The Stigma Surrounding Erectile Dysfunction

وصمة العار المحيطة ضعف الانتصاب

ضعف الانتصاب هو واحد من المشاكل الجنسية الأكثر شيوعاً المبلغ عنها.  إنها حالة غير اعتيادية وقد تؤثر على ربع الرجال الهنود.  معظم الأشخاص الذين يعانون من الضعف الجنسي يعتبرون الأمر محرجًا وربما يخجلون من مناقشة القضية حتى مع شركائهم.  في العديد من الحالات ، يتم منع الرجال من قبل أفراد عائلاتهم من التحدث عن الضعف الجنسي لأنه يعتبر علامة على الضعف.  نتيجة لذلك ، لا يقومون بالإبلاغ عن مخاوفهم إلى المتخصصين.  وهذا ما يفسر أيضًا عدم جمع بيانات على نطاق واسع.  بينما لا تؤكد حالتان أو ثلاث حالات الخلل الوظيفي الجنسي ، من المهم أن تكون على دراية بمجموعة العوامل التي قد تسبب الضعف الجنسي حتى يمكن حل المشكلة من خلال نهج كلي.  فيما يلي المحددات الرئيسية التي تؤثر على الصحة الجنسية للرجال.

  الجسم

  يمكن أن يكون ضعف الانتصاب مؤشرا لحالة فسيولوجية كامنة مثل مشكلة في القلب أو ارتفاع ضغط الدم أو مشكلة عصبية.  بما أن الإثارة الجنسية هي عملية معقدة تنطوي على الدماغ والعضلات والجهاز العصبي ، فإن أي ردع لأي من هذين النظامين يمكن أن يكون سبباً في حدوث الضعف الجنسي.  على سبيل المثال ، يمكن أن يؤدي ارتفاع ضغط الدم إلى تلف الشرايين وبالتالي إضعاف تدفق الدم إلى عضلات القضيب.  وبالمثل ، فإن تلف الأعصاب الناتج عن مرض السكري يمكن أن يعيق إشارة الدماغ إلى استرخاء العضلات من أجل الانتصاب.  مع عدم وجود أسباب جسدية أخرى ، يمكن أن يكون العمر بحد ذاته علامة تحذير ويكون الرجال الذين تزيد أعمارهم عن 50 عامًا عرضة للإصابة بالضعف الجنسي.  عوامل الخطر الأخرى تشمل التدخين ، وتعاطي المخدرات ، واستهلاك الكحول أو السمنة.

  العقل

 الصحة العقلية هي أكثر أهمية بكثير للصحة الجنسية من الصحة البدنية.  الحالات العقلية مثل الاكتئاب والقلق والإجهاد يمكن أن تمنع الدافع الجنسي لدى الرجال مما يسبب فشل الانتصاب.  عندما تكون تحت الضغط ، يطلق الدماغ هرمونات التوتر مثل الأدرينالين أو الكورتيزول كآلية دفاع للجسم.  قد يقلل هذا من تدفق الدم إلى القضيب ويمنعك من الانتصاب.  العوامل النفسية تؤثر بقوة على الصحة الجنسية.  يعاني العديد من الرجال أيضًا مما يسمى "قلق الأداء" بسبب تدني احترام الذات أو الخوف من الأداء الضعيف.  يمكن أن يكون الضغط الناتج عن ضغط العمل أو النزاع الاجتماعي أو قضايا العلاقة مع الشريك.

  الأدوية

  في حين أنه من الثابت أن المرض العقلي يمكن أن يؤثر على الصحة الجنسية ، إلا أنه من الصحيح أيضًا أن نظام العلاج لهذه الحالات يمكن أن يردع الأداء الجنسي.  من المعروف أن الأدوية مثل مضادات الاكتئاب أو مضادات الذهان تؤثر على النشاط الجنسي كأحد آثارها الجانبية الأساسية.  من المعروف أنها تخفض مستويات الدوبامين التي ينتجها الدماغ والتي تعمل كمنشط جنسي أثناء عملية الإثارة.الضعف الجنسي يمكن أن يكون علامة تحذير من العديد من الاضطرابات التنكسية.  إن البحث عن المساعدة والانفتاح حول الضعف الجنسي قد يساعد بالتأكيد في إزالة وصمة العار المحيطة به.  يمكن أن تساعد الاستشارات النفسية والتشخيص الشامل في حل النشاط الجنسي.  ويجري علاج العديد من العلاجات هذه الأيام.  من الضروري أن تختار بحكمة واحدة مثبتة ولها تأثيرات دائمة.  العلاج بالخلايا الجذعية هو علاج طبيعي قادم يقدم نتائج واعدة للمرضى.

Precision Medicine: Changing our perspectives on healthcare

A day is not too far away when you will be directly prescribed with personalized medicine based on how quickly your body accepts it and facilitates faster processing towards the same.
However, today's conventional medicine is quite convinced with the assumption that patients with a particular diagnostic condition should get the same first line of treatment, knowing the fact that it can only be 30-60% effective. In this regard, offering tailored therapy with the best possible response as well as the highest safety margin should be treated as the blockbuster approach. And this can be achieved through the acceptance of precision medicine or personalized medicine.

What exactly is personalized medicine?
Personalized medicine is an emerging approach for better patient management in the form of offering a cost-effective solution for the effective treatment outcome. In other words, personalized medicine can offer a move away from traditional “one size fits all” therapeutic module and further emphasize to manage the disease as per patient’s genetic predisposition and body’s capacity. The proposed new scientific discipline was being developed from the confluence of biochemical, pharmacological as well as the geneticmakeup of an individual; further seeking to understand all the cellular as well as molecular underpinnings of particular diseased conditions. Since, personalized medicine is also being identified as the precision medicine, for being an extension of traditional therapeutic approach to treat the diseased condition; but with greater understanding and with greater precision.
Thus, personalized medicine helps each patient to enable early diagnosis of the diseased condition, better risk assessments,and optimum treatment; further improving overall healthcare and reduce the treatment cost considerably.

The historical landscape of personalized medicine
Over the past decade or so, substantial evidencehave been gathered to confirm that a substantial percentage of variable treatment outcomesare dependent upon a number of factors like genetic predisposition, immunological strength of a person, age, environmental impact, stress, nutritional level, epigenetic factors,etc. It should also crucially note different patterns of therapeutic responses depending upon geographical as well as ethnical basis of a population.

Personalized medicine: The Stem CellsTheranostic?
Precision medicine, by contrast, focuses on the targeted application of a drug or another therapeutic module further allowing specific treatment outcome; with the primary goal of maximizing the therapeutic outcome and minimizing the risk of any other side effects. In particular, this approach has largely been warranted by the regenerative cellular medicine in the form of multiple cascades of interaction between infused cells and the host cells to decisively influence and accelerate therapeutic outcome.
With the advancements on basic science and technology associated with stem cell therapeutics, researchers are now working towards solving many different questions such as:

• How to translate the existing platform of stem cell research towards the therapeutic application of stem cells?
• How to optimize adequate clinical effectiveness and predictive safety, while performing stem cell therapy?
• How to precisely plan targeted delivery of stem cells, in order to facilitate better coordination of stem cells with that of the patients own cells?
• How to exploit stem cells for multi-dimensional, decisive treatment outcome?

Thus, there are several important considerations that need to be taken care of, while considering personalized stem cell therapy for clinical applications.
Important properties of stem cells have implications for personalized medicines
The diminished euphoria of stem cells is forcing scientists, medical professionals as well as the general public to re-examine different types of stem cells and their unique properties that would effectively allow regeneration of lost cells and facilitate functional attributes of tissue. In this regard, researchers are working towards implementation of the transdisciplinary approach by considering all aspects of science and technology to achieve better stem cell migration at the site of injury and facilitate tissue regeneration. Some of the important properties of stem cells that can be referred to as an implication towards precision medicines can be noted herewith:

• Stem cells are immune-privileged, as in they cannot elicit any negative immune response in the patient body and prevent rejection.
• Stem cells are immune-enhancers, by promoting and regulating good immune cells that are already present in our body; and thus, help in minimizing auto-immune destruction of the targeted
• Stem cells are able to transdifferentiate into multiple cells types like bone, neurons, cartilages,and pancreatic beta cells.
• There is a possibility of both autologous as well as allogeneic therapy with the wide treatment spectrum depending upon the disease type.

Conclusion
Thus, the major focus and interest are towards application and exploitation of all the relevant properties of stem cells towards developing a brand-new tool for the tailored health care options based on our unique genetic as well as immunological make-up, environmental effect,and lifestyle. With the accumulation of large database and comparative analysis done on the same, both researchers and clinicians are optimistic towards the use of stem cells in personalized medicine.

References

• http://www.discoverymedicine.com/Klaus-Bendtzen/2013/04/23/personalized-medicine-theranostics-therapeutics-diagnostics-essential-for-rational-use-of-tumor-necrosis-factor-alpha-antagonists/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23636137
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.4137/MEI.S13177

KTV2 Kuwait Interview of Mr. Vipul Jain, Founder & CEO of Advancells.

How Dangerous is being blue all the time?

As the scientific world is looking forward towards exploring the mysteries of dementia and other relative diseases; significant research has been carried out to confirm that the late-life depression is easily associated with dementia or to the more severe version of dementia identified to be as Alzheimer’s disease. As per the latest data suggested by a clinical investigation by a team of scientist at Harvard medical research, the condition ageing population to be suffering from Alzheimer’s has poised to expand without any bounding.
Overview
When a feeling of sadness, hopelessness as well as suicidal tendency dominates in a person’s life, quite persistently; then in medical language the person is being suffered from depression. So far, depression is believed to be contributing towards mental illness; however, people with dementia are being reported to be suffering from multiple physical symptoms like loss of energy, changes in appetite, constant fatigue, loss of memory, etc.
Statistics suggest that almost one out of five individuals from developed countries are suffering from depression, which can later transform into dementia as well as Alzheimer’s disease.
Type of depression common with Age
Scientific analysis has further confirmed that depression is significantly common in people, who are aged. Although, multiple causes or risk factors have been proposed to be responsible for depression in younger population; some of the commonly reported may be:
The sudden death of a spouse, or a close member of the family
Financial losses, debt, etc.
Chronic illnesses, and side effects of certain medicines.
Unusually high level of stress
Survival from stroke
Scientists have further reported that 36 out of every 50 individuals, who have experienced late-life depression due to any of the factor described above; may go on to develop vascular dementia as well as Alzheimer’s disease.
Depression and Dementia: The underlying mechanism
While unraveling the casual relation of depression and dementia, the marvels of the medical world could so far explore that about 40% of people with depression can later on contract with Alzheimer or dementia. Accordingly, multiple theories have been proposed in that direction, some of which have been noted herewith:
One theory proposes that depression should be referred to be as the early sign of dementia.
Another theory believes in the fact that chronic depression may lead to neuronal damage to the brain, which can, later on, initiate dementia or Alzheimer.
Third and the last theory points out towards the altered brain volume due to chronic depression and stress, as the leading cause of dementia.
Treating depression before dementia
It is always better to get consciously advised by an expert or psychiatrist; however, many people avoid being treated for depression due to mental blockage or stigma of suffering from mental disorders. People may possibly think that “I am not crazy to go to the psychiatrist, at the same time I don’t want people to think about me that I am crazy!”
At the same time, if someone appears to have on the threshold of depression; it is very important to look forward to possible treatments, like behavioral therapy, stem cell therapy as well as talk therapy.
Although the science of stem cells is recently emerging out, it has proven its potential in differentiating into many neuronal cells and further prevent the damage associated with the same. Further to which, stem cells are identified to be responsible for guiding our happy hormones to secrete in a proportionate manner to reduce the early signs of depression.
Thus, it is always better to get treated for depression within the definite time frame, but at the same time, it is also important to maintain healthy lifestyle habits, exercise pattern, healthy diet and socialization to prevent being into a state of depression for a longer period of time.

ACL injury- Is surgery the only option?

An ACL injury is a tear or sprain in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) that is one of the major ligaments present in your knee. ACL is ligament tissues that hold bones together in knee and keep it stable. In general, the incidence of ACL injury is higher in people who participate in high-risk sports such as basketball, football, skiing, and soccer. With ACL injury, knee may swell, become unstable and too painful to bear.
There are number of risk factors that increase the risk of having ACL injury

• Being female - due to differences in anatomy, muscle strength and hormonal influences
• Playing certain sports, such as soccer, football, basketball, gymnastics and downhill skiing
• Footwear that doesn't fit properly
• The use of poorly maintained sports equipment, such as ski bindings that aren't adjusted properly

 Treatment Options for ACL injury
Depending on the extent of ACL injury, treatment option varies from patient to patient. The nonsurgical treatment may include rest and rehabilitation exercises that help in regaining strength and stability. Proper training programmes are also available that educates the patient how to prevent instability and help reduce the risk of an ACL injury.  The use of a hinged knee brace is also prescribed in some of the cases. Surgical treatment is usually advised in combined injuries (ACL tears in combination with other injuries in the knee).
Stem cell therapy- An emerging treatment modality for ACL tear
With advancements made in stem cell field, there is now another option to be considered that can get you back to you playing ground in less time. Stem cells are naïve cells of body, which have capability of regenerating the damaged tissues. Stem cell therapy procedure is minimally invasive 3-hour process, requiring no general anesthesia and a far less painful recovery.
The stem cells can be harvested from various sources such as fat tissue, bone marrow etc.  With the use of liposuction device, a small amount of fat tissue is typically taken from the lower abdomen Bone marrow can be harvested from the iliac crest that is a rich source of growth factors and stem cells as well. Stem cells are isolated and concentrated in sterile environment for the injections for knees. During the injection, the stem cells are placed into the ligament with image guided techniques. The stem cells and growth factors are then locally delivered into the damaged ligament as well as into other areas of the injured joint space. The results of pre-clinical and clinical trials have provided encouraging evidence of efficacy and safety of stem cell therapies for the treatment of knee injuries.
In some specific cases, surgery may be the treatment of choice, but in others stem cell therapy is emerging as a better option to consider before going for surgery.