Archive for ◊ June, 2011 ◊

The cultural reaction to hair loss
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• Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

I suppose if you go back to the days when men rose in the mornings and went out into the jungle or on to the plains to hunt for food, losing hair was a real problem. Just imagine the bright sun shining off the bald head. This beacon of light would frighten the game animals away faster than you could move downwind. It would be worse than dropping your spear or forgetting to bring your cudgel along, where the other members of the hunt could cover for you. But when your presence drives the potential food away. Now that’s a real problem. So they drive you out of the cave – no freeloaders allowed. You do your best to join the women in the gathering part of the survival exercise. Berries and roots are not disturbed by your lack of hair. In the end, you probably starve to death and this serves as a terrible warning to the other members of the tribe. Some of the men experiment with animal skins, hoping to invent baseball caps. Others try rubbing earth or other substances on to their scalps. At the very least, it all cuts down the glare factor.

It’s no different today. Were it not for the development of other skills which can be sold in exchange for food, all balding men would starve. This just leaves the other reaction. Women often see balding men as undesirable for breeding purposes. Who wants to have children with someone who may pass on the balding gene? It’s much kinder to let natural selection end these poor creatures and leave the human race stronger and more hairy as a result.

So men who see the first signs of premature male pattern balding slowly emerge must take action to preserve their credibility for breeding purposes. Other problems can be cured. Dental work can correct less than perfect teeth. Cosmetic surgery can remove excess fat and smooth away early wrinkles that might betray age. Style gurus can advise on clothes to wear. This just leaves the hair. Fortunately, the researchers had one of those lucky accidents. There’s this wonderful myth that scientists set out with a hypothesis, devise experiments and prove themselves brilliant. Ironically, there’s just as much discovered when experiments go hopelessly wrong. Bright-eyed and not defeated, they try to find the reason for their humiliation.

So it was with those scientists trying to find a way of treating prostate cancer. Imagine their surprise when the drug trials suddenly produced more hair on the heads of many participating men. After recovering from their Simpson “doh” moment, they realized they might have a money-spinner on their hands. Several trials later, the FDA was convinced and a license was issued. Propecia could be released on to world markets as the only drug to have been fully tested and approved by government regulators. It’s a great marketing strategy when you can tell the truth about your product. Too often in the past, marketers had to lie and cheat their customers, moving on to the next town quickly before the scam was discovered. This time, they really could say Propecia stops hair loss and hold their own heads up proudly.

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Why are fad diets popular?
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• Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

One of the oldest marketing strategies is the idea of something for nothing – the free gift. Buy one, get this free tree branch for use in sweeping out the cave before the hunters come home. It’s incredible people continue to fall for this, particularly when the gift is so often useless. Yet there’s a greedy streak in many who just cannot resist the idea of supposed extra value. Equally, there’s a way of pandering to the lazy streak. Devices are not described as labor-saving for nothing. You can now do this “thing” with less effort (or no effort when the miracle ingredient is added). Ah, note the addition of miraculous qualities. This product will work if you have faith. There will be no scientific explanation, just endless testimonials and endorsements from Charles who grew muscles after sand was kicked in his face at the beach and from Marylyn who married well and got good parts in movies because of the bust enhancing cream she used.

Well, if you go into bookstores (those that have managed to stay in business) or search the internet, you will find an army of experts all trying to sell you their latest book on how to lose weight. No matter what the title, they all come down to the same thing. Follow these few simple instructions and, without you having to lift a finger, unwanted pounds will drop from your body as if blown away by pixie dust. In fact, we do have a small supply of pixie dust available for sale to private buyers, but that’s something we can discuss in another article. Until we get to that, all these diets have common themes.

One particular type of food is hailed as having amazing, not to say miraculous, properties. If you eat enough of it, you will lose weight. The best examples of this are cabbage and grapefruit. Eat either of these (and nothing else) for [insert number of weeks] and, if you do not die of malnutrition, you will be thinner. Then we have the “brand name” diets that either rely on you believing that the Israeli Army only has thin people in its ranks, or thinking you will fade away to nothing if you only drink Slim-Fast or a comparable product. Finally, we have the diets that persuade you they are scientific because they refer to carbohydrates or proteins or the metabolic processes of your body.

The sad fact is that none of these diets work well in the medium to longer term. Anyone who starves for a few weeks will lose weight. The fact this is medically dangerous to your health is not mentioned on the book jackets or the accompanying marketing copy. There’s only one way to lose weight and that’s to burn more calories than you consume. So eat less food. The food you eat should be more healthy. Exercise is good for you. The problem is hunger. The solution is Acomplia which suppresses your appetite. If you feel less hungry, it’s easier to keep the healthy diet going for longer. If you do keep the diet going with Acomplia‘s help, you will feel better and look great. There are no better rewards for putting in the hard work to lose weight.

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What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
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• Monday, June 13th, 2011

There is yet another of those disconnections between the Europeans and our own medical profession. You would always hope that doctors would be doctors no matter where they were in practice. Yet even when you put aside Sarah Palin’s paranoid allegations about European hospitals as death camps, there are a number of key disagreements between the two groups of professions. The one we should be most worried about is that the European insistence on evidence-based practice is rejected in the US.

 

In the US, the FDA licenses drugs or medical devices, and then leaves it to the market to decide how it should all be used. The Europeans believe that all treatments and therapies should be tested. If there is no evidence a particular approach is effective, the national or international regulator issues a directive. The effect is to deny this treatment funding from the public purse. It’s always open to individuals to have their own private health insurance cover non-approved treatments, or they can pay for it out of their own pockets. In the US, doctors can decide to do whatever they like with what’s available. All they care about is whether they can charge patients for the treatment. Obviously, it’s bad for business if too many patients die, but this can usually be hushed up. Unlike Europe, American hospitals do not publish survival and death rates by department. In a perfect world, you would always have access to this information before deciding whether to trust a hospital.

 

Anyway, the latest disconnection covers Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is increasingly routine in Europe but still rare in the US. This is explained by the relative costs. One specialist doctor sees a given number of billable patients an hour. A CBT specialist may spend an hour with one patient deciding how best to treat him or her. One-to-one therapy is considered the most effective. Every major piece of published research confirms CBT as more effective than standard medical approaches to treatment. So the fact you may spend more money today on one patient today means you may not need to treat that patient again for months or years. Now you understand why this is not popular in the US.

 

“Cognitive” means you teach the patient about the physical and emotional problems. Control over pain comes from understanding more about it. The “behavioral” means you look carefully at how the patient moves when performing basic tasks. The “therapy” then devises better ways of performing those routine tasks. It teaches basic coping strategies so you move within the physical limitations with less pain. Exercises and activities are designed to improve your general mobility. Joints are eased and muscles toned up. The idea is to give you a mixture of physical strategies and relaxation techniques to give you control over the pain and the emotions associated with it. This does not deny a place for Tramadol and the other painkillers. But with longer use, there’s a real risk of dependence. You can keep a small supply of Tramadol to hand just in case the pain unexpectedly grows more intense. Otherwise, CBT teaches you to live without reliance on routine medication.

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