Healthier Matters » Men’s Health

Fighting prostate cancer

health girl — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:02:52 +0000

If there is one thing that men have to worry about as they get older, it’s prostate cancer. Apart from visits to the doctor there are some home remedies that men can use to help fight off this bad disease. Of course, these home remedies should be included with a good diet, as well as regular exercise to get the maximum affect.

The first way is to make sure you eat your fish. Not only does fish help to fight off prostate cancer, but it can help stop the growth of a tumour. It is a good idea to get about 2 servings of fish a week. They are high in omega 3 oils. Remember that tuna, salmon, and even mackerel counts as your serving of fish.

Although most men do not like to eat this next product, it works great! Soy is a product that contains phytoestrogen. This is something that is thought to help reduce the amount of testosterone your body makes. Not only that, but it’s able to help stop prostate cancer growth. Most of this is due to the fact that phytoestorgen is thought to limit the growth of certain blood capillaries around tumours that could be around the prostate.

Last, but not least, tomatoes! Many studies have shown that men who eat as little as 2 servings of tomatoes, and this includes cooked tomatoes, every week can reduce their risk of prostate cancer by half! This is because tomatoes are full of an antioxidant called lycopene. This helps fight all kinds of cancers. So grab yourself a tomato. It’s good for you!

Contraceptive injections for men

health girl — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:10:11 +0000

Condoms, vasectomy and other forms of male contraceptives will have a new competition in the industry: contraceptive injections. As the name suggests, this form of contraception will be administered through injections to sexually active men and will prevent unnecessary pregnancy of their sexual partners for at least 30 days. This form of contraceptive is currently being developed in China and results have been very impressive. Virtually no side-effects will be experienced and the natural reproductive system of men will be back to normal as soon as the male stops the monthly injection.

Curiously, the main ingredient of the contraceptive injection is testosterone undecanoate – a form of anabolic steroid which also helps in controlling hormones. Testosterone undecanoate is already available as a pill but these are regarded as legal steroid and not used for controlling reproduction performance in men.

The current trend in birth control is often on women. Pills, injections and other birth control methods are readily available and could be easily accessed. For men, condoms are the current method in temporary birth control. Vasectomy is often shunned since it doesn’t provide guarantees of it being reversible. The notion of contraceptive injections for men will help ease that burden on women.

The contraceptive injection for men could lead to further revolutionary products such as pills for those who do not want injections but that road is yet to be explored by the research. For now, the anticipation is already there for contraceptive injections as worldwide response to the product is generally positive.

The contraceptive injections for men are currently developed by National Research Institute for Family Planning in Beijing, China.

Folic acid may increase cancer risk for men

health girl — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:19:36 +0000

A study that took place at the University of Southern California (USC) found out some new information about men who take folic acid supplements. The study goes on to say that men who take daily folic acid supplement pills of at least 1 mg have an almost double risk of getting prostate cancer compared to men who took a placebo.

These findings came as only secondary information to a study on how aspirin and folic acid affect the colon polyps in men. Overall, the findings showed that aspirin actually reduced the risk of colon polyps. Folic acid, on the other hand, had a negative effect. In fact, folic acid supplements did increase the risk of multiple polyps, or at least increased the advance of polyps.

The final results showed that men who used a folic acid supplement had an increased risk of prostate cancer by about 9.7% (this came over a 10 year study). On the other hand, men who used a placebo only had a 3.3% chance of prostate cancer.

Although, there are other factors that could have played a role in the development of cancer. However, the overall amount of people from both groups that got cancer helps the numbers speak for themselves. The study was done with the support of the National Cancer Institute, as well as the National Institutes of Health.

Other research will be done in the falling years to back up the findings of this study. Other studies are also underway from the same groups to find other supplements that could be leading to an increased risk of cancer. The study does note that this does not mean that men will get cancer for taking these supplements, but it does increase the chances.

Circumcision protects against infections

health girl — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:50:57 +0000

Some people always wonder if it would be better to be circumcised or not. Well, recent studies show that men who are circumcised have a lower risk of infections later on down the road.

In a study that was done on more than 5,000 uncircumcised adults, researchers saw that infection risks, including things like herpes, went down 28 percent after the people were circumcised. However, the transmission of human papilloma virus, also known as HPV, which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer in women who have had sex with men with HPV, saw a drop by 35 percent. Overall, that is a big drop in two main categorizes of very bad viruses.

Other studies that have been done found out that circumcision actually helps to reduce the risk of getting the HIV virus by almost 60 percent. Researchers who checked the results of the findings saw that this was indeed correct.

Also, doctors have noted that it would also be better for the partner of the man as well. Women are much more likely to get infections after sleeping with a man that is uncircumcised, meaning that she is much more likely to get cervical cancer if she is married to an uncircumcised man than if she was not. Although it is more helpful to the guy, it’s nice to do something for the love of your life as well.

Thus, if you have a male son and you are wondering if you should circumcise him, or if you have not been circumcised yourself, then note that viruses can be controlled better through circumcision.

The right diet for a man

health girl — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:32:35 +0000

When you look online for diets, you mostly come across diets for women. However, women are not the only ones that want to be healthier and lose weight. That is why, today, we are going to talk about some dieting tips for men. A diet for men normally not only focuses on losing weight, but on ways to help you perform better. The best way to think about it is like a car. Your car performs better when you use premium gas. Your body does better when you feed it “premium food.”

Our bodies use carbohydrates much like cars use fuel. Thus, in a man’s diet you are going to want about 60 percent of your diet to come from carbohydrates. That means about 6 to 10 servings of things like steamed rice, bread, pasta, and things like that.

However, when doing this you need to make sure you are eating complexed carbohydrate like we just talked about. Stay away from things like sugar, honey, cakes, and desserts. These are going to have a bad affect on your body.

Next, you need to make sure you eat your protein! Muscles use protein as their building blocks. You should eat about 6 ounces of meat per day. This does not mean 6 hot dogs everyday! You need to be eating lean protein like fish, dried beans, and poultry.

Remember that fat makes you fat; it’s as simple as that. Fat from food actually packs on more than twice as many calories as what you would get from protein and, of course, carbohydrates. This is when you compare it gram to gram. Fat is essential for good health, but most people eat about four times more fat than they should.

Men and hair loss

health girl — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:50:09 +0000

There are a lot of things that cause hair loss in men. However, the question comes up a lot, what is the main thing that causes hair loss? Some people say it is what we inherit from our families. Others say that it is environmental factors. Although all of these things do affect hair loss, these are not the main things of today that affect men’s hair loss.

Every few years, the main thing that causes hair loss in men seems to change. Nowadays it seems like stress is causing the most hair loss around the world. This could be due to many things. However, right now studies show that most of the stress is related to money because of the struggling economy. This can make it hard to keep your hair in when you are stressed out all the time.

Doctors say that stress is the number one cause of all health problems, and this includes hair loss. So now the question is, what can you do about it? The truth is that you can do a lot for your hair loss. The best thing that you can do is to forget about your problems for a few hours a day. Do not sit there and dwell on things that are out of your power. A good way to get out some stress is to work out or to do some yoga. Although this may not be your cup of tea, it could help you keep your hair form thinning day by day. If this does not help, then you may need to talk to your doctor about taking some medication.

Premature ejaculation help

health girl — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:38:35 +0000

If there is something that a lot of men worry about, it’s premature ejaculation. This is a problem that actually affects about 33% of all men in the world. This makes it one of the most common sexual disorders in the word. If you need an easier way to look at this, most experts say that premature ejaculation affects about one in every three men. However, this study can only be based on the people who come and seek help for it.

If you have a problem with premature ejaculation, do not worry. This is a problem that can be fixed. Most of the time, your doctor will recommend you going to a sex therapist.

They will usually be able to reach the bottom of what could be causing your premature ejaculation.

When it comes to premature ejaculation, there are things that you can do from home that will help. For example, most experts say that masturbating an hour or two before intercourse can help you delay your ejaculation. Other doctors say that you should avoid intercourse for some time and focus on other types of sexual play (foreplay).

Last, but not least, if you are still having problems with premature ejaculation, then you should do the squeeze technique. To do this, you need to start having sex as normal. As you start to feel like you are about to ejaculate, you or your partner needs to squeeze the end of your penis. You should do this between where the shaft and head join. Keep squeezing until the urge to ejaculate passes. When you are done squeezing, wait about 30 seconds and go back to foreplay. This can be done as needed.

Addressing early erectile dysfunction through exercises

health girl — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:06:22 +0000

Erectile dysfunction or ED could happen to a man’s life at any age. Although it’s true that the chances increases as you grow older, it doesn’t mean that if you’re only 25 you won’t be experiencing ED. That’s right, even though you’re in your sexual prime, you will experience ED unexpectedly. There will be a situation wherein you are ready for some intimacy with your partner but your body doesn’t react accordingly.

If you’re below 30, or someone who thinks ED just happened to them for the first tie, no need to panic. Some immediately react by taking pills and other expensive products just to prevent ED from happening again. You still have a chance in dealing with ED without having to spend hundreds of dollars.

The best alternative in dealing with ED without having to spend a single cent is simply to exercise. To be more specific, cardio exercises such jogging, swimming and cycling.

To understand why these exercises will work on your ED, you should understand the reason why ED happens. Basically, this type of physical problem is all in the blood. When blood is evenly distributed in your body, it will not go down to your penis. That means no erection. But that can be easily addressed by a simple exercise. We all know that a simple exercise could get the blood pumping. Through cardio exercises, your heart will be pumping harder and blood will be distributed faster.

There’s one catch though: you need to do it consistently so that it will work. But it’s free, safe and definitely works.

Men suffering from memory loss

health girl — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:19:46 +0000

One of the major health concerns for men nowadays is memory loss. This has been a growing concern for quite some time, but studies are now showing that men could be having memory loss 2 to 1 when compared to women. Doctors think that this could be linked to the fact that most men are not doing what they need to in order to keep their brains active. Now we are going to talk about a few tips that men can do to help keep their brains sharp. After all, we have to exercise our brains just like we exercise the rest of our bodies.

If you are not sure how to go about exercising your brain, then here are a few tips that you can use to stay sharp and keep your memory longer. Try to learn how to play an instrument. Learning something new every day really helps to improve the overall brain function in men. Also, you should try to interact with others on a regular basis.

Things like playing Scrabble or doing crosswords are other good ways to keep your mind active. Doctors have even noted that simply playing video games is a good way to keep the brain, not only active, but to improve your hand/eye coordination, which can help with memory loss as well.

Of course, there are things that have been linked to increasing the chance of memory loss in men. For example, smoking has now been linked to increasing the rate by which men have memory loss. This is just going to be a growing problem unless men stand up and do something about it. By keeping your brain active, you are going to be able to hold onto your dear memories a lot longer than ever before.

How to prevent lower back pain

health girl — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:16:37 +0000

Lower back pain is one of the biggest reasons why a male can’t really get things done fast. With this pain, the ability to move freely and exert any effort is diminished. Even if you’re just in an office without any requirement of extreme physical effort lower back pain could affect your concentration and eventually, your productivity. This is caused by the decrease of the ability of your lower back muscles to handle such strains.

But increasing the strength of your lower back muscles is actually not the answer. A strong lower back muscle could address part of the problem but continuous movement will still take its toll in your muscles.

The answer to prevention of lower back pain is not on the strength but on endurance. Your muscles should have the ability withstand different weights and force applied in your lower back. By increasing endurance you will also increase your muscle strength as you slowly exercise your muscles.

Prevention of lower back pain is actually a very simple activity. The trick in preventing lower back pain through increased endurance is to constantly move your body. When you’re in the office, try different sitting position which will require you to move your hips a little bit. Every hour or two; stand up and stretch your hands up while your feet a foot apart and breathing deeply.

But there’s just one requirement if you want your lower back pain problem to be permanently avoided. The above mentioned exercises should be done everyday without any exception. These are very simple exercises so you should be able to do them without going to the gym everyday.