There aren't many publications and Web resources that offer men balanced, science-based, practical news and advice about how they can maintain and improve their health. The Harvard Men's Health Watch, Johns Hopkins's health update called "Spotlight on Men's Health," and the Medical University of South Carolina's men's health E-newsletters are a few that generally do. Here are a few kernels of useful advice drawn from their recent offerings.

A recently posted podcast about prostate cancer from the Medical University of South Carolina says that the condition, in many cases, can be safely left untreated. "One of the largest studies of its kind concludes that most older men with early prostate cancer do not shorten their survival odds if they adopt a 'wait-and-see' approach to the disease," according to the podcast. I came across similar data when I explored this wait-and-see, or "active surveillance," approach for an article last summer.

This week, I received an intriguing E-mail from Glenn Sacks, a men's advocate and journalist, crying foul about the possibility that a reality show called Bad Dads might air on Fox. The show's producers and officials from the National Child Support Center plan to hunt down deadbeat dads and humiliate them into paying child support with the cameras running, according to an article first published in the Hollywood Reporter and then by Reuters, which calls the concept "ambush reality TV—but for a noble cause."

The show's premise peeves men's activists, who say it perpetuates the stereotype that men are irresponsible when it comes to child rearing. Ned Holstein, the executive director of the advocacy group Fathers & Families, says: "According to U.S. Census data, noncustodial mothers are 20 percent more likely to default on their child support obligations than noncustodial fathers. There is absolutely no reason to name the show Bad Dads when the average noncustodial father is more likely to pay his child support than the average noncustodial mother." Adds Sacks: "The worst part about Bad Dads is the way it publicly humiliates children of divorce by depicting their fathers as not loving or caring for them. These children did not volunteer to be humiliated on national television."

I hate doctor's offices and hospitals gowns as much as the next guy, but the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Ad Council have a point with their recently released "Real Men Wear Gowns" public-service advertising campaign. Take a look:

Democratic lawmakers have called for the resignation of Ira Katz, the chief mental health official at the United States Veterans Affairs Department, after E-mails emerged suggesting that Katz attempted to conceal the high rate of suicide among veterans.

One E-mail has a subject heading of "Shh!" and states that 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under care of the veterans agency—far more than the department has admitted publicly. Another, according to the Associated Press, says an average of 18 veterans kill themselves each day. If that number is correct, it means that more veterans have killed themselves in one year than have been killed in combat during the entire Iraq war.

Puberty's rough on a growing boy's heart. And not just because of the roller coaster of testosterone-induced crushes that don't always pan out as hoped. During adolescence, boys experience silent physiological changes that leave them at a higher risk of heart disease than their female counterparts for the remainder of their lives, researchers reported today.

Men's blood pressure and triglyceride levels increase during adolescence, even as their beneficial HDL cholesterol levels fall, Antoinette Moran, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, found after tracking 507 teens. In contrast, teenage girls experience decreases in triglycerides and an increase in HDL. You can click here to read more about the study, which was published in the journal Circulation.

After writing an article last September about prostate cancer treatment options, I received a flood of mail chastising me for not mentioning proton beam therapy. I noted in a subsequent blog entry that, as a result of that feedback from readers, I decided to take a second look at proton beam therapy. The resulting magazine piece was published Wednesday on the U.S. News website and will appear in print on Monday. Let me know what you think of it.

For that article, I expanded my scope beyond prostate cancer to other cancers and also looked at the expansion of proton centers. It's a fascinating and complex topic, and one that I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about in the future. In the meantime, I've excerpted and responded to six of the comments I got on my earlier blog post. Here they are, in no particular order:

Part 2 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.

MD of Missouri on head-to-head comparisons

...I would suggest that, while proton beam therapy is excellent, so is brachytherapy (radioactive seed implants) done by an expert. I would welcome a head-to-head comparison between the two. I would bet that brachytherapy would be proven to provide similar excellent outcomes.