It's Your Health!

Yoga for Men
Men often push aside the stress that they feel and give little importance to relaxation techniques. One of the results is the tendency of men to develop heart disease at an earlier age than women. Yoga has many benefits that can help men to learn how to relax. The participant works through a series of poses to improve strength, flexibility, and breathing. Learning how to breathe from the diaphragm can help throughout the day to release tension. Also, many male athletes forget about flexibility focusing only on strength and performance. A yoga class is a great way to work on flexibility if you do not work on it on your own. There are many types of classes, so check around to find the class that suits your goals. If you wish to incorporate strength training into yoga, check into power yoga. You would be surprised at how this challenges even the strongest of muscles! It feels good, too.

Breaking the "Seal"
Have you ever asked yourself why, at a party, you can not urinate for hours, but once you go, you just keep on going? It's because the diuretic effect of alcohol is taking over by the time you seek relief. According to John P. Long, M.D., a urologist at the New England Medical Center in Boston, alcohol interferes with your body's secretion of antidiuretic hormone (ADH). Without this hormone, your body can't regulate urine output and drains more water than usual. Additionally, the longer it takes your liver to clear the alcohol, the stronger the diuretic effect will be. You'll feel the need as long as there's liquid in your bladder. In truth, you "broke the seal" when you opened the first can of the night.

Consider Water
The touted eight glasses of water a day is more than just good advice. It can help you look and feel younger. This will help your workout, your skin, and elimination. Water helps clean out your system. Since the body is mostly water, even slight, non-dangerous dehydration can be evident in dryer skin, less elasticity to the face and fatigue. See: Why Water?

Take Care of Your Heart
A study published in the journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 272, no. 18, pp 1439-41) showed that men with the highest levels of carotenoids had up to 60 percent fewer heart attacks and deaths. Carotenoids are the pigments which give fruits and vegetables their color. To date, over 600 have been identified and more than 60 can be found in food. There is increasing evidence that many carotenoids (alpha carotene, beta-carotene cryptoxanthin, lutein, lycopene and zeaxanthin) have powerful antioxidant properties which could help to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Furthermore, increasing your consumption of foods containing these substances increases your body's tissue levels.

To maintain a healthy heart, start to increase your carotenoid levels by eating more of the following foods:
Carrots, peppers, pumpkin, apricots, parsley, spinach, kale, sweet potatoes, tangerines, oranges, papaya, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, pink grapefruit, watermelon, okra, and corn. Read more about many of these healing, beneficial food at BellyBytes.com: Beneficial Bytes

Antidepressants and the Male Sex Drive
Antidepressants help some men fight premature ejaculation, but they can spoil a night of sex for others. In a recent survey of 1,763 men taking antidepressants, 37-percent reported experiencing sexual dysfunction. Doctors have known about the relationship between these drugs and sexual dysfunction for years, but this is the first study to show how widespread the problem really is. If you noticed a drop in sex drive or experienced erectile dysfunction, delay of orgasm, or inability to achieve orgasm, talk to your doctor about Wellbutrin or Serzone. They function differently in the brain than other antidepressants and trigger fewer sexual side effects. Or inquire about Buspar, Symmetrel or Viagra, which are up to 60-percent effective at reversing the sexual side effects of antidepressants. See also: Male Sexual Health or Sexual Healing.

Excess Weight and the Male Sex Drive
Overweight men are more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction than slimmer counterparts, according to data presented at a meeting of the American Urological Association. Men between the ages of 51 and 88 reported moderate to severe erectile dysfunction. These men also were more likely to have high blood pressure and weigh more. See also: Male Sexual Health.

Men with a waistline measuring 42-inches were nearly twice as likely to suffer erectile dysfunction compared with men whose girth measured 32-inches. Even after adjusting for age, smoking and hypertension, men with a larger waistline were more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction, the study said. The data also showed that men who were inactive were more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction than men who exercised at least 30 minutes per day.

Stress Makes Matters Worse
Actually, stress could be to blame as well -- it's the number-one cause of erection trouble today! Give your sex drive a boost, by cutting down on your stress levels.

Flaxseed and your Prostate
Men with early stage prostate cancer who ate a low-fat diet plus three tablespoons of ground flaxseed daily for just over a month saw their FSA levels drop. They also saw their testosterone and cholesterol levels go down.

PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is an indication of tumor growth. The men who had more advanced cancers saw the PSA scores continue to rise. But researchers speculate that had they stayed on a flaxseed diet longer, they might have seen some benefit as well.

Flaxseed is high in fiber, lignans and omega-3 fatty acids, all of which may help thwart cancer. You can purchase flaxseed in the bulk section of your grocery store or in healthy-food stores.

Source:  Urology, Volume 58, Page 47

Surgery-free vasectomy on the horizon
A no-cut procedure could take most of the pain and fear out of a vasectomy! In a standard vasectomy, a surgeon snips out a small section of the vas deferens (the tubes that carry sperm to the urethra), then seals the ends to block sperm. Doctors using the new technique would locate the tubes manually within the scrotum and attach a plastic clamp to hold them in place. Short pulses of ultrasound energy then fire away for 30 to 60 seconds to kill cells along the vas deferens walls, forming scar tissue that creates a barrier to sperm.

More studies will be conducted to determine whether the procedure blocks all sperm permanently. If successful, more testing will be done on men, which could mean a much easier ordeal. Currently it is not available, but watch for it in the not too distant future, and/or check with your doctor from time to time to learn of the progress on this new procedure.