10 Actions Steps To Prevent Impotence

1. Recognize the Normal Signs of Aging. Remember, it may take longer to obtain an erection at age 60 than at age 20. More genital stimulation and foreplay are required as a man ages.
2. Beware of Medications that can Cause Impotence. There are literally hundreds of medications associated with the side effects of impotence. These common medications include tranquilizers, medication for high blood pressure and ulcers.
3. Avoid Tobacco. Tobacco it is a performance-zapper because its effect on blood vessels can decrease blood flow to the penis.
4. Drink Alcohol in Moderation.1-2 drinks per day may relax you and even protect your heart. More than 2 drinks per day may impact your sexual performance.
5. Timing can be Everything. Sexual performance is influenced by body rhythms. Hormonal levels can vary at different times of the day. It is important to find that time of day or evening that is best both mentally and physically for you and your partner.
6. Accept Occasional Failure. One episode of impotence-even if it last for weeks- does not mean that a man is permanently impotent. Stress and fatigue, and anticipation of failure, can paralyze your sex life. Accept occasional impotence as something that happens to every man at different times in his life.
7. See your Physician at least Once a Year. If you are more than 50 years of age, the cause of your erectile dysfunction is usually physical and not due to psychological or emotional reasons. You need to be sure there are not more serious, life-threatening conditions lurking behind the sexual problem.
8. Balanced Nutrition is important for Sexual Function. The American Heart Association states that a low-fat, a low-cholesterol diet prevents heart disease and arteriosclerosis which also affects a man’s erection.
9. Excess Stress. Excessive, long-term stress is “counter erotic” and affects both a man and his partner’s capability to have a happy sexual relationship.
10.Get Help. Persistent, chronic impotence needs medical attention before it interferes with relationships. Not treating erectile dysfunction may result in more severe illnesses including heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Bottom line: If you or your loved one is suffering from erectile dysfunction see your physician because help is available and no one needs to “suffer the tragedy of the bedroom.” If you want to keep it up, get a checkup!

Purchasing Medications Online-Let the Buyer Beware

With the high cost of prescription medications many patients are frequently asked about ordering medications online. This is certainly understandable with the high cost of medications, so many of our patients on fixed income, and the high unemployment rate making affording medication difficult or impossible. Patients are looking to their physicians for advice on buying medications online. This is the advice I give the patient in a written form to help them make the decision of whether to purchase medications over the Internet.
The FDA is trying to stop the flow of illegal ED drugs, but these medicines still circulate freely on the Internet. Legitimate online pharmacies do exist. It just takes a little bit of sleuthing to find them.
Here’s what to look for when you buy ED drugs online:
• A licensed pharmacy with an address in the U.S. (Check with your state board of pharmacy or the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.)
• A pharmacy that requires a prescription from your doctor
• Drugs that are approved by the FDA
• Containers that are clearly labeled with the name of the drug and the dosage
• A licensed pharmacist who is available to answer your questions
• A contact phone number to call if you have questions or problems
A clearly stated privacy policy that protects your credit card number and other personal information
Bottom Line: Doctors can only assume responsibility for medications they prescribe that are obtained from reputable pharmacies located in the United States. However, it may be possible to find drugs online if you follow the caveats described above.

Don’t Let Your Bladder Drain Your Travel Plans

Travel today can make anyone anxious and nervous. But traveling and worrying about urinary incontinence can make even the most seasoned traveler think twice about making plans for a trip. This article will provide ideas that can help allay those apprehensions about traveling if you have urinary incontinence.

First, if fears about having an incontinence episode are causing you to consider skipping your trip entirely, check in with your doctor. There are medications that can be taken once a day that will help with bladder frequency, urgency of urination and urinary incontinence. You may need to start taking medications a few days or a week in advance of traveling for them to work most effectively, so don’t delay.
Here are other things to discuss with your doctor:

A Kegel a day may keep you dry and comfortable. Kegel exercises are used to strengthen the muscles in the pelvis. However, it may take weeks or months to train these muscles to help control your urination. You can do the exercises at any time even while reading this article or while waiting for the lavatory sign to read “vacant.”

Some medications have side effects that can contribute to urinary incontinence. Check to make sure other drugs you take aren’t undermining bladder control. For example, people who take diuretics to manage blood pressure or swelling might need to switch medications to fight incontinence .
Creating Your Flight Plan

Here’s how to plan for flying or driving “dry”:
Book tickets carefully. If you’re flying, try to get an aisle seat and, if possible, one close to the toilet. Many booking sites let you choose the seat you want on a map of the plane.

Plan your route. If you’re driving, take a careful look at your map and consider stopping for bathroom breaks every 90 minutes or so (based on your typical time between urges or leaks).

Buy supplies. Even with good planning, you could experience a leak. Adult absorbent pads can help you feel more confident. For long trips, talk with your doctor about urethral plugs or portable catheters. Some patients may have a catheter or tube inserted into the bladder before a trip which will drain urine from the bladder to a leg bag which can be easily concealed under your clothing. The catheter can then be removed when you reach your destination. And if you’re flying, check ahead with your airline to find out what you can take in a carry-on. Generally, all prescription assistive products can go on the plane with you.

Learn foreign customs. If you’re traveling internationally, learn how to ask for a bathroom in the local language. Also check in advance to find out whether you will need change for public restrooms and tips for attendants.
Bladder Control While on Your Trip

Choose beverages carefully. Caffeine, soda, beer, and wine are all diuretics and increase the production of urine and can aggravate an already overactive bladder. You should skip these while flying or driving. Sip on water if you’re thirsty.

Ask for privacy. Should you find yourself in the awkward situation of needing a pat-down or other security screening, and you’re feeling embarrassed about your incontinence or related supplies, know that you can ask security officers for privacy. You may want to ask your doctor in advance for a note to confirm your situation.

Avoid constipation as constipation actually makes bladder control more difficult, so make sure you eat a varied diet and have regular bowel movements.

Void early and often. Instead of waiting for a leak, be proactive and seize your opportunities. Make sure you go to the bathroom before you get on the plane, during a layover, and when you have opportunities between meal and beverage cart service times. When driving, stick to your planned stops, even if you don’t feel the urge to go.

Pack a change of clothes. You want to travel light, but you should have easy access to a spare set (or two) of underwear and easy-to-wash travel pants.

Pack toilet supplies. Because you never know how well bathrooms will be maintained, you may want to carry your own flushable wipes, spare toilet tissue, sanitizing hand gel, plastic bags for disposing of trash or for storing soiled clothes, and any other supplies you think you might need.

Plan for special events. You may occasionally have to attend a gala dinner or other social engagement that could require sitting for hours while people speak or make presentations. Try to find out whether these will be on your itinerary and whether you can be seated close to a door.

Bottom Line: With proactive incontinence management, your trip should be as pleasurable and comfortable as you want and you won’t have to depend on Depends!

Article modified from Taking Incontinence on the Road, By Madeline Vann, MPHMedically reviewed by Farrokh Sohrabi, MD

Advice About Ordering Your Medications From Online Pharmacies In Other Countries

Drugs for most medical conditions are very costly. Today the cost spent on pharmaceutical agents is $307 billion per year or $728 for every American is spent each year on medications. (I am sure this is much higher for seniors who take much more medication than younger individuals.) The Medicare “donut hole”, or the failure of Medicare to pay for prescription drugs after the government has paid several thousand dollars, leaves many seniors without coverage for expensive medications for weeks or months at a time. Consequently, many seniors are going without medications or are looking to online foreign sources, i.e., Canada, Mexico, India, and China for their prescription medications. This article will discuss the caveats and pitfalls for buying prescription medications online.

I am frequently asked by patients how to buy less expensive medications including is it safe to buy medications online from another country.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opposes foreign drug purchases, warning that these sales pose serious safety problems. While importing Canadian medications is against U.S. policy, the FDA has said that it will not prosecute individuals who import small amounts (three months or less) for personal use. If you are considering ordering medications from Canada, remember that the FDA cannot guarantee the safety of those medications. The FDA’s concerns include:

Medications that have not been approved for sale in the United States may not have been manufactured under quality assurance procedures designed to produce a safe and effective product.

Some imported medications — even those that have the name of a product approved in the United States — may, in fact, be counterfeit versions that are unsafe or ineffective.

Some imported medications and their ingredients, although legal in foreign countries, may not have been evaluated for safety and effectiveness in the United States. These medications may be addictive or contain other dangerous substances.

Some medications are unsafe when taken without adequate medical supervision. You may need a medical evaluation to ensure that the medication is appropriate for you and your condition. Or you may require medical checkups to make sure that you are taking the medication properly, to assess whether it is working for you, and to check for unexpected or life-threatening side effects.

The medication’s label, including instructions for use and possible side effects, may be in a language you do not understand and may make medical claims or suggest specific uses that have not been adequately evaluated for safety and effectiveness.

An imported medication may not have information that would allow you to be treated promptly and correctly for a dangerous side effect caused by the medications.

The American Association for Retired Persons (AARP), the leading non-profit, non-partisan membership organization for people aged 50 years and over in the United States, does not encourage Americans to break the present drug importation law. But with an estimated two million Americans already buying prescription medications from Canada and other countries, AARP has come up with guidelines to help consumers minimize their risk and ensure that the medications they receive are the ones their doctors have prescribed. AARP recommends that you pick an online pharmacy that:

If you are buying drugs from Canada, look for the displays the seals of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA; see http://www.ciparx.ca/) or Internet and Mail-Order Pharmacy Accreditation Commission (IMPAC; see http://www.impacsurvey.org/). These organizations set standards for safety and service among Canadian mail-order pharmacies that sell to Americans. Those that meet the standards receive accreditation.

Requires a prescription for medication from your doctor. Reputable pharmacies may allow you to fax in a prescription but will then either confirm the prescription by a phone call to your doctor’s office or wait until they receive the original prescription in the mail before filling your order.

Expect that the pharmacy requires you to submit details of your medical history and clearly states the pharmacy’s policies for ensuring medical and personal privacy.

It is probably best to have taken a medication for at least one month before you order by mail so that you and your doctor know the medication is working and is safe for you.

Provides a full mailing address and a toll-free phone number on its website so that you can call and speak to a pharmacist to ask any questions you may have.

Displays on its website full information about shipping fees, payment policies, and refunds. Reputable pharmacies offer secure (encrypted) online payment for credit cards, alternative options for payment (such as electronic fund transfers and regular checks), and do not charge any separate fees except for shipping.

Charges the cost of the medications to your credit card only when the drugs are shipped, not when the order is first placed. An honest pharmacy refunds your money or reships medications immediately if your order does not arrive.

Bottom Line: If you’re wondering where to start looking for pharmacies online, visit http://www.pharmacychecker.com, a website run by an independent American consumer research group that provides ratings and price comparisons for more than 40 online pharmacies based mainly in the United States and Canada. This site rates them on a scale of 1–5 and notes whether a pharmacy is licensed, requires a prescription, provides its address and phone number, and offers personal privacy and payment security. The site compares prices for more than 1,000 drugs at these pharmacies and gives details on shipping fees and delivery times. Buying medication online is slight risk. However, if you follow these guidelines, you may be able to achieve considerable savings for those expensive medications.

Can’t Pee? It May Be Your Medications

Having the urge to urinate — and not being able to do so — is painful, as many men know.  Certain medications may make the emergency form of this condition, known as acute urinary retention, more likely.

Painful urination or difficulty urinating are listed as possible side effects of the drugs studied – sold under the names Atrovent, Combivent and Spiriva.

An article published in the prestigious Archives of Internal Medicine reported that men with chronic pulmonary or lung diseases who had just started taking inhaled anticholinergic medications, a common treatment for the breathing diseases, had 42% greater odds of developing the urinary problem than men who were not on anticholinergics.

Bottom Line: There is an association between respiratory inhaler use and urinary symptoms especially urinary retention.  This is particularly important issue in men who have enlarged prostate glands as they are at an increased risk of having the complication of urinary retention.

How Safe Are Expired Drugs?-The Truth Will Set Your Medications Free

By Richard Altschuler:

Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything? If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like “Do not use after June 1998,” and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

 In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have “expired” are still perfectly good?
  These are the pressing questions I investigated after my mother-in-law recently said to me, “It doesn’t mean anything,” when I pointed out that the Tylenol she was about to take had “expired” 4 years and a few months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement — feeling superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet — but she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage about medical issues.

 So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly “dead” drug, of which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit. I said “You could be having a placebo effect,” not wanting to simply concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually knowing what I was talking about. I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased.

First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug — it does not mean how long the drug is actually “good” or safe to use.

Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date — no matter how “expired” the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won’t get hurt and you certainly won’t get killed.

Studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually much less than the latter). Even 10 years after the “expiration date,” most drugs have a good deal of their original potency. So wisdom dictates that if your life does depend on an expired drug, and you must have 100% or so of its original strength, you should probably toss it and get a refill, ” If your life does not depend on an expired drug — such as that for headache, hay fever, or menstrual cramps — take it and see what happens.

 

In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn’t mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. “Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons,” said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. “It’s not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover.”

The FDA cautioned there isn’t enough evidence from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers’ medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with a handful of exceptions — notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some liquid antibiotics – most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. “Most drugs degrade very slowly,” he said. “In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years. “

 

Enzyte May Do More Than Enhance Your Erection – It Is Linked To Heart Problems

This drug sold as a natural enhancement for erectile dysfunction.  However, it has been shown to cause abnormal heart rates in some men using the products. Doctors are now advising their patients to stop using the product until more data is available.

Enzyte contains a blend of ginkgo, ginseng and goat weed. No one knows exactly which ingredient causes the heart problems. So far, Enzyte has not issued a statement in response to the study or addressed any concerns about the possible heart rhythm problems.

This was reported in a credible medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine in 2010.

How To Become a Better Patient-You Need to Ask the Vital Questions

It is not easy being a patient.  Most patients are nervous and anxious when visiting a doctor and often forget to ask vital questions that will impact their health.  Here are six questions that you should ask your physician when he\she prescribes a new medication:

1.  What does this medication do?  What is the purpose of the medication?

2. How will I know if the medication is working?  Can you tell me about how long I will have to wait before the medication begins to work?

3. What are the side effects of this medication?  What should I do if I experience these side effects?  How common are these side effects?

4. Why is this medication good or effective for my condition?

5. Are there any other non-medication alternatives that I could try that may do the same as the medication?

6. What are the consequences of not taking this medication?

7. Is this a new drug?  Would a less expensive generic drug work just as well?

By asking these questions, you will demonstrate to your doctor that you are actively involved in your medical care.  You now become a part of the “team” and there is no one who should be more interested in your care than you.