Men Who Smoke Prone to Impotence

(HealthDay News) -- If heart disease, stroke and certain cancers haven't been reason enough for men to quit smoking, consider this: The habit also increases the risk of erectile dysfunction.
In fact, emerging research shows that men with a pack-a-day habit are almost 40 percent more likely to struggle with erectile dysfunction than men who don't smoke.

"Smoking delivers nicotine and other vasoconstrictors that close down the blood vessels" of the penis, explained Dr. Jack Mydlo, chairman of urology at Temple University School of Medicine and Hospital in Philadelphia.

Erectile dysfunction -- also called "ED" or impotence -- is the inability to achieve or sustain an erection on repeated occasions. It's estimated that about two of every 100 American men have erectile dysfunction serious enough to warrant a doctor's visit, according to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders. As men age, the risk of erectile dysfunction increases.

A recent study of more than 8,000 Australian men between the ages of 16 and 59 found that those who smoked less than a pack a day had a 24 percent increased risk of erectile problems. And, as the number of cigarettes smoked went up, so, too, did the chances of erectile dysfunction. Those men who averaged more than 20 cigarettes a day increased their risk of erectile dysfunction by 39 percent, reported the study, published in the journal Tobacco Control.

Another study, this one published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found that male smokers in their 40s were more likely to experience erectile difficulties than older nonsmoking males. The risk of erectile dysfunction was nearly doubled for smoking men in their 40s compared to nonsmokers in their 50s.

"Smoking, because it causes blood vessel constriction, is a very big cause of erectile dysfunction," said Dr. Larry Lipshultz, chief of male reproductive medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Smoking isn't the only cause of impotence problems -- other lifestyle habits can have a big impact on men's sexual health. Obesity, heavy alcohol consumption and recreational drug use can all cause erectile dysfunction. And a sedentary lifestyle can also contribute to erectile problems, Lipshultz added.

Other causes include diabetes; heart disease; cancer surgery of the prostate, bladder, colon or rectum; high blood pressure medications or antidepressants; a spinal injury; and a hormone imbalance, usually low testosterone, Lipshultz explained.

All of these conditions or lifestyle factors contribute to erectile difficulties in three major ways: By reducing blood flow, causing nerve damage, or changing the hormonal environment.
While there are medications that can help treat erectile dysfunction, both Mydlo and Lipshultz advocated a healthy lifestyle for maintaining good sexual health.

"Take better care of yourself. Make sure you're not obese, eat well, exercise, and if you have diabetes or hypertension, make sure they're well-controlled," advised Lipshultz, who added that by addressing lifestyle factors, you may not need medication to treat erectile dysfunction.

Mydlo echoed that advice, adding, "Stop smoking, drink in moderation, lose weight, and maintain good blood pressure."

Mydlo added one more word of caution: "Don't use ED medications -- Viagra, Cialis -- if you don't need them. Erections that last longer than four hours -- priapism -- can cause permanent scar tissue and permanent impotence. It's not a good idea to use these drugs casually."

More information
To learn more about erectile dysfunction and how to prevent it, visit the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Health Tip: What's Causing Your Dizziness?

(HealthDay News) - Dizziness is not a disease, but a symptom of another condition. While it's usually not serious and is often temporary, it helps to know what's causing the problem.

The University of Michigan Health System lists these common causes of dizziness:

• An infection or other condition affecting the inner ear.
• Fatigue, stress or fever.
• Low blood sugar.
• Anemia.
• Dehydration.
• An injury to the head.
• A heart or circulatory condition.
• Stroke.
• A side effect of certain medications.

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Beware Holiday Toys That Can Injure Young Eyes

(HealthDay News) -- While concern about lead in toys has attracted a great deal of attention lately, it's just one of the potential dangers that toys may pose to children. For example, some toys can damage children's eyes, warns the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).

There were more than 210,000 toy-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 2005, and about 6,000 of those involved injuries to the eyes of children under age 15, according to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

"The holidays are supposed to be a time of happiness and celebration. A serious eye injury can bring an abrupt end to the celebration. Parents should choose a toy that is appropriate for their child's age, abilities, maturity, and the parent's willingness to supervise use of the toy," Dr. David Coats, clinical correspondent for the AAO and a pediatric ophthalmologist at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, said in a prepared statement.

BB guns, darts, pellet guns and paintball guns are among the toys that pose a threat to the eyes.
"Any toy that can eject or propel an object can lead to a serious eye injury if used incorrectly.

This includes innocuous appearing toys such as a popgun or a paddleball set," Coats said.

He also said children who receive sports equipment as gifts should be given protective eyewear.

"If you plan to give sports equipment, provide appropriate protective gear, such as helmets, facemasks or goggles with polycarbonate lenses," Coats said.

More information
Safe Kids USA has more about toy-related injuries.

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Sex Ed Does Delay Teen Sex: CDC

(HealthDay News) -- Sex education programs do work to help discourage many teens from becoming sexually active before age 15, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Formal programs -- such as those presented in schools and church groups -- did appear to delay onset of sexual activity. For example, teen girls in the nationally representative sample were 59 percent less likely to start having sex before age 15 if they had received sex education, while teen boys were 71 percent less likely, the study found.

"We were obviously hoping to find that sex education is effective. We're glad to see the strong associations," said lead author Trisha Mueller, a CDC epidemiologist. She emphasized that in order to be successful, sex education should take place before young people become sexually active.

Mueller's team also learned that teen boys who attended school were almost three times more likely to use contraception if they had attended a sex education program, compared to those who had not.

However, attendance at a sex education class did not seem to impact girls' use of birth control, the survey found.

The survey did not differentiate between programs that emphasized abstinence and those that educated about contraception. Instead, researchers focused only on whether the teens had ever attended any sex education program in a formal setting, such as school or church.

The study was expected to be published in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

According to earlier, 2005 data available from the CDC, 47 percent of high school students said they had already had sex. Of those who were currently involved in a sexual relationship, one-third said they were not using a condom.

Curious about the effectiveness of sexual education on these behaviors, Mueller and colleagues examined data from more than 2,000 teen boys and girls between 15 and 19 years of age who participated in the door-to-door 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

"Formal sex education is beneficial for youth who are considered to be at-risk," noted Mueller, who cited as an example the 88 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15 among urban black females who had received any sex education. Urban black teen girls who were still in school at the time of the survey had a 91 percent reduced risk of initiation sex before age 15, the survey found.

The research also showed that boys living in single-parent households were more likely to delay sex past age 15 if they had attended a sex education class.

Mueller and her team were interested in teen sexual decision-making before and after the age of 15, because the federal governments' Healthy People 2010 initiative treats 15 as a dividing line. Healthy People 2010 sets a wide array of health goals for states and communities to achieve over the first decade of this century. One of its objectives: to reduce the number of teens under age 15 who are having sex for the first time.

"First and foremost, the report makes clear that the timing of sex education is quite important. That is, providing sex education to young people at an early age seems quite important in helping delay sexual activity," said Bill Albert, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The researchers said the study could not explain why sex education might have a stronger effect in delaying sex among teen boys and black girls, but Albert offered an explanation.

"It is the case that declines in sexual activity among teen boys, as opposed to girls, and African-American teen girls, as opposed to other racial/ethnic groups, have been much more dramatic over the past decade. This may, in part, explain why the effect of sex education seems stronger. It may also be that concern about HIV/AIDs may be particularly strong among these two groups," said Albert.

However, certain sub-populations of teens deserve further research, said Mueller. The data suggested that both rural, white teen girls and white or Hispanic teen girls who had dropped out of school might be more likely to have sex before age 15 if they had sex education, but Mueller said the number of people in those groups in the study was so small that the results could be a statistical fluke.

"They were kind of opposite findings," said Mueller, who acknowledged that "some subgroups may not benefit from sex ed the same way as the larger group of teens."

This research comes in the wake of data released Dec. 5 by the CDC showing that the annual rate of births to teens has increased for the first time in 14 years. Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15 to 19 rose 3 percent -- from 40.5 births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 per 1,000 in 2006.

Considering both studies, Albert said, "The early wins may have been won. Future efforts may well have to be more intense, focused, and creative if the nation is to make continued progress in reducing teen pregnancy and childbearing. Put another way, yesterday's way of doing business will no longer suffice."

More information
To find more data about teenagers and sexual decision-making, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Having Boys as Friends Can Boost Young Girls' Drinking Risk

(HealthDay News) -- For girls, especially, having friends of the opposite sex during adolescence can raise the likelihood for alcohol use.

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University analyzed data on 4,700 twins in Finland.

They focused on the association between friendship characteristics and alcohol use and the extent to which genetic and/or environmental factors influenced similarity in drinking behaviors among adolescents and their friends.

"Our findings suggest that girls may be more susceptible to their friends' drinking and that having opposite-sex friends who drink is also associated with increased drinking," corresponding author Danielle Dick, now of Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a prepared statement.

Dick was an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis at the time of the study.
"Furthermore, genetically based analyses suggest that the correlation between adolescent/friend drinking was largely attributable to shared environmental effects across genders," Dick said.

Parents need to be aware of their children's friends and how they spend their time together. "This awareness is particularly important for girls, and when the friendship group consists of members of the opposite sex," Dick said.

The study is published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
"Those who design and implement [drinking] prevention approaches should take gender into account as a potentially critical moderator of prevention outcomes," Kenneth J. Sher, Curators' Professor in the department of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, said in a prepared statement.

"We need to better understand the 'why' of sex differences in risk in order to shed important light on the nature of risk processes," Sher said. "For example, are girls potentially more 'vulnerable' to peer-related effects at this stage of life because they are likely to be more intimately involved with their closest friends that are boys? That is, does gender simply serve as a 'proxy' of a variable such as intimacy or closeness during this time of their lives?"

More information
The Nemours Foundation has more about kids and alcohol.

Health Tip: Eating Fast Food?

(HealthDay News) - Fast food is so popular because it is just that -- fast. And it's easy and tastes good.

But fast food often is laden with fat, calories and sodium, and can take a toll on your health when eaten frequently.

Here are suggestions from the U.S. National Library of Medicine on making healthier fast-food choices:

• Order pizza with less cheese, and add veggie toppings.
• Order child-sized or a half sandwich, with lean meats and lots of vegetables, whole grain bread, and without mayonnaise and other sauces.
• A hamburger with a plain beef patty plus lettuce and tomato is a healthier choice. Skip the cheese and sauces, and don't get a side of fries.
• Try salads with light or fat-free dressings or lemon juice -- skip the bacon and creamy dressings.
• As a general rule, stay away from heavily breaded or fried dishes, as well as creams, dressings and sauces.

Green Tea, Fruit Extracts Touted as Potential Cancer Fighters

(HealthDay News) -- A gel derived from black raspberries, a fruit beverage and old-fashioned green tea all hold potential promise as ways to treat or prevent different types of cancer, preliminary research suggests.

"Until now, foods have not been considered good treatments for chronic illness, especially tackling tumors," Greg Jardine, a biochemist at Dr. Red Nutraceuticals in Australia, said at a teleconference Thursday. In fact, "foods can be medicine," added Jardine, co-author of a manufacturer-funded study of a "punch" that appeared to reduce the growth of prostate cancer in mice.

In addition to Jardine's study, two others -- one with people and one with rats -- suggest that a black raspberry gel can reduce oral cancer lesions and green tea can prevent colorectal cancer.

The studies, which are all small and need further confirmation, were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Sixth Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, which runs through Dec. 8 in Philadelphia.

Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Kentucky are using a gel made of extracts from black raspberries to treat oral lesions, which often begin as growths inside the mouth and threaten to turn into major tumors.

"About 36 percent will progress to oral squamous cell carcinoma, but, at this point, we don't have the molecular tools to determine which ones will go on to malignancy," said Dr. Susan Mallery, a professor in the Department of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology at Ohio State University's College of Dentistry.

About 7,500 people in the United States die each year of oral cancer, according to American Cancer Society statistics, and 34,000 new cases are diagnosed annually.

The researchers assigned 30 patients -- 20 with precancerous lesions and 10 healthy patients -- to apply the gel several times a day. After six weeks of treatment, the grade of the lesions decreased in 35 percent of patients, while it stayed steady in 45 percent of patients and grew in 20 percent, Mallery said.

Patients whose tumors had progressed the least seemed to do the best after undergoing the gel treatment, Mallery said. None of the patients reported side effects.

Why does the gel appear to work? According to Mallery, the active agents appear to be "those chemicals that give it a very rich purple color." The study authors suspect that the chemicals may help "re-educate" tumor cells, reversing their march toward cancer.

In another study, Australian researchers -- funded by Dr. Red Nutraceuticals, the maker of an antioxidant-boosted beverage called "Blueberry Punch" -- gave the drink to mice with tumors that were considered equivalent to prostate cancer in humans.

The tumors were 25 percent smaller in eight mice that drank the punch for two weeks, compared to eight mice that did not drink the punch. Jardine said the next step is to figure out if the punch would have a beneficial effect in men. The punch, designed to be a health aid, is sold in Australia and in New Zealand, and is made of fruit concentrates and a variety of extracts, as well as tarragon, turmeric and ginger, he said.

In the third study, researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey fed chemicals known as polyphenols from green tea to rats that had colorectal cancer. The polyphenols appeared to reduce the size of tumors by 45 percent, the study authors said.

It's not clear if the polyphenols would have a similar benefit in humans, and the equivalent amount of tea consumption in people would be hefty -- four to six cups a day, the researchers said.

More information
To learn more about colorectal cancer, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Heath.

Extra Doses of Vitamins C, E Don't Guard Against Preeclampsia

(HealthDay News) -- Taking extra doses of vitamins E and C doesn't reduce the chances of the blood pressure disorder preeclampsia in women who are at risk for the dangerous pregnancy complication, a new report finds.

The study casts real doubt on the effectiveness of this regimen in preventing preeclampsia, said study author Dr. Joseph A. Spinnato II, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "There were those that were arguing that the evidence was enough prior to our publication, so I think this is added weight," he said.

There may be other avenues of hope, however.

"The article was compelling and a little disappointing, but the authors left us with an out at the end of the article, that perhaps we shouldn't give E and C at the same time because the E might negate the C," said Dr. Miriam Greene, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "You can continue and try to do the two separately. They did prove that the drugs were safe."

The findings appears in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Preeclampsia, which occurs in about 5 percent of all pregnant women in the United States, can lead to sudden high blood pressure and irregular blood flow. This can activate platelets and the clotting system, which in turn slows blood flow further.

Risk factors for preeclampsia include: first pregnancy, 10 years since previous pregnancy, carrying multiple fetuses, being overweight, being under 20 or over 35, or having a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease, lupus or preeclampsia in a previous pregnancy, according to the March of Dimes.

At present, medical professionals have no clear guidance on how to prevent this potentially fatal condition.

"We don't have a good way to reduce the incidence of preeclampsia, except in calcium-deficient populations and those tend not to be in the U.S.," Spinnato said. "There is some evidence that still supports the use of baby aspirin among patients at risk, but even that is argued pretty heavily."

An Australian study published last year also found no benefit to vitamin C and E supplementation.

The current study involved 707 women at four Brazilian sites who were in their second trimester of pregnancy and who had chronic hypertension or a prior history of preeclampsia.
The women were randomly assigned to receive 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C with 400 International Units of vitamin E or a placebo daily.

The rate of preeclampsia was 13.8 percent in the vitamin group and 15.6 percent in placebo group, which was not a statistically significant difference.

There appeared to be no harmful effects on the fetus, a finding echoed in previous trials.
But this study had one surprise finding: more frequent premature rupture of membranes among women taking vitamins. "That was completely unexpected," said Spinnato, who is following up on the finding.

Other than the possibility that vitamin E is canceling out vitamin C, there is no clear explanation for why the combination didn't work.

"One of the continuing challenges to vitamin supplementation as a general thing is getting it from leafy vegetables is different than getting it from a pill," Spinnato said. "There are also those who argue that we didn't start [giving the vitamins] early enough, but that argument is difficult to swallow. There are medical and legal ramifications even for vitamins."

More information
To learn more about preeclampsia, visit the March of Dimes.

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