Entries for February 2008

Some bad news for all you guys out there dutifully downing a daily multivitamin: They don't work and are possibly hurting you, reports March's Harvard Men's Health Watch. Harvey Simon, that newsletter's editor, has launched a fusillade against "vitamania" with an article suggesting that men abandon the notion that those little brown pills are harmless insurance policies against chronic diseases. Rather, he argues, men (and women, too) should consider evidence that multivitamins could be hastening the growth of tumors.

Vitamania, the Harvard newsletter notes, came to the fore in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a series of observational studies (which aren't rigorous and cannot prove cause and effect) showed that certain antioxidants, including vitamins A, E, and C, could protect against heart disease, cancer, and other maladies. Those studies, along with a permissive 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act that allowed manufacturers to sell supplements without first proving that they provide health benefits, spurred a booming multibillion-dollar supplement industry.

Since I bike pretty much everywhere, I spend a fair bit of time sandwiched behind garbage trucks, city buses, and whatever other pollution-spewing monstrosities come my way. Just yesterday, for instance, a delivery truck pinned me in between the curb and a lane of fast-moving traffic. Since I'm working on a magazine story about the growing list of health risks associated with air pollution, I couldn't help but ponder the diesel fumes wafting my way from the truck's exhaust pipe. Should I just keep gulping the stuff down? Try to back up a few feet? Break the law and make for the sidewalk?

Plenty of scientists and doctors have been telling me that there's no doubt air pollution can do a number on my heart and lungs. They have conducted literally thousands of studies that make that point. The reassuring thing, they tell me, is that the risk is relatively small for any single individual. OK, good. Then from the other corner of their mouths they usually whisper: Umm, by the way, avoid exercising outdoors near traffic if you can. And, oh, yes, bicycling in heavy city traffic is probably one of the best ways you can up your air pollution exposure.

With lawmakers grilling Roger Clemens on Capitol Hill this week about using performance-enhancing drugs, human growth hormone (HGH) is back in the spotlight. Hardly a surprise, given the metronome of such news stories since Jose Canseco published Juiced in 2005, a tell-all tale that alleges widespread steroid use among major leaguers.

What is surprising is how widely human growth hormone is used beyond the arena of athletics. Government investigations such as the U.S. attorney's Operation Phony Pharm and the Albany district attorney's Operation Which Doctor are now highlighting the extent of growth hormone's distribution and use for antiaging purposes. The targets of these investigations are clinics and online marketers who persuade middle-aged and elderly Americans to shell out hundreds of dollars each month for the hormone that, according to boosters, does everything from build bone and muscle mass to improve libido, mood, cognitive function, and sleep quality.

Men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer know choosing the right treatment can be difficult. Consult five doctors, and you may well get five starkly different recommendations. Now an important report released this week by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has identified the source of the confusion: Reliable scientific evidence on the effectiveness and harms of the differing treatment options is sorely lacking.

Below are 11 kernels of information drawn from the report that men should be aware of before choosing a prostate cancer treatment. Don't stop with these, however. Anyone pondering any of the treatments the report covers would do well to read its findings carefully. It reviews all of the available scientific evidence—the authors considered 592 published articles—on the effectiveness and potential harms of eight widely used treatment strategies: radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy (including intensity-modulated radiation therapy and proton beam therapy), brachytherapy, cryoablation, androgen deprivation therapy, watchful waiting, robotic prostatectomy, and high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy.

How do medical myths arise? We may be witnessing a case study. Last May, men got a scare when ominous headlines in outlets such as Reuters and the Washington Post warned that iPods might emit enough electromagnetic interference to cause malfunctions in pacemakers, which are heart devices that are more common in men than women. The source for those articles was a study conducted—rather unusually—by a 17-year-old high school student and a family friend and University of Michigan cardiologist, Krit Jongnarangsin, with input from the student's father, R. K. Thaker, who is a cardiologist who specializes in pacemakers.

Yesterday, another study emerged, this one contradicting the first and seemingly more rigorous. According to a summary of the new study published on the website Science Daily, the Food and Drug Administration researcher who led the study tested four different iPod models and found that the peak magnetic field strength was 0.2 millionths of a Tesla, a value hundreds of times lower than the levels capable of interfering with a pacemaker.