Could Hair Loss at 20 Signal Higher Prostate Cancer Risk?

Men with prostate cancer may be twice as likely to have started showing signs of male pattern bluntness at the age of 20 than those without prostate cancer, a new French study suggests.

Men who start down their hair in their 30s or 40s do not appear to face a similar boost in prostate cancer risk. And those whose hair loss starts in their 20s do not face a higher risk of developing the cancer at an early age or of developing more aggressive tumors, the research team noted.

But we do know that there are genetic factors that make prostate cancer more common," Stone said. "For example, men who have a first-degree relative an uncle, father or brother who have a analysis of prostate cancer are 2.5 to three times more likely to develop prostate cancer themselves than men who don't have such a history. And genetics also plays a role in men who develop early hair loss."

"So, you have two genetically related factors that there may be an association from, and each may be linked to early high male hormone levels. So it may be a hormonally related situation," Stone acknowledged. "But it's very hard to prove."

How can light kill viruses?

To save off infection, there are some things you probably know you should do: wash your hands, gets lots of sleep, be careful when you sneeze, don't rub your eyes (especially after touching your nose); eat lots of fruits and vegetables. After all, a cold virus can survive on someone's hand for a couple of hours or for several days on some materials.

Even those hand sanitizers that many people use don't kill everything. And once they're in the body, viruses are quite tough to kill - antibiotics are powerless against them and vaccines for influenza and some other viruses must be changed every year to adapt to new strains. Fortunately our immune systems can fight off many viruses, but some, like Ebola or even influenza, can be deadly. It may then surprise you to learn that something viruses are exposed to all the time visible light can be used to kill them.

Doctors are limited in the ways they can fight viruses, which is why studies like this one are so exciting. On the next page, we'll look at more ways in which scientists try to fight viruses or stop their spread altogether. Several of them use light, whether to kill viruses or as an activating agent.

Health May Improve, If Patients Share Their Stories...

A talented artist in his premature 60s, the patient was a liver transplant candidate who learned he had hepatitis B some 20 years previous. Even though the degeneration fatigue that accompanied his liver failure, he threw himself into preparing for his transplant. He read everything he could about the procedure and the postoperative care, drilled doctors with endless questions and continued to drag himself to the gym each day in the hopes of being better prepared to withstand the rigors of the operation.

The only reservation that he mentioned was the same one all the other patients had — he feared that death would come before the perfect organ.

But during one visit just before he finally got the transplant, he confessed that he had been grappling with another concern, one so overwhelming he had even considered withdrawing from the waiting list. He worried that he would not be strong enough mentally and physically to survive a transplant.

In desperation, he told me, he had contacted several patients who had already undergone a transplant. “That’s what made me believe I’d be O.K.,” he said. “You doctors have answered all of my questions, but what I really needed was to hear the stories about transplant from people like me.”

“We learn through the above stories, and we use them to make sense of our lives. It’s a natural extension to think that we could use stories to improve our health.”

How to avoid some errors at the pharmacy

When you pick and choose up your prescriptions in a medical store, how directly do you look at the label?

Everyone should follow Steps One, Two and Three below:

• 1) Write down your prescription information. That's because when you hand over the prescription to the pharmacist you no longer have a record of what your doctor prescribed. This way, you will have the information in hand so that you can make sure you get the right medicine.

• 2) Check out the label. Is that your name, medicine and the right dosage? Sometimes drug names look and sound familiar, so make sure the name of the drug on the label matches the prescription your doctor gave you. Sometimes pharmacies will swap out brand name drugs for generics drugs, so when that happens just double-check with your pharmacist.

• 3) Open the bottle. While you're at the pharmacist's, I advise opening the bottle and showing the pills to the pharmacist. Ask if it's the drug you've been prescribed.

For more advice, read my Online Pharmacy blog how to avoid pharmacy errors.