Good health as men behave badly

Men's health is one of the UK's most familiar oxymorons. Where physical well-being is concerned, the battle of the sexes is no contest. While women are on first-name terms with every crevice and contour of their bodies, most men are lost in a Neanderthal darkness and emerge blinking into the light only when they are on the verge of a near-death experience.

Men's health is something of a joke down under, too. Except it's a joke of an entirely different order, a joke that men even want to laugh at. Having realised that no matter how often and earnestly doctors repeated the central tenets of basic health awareness most men studiously ignored the message, a few Australian doctors decided four years ago to try another tack. "We call it health by stealth," says Dr Greg Malcher, a GP in Daylesford, an old mining town of about 8,000 inhabitants 70 miles outside Melbourne. "We wanted to get to men in their comfort zones, where they might be more receptive to the message."

The favourite comfort zone of the average Aussie male is the bar, so that's where Malcher organised a series of men's health nights. He assembled a line-up of prominent Aussie sports stars and assorted entertainers and promised liberal quantities of beer. Before long he had a full house of nearly 400. Even then Malcher adopted a softly, softly approach. "We started off with Simon Madden, an Aussie Rules Football player, talking about his health, before I talked about heart disease and basic preventative medicine," he says. "We then had a drag act and a bar break before moving on to more difficult topics, such as depression and suicide."

Men's nights have caught on in other areas of Australia with similar results. Malcher is not claiming an overnight transformation in the male psyche and he is aware that much more needs to be done for men in the 20-55 age group, but he does think that he is building up a bedrock of awareness; a significant number of his patients no longer regard the surgery as a no-go zone and most now know there are lifestyle choices that can affect their health.

This Men Behaving Badly approach has knocked on to health programming on Australian TV. Out have gone the camera-friendly TV doc magazine shows and in has come a stand-up, or rather sit-down, health show presented by John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, the Australian equivalents of John Bird and John Fortune. "The public seemed to respond well to the idea of two blokes who knew next to nothing about the subject talking about their health," laughs Dawe. The show, which can be seen on the Discovery Health channel in this country, drew excellent ratings in Australia and at the very least had an effect on Dawe. "A viewer stopped me in the street and asked why I still smoked," he says.

"I couldn't think of a good answer so I quit."

So how would a similarly laddish approach go down here? A few nurses have been known to hold Wellman clinics in pubs, but what would happen if we went the whole hog and stuck Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey at the head of a men's health campaign? TV doctor Mark Porter is far from convinced it would make much difference. He believes that most men are just as interested in their health and that the problems of male diagnosis and treatment are structural as much as psychological.

"Most GPs arrange their surgeries at times that are highly inconvenient for working men. Similarly, government funding for raising awareness and improving treatments for male-specific diseases has been ridiculously low. Breast cancer and prostate cancer have similar mortality rates, but until recently breast cancer received £10 million per year while prostate cancer got just £40,000." He also reckons that magazines, such as Men's Health, which could play an important role in promoting health issues, tend, instead, to pander to the narcissistic tendencies of their readers and advertisers. "You get a lot about the perfect abs and biceps and how to satisfy your partner, but not much else."

Where Dr Porter is somewhat measured in his responses, Dr Keith Hopcroft, author of A Bloke's Diagnose It Yourself Guide to Health, is far more outspoken.

"There are a lot of myths talked about men's health and this new body fascism is only going to turn men off," he says. "Most men know that smoking and drinking too much are bad for them and don't need to have it rammed down their throat, and going on and on about testicular and prostate cancer is more likely to create a bunch of male neurotics. Testicular cancer is actually very rare and is usually accompanied by an identifiable ache, so endless bouts of self-examination are only likely to turn up harmless abnormalities that cause sleepless nights. Similarly, prostate cancer is almost unheard of in the under-fifties so talking endlessly about it is only going to clog up the surgeries with people demanding tests for an ill-ness they almost certainly don't have. Even for the over fifties, the test creates as many problems as it solves, as it can only indicate the possibility of an abnormality and, in any case, there is no evidence that early treat-ment of prostate cancer improves the outcome.

"The message for men has to be: if you think you've got a problem see your doctor. If you don't, stay away."

Some people, of course, may take this a little too literally. Dr Malcher referred a patient to get a mark on his forehead seen by a skin cancer specialist and was concerned when the appointment wasn't kept. "The patient told me that he'd gone out to the garage and removed the mark with a soldering iron," smiles Malcher. "He said it had smoked a bit but it hadn't reappeared, so he reckoned it must be OK." I guess there's men's health and then there's real men's health.

Cargill announces GRAS status for non-animal glucosamine

Minneapolis-based Cargill has announced that its Regenasure ingredient, the only non-animal glucosamine available on the market, has been determined generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

The announcement permits the ingredient to break out of the glucosamine supplements market and break into a variety of foods and beverages. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate are the most commonly used supplements for osteoarthritis, with estimated sales of $730m in the US in 2004.

"Regenasure glucosamine with GRAS status allows our food and beverage customers to confidently incorporate glucosamine into new of existing products, allowing them to innovate in mainstream markets and address consumer joint health needs with ease," said Bill Gruber, VP of Cargill Acidulants.

The fungus-derived ingredient, being the only non-animal glucosamine available (other glucosamine products are derived from the shell of crabs, lobster and shrimps) eliminates fears over shellfish allergues, and is also Kosher/Halal certified.

According to Cargill, the ingredient is also highly soluble and clean tasting.

Proving its ease of formulation, Coca-Cola launched a Minute Maid beverage this month with the ingredient, with each serving containing half the daily amount of glucosamine demonstrated by clinical trials to be effective in promoting joint health (750 mg).

The joint health benefits of glucosamine have been reported in numerous clinical trials, most notably the Glucosamine/chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT), sponsored by the National Institute of Health, that studied the effect of glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate supplements on 1583 people with osteoarthritis and found that the combination supplement was highly efficacious in reducing moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis pain (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 354, pp. 795-808).

The ingredient is reported to work by rebuilding cartilage in the joints.

Cargill's Regenasure also gives manufacturers a more stable source, since the introduction of trade tariffs at the end of 2004 halved the profits made by shrimp farmers in China and other producing countries, causing many to give up the business and glucosamine prices to soar.

Artical from Cargill announces More >>

What is Arthritis?

While often referred to as if it were a single disease, arthritis is actually an umbrella term used for a group of more than 100 medical conditions that collectively affect nearly 46 million adults and 300,000 children in America alone. While the most common form of arthritis - osteoarthritis (OA) - is most prevalent in people over 60, arthritis in its various forms can start as early as infancy. Some forms affect people in their young-adult years as they are beginning careers and families and still others start during the peak career and child-rearing years.

The common thread among these 100-plus conditions is that they all affect the musculoskeletal system and specifically the joints - where two or more bones meet. Arthritis-related joint problems include pain, stiffness, inflammation and damage to joint cartilage (the tough, smooth tissue that covers the ends of the bones, enabling them to glide against one another) and surrounding structures. Such damage can lead to joint weakness, instability and visible deformities that, depending on the location of joint involvement, can interfere with the most basic daily tasks such as walking, climbing stairs, using a computer keyboard, cutting your food or brushing your teeth.

For many people with arthritis, however, joint involvement is not the extent of the problem. Many forms of arthritis are classified as systemic, meaning they can affect the whole body. In these diseases, arthritis can cause damage to virtually any bodily organ or system, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, blood vessels and skin. Arthritis-related conditions primarily affect the muscles and the bones.

Together, arthritis and related conditions are a major cause of disability in the United States, costing the U.S. economy more than $124 billion per year in medical care and indirect expenses such as lost wages and production - and costing millions of individuals their health, their physical abilities and, in many cases, their independence. And unless something changes, the picture is going to get worse. As the population ages, the number of people with arthritis is growing.

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Navamedic: final agreement with Gruenenthal for CEE

Navamedic, a Norwegian manufacturer of glucosamine-based products, has signed a final agreement with Gruenenthal, a pharma firm of German origin, for marketing and distribution of its glucosamine product Glucomed/Flexove for a range of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries, including Poland.

The agreement was signed for a period of 10 years. The other countries covered by the agreement are the Czech Republic, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Russia and Ukraine. Austria may also be added to the seven countries already covered by the agreement. The companies signed a framework agreement for this market on 10 January, and the final agreement is expected to be formally signed before the end of March 2007.
Gruenenthal has already commenced the regulatory process in countries not part of the EU/EEA product approval process. Product launches are expected from 2007 in EU countries and 2008 in non-EU countries.

Navamedic announced that it had entered into a framework agreement with Gruenenthal on 29 September 2006. Prior to this, the Norwegian firm had been searching for a distribution partner since the product’s first approval at the beginning of the year, Navamedic CEO, Oyvind Brekke, revealed to Pharma Poland News in January 2006.