Medical Minute: Male Menopause
Last Friday, Khloe Kardashian’s husband, Lamar Odom, was almost traded to the New Orleans Hornets NBA franchise. Mr. Odom unleashed a series of angry tweets on Twitter.com, before claiming his Twitter page had been hacked into.
Then, during a moment of male bonding between Lamar and uber macho ESPN radio jock Stephen A. Smith, the 6 ft 10 in, 230 lb Odom dissolved into tears. Lamar’s emotional response to this event might be due to the early stages of male menopause.
Emotional changes are one of the signs and symptoms of low testosterone in men that occurs when a male is going through “the change”. Hormonal changes are a natural part of aging for both men and women. Though women experience more changes than men when hormone levels drop due to aging.
What exactly is male menopause?
According to the Mayo Clinic, male menopause is “sometimes used to describe decreasing testosterone levels or a reduction in the bioavailability of testosterone related to aging.”
Male menopause occurs after age 30 on average. By about age 70, the decrease in a man’s testosterone level can be as much as 50 percent. One of the first signs of male menopause in a man is weight gain around the midsection, aka pot belly.
Medical Minute: Body Image Disturbance (BID)
The last post I wrote on Body Image Disturbance (BID) profiled a 23-year-old woman who died of complications related to her sixth breast augmentation surgery.
Despite the increased media focus on botched butt enhancement injections, many women continue to put their lives at risk.
Miami Gardens police have arrested a man (pictured above) who posed as a fake doctor to conduct unauthorized plastic surgery procedures on a woman who required hospitalization afterwards.
Cops say 30-year-old Oneal Ron Harris injected a substance consisting of cement, “fix-a-flat,” mineral oil, and “super glue,” into his victim as a butt enhancement and then sealed the incision with “super glue.”
The injections resulted in what police called a “serious medical condition,” requiring the victim to be hospitalized.
Miami Gardens Police say Morris also performed a similar procedure on himself. Source
Body Image Disturbance (BID), or Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a mental illness that is on the rise in the black community. Celebrities such as Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian help to perpetuate the myth that bizarrely altering a woman’s body parts will bring them riches and fame.
Rather than improve a woman’s low perception of herself, the illegal butt injections often results in depression, serious illness or death.
fanMAIL: Lil Wayne is still sipping that syrup
On Saturday, Oct. 8, we posted Lil Wayne’s “Public Service Announcement” video that we found on Derick G‘s blog.
To be honest, we didn’t even watch one second of that video, because, after all, Lil Wayne was in it. But we regret not watching the video after reading the following email from loyal reader SouthernLegalDiva.
Sandra,
I know you do “medical minutes” frequently on your blog. Recently, Lil Wayne posted a PSA wherein he explains his use of Promethazine DM Syrup as being prescribed by a doctor as a sleep aid. I have never heard of this usage. I could only watch about 6 mins of the video, as the BS level was through the roof. It was featured on Straightfromthea.com
Thanks, SouthernLegalDiva
It’s clear that Lil Wayne is still under the influence of drugs, specifically purple drank cough syrup — but he’s doing it legally, right under the nose of his probation officer. He says so right there in the video.
Medical Minute: Oral cancer in men caused by HPV
The human papillomavirus virus (HPV) has long been linked to oral cancers in men through oral sex. But according to CBS and ABC, a new report shows that the rate of HPV linked oral cancers in men is rapidly increasing.
Though the report mainly focuses on an increase in the rates of upper throat cancers in men, the same is true for cancers of the tongue, neck and the mucus membranes lining the inner cheeks.
The report — published in the Oct. 3 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology — showed that cases of HPV-positive tumors in men rose from 16 percent in the late 1980s to nearly 73 percent by the early 2000s.
The HPV virus is the most commonly sexually transmitted infection. But the majority of HPV infections in young women usually disappear before 1 year, causing no symptoms.
The 5-10% of infections in women that persist for years will usually develop into cervical cancer.
While women can also get oral cancer, the risk to men is far greater. The majority of infected women show no symptoms, but the HPV virus is still floating in their vaginal fluid, and is easily transmitted to men, just like the HIV virus.
fanMAIL: Leave Beyoncé Alone
In response to yesterday’s post on Pseudocyesis (False Pregnancy), reader Genti Price writes:
I use to love reading your blog, I felt they were informative about some celebs. But I read and detect a lot of attitude when you discuss some celebs on your site, EVEN MORE NOW than before. You sound like a girl from high school who is on the newspaper committee, who, if [you] can’t get [your] way with the person you think you should be able to, you will smear that person’s name in the high school paper who didn’t warrant any attention towards you.
There is no reason for you to post a picture of this woman with that title. Why not just find an actual medical article with a REAL person that is/was suffering from such condition? My God Sandra, we all know that this woman IS TRULY pregnant.
You talk about people needing to grow up.. YOU WEAR THAT VERY WELL.
May peace be upon you now and in the after life!
SR responds: Was that a threat?
Email was edited for length and clarity
Medical Minute: Pseudocyesis (False pregnancy)
Please note: any photos accompanying this post is used purely for illustration purposes and is not intended to diagnose any ailment or condition of the subject(s) in the photos.
Pseudocyesis, also known as false pregnancy or hysterical pregnancy, is a rare psychological condition in which a woman displays signs and symptoms of a real pregnancy even though she is not pregnant. The average age of women with pseudocyesis is 33.
To be diagnosed as true pseudocyesis, the woman must actually believe that she is pregnant. When a woman’s pseudocyesis is found to be caused by underlying psychological problems, she should be referred to a psychologist or a therapist.
The symptoms of pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy, are similar to the symptoms of true pregnancy and are difficult to distinguish from real pregnancy, even by trained physicians because of false-positive pregnancy tests.
The most common sign of false pregnancy is abdominal distention or a bloated belly that is much larger than expected. The woman’s abdomen (tummy) expands as a normal pregnant woman’s would, but at a more rapid rate than a normal pregnancy.
Bootsy Collins’ Nephew Dead at 24
*Bumped…
The 24-year-old nephew of ’70s funk star Bootsy Collins has died after a tooth infection spread to his brain.
Kyle Willis went to a hospital complaining of a toothache two weeks ago Collins’ wife Patti told The Cincinnati Enquirer. The father of a 6-year-old girl had no health insurance and could not afford the $27 for his antibiotic prescription.
The tooth infection quickly spread to his brain and Willis died at the University Hospital in Cincinnati where he was transported after becoming violently combative and delirious.
The infection was able to spread to his brain through one of the few openings in the blood-brain barrier that normally protects the brain and spinal cord from infection elsewhere in the body.
The blood-brain barrier is a collection of cells wrapped tightly like a net around tiny blood vessels in the brain that acts as a filter to prevent the passage of large objects like bacteria and virus into the brain from the blood stream in your body.
The roots of your teeth sit within inches of the brain and are not behind the blood-brain barrier. Therefore your brain is not protected from dental infections.
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