Masculinity is a complicated thing. And there’s no more masculine way for a man to express his, well, masculinity than by making babies. That explains why being infertile or having erectile dysfunction (ED) is so strongly connected with depression (in both directions—depression itself can cause ED, and ED and/or fertility problems can cause depression). Infertility...Continue reading
Back in 2008, in the summer between semesters at graduate school, I took an internship with the Men’s Health Network (MHN) in Washington, D.C. I had no idea then how transformative it would be. Looking back now, it was a reality check of sorts. In the semester before my internship, I took a class on...Continue reading
How do you solve tough problems? Maybe you pick at them until they’re gone. Maybe you dance around them until they’re contained. One thing I like to do is to step away and examine them as an outsider, from a completely different perspective. In other words, get out of the trees and look at the whole...Continue reading
Infertility is often looked at as a disease that only affects women. In reality, infertility is caused by female factor and male factor equally at 30% each. In the balance of cases, the infertility is the result of both partners or unexplained. Even when the disease is not a direct result of issues with a male...Continue reading
The case of the month is an actual patient of The Turek Clinic The body has a whole bunch of really cool reflexes. These are things that the body does with conscious thought. It’s how the eye focuses. It’s why the knee jerks. It also explains blushing, sneezing, coughing, shivering and even yawning. And, believe it...Continue reading
Growing up as a kid, you expect to find two jewels right where they belong down there. And about the size of small grapes. But did you know that 2% of boys at birth are missing a testicle? It’s just not there in the sac. Yup, undescended testicles are the most common genital birth defect. That...Continue reading
Hard to believe, but I used to use Encyclopedia Britannica in grade school to research book reports. Imagine that, a 10 year old encyclopedia was the “latest and greatest” source of knowledge that you could get in a library. Back then, history was history, it’s in the past for Heaven’s sake, and science was evolving at...Continue reading
I’ve been called a “disruptor” before, but I’ve never considered myself a “visionary.” To my surprise, I was recently called just that, and by colleagues about whom I might use the same term. Quite flattering, really. Meeting of Minds We met just outside of Washington, at the invitation of the NIH and CDC, to discuss what’s...Continue reading
For how long have women been taking “prenatal” vitamins? Maybe a decade? Nope. A link between vitamin deficiency and pregnancy outcomes was postulated 70 years ago! And studies showing fewer neural tube defects in babies following maternal folic acid supplementation are now almost 40 years old. Indeed, prenatal vitamins have become a clutch player in the world of preventative medicine....Continue reading
Let’s talk for a moment about life cycles. Companies have them, markets have them, and products have them. The trajectories for many product life cycles generally progress through well-defined stages: Introduction, growth, maturity and decline. I dare say that as boys become men, their health care shows a remarkably similar curve. Men’s Health Lifecycle Don’t...Continue reading