Mean Green

Over the decades, the pharmaceutical industry has done a wonderful job in convincing us there’s always a drug to solve a medical problem. Indeed, if you listen to some critics, they will tell you Big Pharma invents a medical problem and then develops a drug to treat it (in some cases, it may be the other way round). This has undermined the status of the doctors and surgeons who used to rule the roost. In the dim and distant days before we had basic drugs like penicillin, doctors used their experience to pull people through serious illnesses. If you were injured, surgeons sewed you back together again. It was a good team effort all round. How fast things change in seventy years.

If you look around the country right now, you will actually see a lot of men losing their hair. Those whose business it is to guess how many, estimate the number to be around 30 million. Using the most neutral written voice possible, it seems the majority of these men begin losing their hair before they reach the age of 35. There are many possible causes suggested. In the top position comes genetics. It’s all the fault of your wife’s brother’s uncle if you were born in a month with an ‘r’ in it. This is not to say there’s no evidence that male pattern badness runs in families. It often does and through the female line. But we’re no closer to explaining precisely how genes might be contributing to this problem. Nor is there any prospect of being able to do anything about it even if we could identify which genes are misbehaving. Then we get into the usual list of lifestyle choices with excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and unhealthy diets all blamed. And then there’s stress. If all else fails, experts say we’re worrying our hair into falling out. Or perhaps you have a tendency to pull your hair out when under stress – doctors who like to name these problems call this trichotillomania.

So, if you have male pattern baldness, the pharmaceutical industry has come up with the cure – Propecia was an accidental discovery, but the researchers did recognize what they had when the trial results came in. For everyone else, the surgeons have an answer. If you have the money, they will introduce you to the world of hair implants. This borrows from the world of farming. To plant seedlings, you carefully remove them from position A, keeping all their roots intact, and then place them carefully in a newly dug hole at position B. So the surgeon takes three or four hairs as a unit from a part of your head where the hair grows vigorously and replants them into a bald area. Unfortunately there’s no guarantee the hair will grow in the new position and there’s quite a high risk of infection. So you could end up with two sets of holes in your scalp where no hair grows, and all this can cost you about $10,000 a procedure. Expensive and results are not guaranteed! So if you have male pattern baldness, use Propecia as soon as it is diagnosed. Otherwise, learn to live with the baldness.

The process of aging is built into our genes and, no matter how hard you try to cover up the signs, the body will follow its programming. So the first and most important rule to follow is never lose your sense of humor. It’s going to happen sooner or later so, when it does, you might as well enjoy it. Once you reach around 45, the muscles start to lose their tone and, unless you exercise on a regular basis, you will find yourself unfit. The first signs are an increase in the amount of body fat and your aerobic capacity drops. This means you will get out of breath more quickly and begin to slow down. If you used to be able to play sport or even run to get out of the rain, the strength and stamina of your youth will fade away. Worse, bone density starts to drop. As if all this is not bad enough, you will also find the level of testosterone drops so you will feel less interested in sex. Yes, it’s almost unimaginable, but libido also fades. With the drop in testosterone and other hormones, the pace of hair thinning and loss increases. Snow appears on the mountain peaks and, over time, it all fades to that pleasing shade of grey before becoming white.

So, for the major changes, you already have that exercise program in place. You are dieting to reduce the amount of fat in your diet and increasing the protein intake to build muscle mass. Changes in hair color can also be masked with dyes, but the one unchanging and unstoppable trend is hair loss. Every time you shed a hair, it grows back more thinly. This makes your age more obvious and thin hair is more likely to fall out of the roots. All this points to a curious medical discrimination. For years, doctors have been debating with women on whether hormone replacement therapy does more harm than good. Yet no doctor seriously suggests men would be helped by a comparable approach. This is not to say doctors don’t prescribe testosterone to men. There are some conditions where this is considered effective. But there’s no suggestion men’s general health will be improved or the aging process slowed if male hormone levels are topped up.

So, coming back to hair loss through aging, this is inevitable and you just have to learn to love it as the years roll by. However, if you are younger and the doctor confirms you have the first signs of male pattern baldness, Propecia is the answer. This emphasizes the need for a clear diagnosis before you start on the treatment. It takes from three to six months before you will see any results from Propecia so, if you do not have male pattern baldness, you will be wasting your time and money on a drug that will do nothing to cure your problem. Do not risk self-diagnosis. Always have a doctor examine your scalp to exclude the other possible causes of hair loss. Then assuming the diagnosis is confirmed, remember the drug is only effective for so long as you take it. Once you stop, the hair loss will resume and accelerate.

When you’re a young driver, you should never approach the question of insurance dreaming of low premiums. Under the age of 25, no insurance is ever going to cheap and the sooner you adjust your expectations and set to do a little work, the better. The standard advice is always to shop around. Why bother? The answer is more important when you’re young. Any driver, regardless of age can save money by being prepared to change insurers. The majority of companies will offer a welcome bonus to persuade you to jump ship. The people who make their money researching and crunching numbers will tell you the average man aged 55 will save around $450 by changing insurers. It’s possible, of course, the new insurer will quickly phase out the discounts and equalize the premium rates. That’s business. But a small percentage of policyholders are prepared to move their business when renewal falls due at the end of each year. The industry calls this churning and this helps maintain some level of price competition between the insurers. Sadly, most drivers seem reluctant to change, preferring to stay loyal. This makes the insurers lazy and they all tend to pitch their premium rates quite close together. For younger drivers, it’s a different matter. The number crunchers tell us there can be more than $1,000 in savings available if you make an effective survey of all the insurers in your state. Why is the difference so much greater? The answer comes in track record. The 55-year old driver has spent years proving whether he is safe and so, when it comes to deciding what level of risk he represents, the insurers will all come up with similar premium rates. This leaves a narrow range, only widened because of the welcome bonuses offered. But when you are starting off your driving career, there can be a big difference of opinion between the companies on how to assess your driving. When there’s no evidence on how safe you are, it comes down to company policy. Some argue the earlier the company signs you up, the longer you will stay a loyal customer. It’s possible you may have a few crashes in the early years but, as you learn, you will become a steady contributor to the profit margin. Other companies prefer not to have too many young driver in their groups and so set higher premium rates to deter the average youngster. So, for the first years, it may be better to shelter on your family’s policy. Never do this blindly. Some companies base the premium rate on the most expensive family vehicle. Others ask which vehicle the young driver will be allowed to drive. There are also very different rules about discounts for a good GPA and what is to happen when people leave for college. There are just too many variables. Rather than trying to guess, you should get a full set of quotes from all the insurers. One of them may actually be the cheap car insurance you’re hoping to find. Even if the premium rates prove more expensive than you were hoping to find, remember it’s better to have some car insurance rather than none. Getting caught without insurance is going to be a red flag when it comes to setting future rates.

Sometimes, paranoia is good for you. You can be just about to do something unwise or actively dangerous, and the suspicions kick in. What if? you ask yourself. And this hesitation saves you from making a mistake. So what’s the problem here? Well, some men are alarmed by all the stories going around the news media and the internet suggesting the online pharmacy industry is run by thieves who will take our money and fail to give us the drugs we need. As a note of explanation, ask yourself who owns many of the news media? Either the same corporations that also own pharmaceutical manufacturers, or the corporations that rely on all the advertising dollars spent by the manufacturers. So they have a direct interest in frightening you out of buying online. Remember, there are always one or two black sheep in every trade or industry. This does not make the whole industry suspect. All these scare stories are placed to protect the profits of Big Pharma. Anyway, some men seem not to draw the right lesson from these stories. They accept the lie that the online pharmacies, many of which are regulated by governments around the world, are unsafe. So they sign up to buy sex-enhancement remedies from random websites. This is not one of those out of the frying pan, into the fire decisions. This is abandoning a safe harbor to go for a swim with crocodiles. If the pharmacies, many of which have been trading for years, are criminal, what does that make the fly-by-nighters offering to turn you into stallion overnight? One of the less-well-advertised functions of the FDA is to police the market for supplements and non-pharmaceutical remedies. Although the manufacturers don’t have to get a license to sell their magic products, they do have to be truthful in what they claim for them. So, if the FDA finds misleading ads, they can order the ads removed and, in bad cases, the product pulled from the market. What then counts as the “bad” cases? Let’s say the manufacturer claims this herbal product will produce the most enhanced erection you have ever seen or felt. Making allowances for the usual exaggeration, the FDA might get suspicious if the business seemed to be growing. Although the placebo effect can persuade some men to produce erections, most herbal and “alternative” products don’t work. So repeat orders and good word-of-mouth would persuade the FDA to test samples. In the case of “ExtenZe”, the FDA found the herbs were supplemented by Cialis. It’s relatively easy to make your own product effective when you include the best of the erectile dysfunction drugs as a secret ingredient. Yet it’s this failure to warn men that makes this product so dangerous. When we buy a prescription-only drug, we are given clear instructions on safe dosages. If we don’t know we are taking a drug, we may believe it safe to take several tablets at once. This can produce an overdose which, if not treated properly, can be dangerous. Any drug, including Cialis, can be dangerous if you overdose. The FDA has therefore ordered the manufacturer of “ExtenZe” to cease selling their drug-enhanced product.

It’s one of those deeply frustrating experiences when something that worked so well in the past suddenly stops working quite as well. Keeping this real, most of us want sex. It’s usually best in a loving relationship, but that’s not always possible. So we want the confidence that, should the opportunity arise, we’re going to be up to the job. If something disturbs that confidence, it disturbs the way we relate to women. This is something we should aways take seriously and have a check-up. Except we come back to that underlying fear of discussing such a personal failure. It shames us in our own eyes. It allows others the opportunity to judge us. So, with the rise of the online pharmacy industry, we’ve stopped going to the doctor for a prescription. We preserve our privacy and decide to hope for the best on the health front. Why “hope for the best”? Because some of the causes of erectile dysfunction can be serious. If we get early treatment, everything is under control and we can look forward to a long life. Leave it too long and we can find ourselves in an ER wondering what’s gone wrong. Erectile dysfunction is most often caused by a build-up of plaque on the wall of the penile artery. This prevents the muscles from expanding and contracting. If this happens to you when you’re young (that’s anyone under the age of 40), there’s a real risk you will have a stroke or heart attack within five years. The reason? What happens to the penile artery today, happens to the main arteries in the chest and lungs tomorrow. All of this is treatable. The costs are controllable. It’s the same if the cause is diabetes. Leave this untreated and the erectile dysfunction will become permanent. Worse, what affects your sexual performance today can damage the nerve endings in other parts of the body. Pride should not get in the way of your health. But if the problems are more psychological and arise out of a stressful lifestyle or depression, the need for formal consultation is much greater. The first piece of bad news is that none of the erectile dysfunction drugs improve performance if depression is affecting your sex drive. It will often be necessary to take drugs to combat anxiety or depression first. This may solve the erection problem. If not, you can then switch to the erectile dysfunction drug of choice. As a general rule, you should not take them together. Should the cause be stress, you should consider improving your fitness, exercising at least three times a week. This will help you sleep better. If in doubt, cut down on alcohol and quit smoking – nicotine is a cause of plaque in your arteries. No matter how embarrassing you find the idea, there are some highly effective relaxation techniques that often help improve your sex drive. These lifestyle changes may make it unnecessary to use Cialis. Counseling and therapy are also effective, albeit more expensive. However, if you don’t have the time and only want a short-term fix, Cialis is the best answer to the problem. It will delay the need to see a doctor about your general health.

For as long as women have had to rely on men to keep the human race going, there have been problems. Even back in the caves before indoor plumbing was invented, some men just seemed to run out of steam. It was embarrassing and always led to a loss of status within the tribe. So began the search for any natural substances or foods that would encourage sexual activity. We start to get detailed records of all the different experiments as we come out of prehistory and into the early days of the Chinese and Roman Empires. Doctors made two very important discoveries. The first was that some seafood like oysters seemed to improve matters. Modern science confirms that oysters do increase the production of testosterone but, other than encouraging the libido, they do nothing for actual performance. Whatever benefits come are the result of self-confidence. Ask any magician or shaman from a primitive tribe and they will all tell you the same story. If the captive audience believes in “magic” strongly enough, it will deliver the goods. Today, we call this the placebo effect and, in clinical trials, an average of about one-third of the participants report feeling better after taking chemically inert pills. All it takes is someone with a serious expression wearing a white coat and people will believe they are about to be cured. The one solid discovery from early research was the so-called Spanish Fly. In fact this is a green beetle. If you let them dry and crush the bodies into a powder, you can make a mixture that encourages sexual activity. At low concentrations, it was discovered effective in stimulating animals to mate. This was particularly important for selective breeding to produce the best animals for food and work. In humans, it was also not unsuccessful. There were, however, two problems that became obvious. Unlike animals that can be tricked into sexual activity, men and women have to feel “in the mood”. This relationship between the mind and body has always been one of the biggest causes of erectile dysfunction. The second problem is that, at higher dosages, Spanish Fly is poisonous and, in overdose, is fatal. Getting stiff in death is not helpful to anyone. The moral of the story so far is that, with the possible exception of ginseng that the Chinese have always favored, none of the natural aphrodisiacs have any scientific credibility. So, whenever you see ads for enhancement products based on spices, herbs, the bark of trees or the powdered bits of various “powerful” animals, keep your money safely locked away. These are all scams. Unless, of course, you’re one of these people who find the placebo effect works. Since erectile dysfunction is often caused by performance anxiety, anything that boosts self-confidence is likely to improve the sexual outcome. All of which brings us back to Viagra which was first discovered by accident in clinical trials. If ever you wanted evidence that this drug works regardless of belief, remember the history. The drug was going through clinical trials as a treatment for a different problem when the men reported an interesting side effect. Viagra works even when you are not expecting it to work.