Long-term use of prescription painkillers for back pain linked to erectile dysfunction in men

May 15, 2013 ? Regularly taking prescription painkillers, also known as opioids, is associated with a higher risk of erectile dysfunction, according to a study published online today in the journal Spine.

The researchers included more than 11,000 men with back pain in the study and examined their health records to find out if the men taking prescription painkillers were more likely to also receive prescriptions for testosterone replacement or ED medications.

More than 19 percent of men who took high-dose opioids for at least four months also received ED prescriptions, while fewer than 7 percent of men who did not take opioids received ED prescriptions.

In the study, men over 60 were much more likely to receive ED prescriptions, but even after researchers adjusted for age and other factors, men taking high-dose opioids were still 50 percent more likely to receive ED prescriptions than men who did not take prescription painkillers.

"Men who take opioid pain medications for an extended period of time have the highest risk of ED," said study lead author Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH, investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and professor of Evidence-based Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.

"This doesn't mean that these medications cause ED, but the association is something patients and clinicians should be aware of when deciding if opioids should be used to treat back pain," Dr. Deyo added.

Opioid use is growing in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Mortality and Morbidity Report, prescription opioid sales quadrupled between 1999 and 2010. Another recent survey, published in the journal Pain, estimates 4.3 million adults in the U.S. use these opioid medications on a regular basis. The most commonly used prescription opioids are hydrocodone, oxycodone and morphine.

"There is no question that for some patients opioid use is appropriate, but there is also increasing evidence that long-term use can lead to addiction, fatal overdoses, sleep apnea, falls in the elderly, reduced hormone production, and now erectile dysfunction," says Dr. Deyo, who has spent more than 30 years studying treatments for back pain.

For this study, Dr. Deyo and colleagues identified 11,327 men in Oregon and Washington enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente health plan who visited their doctors for back pain during 2004. The researchers examined the men's pharmacy records for six months before and after the back-pain visit to find out if they had filled prescriptions for opioids and for ED medications ortestosterone replacement.

Opioid use was categorized as "none" for men who did not receive a prescription for opioids; "acute" for men who took opioids for three months or less; "episodic" for men who took opioids for more than three months, but less than four months and with fewer than 10 refills; and "long-term" for men who took opioids (a) for at least four months or (b) for more than three months with 10 or more refills. Anything more than 120 mg of morphine equivalent was categorized as high-dose use.

More than 19 percent of the men who took high-dose opioids for at least four months also received ED medications or testosterone replacement. More than 12 percent of men who took low-dose opioids (under 120 mg) for at least four months also received ED medications or testosterone replacement. Fewer than 7 percent of men who didn't take opioids received ED medications or testosterone replacement.

Researchers found that age was the factor most significantly associated with receiving ED prescriptions. Men 60 to 69 were 14 times more likely to receive prescriptions for ED medication than men 18 to 29.

Depression, other health conditions (besides back pain), and use of sedative hypnotics like benzodiazepines also increased the likelihood that men would receive ED prescriptions.

But even after researchers adjusted for these factors, long-term opioid use increased the likelihood of also receiving prescriptions for ED medication by 50 percent.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/ii55HZ6PYTc/130515094923.htm

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Oh No They Didn't! - Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre give $70 million to ...

Entrepreneurs and music industry icons Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre (Andre Young), already known as forward-thinking visionaries in music and business, are giving $70 million to USC to create a unique undergraduate experience.

The duo?s gift will establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, an environment for those rare undergraduate students whose interests span fields such as marketing, business entrepreneurship, computer science and engineering, audio and visual design, and the arts. The program will prepare them to become a new generation of inspired innovators.

The goal of the academy is to shape the future by nurturing the talents, passions, leadership and risk-taking of uniquely qualified students who challenge conventional views of art and industry. The academy will attract students who are motivated to explore and create new art forms, technologies and business models ? and who will benefit from a stimulating environment that fosters exploration and discovery beyond traditional educational and disciplinary boundaries.

?The vision and generosity of Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young will profoundly influence the way all of us perceive and experience artistic media,? said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. ?USC provides an extraordinarily rich academic, research and artistic environment. We are committed to encouraging our students to use their intellectual and creative resources to effect change in all segments of society. Our goal is to ensure that the academy is the most collaborative educational program in the world.?

Iovine and Dre?s gift is part of The Campaign for the University of Southern California, a multiyear effort to secure $6 billion or more in private philanthropy to advance USC?s academic priorities and expand its positive impact on the community and world.

To meet student interests and to meld inspiration with education, the academy?s specially designed courses will provide students with a solid background in the integration of technology with all aspects of creativity along with a thorough understanding of existing and potential business, marketing and distribution strategies.
Drawing on the expertise of top faculty from the USC Marshall School of Business, the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Thornton School of Music, the academy will also host industry icons and innovators as visiting faculty and guest speakers. It will offer a highly select group of students an integrated, four year course of study that will provide in-depth learning in engineering and computer science, fine arts and graphic design, business, and leadership models. Team-taught interdisciplinary courses will be developed and adapted specifically for the program.

The Iovine and Young Academy will focus on four core curriculum areas: arts and entrepreneurship; technology, design and marketability; concept and business platforms; and creating a prototype.

The academic program will include one-on-one faculty mentoring, opportunities to interact with luminaries from the arts and entertainment industry serving as guest speakers and lecturers, and a broad array of internship opportunities for students.

During their fourth and final year, academy students will take up residence in an experiential setting called the ?Garage.? Grouped into self-directed teams, which may include nonacademy students from across the university, these students will determine a project that can be developed into a prototype over the course of the year.

Appropriate faculty members, other artists and business leaders will serve as mentors to each group, and venture capitalists and other real-world experts will be introduced to give students advice and direction. All of these elements will combine into one unique educational experience, where working together, students will challenge one another to take even greater risks in innovation.

?Flexibility is a hallmark of USC, and the academy?s curriculum is incredibly adaptive,? said USC Roski Dean Erica Muhl, who will serve as the academy?s inaugural director. ?The curriculum was created to take full advantage of a newly designed, revolutionary educational space that will offer students very powerful tools. Academy students will have the freedom to move easily from classroom to lab, from studio to workshop, individually or in groups, and blow past any academic or structural barriers to spontaneous creativity.

?The academy?s core education will create a common, multilingual literacy and fluency across essential disciplines,? she continued. ?This ?big picture? knowledge and skill will equip graduates with a leadership perspective that is unparalleled in an undergraduate degree, and that will be applicable to virtually any industry.?

USC?s strategic location in Los Angeles ? widely viewed as the creative and media capital of the world ? provides an opportunity for students to take advantage of a living laboratory where music, film and visual arts are deeply intertwined. In addition, the university?s proximity to the city?s burgeoning ?Silicon Beach? as well as Northern California?s Silicon Valley provides access to an array of technological advances from which students can draw inspiration.
The academy will enroll its first class of 25 students in fall 2014. Applicants will be accepted based on a rigorous review process encompassing demonstrated academic excellence as well as proven ability for original thought. Students who complete a course of study in the academy will graduate with a degree that recognizes each individual?s ability to engage and succeed in an educational experience that is constantly asking the question, ?Why not??

Iovine, chairman of Universal Music Group?s Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records, is one of the music industry?s most accomplished and respected leaders. Iovine began his four-decade career as a recording engineer, working with the likes of John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. As record producer, he was instrumental in the career breakthroughs of artists such as Patti Smith, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, U2, Stevie Nicks, Dire Straits and The Pretenders.

Iovine co-founded Interscope Records in 1990, widely regarded as the home of music?s greatest artists, including Dr. Dre, Nine Inch Nails, Mary J. Blige, No Doubt and Lady Gaga, among others.

Born in Compton, Calif., hip-hop pioneer/producer Dre began his career as a member of the World Class Wreckin? Crew. In 1986, he co-founded N.W.A. and won critical and commercial acclaim with the group?s 1988 landmark rap album Straight Outta Compton. In 1992, Dre released his solo debut, the G-funk masterpiece The Chronic, which Rolling Stone hailed as one of the greatest albums ever made.

With the launch of his own record company, Aftermath Entertainment, in 1996, Dre went on to discover and nurture such next-generation hip-hop superstars as 50 Cent, The Game, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.

In 2006, Iovine and Dre co-founded Beats Electronics, a high-performance headphone and sound transmission company intent on recapturing the fidelity of the studio. With its expansion into smartphones and car audio systems, Beats by Dr. Dre has captured 40-percent market share of the entire billion-dollar headphones industry.

SOURCE

Source: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/77838018.html

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Look To A Lighter Future With Better Weight Loss Tips | How To ...

Trying to shed unwanted pounds is like most things, a little education goes a long way. But, because of all the different weight loss methods, it can be difficult to figure out which one to try. Using these tested tips can give you the best results.

Reducing your consumption of red meat is one way to help you lose weight. Red meat has high amounts of cholesterol and saturated fat, which is extremely harmful to your heart. Cut red meat. Go for lean meat like tuna and turkey.

TIP! It is often said that you should drink large amounts of water if losing weight is your goal. However, the fact that drinking cold water will increase your metabolism is less well known.

Find lower calorie ways to fix your favorite foods, rather than eliminating them completely from your diet. It is not uncommon for dieters to entirely abandon their weight loss plans in favor of an intense craving. If you eat the food you love, though in a low-calorie version, you will never feel deprived and will have a better chance of sticking to your diet.

Stay busy to keep your mind of eating and also to burn calories. If you have nothing to do, and you are bored, you will be far more likely to daydream of food and to eat food. Staying busy is the best way to avoid these types of cravings.

Develop healthy habits to succeed at losing weight. By making positive changes, you can stick to your diet. Instead of thinking all the time about avoiding unhealthy breakfasts like donuts in the morning, consider going somewhere that offers fresh fruit instead. It is much simpler to create new habits than it is to try to break old habits.

TIP! A great food option to aid your weight loss goal is yogurt. Yogurts that are plain or low in fat are your healthiest choices.

It is crucial you keep an eye on how many calories you are taking in each day. You can do this by monitoring the amount of calories and calculate them by your personal daily needs. Once a person knows how many calories are needed, it will be easier to determine the optimal amount of food to be eaten.

A pedometer can keep track of your walking when you are losing weight. Typically, you will want to aim for 10,000 steps for the full day. When you figure out your average number of steps you take daily, you can push yourself to take more. Every step you takes gets you in better shape and helps you lose weight.

Avoid eating processed foods if you want to lose weight. Read the labels of the products you buy and avoid anything that contains too many preservatives. The types of junk food that are stuffed with fat, refined sugar, and preservatives will start to look less attractive to you.

Eat butter that is whipped. Many people hesitate at the idea of cutting butter out of their diet. There are those who really just love real butter. Thankfully, you don?t need to eliminate butter to drop weight. Just change over to eating whipped butter. It tastes just like real butter with only half the calories.

Be realistic with your weight loss goals. As with most things in life, having an unrealistic goal makes you unable to reach it usually. If you also try to drop a large amount of weight in an unrealistically short period of time, you are going to fail. Set smaller goals along with your overall weight loss goal. Focus on what?s directly in front of you, not down the road. Focus instead on losing smaller amounts of weight each week.

TIP! Try preparing a large batch of food every weekend, then dividing it into healthy portions and freezing each one. Keeping the freezer stocked with healthy food that you can make quickly is a great way to avoid the pitfall of fast food.

It?s important to make a habit of checking your weight at regular intervals while you?re trying to reduce it. This will help you see if you are moving forward or backward. You can also record your waist size and other vital measurements. Doing so makes it more likely that you will lose weight.

Weight loss depends on keeping a careful eye all the time on food intake. Both exercise and diet are key to having a healthy life and great body. A good thing to remember is that you need to take in less calories and burn more.

Angel food cake is a great dessert option if you must have something sweet because it is very light and lower in calories than other choices. There are some cravings that are so strong, they seem impossible to ignore. An angel food cake or it?s equivalent contain a lot of air. These airy cakes have a lower calorie count than other varieties of cake.

TIP! Be sure to eat lots of healthy foods when you are dieting. Even though you are trying to lose weight, you need to make sure your diet contains adequate nutrition.

If you want to lose weight, give extra scrutiny to high-calorie foods. Should you permit yourself a small slice of cake, arrange fresh fruit around the cake so it will be a sweet treat to relish. Have a little fruit with every bite of cake, and you will be satiated and full.

The advice above has worked for many people and can just as easily work for you. Don?t spend hours wandering the Internet and watching unhelpful videos. Now that you are armed with this knowledge, you can begin losing the weight you?ve been trying to lose for years today. Stick with what you?ve just learned, and you will soon reap the benefits.

Distraction makes piling on the pounds easy. If you do not pay attention to how much you are eating, you can accidentally eat too much and reaching your goal of weight loss will be hard to achieve. Stay aware of the amount of food you eat at each meal or snack, and you will likely find yourself eating less.

Tags: lose weight, real butter, weight loss

Source: http://www.reducebellyfatz.com/look-to-a-lighter-future-with-better-weight-loss-tips/

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The 6 Big Celebs Who Starred on 'The Mickey Mouse Club'

Since The Mickey Mouse Club debuted in 1955, the show became known for discovering young talent, like Annette Funicello.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/6-celebs-who-starred-mickey-mouse-club/1-a-535939?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3A6-celebs-who-starred-mickey-mouse-club-535939

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No idle chatter: Malaria parasites 'talk' to each other

May 15, 2013 ? Melbourne scientists have made the surprise discovery that malaria parasites can 'talk' to each other -- a social behaviour to ensure the parasite's survival and improve its chances of being transmitted to other humans.

The finding could provide a niche for developing antimalarial drugs and vaccines that prevent or treat the disease by cutting these communication networks.

Professor Alan Cowman, Dr Neta Regev-Rudzki, Dr Danny Wilson and colleagues from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Infection and Immunity division, in collaboration with Professor Andrew Hill from the University of Melbourne's Bio21 Institute and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology showed that malaria parasites are able to send out messages to communicate with other malaria parasites in the body. The study was published today in the journal Cell.

Professor Cowman said the researchers were shocked to discover that malaria parasites work in unison to enhance 'activation' into sexually mature forms that can be picked up by mosquitoes, which are the carriers of this deadly disease.

"When Neta showed me the data, I was absolutely amazed, I couldn't believe it," Professor Cowman said. "We repeated the experiments many times in many different ways before I really started to believe that these parasites were signalling to each other and communicating. But we came to appreciate why the malaria parasite really needs this mechanism -- it needs to know how many other parasites are in the human to sense when is the right time to activate into sexual forms that give it the best chance of being transmitted back to the mosquito."

Malaria kills about 700,000 people a year, mostly children aged under five and pregnant women. Every year, hundreds of millions of people are infected with the malaria parasite, Plasmodium, which is transmitted through mosquito bites. It is estimated that half the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria, with the disease being concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions including many of Australia's near neighbours.

Dr Regev-Rudzki said the malaria parasites inside red blood cells communicate by sending packages of DNA to each other during the blood stage of infection. "We showed that the parasites inside infected red blood cells can send little packets of information from one parasite to another, particularly in response to stress," she said.

The communication network is a social behaviour that has evolved to signal when the parasites should complete their lifecycle and be transmitted back to a mosquito, Dr Regev-Rudzki said. "Once they receive this information, they change their fate -- the signals tell the parasites to become sexual forms, which are the forms of the malaria parasite that can live and replicate in the mosquito, ensuring the parasites survives and is transmitted to another human."

Professor Cowman said he hopes to see the discovery pave the way to new antimalarial drugs or vaccines for preventing malaria. "This discovery has fundamentally changed our view of the malaria parasite and is a big step in understanding how the malaria parasite survives and is transmitted," he said. "The next step is to identify the molecules involved in this signalling process, and ways that we could block these communication networks to block the transmission of malaria from the human to the mosquito. That would be the ultimate goal."

This project was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Victorian Government.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/xJcSffHqZF0/130515125036.htm

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Why Your Ears Pop (And What to Do If They Don't)

Flying sick was a bad choice. Your congested ears refuse to pop and now you're stuck on a cross-country flight, cruising at 30,000 feet of ear-splitting agony. Here's how to fix it.

Under Pressure

The surface of the Earth is covered in a thick atmospheric soup. Though only a fraction of the density of our oceans, the atmosphere behaves much the same way. Just as water pressure increases the deeper you go, air pressure increases the closer you get to sea level. In both cases, that's because as you go deeper, you've got more and more air/water above pushing down on you.

We've evolved to be able to shrug off the weight of the atmosphere and our ability to hear actually requires it. See, sound waves are transmitted from the outer ear to the inner ear through the eardrum. This thin vibrating membrane acts as a barrier to liquids but allows atmospheric reverberations to pass through, however this requires that the air pressure on both sides of the eardrum be roughly equal.

Normally, equalizing the pressure between the outer and middle ear is easy. Each inner ear is equipped with a small channel that runs down to the side of your throat known as a Eustachian tube. It's designed specifically to facilitate air to escape from the inner ear into the throat, allowing you to equalize the atmospheric pressure on either side of the eardrum. These tubes are attached to the tensor veli palatini muscles in your soft palate and are activated automatically whenever you yawn or swallow. That "pop" you hear is the sound of the pressure in your inner ear equalizing.

Plane Drain

Now, when you're in a rapidly climbing airplane, air pressure in the cabin will decrease while the pressure in the inner ear remains constant. This causes the eardrum to bulge outward. Conversely, if you were to go scuba diving, the increased pressure on the outer ear relative to the inner would cause the drum to bulge inward. In both cases, your auditory capacity is reduced since the over-taught membrane doesn't transmit sound as well, resulting in that stuffy, plugged up feeling you get before the pop.

The Eustachian tube will typically open on its own whenever you swallow hard but when you have a upper respiratory, infection the tubes might not open at all on account of your swollen throat. No open Eustachian tube means no pressure equalization means a really uncomfortable flight.

Some folks will attempt to simply overpower this swelling by holding their nose, closing their mouth, and blowing; forcing air from the lungs into the tubes and equalizing the pressure. These folks don't much like their eardrums. Not only is there the very real chance of blowing too hard and tearing the eardrum itself, you can very well also blow all that infected mucus that's draining down your throat into the Eustachian tubes and give yourself a raging middle ear infection.

The Fix

Instead, drop a couple of decongestants before you take off to reduce the amount of snot running into your throat. As you feel the pressure beginning to build do the following:

• Hold your nose, close your mouth
• Turn your head to the right until your chin touches your shoulder
• Swallow hard until your left ear pops
• Turn your head to the left until your chin touches your shoulder
• Swallow hard until your right ear pops
• Continue doing this until you reach cruising altitude and start again as the plane begins its approach

That's it. Your ears should have popped and you are now free to enjoy the rest of your flight?at least until the baby in row 15 starts crying again.

[MSU - Wikihow - Physlink - ear diagram: Perception Space, diver: Elisei Shafer / Shutterstock,

Source: http://gizmodo.com/why-your-ears-pop-and-what-to-do-if-they-dont-505598950

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Va. Tech president retires; criticized in massacre (Providence Journal)

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