Blue-Collar Smokers Get Help Kicking the Habit
Blue-collar workers aren’t giving up cigarettes as readily as white-collar workers, and on-the-job smoking-cessation programs are less successful for them as well. Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Boston believe they’ve found a solution: combining cessation programs with work safety programs.
To test their theory that combined health messages might be more helpful, Glorian Sorensen, director of the Center for Community-Based Research at Dana-Farber, and her colleagues worked with 15 manufacturing companies in eastern Massachusetts. Half of them conducted health promotion efforts to help workers quit smoking and eat more fruits and vegetables. The others combined similar efforts on smoking and diet with programs that informed workers how to protect themselves from exposure to toxic chemicals and other job hazards.
Eighteen months after the programs were initiated, the researchers found that in work sites that received the combined programs, twice as many blue-collar smokers quit, compared with those in the work sites that got only the promotion program.
“If we want to promote smoking cessation, then we need to think about the larger health issues these workers are dealing with. If you’re exposed to [toxic] chemicals, it’s important to address those hazards and not just smoking,” says Sorensen. And obviously, for many of the workers, awareness of the interaction between the two made a difference.
Cancer Causes and Control 13: 493-502.
Study Finds Lower Male Hormone Levels Among Apnea Sufferers
Men with sleep apnea who think they’re just too tired to have sex may actually have flagging testosterone levels to blame for their lack of desire.
Israeli researchers measured testosterone levels in 10 men with sleep apnea and five healthy men every 20 minutes throughout the night. They found that the normal peak in testosterone didn’t happen in about half of those with sleep apnea.
The researchers also learned that the accumulated amount of testosterone during the night in those men whose hormones didn’t peak was at least 50% lower than the average levels in the five good sleepers. “We believe the entire endocrine system is blunted in those patients,” says Peretz Lavie, director of the Sleep Research Center at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where the study was done.
In apnea, breathing temporarily and repeatedly stops, disturbing sleep and often causing loud snoring. Since people with this disorder may not fully awaken, they may not realize they have sleep apnea. Women have two reasons to send their husbands to the sleep clinic,” says Lavie. “One is snoring and one is sex.”
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 87 (7) 3394-3398
Plaque Ruptures Linked to Repeated Coronaries
A person who has a heart attack is at high risk of having another one within the year, and now researchers have uncovered a possible explanation. Using an ultrasound technique that creates 3-D images from within an artery, French researchers found that there are often other plaque ruptures in the vessels supplying the heart muscle.
A study of 24 patients in France found that 79% of the people who had their first coronary had at least one plaque rupture besides the one that caused their heart attack. And one in eight of the patients had unstable plaque in all three arteries.
These plaque ruptures may not create a blockage, but their presence does indicate that coronary artery disease isn’t a simple mechanical problem but a complex biological process that may involve all the arteries supplying the heart.
Circulation: volume 106:7, 804-808; editorial 106:7 760-762.
Many Young Men With Chlamydia Lack Symptoms
The first national survey of the prevalence of chlamydia in young men has found that 3.1% to 4.5% of teenage and young adult males are infected with the sexually transmitted disease.
Nearly 2,000 men, ages 18 to 26, participated in the National Surveys of Adolescent Males. Researchers then interviewed about 1,500 respondents and took urine samples for testing. The study was done by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and Research Triangle Institute in Washington, D.C.
The tests for chlamydia done as part of this study detected infections in 3.1% of the teenagers and 4.5% of the young adults. Only one-fourth of the teenagers and one-third of the young adults with symptoms, such as burning upon urination or having a discharge from the penis, had been tested in the past year. And many of those who tested positive as a result of the study hadn’t had symptoms.
“Chlamydia is often a silent disease, and that’s what makes it so tough to deal with,” says Leighton Ku, who was at the Urban Institute when the study was done. “The majority of young men aren’t aware of it and so they never seek medical treatment. That’s why screening is so important.”
Unlike young women who tend to have routine gynecologic care, “lots of young guys go for years without seeing a doctor,” says Ku. The CDC recommends annual chlamydia screening for sexually active women 24 years old and younger. There is no similar recommendation for young men. According to the CDC, untreated chlamydia in men causes urethral infection and can lead to complications such as swollen and tender testicles. In women it can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to infertility and tubal pregnancy, among other consequences.
American Journal of Public Health 92 (7): 1140-1143
Injury Affecting Women Cyclists Is Identified
Women can now add “bicyclist’s vulva” to the growing list of sports side effects such as saddle sores and cyclist’s nipples.
In Belgium, where the women’s cycling event La Grande Boucle Feminine Internationale begins Aug. 12, this sports injury has been identified in competitive women cyclists. “Bicyclist’s vulva,” a chronic swelling on one side of a woman’s genitals, isn’t painful and doesn’t seem to interfere with other activities, but the enlarged vulva is so embarrassing that the few women diagnosed with the bulging had not seen a doctor about it specifically.
“We think the reason for the swelling is chronic inflammation of the perineum and the curved position the cyclist maintains,” says Dr. Luc Baeyens, head of sports gynecology at Brugmann University Hospital in Brussels.
Pressure from the bicycle seat doesn’t appear to be a factor. Rather, the curved position taken when biking long distances compresses the lymph vessels in the groin, compromising circulation in the area, he says.
Although the problem may never resolve completely, it might be relieved or prevented by elevating the legs during rest periods to assist lymph drainage of the perineum and pelvis. Swelling may be reduced by applying cold compresses to the area after training and by massage, or manual drainage, to push the lymph fluid into alternative, undamaged pathways. Preventing inflammation and taking care of any irritation in the genital region are important too.
Competitive cyclists put in far more miles than the weekend athlete, but so can “spinners.” Kimberly Fowler, a spinning teacher and owner of YAS (Yoga and Spinning) in Venice, says the average spinner clocks about 30 miles in a class. A person who combines long-distance biking on the weekends with three or four classes a week, which is not unusual, says Fowler, could bike 300 miles a week.
British Medical Journal 325:138-139
*
Dianne Partie Lange can be reached by e-mail at DianneLange@cs.com.
