Health’s Blog

Experts claim that the red-fleshed fruit contains an ingredient that affects the body’s blood vessels in the same way as when a man takes the sex drug.

Researchers believe that the juicy fruit could be used to help men who suffer from erectile dysfunction.

Watermelons are loaded with an organic compound called citrulline that can trigger blood vessels to relax, much like Viagra does, according to scientists from Texas A&M University in the United States.

Dr Bhimu Patel, who led the study, said that when watermelon is consumed, citrulline is converted to an amino acid called arginine which improves circulation.

Dr Patel, who is director of the university’s Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Centre, said: “The more we study watermelons, the more we realize just how amazing a fruit it is in providing natural enhancers to the human body.

“We’ve always known that watermelon is good for you, but the list of its very important health benefits grows longer with each study.

“Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it.

“Watermelon may not be as organ specific as Viagra but it’s a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side-effects.”

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By Steven D. Levitt

A few years back Dubner and I wrote a piece on Slate heralding a remarkable young economist, Emily Oster. She has continued to do great work.

She also has done something incredibly rare for an academic economist: she has admitted she was wrong.

In places like India and China, there are many “missing women.” In other words, the sex ratios in those places are out of whack. This is especially true now with the availability of ultrasound machines to aid in sex-selective abortion, but it was true long before that technology became available.

Emily wrote a paper arguing that high rates of Hepatitis B in China explained a large part of the missing women puzzle. Medical data suggested women with Hepatitis B gave birth to more sons — many women in China are infected, thus too many sons. It seemed like a crazy theory when I first heard it, but she put together extremely compelling evidence from a variety of sources to support her argument. Eventually we published it in the Journal of Political Economy, where I was an editor.

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There are more men than women in China. That’s usually attributed to a cultural preference for boys, which leads in some cases to selective abortion or even infanticide.

But a few years back a young economist made a name for herself by arguing that the viral liver infection hepatitis B played a major role as well, by harming the development of female embryos more than male embryos.

Now the economist, Emily Oster, has changed her mind, arguing that further analysis shows that hep B probably isn’t a significant factor, the WSJ reports. In the world of elite academics, where many scholars seem to dig in and defend their hypothesis at all costs, such a reversal is rare.

“She did what you would hope good scholars would do but that very few good scholars actually have ever done,” Steven Levitt, the economist who edited the journal where Oster’s original paper was published, told the WSJ. (Levitt, also the co-author of Freakonomics, co-wrote an article for Slate on Oster’s hep B paper.)

Oster’s work grew out of a notion suggested by Baruch Blumberg, a doctor who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the hep B virus. He thought it possible that the virus might harm female fetuses if a parent were infected.

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are causing many Americans to take to the skies on “medical tourism” junkets, looking for high-quality yet low-priced health care at foreign clinics.

In many cases, patients get exactly what they are looking for, but experts also warn that the booming industry does have some risks.

“My own advice would be to look carefully at the accreditation of the hospital and consider the nature of the procedure. Are you sure it is the procedure you need? And is it done well at the place you are going?” said Dr. Ann Marie Kimball, a professor of epidemiology and health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health, in Seattle.

The surge in medical tourism over the past decade is being driven by rising U.S. health-care costs and growing numbers of uninsured or under-insured Americans, said Josef Woodman, the author of a guidebook on the topic called Patients Beyond Borders.

Almost 45 million Americans, or slightly more than 15 percent of the population, are currently uninsured, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics from 2005, the latest available.

Woodman estimated that more than 150,000 Americans traveled abroad for health care in 2006. The number is projected to double in 2007, he said.

“That 150,000 number is conservative,” he said. “Some experts say 400,000.” Among the top destinations: Southeast Asia and Mexico, with many other countries, such as Costa Rica, expected to be the next popular destinations for medical care.

Medical tourism companies, in collaboration with special “health travel agents,” have sprung up across the country, and some insurance plans are participating in these endeavors, as well.

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A Sydney University researcher is helping to alert people in the Asia Pacific region to the deadly impact of smoking.

Dr Rachel Huxley, acting director of the Nutrition and Lifestyle Division at the George Institute, says too few people in the region are aware of the dangers of smoking which is responsible for nine out of ten cases of lung cancer, three out of four cases of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and one in four cases of coronary heart disease.

Public awareness has been raised in Australia, which, over the past few decades, has gone from having one of the highest rates of cigarette smoking in the world to one of the lowest. But in the wider region, especially in developing countries, the number of smokers is enormous - China alone has 320 million smokers, the vast majority of them men. Moreover, a recent report suggests that over 50 per cent of doctors in China smoke.

Dr Huxley has led an international research team - the Asia-Pacific Cohort Studies Collaboration (APCSC) - with more than 60 researchers from nine countries examining the impact of risk factors on cardiovascular disease. More than 650,000 people have contributed to the research from 44 studies in the Asia Pacific region since 1999.

The latest research findings indicate that the risk of dying from lung cancer among women who smoke is double that for men. But the study also reported good news for any smoker wishing to quit the habit: stopping smoking can reduce the risk of death from lung cancer by up to 70 per cent. Dr Huxley and her team are trying to help developing countries avoid the “growing pains” that western countries have already suffered. “There is an urgent need to promote public awareness of the harmful effects of smoking within the region - particularly in China, where the numbers of smokers are so high that even a small reduction in the number of people who smoke could save tens of thousands of lives. But if current smoking patterns persist, 100 million smokers in China will be killed by the habit by the end of this century,” she said.

The need for comprehensive tobacco control policies is also highlighted by the research: working with the health departments of developed countries, Dr Huxley suggests that the western model of preventing and controlling smoking can be applied in Asian countries, with strong government controls over tobacco companies and massive advertising campaigns.

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Poetry is a unique and creative art form that allows us to express and share aspects of our mental lives. We can convey our thoughts and emotions, or experience those of another writer, with a depth and insight that go far beyond simple description.

Someone might say to you, for example, that she feels “very depressed.” But if she were to craft a poetic treatment of those feelings, she might find herself using images of bleak winters and barren landscapes, which could then perhaps suggest abandoned hopes and lost opportunities to the reader.

I confess that I don’t regularly read poetry, but I often listen to it. I delight in the daily 5-minute program, “The Writer’s Almanac,” narrated by Garrison Keillor. It’s on some public radio stations, but is also available as a podcast or on the program’s Web site. Keillor usually ends his daily recordings by reading a poem in that sonorous baritone of his.

I pause from my other activities and allow myself to be briefly transported into the world of the words, where they have been selected and organized just right by the poet to convey feelings and shared symbols from one mind to another. Poems are about compression too: I often marvel at how so few words can express so much emotion.

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November is American Diabetes Month. So why should you be concerned about diabetes? Some statistics from the American Diabetes Association might pique your interest.

• Diabetes is the 5th leading cause of death by disease; currently, it’s a disease that has no cure.
• Since 1987, the death rate due to diabetes has increased by 45 percent, while the death rates from stroke, cancer, and heart disease have all declined.
• Worldwide, over 246 million people have diabetes. By 2020, that number is expected to rise to 380 million.
• Diabetes is costing our society. In 2002, $92 billion was spent on direct medical costs for diabetes. This means that 1 out of every 10 dollars we spend on health care goes to feed the diabetes beast. The total cost of diabetes to the U.S. each year is estimated to be $132 billion, which includes not only the direct costs but also $40 billion in such indirect costs as disability, work loss, and early death. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some interesting, and maybe even frightening health facts*, that you probably never knew about. After reading these facts, you might want to think twice about grabbing a cup of coffee or even drinking a glass of orange juice for breakfast! Want to be lazy and lose weight at the same time, just go to sleep!

1) Motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunk drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding .08!

2) Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

3) Some parts of the world protect their babies from disease by bathing them in beer.

4) The word ‘gymnasium’ comes from the Greek word gymnazein which means ‘to exercise naked.’

5) There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. Of these, only 26 have been tested, and half caused cancer in rats.

6) The average American eats at McDonalds more than 1,800 times in their life.

7) A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day.

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Pilot screening programmes for abdominal aortic aneurysms in men aged 65 are due to be launched in England this year, but is this move too hasty? Two experts debate the issue in this weeks BMJ.

Around 90% of people with a ruptured aortic aneurysm die. But if the aneurysm is discovered before it ruptures and is repaired by an experienced vascular surgeon, mortality is around 7.4%, writes James Johnson, consultant surgeon at Halton General Hospital, Runcorn.

Around 5% of men aged between 65 and 74 have abdominal aortic aneurysms, but they rarely cause symptoms, so screening in this age group would potentially ensure that most aortic aneurysms are diagnosed and repaired.

But the case for screening is not clear-cut claims Johnson.

He points to wide variations in the mortality for surgical repair between hospitals in England. In addition, a number of patients will not be fit enough to have a repairaneurysm is a disease that rarely exists in isolation. Most patients will also have hypertension, or a history of myocardial infarction, stroke or diabetes.

As a result, a number of patients will be left with the knowledge that they have a life threatening condition that is liable to cause sudden death and that nothing can be done about it, writes Johnson.

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by Jonathan Gardner

In interviews with Health Affairs, government ministers in Germany and the Netherlands talk up market-oriented refinements to their universal health insurance systems for the future. But the news from Europe isn’t all happy: an unsettling survey in the United Kingdom finds that some physicians believe that the market will unravel the government-owned and -operated National Health Service (NHS) in the next decade.

The online poll of more than 500 general practitioners (GPs) conducted by Pulse, which describes itself as “UK’s leading medical weekly,” found that 84% believed that the NHS would not exist “as we know it” in ten years’ time and that only one-third believe that the NHS will be free at the point of use in the same amount of time.

Given that the publication does not disclose the survey’s methodology, it’s not clear whether the poll is reflective of British physicians’ attitudes. But it more than likely reveals an unease with some reforms within the NHS as well as incursions by the private market, including Richard Branson’s Virgin health centers, the first of which is scheduled to open this summer. Indeed, the Pulse poll reveals that one-quarter of its respondents had been asked to join a private firm, and the publication itself is mounting a campaign in opposition to the private clinics.

In a larger context, however, the place of the NHS in the health care systems of industrialized economies is in question. In the Euro Health Consumer Index 2007, the Stockholm-based Health Consumer Powerhouse scores the NHS as a “mediocre performer,” scoring seventeenth of twenty-nine on such indicators as patient rights and information, waiting times, outcomes, and the generosity of the medical and pharmaceutical benefit.

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