healthbriefs
PSA Testing Controversy M
en face a new dilemma at their annual physical this year—should they be screened for prostate cancer?
Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against routine screening for this form of cancer, regardless of age. Some doctors claim this will cause treatable prostate cancer cases to be missed. The level of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein
produced by the prostate gland, can be measured with a simple blood test. Until the USPSTF issued its recom- mendation, doctors routinely used the test to screen men 50 and older. The task force, however, concluded there is at least moderate certainty that the potential harms of
PSA testing outweigh the benefits; many benign conditions, particularly prostate infections and enlargement, can elevate PSA readings higher than normal, prompt- ing more aggressive testing.
Before deciding on the test, it helps for men to explore this issue with their doc-
tor. Some physicians take a “wait and see” approach and retest several times over a few months before making a recommendation; others suggest an immediate biopsy if PSA levels are high. While a blood test is a benign procedure, a prostate biopsy is not. A high PSA reading coupled with an overly aggressive doctor can cause anxiety and result in additional—and possibly unneeded—medical treatment.
Source: James Occhiogrosso,
ProstateHealthNaturally.com O
EXCESSIVE DIETARY FAT MAY HINDER CONCEPTION
ne reason for a couple’s inability to conceive could be linked to too much fat in the male’s diet. A study by Harvard
Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital of 99 U.S. men uncovered an association between a high fat intake and lower sperm count and concentration. Results were published in the jour- nal Human Reproduction.
Men that consumed the most saturated fats had a 35 percent lower total sperm count and 38 percent lower sperm concentration than men that ate the least amount of such fats. Moreover, men that ate more omega-3 polyunsatu- rated fats—the type of healthful fat often found in fish and plant oils—had better- formed sperm than men that ate less.
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BREAKS FROM EMAIL BOOST FOCUS AND PERFORMANCE
“vacation” from email might be a simple prescription for improving work performance, suggests a new study by the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and U.S. Army researchers. “We found that when you remove email from workers’ lives, they multitask less and experience less stress,” says UCI Informatics Professor Gloria Mark, who co-authored the study. Participants reported feeling better able to do
their jobs and stay on task, and they were happier to interact with others in person. Also, getting up and walking to someone else’s desk instead of emailing provided physical exercise.
12 South Central PA
NaturalCentralPA.com
Don’t Worry, Be Healthy T
he adage, “Don’t worry, be hap- py,” captures the essence of the
first-ever metastudy of the relation- ship between happiness and heart health. Based on a comprehensive review involving 200-plus studies, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, concluded that a positive outlook on life could help protect the heart from cardio- vascular disease. Julia Boehm, Ph.D., and Laura
Kubzansky, Ph.D., discovered that certain psychological traits—opti- mism, positive emotions and a sense of meaning—both offer measur- able protection against heart attacks and strokes and slow the progres- sion of cardiovascular disease. The pair found that the most optimistic individuals had approximately 50 percent less chance of experiencing an initial cardiovascular event com- pared with their less upbeat peers. “The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive,” notes Boehm. “Psy- chology has been trying to fix what’s wrong with people, but there’s also an increasing interest in what people might be doing right.”
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