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The bald community is doing cartwheels over the latest baldness cure in a string of other purported bald cures that have been introduced during the last 10-15 years. This newest innovation comes in pill form and is a prescription drug called Propecia.

Propecia, whose generic name is finasteride, helps hair grow back by blocking the conversion of testosterone into dihyrdo-testosterone, commonly referred to as DHT. DHT prevents hair from growing, so by blocking its formation, hair can begin to grow again.

The results of a clinical trial that tested the efficacy of Propecia revealed that 20% of men who took a small amount of the drug for a year grew back moderate to heavy amounts of hair! And another 30% grew some hair. The clinical trial also revealed that it took longer for some of the men to start regrowing hair; these men experienced positive results after taking the drug for 2 years. The best news is that finasteride has been demonstrated to help prevent prostate cancer, so this additional benefit is a further incentive for bald men to give Propecia a try, because bald men show an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.

Sounds too good to be true? Perhaps. Propecia usage can reduce sex drive and cause impotence in some men, but these effects disappear when usage of the drug is halted. However, this effect upon sex drive is not universal, it may be experienced in some men and not in others. Besides, you can always use Viagra to counteract the effects of having a reduced libido. Most men would do anything to grow their back, and if Propecia provides that answer, then it’s worth a shot. However, to maintain the hair you grow back as a result of taking Propecia, it is important to keep taking it, as once the medication is discontinued, the hair loss returns. So, you must continue to take the drug indefinitely to keep the hair.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Propecia can help you restore your head of hair for the time being, and then sometime in the near future, stem cell cures for baldness will likely be available and will probably be the permanent answer for curing baldness once and for all. In 2004, a test performed on mice revealed that bald mice easily grew back their hair after being given stem cells that were engineered to induce hair growth.

It’s not hard for scientists to imagine that one day they will be able to implant “blank-slate” stem cells into areas where men are bald, resulting in hair for life. These stem cell treatments are not coming tomorrow or next year, but are certainly within our reach as biologists continue to work with stem cells and make new discoveries.

So, for now, the bald community must settle for Propecia, the short-term solution for curing baldness. Then, probably 10 years from now, biotech companies will provide the long-term solution with a cure for baldness at the genetic and cellular levels, a solution that will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Jim Pretin is the proprietor of http://www.consumersavingsrx.com, a licensed online pharmacy that sells various FDA regulated prescription drugs, including Propecia.

Americans have begun buying their prescription drugs online from internet pharmacies based in Canada. If you’ve ever looked at some of these Canadian drug websites, you may have noticed that many of the drugs are 80% cheaper in Canada then they are in the United States, which begs several questions.

Firstly, Canadians pay fantastically less for the same medicines than Americans because the Canadian government stipulates a price ceiling at which they allow drug manufacturers to sell to Canadian drug distributors, and the government also controls the prices at which Canadian distributors can then sell those drugs to the public. So, the pharmaceutical industry is tightly regulated and price controlled by the Canadian government, resulting in very cheap, very affordable prescription drugs.

This socialized system for prescription drugs is not anywhere to be found in the United States. In the U.S., drug companies are allowed to sell medicines to the public at whatever prices the market can bear. Isn’t that nice? We live in a country so free that our drug companies can charge us $350 for 20 tablets of Viagra or Cialis, whereas in Canada you can get it for $90.

As a result of these enormous price discrepancies, internet pharmaceutical suppliers in Canada have launched extensive marketing campaigns targeted at the U.S. to capitalize on the American demand for affordable prescriptions. Visit any search engine and type in the words “Canada drugs” or simply type in the name of any prescription drug you can think of, and you’ll find a ton of Canadian-themed sponsored links for online pharmacies based in Canada selling drugs that are so cheap it makes your eyes pop.

But is this legal? According to the FDA, the importation or re-importation of drugs into this country from a foreign source is against the law. Simply put, it is technically illegal to buy drugs from Canada that were either manufactured in Canada or manufactured in the United States and then sold to Canadian distributors. Is this dumb? Absolutely.

The FDA says that they can’t guarantee the “quality” of the drugs from Canada, that these drugs might be dangerous, that they might have been poorly manufactured or improperly formulated, or manufactured in facilities in Southeast Asia.

So, the FDA is dismissing the idea of allowing Americans to legally purchase drugs from Canada because the products might have been made in a bathtub in Cambodia, because I suppose Canadians are too dumb to make this stuff on their own. This is an absurd excuse on the part of the FDA.

The FDA could regulate the Canadian pharmaceutical trade, and investigate as to which Canadian pharmacies, online or offline, are making the drugs themselves and/or buying the drugs directly from American drug manufacturers, as opposed to those that are making them in foreign countries.

Most of the drugs sold by Canadian internet pharmacies are drugs that were made in the USA, and have simply been sold to Canadian distributors. Some of these drugs are manufactured by Canadian manufacturers. But rather than publish a buyers guide for Americans and allowing us to buy our drugs from “certified Canadian pharmacies”, they make the whole practice illegal to increase the profitability of the American drug industry.

Yes, it is true that there are some rogue companies on the internet masquerading as Canadian pharmacies that are actually Mexican pharmacies that don’t even have a doctor and pharmacist review your medical history before sending you the medicine.

But the FDA could easily set up a legal Canadian-American drug trade where the FDA makes it legal for Americans to buy their drugs from a select group of Canadian pharmacies that buy all their products directly from the U.S. or manufacture their drugs in the facilities of Canada’s major drug companies.

This isn’t likely to happen, however, because we have an administration in Washington that is for the corporations and by the corporations, and an FDA whose sole purpose is to protect the windfall profits of the drug manufacturers while allowing drug companies to make and sell hugely overpriced, noxious drugs that kill us, like Vioxx and others they’ve allowed onto the market that produce harmful and sometimes lethal side effects.

If the FDA sponsored a system of legal and regulated prescription drug buying from Canada, this would force American pharmaceutical companies to drop their prices by 80% to compete, resulting in a better situation for the consumer. The drug companies would still make profits, because the demand for the drugs would go up tremendously if they suddenly became affordable for people without health insurance, but the profits wouldn’t quite be the same.

For the time being, Americans will continue to have to choose between buying food for their family or buying health insurance they can’t afford that hardly covers the costs of the drugs they can’t buy.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.healthpalace.net/penis-enlargement, an online directory for herbal products

Atorvastatin, marketed under the trade name Lipitor, is used for lowering cholesterol. Atorvastatin inhibits the enzyme located in hepatic tissue that produces mevalonate, a small molecule used in the synthesis of cholesterol. This lowers the amount of cholesterol produced which in turn lowers the total amount of LDL (low density) cholesterol. In 2005, Lipitor sales totaled $12.2 billion, making it the largest selling drug in the world at the time.

Atorvastatin is indicated as an adjunct to diet for the treatment of hypercholesterolaemia. In a clinical trial, after 2 years, a relative risk reduction of 16% in the primary end point rate (death, heart attack, unstable angina, coronary revascularization, or stroke) was seen in patients receiving intensive treatment with the drug. The benefit of intensive treatment was apparent, in some instances, within 30 days.

If you have high cholesterol, chances are your physician has already talked to you about Lipitor. Doctors like to prescribe it because it works quickly and easily. However, you need to understand the risk consequences associated with taking these sorts of drugs, because there is a potential for dangerous and sometimes permanent side effects. Some patients have suffered severe health consequences and were not adequately forewarned by their doctors.

Some of the more well known side effects associated with drugs known as statins (statins is the scientific classification for drugs such as Lipitor) include liver damage, sexual dysfunction, and peripheral neuropathy. But there have been other studies that have revealed other subtle problems that develop within the patient, which can have huge ramifications for the health of that patient later in life.

In a study performed by Finnish doctors, doctors assessed the effects of the statin drug Zocor on 120 men ages 35 to 64. All of the men had high cholesterol levels, ranging from 232 to 309. One group of men was told to maintain their current diet, while the other group was required to reduce their daily intake of saturated fat to less than 10 percent of total daily calories, and to keep their daily cholesterol consumption below 250 mg.

Then, each of the 2 groups was divided into 2 subgroups. One subgroup would take 20 mg of Zocor per day, while the other group received a placebo. This was continued for 12 weeks, at which point each subgroup switched so that the subgroup that had been receiving the placebo would receive the Zocor for the next 12 weeks, and vice versa. At the beginning of the clinical trial, and after the first 12 weeks, as well as at the end of the second 12 weeks, the cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin, and weight of each patient were measured.

The Zocor clearly worked, because it decreased cholesterol levels by 20.8 percent, while diet alone only decreased cholesterol by 7.6 percent. However, there was an astonishing finding. It was discovered that the drug increased fasting serum insulin levels by 13 percent, and decreased serum concentrations of important antioxidant vitamins by as much as 22 percent. This was a huge revelation.

Decreased insulin sensitivity can lead to a whole host of problems down the road, such as blindness, diabetes, and kidney disease. And antioxidants protect us from a whole host of problems, such as organic brain disease, cancer, and atherosclerosis. So, even though these cholesterol drugs perform a valuable function (lowering cholesterol), they can cause a whole range of other problems and diseases that can make a patient severely ill later in life.

So, you should think long and hard before using cholesterol-lowering drugs. The aforementioned side effects may not be equally severe in all people who take the medication. However, you might be better off working closely with your doctor to develop a program of diet and exercise before using drugs like Zocor or Lipitor to lower your cholesterol.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

Atorvastatin, marketed under the trade name Lipitor, is used for lowering cholesterol. Atorvastatin inhibits the enzyme located in hepatic tissue that produces mevalonate, a small molecule used in the synthesis of cholesterol. This lowers the amount of cholesterol produced which in turn lowers the total amount of LDL (low density) cholesterol. In 2005, Lipitor sales totaled $12.2 billion, making it the largest selling drug in the world at the time.

Atorvastatin is indicated as an adjunct to diet for the treatment of hypercholesterolaemia. In a clinical trial, after 2 years, a relative risk reduction of 16% in the primary end point rate (death, heart attack, unstable angina, coronary revascularization, or stroke) was seen in patients receiving intensive treatment with the drug. The benefit of intensive treatment was apparent, in some instances, within 30 days.

If you have high cholesterol, chances are your physician has already talked to you about Lipitor. Doctors like to prescribe it because it works quickly and easily. However, you need to understand the risk consequences associated with taking these sorts of drugs, because there is a potential for dangerous and sometimes permanent side effects. Some patients have suffered severe health consequences and were not adequately forewarned by their doctors.

Some of the more well known side effects associated with drugs known as statins (statins is the scientific classification for drugs such as Lipitor) include liver damage, sexual dysfunction, and peripheral neuropathy. But there have been other studies that have revealed other subtle problems that develop within the patient, which can have huge ramifications for the health of that patient later in life.

In a study performed by Finnish doctors, doctors assessed the effects of the statin drug Zocor on 120 men ages 35 to 64. All of the men had high cholesterol levels, ranging from 232 to 309. One group of men was told to maintain their current diet, while the other group was required to reduce their daily intake of saturated fat to less than 10 percent of total daily calories, and to keep their daily cholesterol consumption below 250 mg.

Then, each of the 2 groups was divided into 2 subgroups. One subgroup would take 20 mg of Zocor per day, while the other group received a placebo. This was continued for 12 weeks, at which point each subgroup switched so that the subgroup that had been receiving the placebo would receive the Zocor for the next 12 weeks, and vice versa. At the beginning of the clinical trial, and after the first 12 weeks, as well as at the end of the second 12 weeks, the cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin, and weight of each patient were measured.

The Zocor clearly worked, because it decreased cholesterol levels by 20.8 percent, while diet alone only decreased cholesterol by 7.6 percent. However, there was an astonishing finding. It was discovered that the drug increased fasting serum insulin levels by 13 percent, and decreased serum concentrations of important antioxidant vitamins by as much as 22 percent. This was a huge revelation.

Decreased insulin sensitivity can lead to a whole host of problems down the road, such as blindness, diabetes, and kidney disease. And antioxidants protect us from a whole host of problems, such as organic brain disease, cancer, and atherosclerosis. So, even though these cholesterol drugs perform a valuable function (lowering cholesterol), they can cause a whole range of other problems and diseases that can make a patient severely ill later in life.

So, you should think long and hard before using cholesterol-lowering drugs. The aforementioned side effects may not be equally severe in all people who take the medication. However, you might be better off working closely with your doctor to develop a program of diet and exercise before using drugs like Zocor or Lipitor to lower your cholesterol.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

Have you ever heard of homeopathy? You probably have, but have no idea what it really is. Homeopathy is a system of medicine that treats an illness or condition with highly diluted concentrations of natural ingredients that mimic the symptoms of the condition being treated. It seems like an odd premise, but in spite of the unusual mechanism behind it, it is a very effective method for treating disease.

How do you cure someone of an illness by giving that person a tiny concentration of something that actually causes the illness? According to proponents of the science, homeopathy not only works, but works better than conventional medicine. They say that somewhere along the line the pharmaceutical industry got involved in medicine, at which point natural remedies were abandoned in favor of chemical formulations.

If you browse through your local pharmacy, you will notice that there are actually quite a few products in the Cold & Flu aisle that are homeopathic. The easiest way to to find out if a product you are interested in is homeopathic is to read the label on the back and take a look at the ingredients. In homeopathy, all of the ingredients are diluted, so each ingredient in a homeopathic product has the letter X or C after it.

So, if one of the ingredients is Zinc 20X, that means the product contains Zinc that has been diluted 20 times. One of the most popular cold medicines on the market, Zicam, is actually a homeopathic remedy that consists of nothing more than homeopathic zinc in a nasal gel. Most people that use Zicam do not even realize that it is a homeopathic product.

There are homeopathic remedies available for almost any condition you can think of. Cold, flu, allergy, even bedwetting; there is a homeopathic remedy available for almost every condition. Homeopathy is universally recognized as being safe because the ingredients are always natural substances diluted many times over.

The big drug companies claim that any relief felt from the application of a homeopathic medicine can be attributed to the placebo effect. And, because the FDA does not require homeopathic products to undergo a clinical trial before being sold to the public, the detractors feel that homeopathy is junk science. So, is homeopathy a bunch of hodgepodge, or does it really work?

In my opinion, it works. There have been several clinical trials done over the years to test the efficacy of homeopathic products. Liddell Laboratories makes a product called Vital HGH which contains homeopathic HGH. Vital HGH is designed to treat the symptoms of aging and/or a rundown condition. In a small clinical trial performed years ago, a group of test subjects who were deficient in human growth hormone, ranging in age from 45 years and up, were given the Vital HGH formulation.

The results speak for themselves. During the five month clinical trial, the levels of HGH in the blood increased in every test subject, and more than doubled the average level of HGH. I personally have used homeopathic remedies to treat my allergies, and not only do they work, but they seem to prevent the symptoms from returning for an extended period of time.

The main reason why big drug manufacturers try to downplay the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines is so they will not have to make them. Most homeopathic products are incredibly cheap to manufacture and the profit margins are extremely small. A prescribed conventional medicine costs a lot more.

If the public began demanding natural, homeopathic remedies for their ailments, drug companies would have to make these kinds of products to stay in business, and then their revenues would tumble and their profits would shrink.

Imagine if Pfizer had to stop manufacturing Viagra, which they sell at $20-$30 per pill, and instead make a homeopathic product that would retail for only $20 for a one month supply. That is why drug companies often spend significant money to debunk claims that homeopathy works, using misinformation tactics to instill a belief in the public that homeopathy is a sham. This simply is not true. Homeopathy works, and is much more affordable.

Conventional medicines are still necessary because sometimes homeopathy does not work for each and every individual. But, next time you go to the pharmacy, take a look at some of the homeopathic brands on the shelf and give them a whirl. For common ailments that are not life threatening, homeopathy is probably a cheaper and more effective alternative.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

You may have heard of “homeopathy” but you are not sure what it is. Simply put, it is a system of medicine that treats a condition with highly diluted natural substances that mimic the symptoms of the condition being treated. This concept seems paradoxical to most.

Homeopathy is a difficult concept to grasp. How do you cure someone of an illness by giving them a tiny concentration of something that can actually cause the disease? One would think that this would simply make the person even more sick.

But, according to proponents of the science, homeopathy not only works, but is much more effective than conventional medicine. They claim that conventional medicine only suppresses the immune system and prolongs the illness.

There are actually quite a few homeopathic products in your local pharmacy. The FDA requires that homeopathic products indicate what kind of product it is somewhere on the packaging. The easiest way to tell what kind of product you are buying is by examining the list of ingredients on the back or the on the side of the packaging.

With homeopathy, all of the ingredients are diluted, so each ingredient in such a product has the letter “X” after it. So, if one of the ingredients is “Zinc 20X”, that means the product contains Zinc that has been diluted 20 times. One of the most popular cold medicines on the market, “Zicam,” is actually a homeopathic remedy that consists of diluted zinc in the form of a nasal gel.

There are homeopathic remedies available for almost every condition. Cold, flu, allergy, even bedwetting; there is a homeopathic remedy available for almost every condition.

Homeopathy is universally recognized as being safe, as the ingredients used are natural substances diluted many times over. Because there is such a small concentration of the ingredients, many opponents of the science, including the drug companies that make conventional medicines and are afraid of the growing popularity of natural medicine, claim that any relief an ill person receives after using a natural product is the result of the placebo effect.

Since the FDA does not require most natural products to undergo clinical testing before being sold to the public, the detractors feel that it does not actually work. So, who is telling the truth? Does homeopathy really work or is it a bunch of nonsense?

In my opinion, it works. There have been several clinical trials done over the years to test the efficacy of homeopathic products. Liddell Laboratories makes a product called Vital HGH. Vital HGH is designed to treat the symptoms of aging and/or a rundown condition.

In a small clinical trial performed years ago, a group of test subjects who were deficient in human growth hormone, ranging in age from 45 years and up, were given the Vital HGH formulation. The results speak for themselves. During the five month clinical trial, the levels of HGH in the blood increased in every test subject, and more than doubled the average level of HGH.

Homeopathy does work. I speak from personal experience. I used such a remedy to deal with the allergy attacks I was having, and the medicine not only stopped the attacks faster than the Claritin I had been taking previously, but it also prevented subsequent allergy attacks.

So, why is there a controversy? Well, there is a public perception that homeopathy is the same thing as holistic healing or faith-based medicine. This is simply not accurate.

Homepathy and natural medicine in general make big drug manufacturers worry that such products might be more effective for treating common illnesses as opposed to the more expensive prescription versions that make the pharmaceutical companies rich. Most natural products are incredibly cheap. A prescribed conventional medicine costs a lot more.

If the public began demanding natural remedies to treat their ailments, drug companies would have to make these kinds of products to stay in business, and then their profits would shrink. Imagine if Pfizer had to stop manufacturing Viagra, which they sell at $20-$30 per pill, and instead make a homeopathic product that would retail for only $20 for a one month supply.

This is why drug companies often spend significant amounts of money to debunk claims that homeopathy works, using a wide variety of misinformation tactics to instill a belief in the public that natural medicine is is not effective for treating common ailments.

I am not saying that you should discontinue the use of conventional medicines. But, next time you go to the pharmacy, take a look at some of the natural brands on the shelf and give them a try. For common ailments that are not life threatening, a homeopathic product is probably a cheaper and more effective alternative.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form