Because diagnosis and treatments have been improving steadily over the last decades, more men than ever before are now living longer with cardiovascular disease. In the last century, heart attacks were the most common cause of death by a significant margin. Now with better drugs and lifestyle changes, deaths from cardiovascular disease have been falling. But this does not mean that these men have a satisfactory quality of life. The majority of men are now older, overweight, living in deprived areas and depressed. Many also find themselves affected by Type 2 Diabetes as the weight increases. It’s difficult to prevent this development because, with limited budgets, most men cannot afford healthy food options. Cheap processed food has a high fat content and excess salt. General risks are increased significantly if the men also smoke and neglect to take any physical exercise.

As a routine, men should be encouraged to monitor their waist measurements as a simple means of judging when the risks are rising. Anything over 37 inches for men (and 31.5 inches for women) is in the danger zone and suggests the need to check blood pressure. Once a person is at risk, there should be positive intervention to counsel lifestyle changes, starting with quitting smoking and eating a more healthy diet to reduce the cholesterol levels. However, there is a significant link between cardiovascular disease and erectile dysfunction (ED). It may be a side-effect of the drugs to control the cardiovascular problems, damage to the arterial system or nerve endings, or it may be linked to the depression many experience. The interaction between these factors can produce a vicious cycle. As the ED worsens, depression deepens justifying more powerful drugs that further affect sexual performance.

All men at risk should be asked a direct question, “Are you suffering from ED?” If the answer is, “Yes.” this should trigger a review of the drugs being taken, and the prescription of viagra to begin restoring sexual activity. However, to be effective, men must be convinced that ED is a symptom of cardiovascular disease and be prepared to answer the question honestly. Too many consider such a question to invade their privacy, and either lie or refuse to answer. In its own right, this process is difficult because those who live in poverty and in deprived areas are often not contacted as easily and are reluctant to come into clinics for any type of treatment. It may be necessary for local health providers to physically go into the community to provide health screening and health assessments. This is preventative medicine as it should be practised. The earlier ED is identified as a predictive symptom of cardiovascular disease, the more men may be saved the trauma of a stroke or heart attack. This will require a diversion of funding to community-based medicine and to state funding of medications such as viagra to help treat the ED. But it should save money in the long term.

Filed under: Uncategorized Date 30 December, 2008
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Life is never fair. Even though the majority may avoid some of the worst possibilities, there are always the few who seem to have the worst of luck. Look around the media and it’s impossible to avoid the stories. Sometimes, it’s news of accidents and crimes where we are shown the victims and their suffering. Sometimes it’s the way of collecting charitable donations. Images of young and old are everywhere reminding us that there will always be some who need our help. One of the ways in which we prove we are human is through empathy. By our willingness to put ourselves in the position of others and to imagine what it would feel like to have their problems.

For both men and women, there are hormones and biological drives which guide physical growth and give us an interest in reproduction. Because of the physical gender differences, boys and girls are nurtured to have different functional expectations. Being a man means fertilizing the eggs. Being a woman means having the resulting babies. In later life, should something happen to interfere with reproductive abilities, those affected can at least look back on some life where pleasure and function worked together. But it is emotionally difficult when nature or an accident denies you the chance to experience sexual activity. Although those affected never know what they have missed, there is an underlying sadness and frustration.

For teenage boys, erectile dysfunction (ED) is not a common problem. As a result, there is little research. Most healthcare providers prefer a simplistic and dismissive diagnosis of psychological dysfunction and, where there is medical insurance to cover it, refer those affected for counseling. Such research as there is actually prefers formal assessment of the vascular system. A recent meta-research study examined research carried out between 1998 and 2003, looking for common factors in diagnosis and treatments for teenagers under the age of 19 years. On average the young men had suffered symptoms of ED for an average of two years with the most common causes being perineal and penile trauma, and surgery. Formal vascular examinations were carried out in 60% of all cases and almost half were found to have serious problems justifying further angiographic study or surgery.

In other words, half the teenagers given a formal test were found to have abnormal blood flow as the explanation for their ED. The practice of routine referral for counseling is expensive and ineffective because, in most cases, the usual consequence of recommending viagra will not represent the best treatment. Indeed, because of the expense, most healthcare providers simply write out a prescription for viagra and send the patients away with the reassurance that they will grow out of it, or everything will work out fine when they meet the right woman. At the very least, there should be a detailed survey of medical history to see whether there is evidence of traumatic injury as the trigger for haemodynamic testing. Our young always deserve the best treatment.

Filed under: Uncategorized Date 30 December, 2008
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In October, the US enacted the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, named after a young man who died after abusing drugs bought over the internet. Except the law only applies to online pharmacies based inside the US so this site doesn’t have to comply. It can do whatever it wants. That doesn’t sound very good does it? So let’s look at one of the key requirements. Whenever you buy a drug, you want to know that it’s safe to take it. This involves two quite separate issues. Every drug offered for sale in the US, whether branded or generic, has to get FDA approval. Naturally, the FDA looks at all the research and the results of the clinical trials before deciding whether you should be allowed to use it. Be reassured. All the drugs supplied by the online pharmacies through this site are FDA approved. There are risks and benefits when using any drug. Take accutane as an example. This is a very powerful drug used to treat acne. It’s highly effective but the FDA and the manufacturer were worried. Although this drug is “safe” within the usual limits when used by men, it can damage babies in the womb. So it should never be taken by women who are pregnant. To protect women, it was agreed that accutane should only be supplied through the iPledge system. This warning is prominently displayed on the labeling and, in addition, we are highlighting the issue in our posts to this blog. Everyone has your interests at heart. Except that the manufacturer of accutane did not want any other possibly serious side effects to be mentioned on labels. A drug like accutane is in big demand. It offers a real treatment for a condition that causes distress and heartache to millions of teenagers and adults around the world. So anything that would slow down sales is resisted by the manufacturer. The more people talk about side effects, the more consumers might worry and stop buying. It’s always a balancing act. Does a responsible website always give you full details about all the side effects? Well, it should. In fact, you should use this as a test of the honesty of the site. We do not have to comply with US law but we do on this point. For example, there’s a link between accutane and severe inflammatory bowel disease. It affects less than 1% of people who take this drug and people who use the drug as directed by the pharmacist are not significantly at risk. But the manufacturer, which has known of the problem from 1994, tries to keep it a secret. Now ask yourselves who is the more responsible. This site for telling you of a remote risk, or the manufacturer for trying to hide it? Summary The article looks at the new law which requires websites to disclose the side effects of the drugs it sells and, on the issue of patient safety, confirms that all sites should be honest about possible side effects to the drugs offered for sale.

Filed under: Uncategorized Date 30 December, 2008
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When people get the bit between their teeth, they can be driven to do good things. Hopefully staying on the right side of obsession, they devote their lives to asking questions and finding the answers. This is the “scientific method” at its best. In this case, as you can see from the title to this post, we are dealing with the “nut” which, in British English, means the head (when bald, it’s round and shiny like the shell of a nut). On this most important parts of the body, the best brains of Canada, England, Holland, Iceland and Switzerland have come together to solve the problem of male pattern baldness. No more “nut” in the British sense of the word, unless it’s a hairy nut. Until now, men have either had to tolerate hair loss or use propecia, the only really effective medication on the market that stops hair loss. Now there’s better hope for a “cure”. The international team has found a genetic combination that appears to multiply the risk of hair loss by a factor of seven. It’s another of these “accidental” breakthroughs. The research team was looking at cardiovascular diseases and they came across evidence that there’s a statistical link between heart disease and baldness. Searching for a clue to confirm this apparent relationship, the team scanned the human genome and came across an area that was incomplete in bald men who had heart disease. Nearly three thousand caucasian men were examined and this genetic gap was identified in more than half the sample. There is, however, no cause for immediate excitement. Like many advances in human knowledge, the fact that you make a discovery is no use unless you see how to take advantage of the knowledge. In this case, they can say we have found a gap. Whether that gap can be repaired and how science might engineer it is anyone’s guess. In the case of propecia, for example, hair loss is described as androgenic alopecia. It affects about 40% of men as they age. It is caused by an excess of Di-hydrotestosterone (DHT). Propecia prevents the body from producing 5-Alpha-Reductase, a chemical necessary to the production of DHT. It’s a magic bullet to remove the cause of baldness. For as long as a man takes the tablets, they will stop hair loss and sometimes allow some hair to regrow. When a man stops taking propecia, the hair loss resumes. Following this research breakthrough, hair loss will be characterized as a genetic deficiency and, in due course, a magic bullet may be devised to deliver replacement genes to the right place in the genetic sequence in your body. Until then, rely on propecia.

Filed under: Uncategorized Date 30 December, 2008
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One of the more interesting questions for any pharmaceutical company is how to market their drug. In theory, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. You have this great tablet. When people take it, the terrible disorder or disease is cured. All you have to do is tell everyone who might get this disorder or disease, and they will flock to buy these tablets when they get sick. Except not everyone thinks the same way. Let’s say you come up with this really great drug that works on the nitric oxide in the body. People who research plants, fruit and vegetables get interested because nitric oxide extends the life of cut flowers and the shelf-life of food in our stores. They discover that putting tiny amounts of this medication in the water for cut flowers gives a week and more of life before wilting sets in. Who would have thought it? Well, certainly not the medical researchers who designed the drug in the first place. Those of you reading this are, of course, way ahead of me. You all know that adding a pinch of the little blue pill to the water of your cut flowers wards off droop for up to a week. It’s not the cheapest way of keeping flowers fresh but, if it’s that important to you, the remedy is in your hands. So what has all this to do with this article’s theme? To answer that, we need to go back to the history of the viagra. The first application that came up for clinical testing was as a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The drug dilates arteries. If the main arteries in the chest and lungs are constricted, this limits the flow of oxygen around the body and bad things happen. When the side-effect of erections was noticed, the researchers put PAH on the back-burner and focussed on making money – an understandable decision that has paid the bills at Pfizer for the last ten years. But good ideas never go away. Now’s the time to meet Calvin Muteesa. This British boy has been taking viagra for 92% of this life. The daily dose is between four and six tablets. He started when he was three months old. He’s now thirty-three months old. The diagnosis of PAH was clear. His heart was struggling to pump the blood around his body. He could barely breathe. The effect of taking this “adult” drug was described by his parents as nothing short of miraculous. Within an hour, his blood pressure dropped and his breathing became more normal. Remember, the chemistry in the body works the same in arteries at strategic places all around the body. If a drug works to dilate the artery to relieve erectile dysfunction, it also works to relieve PAH. Quite what will happen to Calvin’s physical development is uncertain. Doctors will monitor him and adjust the dose if it seems necessary. So age is no barrier to the use of this drug. Viagra really does get the blood flowing where it should with all the desired results.

Filed under: Uncategorized Date 18 December, 2008
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