Partners in Health – Personal Body Check

Within hours, news accounts said that the story unfolded after discovering a high PSA in a routine appointment. Next, he had a prostate biopsy. A few hours later, news accounts said that Buffett decided to get radiation therapy for prostate cancer. What’s wrong with this picture?

10. He’s an icon who other men will follow, and there is limited (or no) evidence of benefit of aggressive treatment in men as old as Buffett. At 81, his life expectancy is 7.41 years, shy of the 10-year life expectancy mark doctors look for when they recommend aggressive treatment for prostate cancer.

9. Although Buffett can afford whatever care he so desires, it would cost a fortune if tons of men in his age group went for active treatment and there would be little yield and plenty of side effects.

8. For several years, many physician organizations, including those representing the radiologists and urologists (ASTRO and AUA) who stand to gain income from treating older men, have expressed skepticism about the value of treating and screening men as old as Buffett. That’s because prostate cancer is slow-growing. Buffett is more likely to die from something else.

7. There are far better health care investments that would yield better, long-lasting outcomes. Limited healthcare dollars could be spent on things that actually help people.

6. In some circles, the evidence movement is flourishing and medicine is moving towards more of a scientific base. Yet despite years of intensified effort to base medicine on proof of benefit, or evidence, seemingly has not reached one of America’s smartest men.

5.The war on cancer seems very much alive, no matter what the evidence. Even powerful men, possibly more secure, cannot say no.

4. Buffett may well have side effects from the radiation, namely bowel, urinary incontinence, and impotence.

3. Besides being wasteful, it is not going to save his life.

2. The search for an active surveillance icon continues. I was kind of hoping Buffett could have assumed that role. Surgery has its heroic icons: General Norman Schwarzkopf and Senator Bob Dole. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani went with seeds.

1.If the tide shifts and many more older men choose treatment, it will be a step away from science-based medicine.

According to team leaders, Ruth Drdla-Schutting and Jürgen Sandkühler along with their research team at the MedUni Vienna’s Department of Neurophysiology (Centre for Brain Research); opioids can be used for more than temporary pain relief. Apparently, a strong enough dose can actually erase our memory traces of pain in the spinal cord.

At the most basic level, opioids bind to specific sites, called µ-opiate receptors (MOR), which suppresses the stimulation of pain. Characteristically, opioids are only known to alleviate pain while bound to these sites, therefore once treatment is ceased, pain resumes.

Typically, for chronic pain, opioids are administered continuously in moderate doses in order to achieve a permanent binding. This method may result in pain relief, however the treatment is long-term and the cause of pain cannot be eliminated.

To test their theory, that memory traces of pain can be erased with a large enough dose of opioids over a short period, “scientists recreated a surgical procedure in vivo in which pain fibres were stimulated under controlled conditions”.

“Although deep anaesthesia prevents any sensations of pain, we were able to reserve long-term synaptic potentiation in the spinal cord. Despite anaesthesia, there appears to be a memory trace for pain and a pain amplifier has engaged.”

“Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between two neurons that results from stimulating them synchronously.”

Researchers administered high doses of intravenous opioids over a period of an hour and discovered that this completely removed the long-term potentiation. By doing so, this can reverse the cellular changes that cause pain memories. As such, this could actually rid the memory of the sensation that pain is amplified and longer lasting than in actuality and avoid the development chronic pain syndrome.

If proven to be an effective method of treatment, this could mean more than pain management for many people suffering with chronic pain. Current methods temporarily relieve symptoms of pain and typically require long-term opioid use. This type of treatment could greatly reduce the risk of a rapidly growing form of addiction.

Balding is a fact of life for millions of men all over the world. On an average, a man loses around 1000 hairs on the scalp every day. The life cycle of a hair is about five years out of which it goes through the growing phase for 3-4 years and the remaining is the resting period. Male pattern hair loss occurs when hair fall exceeds hair growth.

Hair does not get replaced in a case of male pattern hair loss. Bald areas gradually appear on the scalp. This process takes a long time but there is ample evidence to prove that men at any age can suffer from this health condition. Most men who suffer from this problem do not realize it until later that they are suffering from male pattern baldness and not balding due to age.

Causes of male pattern baldness

A lot of men are genetically predisposed to this health condition and this is because of the effect of hormones on their hair follicles.Testosterone is converted into DHT with the help of 5-alpha reductase, an enzyme. Once DHT is formed, it degrades the hair follicles by shrinking them. Growth of new hair is prevented and the current hair becomes thin. Hair loss occurs because of the interaction between DHT and hair follicles. Male pattern hair loss is gradual but permanent at later stages.

If you are taking your baldness too lightly, it is time to act now and take some effective hair loss treatment. Finasteride, which is marketed as Propecia, is an FDA approved oral medication that treats male pattern baldness. There are many advantages of using it as a method of male pattern baldness treatment. You can buy Propecia online or from a traditional brick and mortar pharmacy.