those who felt an effect from television and computer screens were probably right, except that the effect seems to be beneficial if you want to change your sleeping times.

We know when to sleep because our internal clock is set to match the local daily cycle. If we move to different time zones so that morning is now night, this confuses us and we find it difficult to match local time for sleep. As a trial, a number of people were cut off from the world in rooms without windows or clocks. There was no way for them to tell how much time was passing. The research team kept them awake for fifty hours and then allowed sleep for eight. When awake, half were exposed to blue light, the other to green. All the participants were carefully monitored and it was found that both colors could reset the internal clocks. The only difference between the two groups was that dim blue and bright green lights were less effective. The relevant neurotransmitters and hormones responded more precisely to bright blue and dim green.

So, in all situations where the sleep problem is caused by the body”s circadian rhythms not being properly synchronised to local time, the use of light may well prove the best long-term solution. Although a drug like ambien can and does produce sleep “on demand”, there are always problems if you come to depend on a drug for any long-term solution. Ambien will always help you get needed rest, but the use of alternative methods is preferable. As counseling and therapy is expensive and often not covered by health insurance plans, the development of light treatment may come as a simple and cheap solution to sleep problems.

Looking around the journals published so far in 2010, it’s clear the research community is finally beginning to challenge the assumption that America should be medicated. If you listen to the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who are paid to stand up and promote drugs as the best treatment for any disorder, you will hear a consistent pattern of propaganda. All our products have the FDA seal of approval. The clinical trials show our products are safe and effective. The health insurance industry pays most of the price for our products. Take our pills and get better. Indeed, when it comes to the top-selling sleeping pills, there are record numbers of prescriptions being written by doctors. The reason? Well, its not hard to suspect stress levels are increasing thanks to the recession. Unemployment is high. Credit levels have been reduced, There are foreclosures in every neighborhood. That’s bound to make sleep more difficult. What’s curious about the new records being set in the number of prescriptions is the additional financial burden this places on families when they can least afford it, and the implied assumption that sleeping pills can cure the underlying social and economic problems causing the stress.

The Journal of the American Medical Association reports talk therapy is more effective than sleeping pills. The research team gave the participants sleeping pills alongside therapy sessions and measured which had the better outcome. Because the talk asked why people were finding it difficult to sleep and discussed ways of resolving problems, people with the therapy sessions had better sleep than those on pills. This follows on research testing the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy which teaches people how to change their habit patterns to restore sleep. Therapists encourage people to avoid naps during the day, adopt a set routine for going to bed, and physically change the bedroom to minimize light and noise that might disturb sleep. When combined with techniques to address the cause of stress and relax, CBT has consistently been found to outperform sleeping pills.

When you look at the statistics, there can be little doubt we use too many sleeping pills. Add in the increasing use of online pharmacies which supply drugs without the need for a prescription, and the scale of reliance on sleeping pills is almost certainly worse than we imagine. Why should we care? Because all the sleeping pills on the market can cause dependence. As people continue to take them, tolerance builds and the pills actually become less effective. Increasing the dose confirms the dependence and can lead to unwanted side effects. Yes, ambien is one of the better pills and there are fewer problems with its use, but if your insomnia has been disrupting your life for six months or more, you should consider undergoing therapy first. CBT is clearly the best. To help you focus during this learning period, your doctor may offer the use of a sleeping pill. If you decide to accept, ambien is the best but you should only take it for a few weeks at low dose. The long-term restoration of sleep is going to come from the therapy. Although this is a short-term cost to meet, your life will improve with natural sleep and your finances will be better of without having to buy sleeping pills for the rest of your life.