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Taking Social Networking Offline

June 25, 2007

At first, the Web didn’t look too promising an avenue for meeting new people, since the only ones who ever seem to contact me through my page on MySpace are spammers selling Viagra. Then a friend told me about MeetIn.org, an online social network designed to help people find new friends — not the romantic kind — to do fun stuff with in the real world.

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I started using MeetIn.org two months ago, having found myself a social butterfly with its wings clipped. My best friend had bought her first home and was busy caulking the bathtub and painting walls. Another buddy was getting ready for her first baby. Yet another was working two jobs. After spending one more Sunday weeding my yard, it dawned on me that I needed to find more friends to join me for hikes and concerts.

However, making new friends is not easy, even in Portland, Ore., a superfriendly city. I am too shy to initiate conversations with strangers at my favorite bookstore, the gym or lectures. At first, the Web didn’t look too promising, since the only new people who ever seem to contact me through my page on MySpace Latest News about MySpace are spammers selling Viagra. Then a friend told me about MeetIn.org, an online social network designed to help people find new friends — not the romantic kind — to do fun stuff with in the real world.
Millions Reach Beyond Cyberspace

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Apparently I’m not alone in my quest for offline friendships. Social networking sites that attempt to go beyond the conventional, online-only services offered by the likes of MySpace and Evite have been enjoying stellar growth. MeetIn’s user base has nearly doubled, vs. a year ago, to 75,000 people in 90 cities worldwide. Other sites focused on getting people together offline report strong growth as well. Launched five months ago, nightclub-oriented MingleNow.com already boasts 1 million users.

With MeetIn you set up a profile, which can include your photo, age and brief sections on education and interests (MeetIn’s largest and most active chapter is in Portland, where more than 6,600 people have created profiles). Each member can post invites to events — dinners, concerts, salsa dancing, Frisbee outings — for others to join. The Portland contingent posts about 150 events a month. Promotional and singles events are a no-no. “I was very, very nervous and apprehensive,” remembers Joanne Couchman, who came to her first MeetIn event in 2005, after she and her boyfriend relocated to Portland from the East Coast. “But I walked in and these people made me feel like I’ve known them forever.”

The similarly named MeetUp.com, which helps people find events ranging from scrapbooking to lectures on social justice, has seen the number of RSVPs on its site double in the past five months. To keep up with the growth, MeetUp plans to double its staff this year to 60 people, says Scott Heiferman, cofounder of the site. “We are growing faster than ever.”

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Impotence Indicates Risk Of Heart Disease

June 21, 2007

Many people who suffer a heart attack had never had any symptoms of heart disease. Of the roughly 5,000 individuals who die of sudden cardiac arrest in Sweden each year, two thirds had not had any known heart disease. But in men there is one thing that should constitute a advance sign of coming heart problems: impotence.

In some cases, impotence can have neurological, psychiatric, and other causes. But the most common cause, accounting for up to four cases of five, is that the blood circulation in the penis has become so poor that erection is impaired, or no erection can occur at all. And if the circulation in these vessels has been affected by atherosclerosis, then it is highly probable that the same process is under way in the coronary artery in the heart.

In a dissertation from Lund University in Sweden, the physician Rasmus Borgquist has managed to show that this reasoning is correct.

“One of our studies shows that otherwise healthy men with impotence show signs of early atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries of the heart. In another study we saw that men with impotence evince a higher incidence of high blood pressure, high blood fat, abdominal fat, and other traditional risk factors for heart disease,” he says.

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The conclusion is that men with impotence problems should seek care as soon as possible, since both their impotence and the possible threat of heart disorders can be counteracted with early intervention. The first priority involves changes in life style, such as quitting smoking, exercise, and altered diet, and then, if these are insufficient, ¬medication for lowering blood pressure and blood fat and also pharmacological therapy for treatment of the impotence as such.

“It’s probably easier to get men to accept changes in their life style if you can point out that they alleviate impotence, rather than talking about the risk of a heart attack sometime down the road. And there are studies that show that potency improves rather quickly in those who quit smoking and lose weight,” says Rasmus Borgquist.

The notion that there is a connection between impotence and heart disease was put forward in the mid 1980s. But this connection has been studied seriously only in recent years.

“Today there is a greater interest in these issues, both among the public and at drug companies,” claims Rasmus Borgquist. “On the one hand, several new drugs have appeared to combat cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors, and, on the other hand, potency drugs like Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra have led many more men to seek help for impotence.”

There is still a certain “awkwardness factor” that makes some patients reluctant to seek help, and some physicians are hesitant to take up the matter. But in Rasmus Borgquist’s experience, once the physician has broached the subject, patients tend to respond frankly.

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New guidelines recommend Viagra, sildenafil for pulmonary hypertension

June 13, 2007

A recently issued update to the 2004 American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Guidelines recommends the use of sildenafil in treating patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), reporting a substantial benefit.

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The drug, most commonly known as Viagra, is widely used to treat erectile dysfunction.

The recommendation is based on several reports of studies of patients with PAH who were successfully treated with long-term sildenafil therapy. In one case, 222 patients completing 1-year of treatment with sildenafil monotherapy improved their 6-minute walk test by 51m.

This update appears in the June issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

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HIS HEALTH: What does a diagnosis of prostate cancer mean? (Pt II) - The surgical option

June 6, 2007

Regarding ability to permanently cure the condition, given early cancer, radical prostatectomy in which the prostate gland and seminal vesicles are completely removed, has the longest track record of durability of cure but is very invasive (although laparoscopic or keyhole surgery has minimised this aspect of treatment thereby shortening the period of convalescence).

With open radical prostatectomy, an average hospital stay of three to six days can be expected and convalescence at home, before return to major activities, is approximately six weeks. The catheter placed at surgery to drain the bladder while the joining between the urine passage and bladder heals can be expected to remain for five days to three weeks depending on the surgeon’s preference and the method of rejoining used.

Common side effects (greater than five per cent) include minor urine leakage that is usually short lived (the operation inherently involves completely removing one of the two muscles which control the urine and shortening the remaining one) and erectile dysfunction. The risk of the latter is related to the patient’s age (the younger the better), pre-surgery erectile function (the better it is before, the better it is after) and whether the nerves that transmit erectile impulses to the penis are spared. In reality, a nerve-sparing operation is usually performed unless otherwise contraindicated but despite this, nerve conduction may be impaired after the surgery for different reasons and full nerve recovery may take up to 18 months.

Inject the penis

There is no advantage of laparoscopic prostatectomy (robot assisted or not) where post-operative urinary control and erectile function are concerned. During this period oral agents such as Viagra, Levitra or Cialis may speed return of erectile activity and for intercourse, the patient can be taught to inject a drug directly into the penis which gives firm erections.

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A patient can expect to have a dry orgasm after surgery and perhaps som orgasmic sensation. He can also expect to be infertile and this is especially important to know when the man diagnosed with prostate cancer has not yet started a family. It would be prudent for him to impregnate his wife prior to treatment (prostate cancer cannot be sexually transmitted, a frequently asked question by concerned female partners) rather than undergo expensive and invasive assisted conception techniques after the surgery.

Complications of surgery include total loss of urinary control, a stricture or narrowing of the joining between the urine passage and the bladder; clots forming in the limb or pelvic veins which may travel to the lungs and cause death - this dreaded complication is minimised by early mobilisation after surgery, chemically ‘thinning’ the blood and applying mechanical devices to the legs to keep the blood in the calves flowing during and immediately after surgery.

Heavy blood loss during surgery is sometimes encountered but, once controlled, the patient’s own blood (taken off prior to surgery) is returned to him close to the end of the procedure. This preoperative ’self-donation’ of blood significantly reduces the risks associated with blood donated by someone else.

What can a patient do prior to surgery to optimise the outcome? Lose weight if overweight, stop smoking, stop taking aspirin tablets or herbal supplements 10 days prior to surgery, see an internist to help optimise preoperative health, and learn to do pelvic floor muscle (Kegel’s) exercises preferably with the aid of a physiotherapist.

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Aussie Viagra-fed oysters arouse international interest

June 5, 2007

SYDNEY (AFP) - George May said the natural qualities of the oyster, known for arousing sexual desire, combined with the best modern pharmaceutical equivalent to create a potentially multi-million dollar market.

“First of all, oysters are the greatest natural aphrodisiac, second, you lace it with Viagra, and third, it’s a laugh,” the 59-year-old told AFP on Monday.

May, who was a successful Sydney marketing executive until being diagnosed with prostate cancer late in 2006, will not be allowed to sell his oysters in Australia because they contravene strict regulations.

And he has been ordered by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which produces the anti-impotence drug Viagra, to stop using the name of their most famous product in his marketing.

But May says neither of these obstacles will stop him from exporting his specially prepared Sydney Rock Oysters around the world.

“No-one can stop me feeding Viagra to my oysters. The reason that Pfizer are jumping up and down is that I used the name Viagra,” he said.

“I’m getting calls from Macau, Hong Kong, Moscow for god’s sake. I’m getting calls from all over the bloody world.”

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May, a self-described “marketing genius” from Scotland, said the idea came to him after he started “hanging around with the boys” in the small fishing village north of Sydney he retired to following prostate surgery last December.

His doctor had prescribed a small daily dose of Viagra to help his recovery and it occurred to him he should be feeding the drug to oysters to help the local farmers, many of whom had struggled after a disease swept through their crops.

May said he told them: “I’m going to feed them Viagra and zinc and every other aphrodisiac I can find.”

He has since patented the idea of feeding the oysters Viagra, magnesium, zinc and sea grass among other things after the shellfish have gone through the normal purification process.

“They are all being really well looked after because they are in beautiful filtered water and we’re actually feeding them vitamins and minerals,” May said. “We’re getting a bigger oyster.”

May now has some 10 million oysters in cultivation and says he eats one to two dozen each day without any ill effects of consuming a foodstuff containing some medication. “I swear to god. They work,” he said.

A spokesman for Pfizer said the drug company was concerned about the use of their brand name. “It’s a very ordinary trademark issue,” he said.

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