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Sometimes we in the America are the best. But the rest of the world has been steadily catching up with us in areas of life that really matter. Some countries have now overtaken us. So if you look at the international league tables, we’ve dropped way down in education standards, and we’ve got one of the worst value-for-money healthcare services in the developed world. That’s what happens when you allow capitalism to take responsibility for public services. If your political system depends on not raising taxes, you can only cut services and the first to be cut is usually education. Now add the profit motive into the mix. If your doctor’s pay depends on how many patients he or she sees in a working day, how many minutes do you expect to have in your consultation? So, for example, we have an infant mortality rate of 6.4 babies dying for every thousand births. This is worse than every East and West European country – only 3.9 babies per thousand die in the Czech Republic. Our hospitals and clinics make money by testing you to find out what’s wrong. This can take a lot of tests. Then the doctors might prescribe the cheapest drugs or they might prescribe the more expensive drugs where they get incentives and kickbacks. In Europe, tests and treatments are only allowed if there’s clear evidence both that they are needed and likely to be effective. Drug prices are controlled by governments.

So how does pain management work in the countries with the best international standings? The first part of the answer might surprise you. By making the patient more important than the doctors. This flows from the practice of socialized medicine. Doctors’ pay does not depend on the profitability of the hospital or clinic where they work. Their performance is measured by the length of time patients must wait to see them, by whether their treatments have successful outcomes, and by their “death rates”. Yes, that’s right, hospitals publish the survival rates after the most common surgical procedures. We only rarely hear about the death and readmission rates in our hospitals. Our doctors are terrified of medical negligence and malpractice actions, and no one ever admits to a mistake. Yet without access to this information, we cannot make informed choices about where to get our medical care. (more…)

The problem of hair loss is certainly a very sensitive issue both for men and women. Hair is a good indicator of how healthy a person is, and if the person starts to get bald it is seen as either a sign of poor health or aging. Of course, it’s not always so and in case of male balding it’s often seen as a matter of genetic predisposition or poor hair nutrition. But how relevant these assumptions are to the actual causes behind hair loss in men?

A large number of scientific and clinical studies on the problem of hair loss in men have come to the same conclusion that there’s a reason for male pattern hair loss other than what was assumed before. Yes, genetics, nutrition, care and environment play an important role in maintaining a good condition of hair. But the majority of male hair loss cases have been observed to be caused by hormonal changes. And it’s not about a particular glad dysfunction or hormonal imbalance. It’s all about one of the most important male hormones – testosterone.

But it’s not the abundance of shortage of testosterone that really matters. Of course, the level of testosterone in general influences many aspects of a man’s health. But when it comes to hair loss, it’s the way testosterone is processed that really matters. Usually, testosterone is converted into another male hormone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), after some time. And it’s the DHT that’s responsible for hair loss in men. When there’s a small quantity of this androgen in the bloodstream there’s nothing to worry about. But as it accumulates in the body and starts contacting with hair follicles it gradually stops natural hair growth and makes the follicles weaker. By having a low natural hair growth rate a person will gradually start balding because of the normal hair loss rate (100-200 hairs per day). Usually, the lost hair gets restored rapidly and we have a constant form of hair. But as the follicles get weaker, the usual hair loss becomes a real problem.

Some studies that focused on the genetic causes of male pattern hair loss have also concluded that in cases where hair loss problems have passed through generations it was also due to the abundant production of DHT that seems to pass from father to son. So it’s clear that hair loss in men is generally caused by the levels of DHT. But what can be done about it? (more…)