Being a young driver aged less than 25 is quite uncomfortable from the insurance perspective as you’re always charged with premiums that can be twice as high as your parents pay. That is because insurance companies regard younger car owners as being the most risky age group to insure. And while this may seem as a form of discrimination, the hard facts are on their side and you can’t do anything about it. Young drivers have less experience, end up in accidents more often and tend to take more risk while behind the wheel, which reflects in more at fault claims and more serious accidents. Still, even if you make part of this age group this doesn’t mean that there are no ways to get affordable insurance for your policy. Here are a few tips on how to do it right:
Ask your parents to include you to their policy
Although it may seem like a move that’s not very independent this still may help you save some money. Especially if your parents are paying the premiums. By including a high risk teen driver to the policy the premiums will automatically go up, however it will still cost you less than buying two separate policies for parents and the teen driver apart. So consider talking to your parents about such a move, especially if they already have very competitive premiums on their policy. more…
So here’s the big dilemma. You’ve been having pain and problems “down there” and, finally after much argument and debate, you go see a doctor. There’s prodding and even more embarrassing tests. Finally, a big gun surgeon appears and confirms your worst fears. You have prostate cancer, but it’s treatable. So this surgeon is just getting into the spiel about the new advances in robotic prostatectomy and you interrupt with the most important question. “How will this affect my sex life?” There’s a pause. Now does the surgeon tell you the truth or does the surgeon smile with the magic confidence that comes from having perfect teeth and tell you that all his/her patients are “fine” after the procedure?
In the midst of this, of course, there’s an assumption the surgeon actually knows the truth. The reality is more likely to be that, after the surgery (which is the easiest part of the whole process), you get passed on to the urology department and our famous surgeon never follows up on what happens to you afterwards. That explains why the perfect smile of confidence is so convincing. He/she is protected by a lack of information and so can appear sincere. More importantly, there have been very few research studies looking at significant numbers of men going through the surgery. That’s just changed. Now surgeons have no excuse for not knowing the “truth”. But that brings us back to the dilemma.
Every year, about 240,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer. Suppose you’re only in your 40s and have been expecting an active sex life for the next twenty or thirty years. Loss of hard erections would seriously affect your quality of life. But if you’re already in your 60s and sex has become a slightly distant memory, the potential loss of erections is not going to be so troubling. The tendency among older men with active sex lives has been to refuse surgery. They apparently believe they would prefer a few more years of happiness. They hope to die of natural causes before the inconvenience and pain of the cancer comes to dominate their lives. So which is better from your friendly neighborhood surgeon? Reassuring confidence you’ll be just fine, or total frankness about the risks? more…
The GOP has a field of candidates who want to run for President. When the race began, the front runner was Mitt Romney but, when Rick Perry joined in, he surged into a lead. Whether he can maintain that lead is something only time can tell. The first signs are that the enthusiasm of the evangelicals and tea-partiers may not be shared by the rest of the country. Governor Perry has some interestingly partisan ideas and a Texan style of delivering them. But, if Perry is not likely to be electable, where does that leave Mitt Romney. He’s more the thinking-person’s candidate and, of course, he’s controversial” because of his health care reforms in Massachusetts. more…
As we emerge from the recession, we find the nation in crisis. Think of the bursting of the housing bubble and the loss of credit as like a wound. Now the nation has to endure the pain of unemployment with more people living in poverty in 2010 than at any other time since we began keeping records. To give you an idea of just how bad the situation is, a recent survey of the hundred most prosperous city areas by the Brookings Institute found only 16 have managed to replace more than half the jobs lost during the recession itself. That means increasing financial pressures to pay unemployment benefits at a time when tax revenues are low. Except, ask yourself whether just paying unemployment benefit is a sufficient treatment. If your body had just received a wound, would you think it sufficient if the only treatment was sewing you back together and leaving you to get better? No! You would expect there to be follow-up treatment through physical therapy to help rebuild muscles and improve mobility. If there was continuing pain, you would expect experts to help you find better ways to live your life with less discomfort. This might involve redesigning your home, changing the way you work, offering you various drugs to keep the pain under control, and so on.
When you move beyond the original cause but still have consequences flowing from it, you hope and expect there will be an expert in consequences. Just talking to the surgeon who sewed you up is not really the right person to be talking to. That’s why we’re all frustrated with Washington right now because none of the politicians can agree how to treat the pain. The result? There’s no treatment for the pain as they fight among themselves about whether FEMA should have money to deal with emergencies like hurricanes and other minor issues. more…
When our grandparents were growing up, there were microscopes but, by modern standards, they were primitive. There were moderately sophisticated chemical tests for different medical problems and conditions. Sadly, they were not very precise. So, when a doctor or any other scientist made announcements, the numbers were very general. We found this acceptable. No one expected science to develop into the modern wonders of today where we can measure the presence of trace elements as parts-per-million. We may even have discovered an atomic particle capable of traveling faster than the speed of light. Einstein would be turning in his grave to get a better look at this magic neutrino that might just shoot down one of his best known theories.
Because we’ve moved from general statements that there were traces of a chemical to a precise measurement there were 39 parts-per-million, many now believe even minute traces can be dangerous. We’ve lost the sense of scale. When we can detect the presence of particles at a subatomic level, we want to believe science has more answers. It’s going where no one has been able to go before, therefore it must know more than those who tried to go before. Except, science doesn’t work like that. The best it can do is say people have been able to replicate the same results from experiments, so this suggests a theory is correct. But the theory is only correct until a better theory comes along with experimental evidence to back it up.
When the erectile dysfunction drugs were going through their clinical trials, there were some effects noted on eyesight. This fell into two classes. First, some men experienced a slight color shift so many objects appeared tinged with blue. Second, some men experienced photosensitivity, i.e. their eyes were painful in bright light. This affected between 3 and 10% of all men going through the trials, and the effects were duly noted on the labels and accompanying patient information. Suddenly, there were stories about men going blind. As a knee-jerk reaction, the FDA required the manufacturers to change the labels to include a warning.
In a sense, this is the precautionary principle at work. As a responsible regulator, the FDA prefers not to take any chances. Except, just how many verified cases of vision loss were there to encourage the FDA into action? The answer comes in a new piece of research. A team went through all the published reports in the peer-reviewed literature. All the results were analyzed using the international probability scales. The result? Between January 2006 and February 2011, there were eight reported cases. Eight cases over five years! And even in these cases, there’s no certainty the loss of vision was due to the use of an erectile dysfunction drug. There were other equally valid explanations. more…
Any man that has experienced premature hair loss and balding, or is experiencing such problems at the moment, will know just how debilitating this can be. Whilst some people may think that hair loss is just an aesthetic problem and that men should just get over it and play the hand that they have been dealt, this is actually a problem that can go much further than just aesthetics. Of course, some men have no qualms about losing their hair and to them it really is plain and simple aesthetics. However, for many other men losing their hair can have a profound effect on the way they feel. Many men lose their self esteem and confidence along with their hair and this can make a big difference to their overall quality of life.
Propecia is a drug that is manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, and it is designed to help men who are experiencing hair loss and baldness. This medication is aimed at helping to stop any further hair loss, so the earlier men consider taking it the better. However, many men may already have bald patches by the time they start taking Propecia. The good news is that this medication is also able to help stimulate hair regrowth on bald areas of the scalp in some men, which means that even those that have already become bald in some areas could benefit.
There are in fact a number of main benefits that come with this hair loss treatment and some of these include:
- This medication may be able to stop any further hair loss in men that have been losing their hair. It can therefore prove very effective for men who start taking it early before too much hair is lost
- For some men this medication will also result in the regrowth of new hair in areas of baldness, as it can help to stimulate the follicles that have stopped producing new hair in order to get them working effectively again
- Propecia comes in the form of a small pill, which only has to be taken once a day in order for men to start benefitting from its effects. This means that there is no need for inconvenient ointments that have to be rubbed onto the scalp each day. It also means that you can take your medication discreetly even when you are away on holiday or business
- Whilst there are side effects that are associated with this treatment many men experience no side effects at all from taking Propecia, and instead enjoy only the benefits of the treatment more…
These are the days of political correctness where, on issues of gender, race, religion and other divisive issues, we are expected to remain civil and avoid anything that might stir up trouble. This actually makes life quite difficult because, if real change is going to be made, there must be an honest debate about the issues. So, for example, should men and women receive the same pay for the same work? This should not be controversial. If the employer benefits equally from the work done by both sexes, there’s no reason to reward one more than the other. Except there’s no transparency. Only a tiny percentage of employers make pay grades public, so it’s almost impossible to discover whether any group of individuals is being paid less than the average for that type of work. Now let’s turn the question around. Would you expect a man to be asked to pay more just because he’s a man?
It’s a statistical fact that women live longer than men, so let’s say a man and a woman of the same age ask for quotes to buy a life insurance policy with the same guaranteed death benefits. If the insurance companies base the quotes on the math, the man pays more because he will live for fewer years. There are two reasons for this. First, the man may not work for as long before ill-health forces retirement, i.e. the payments will stop. Second, as women live longer, there are more years for the investment of the payments to build up in value. So women can expect to pay less than men for the same product. Except this would be a positive discrimination on the basis of sex. Presumably that’s illegal.
Moving on to insuring drivers, it’s a statistical fact that women are safer drivers than men. They are more likely to obey the law and generally drive less recklessly. So even if they are involved in accidents, they are traveling more slowly and so there’s less injury to passengers and less damage to the vehicles. Because premium rates are based on the risk an insured will claim, women should pay less than men. Except, unless the insurance company offers a women-only policy, men and women are grouped together so there’s no problem in giving to same rates to individuals with the same safety records. The averages will simply show that women pay less than men. more…
As long as people deal with erectile dysfunction (and this is probably well since the dawn of mankind) there were countless views on how this condition could be treated. There were different views both on the nature of this issue and the way it should be treated but none of them was adequate or effective. Depending on the stage of medicine development doctors offered everything from magic potions made from bat wings and unicorn hair to complex chemical compounds that were still ineffective against male impotence. Fortunately, things have changed drastically since the invention of the very first ED medication in the late 1990’s.
Until the development of the blue pill the exact nature of erectile dysfunction wasn’t in the spotlight of numerous medical investigations. Sure, people always tried to learn more about the causes behind this medical condition but they never did so to an extent in which it was exercised after the first ED drugs have hit the market. After the year 1998 there were countless medical trial being made both on the effectiveness of erectile dysfunction pills and the actual nature of the conditions. And these developments have lead to remarkable and very interesting results that shed some light on the alternative methods of treating and preventing male impotence. more…
Walk down any street anywhere in our country and you can’t help but notice how few thin people there are. It’s like a lunar month passing over a hundred year cycle. If you go back to 1911, access to plentiful food was limited to the middle and upper income groups. More importantly, only a few overindulged. The new generation grew taller and stronger, but they stayed lean. So, when you walked down any street, anyone overweight stood out. If anything, this trend was reinforced by the 1930’s, the lost decade of the Great Depression. Poverty and starvation left deep scars. It actually took World War II to get us fit and healthy again. We needed stronger people for the war effort and so food supply was improved. As evidence of sexual health, you only have to look at the Boomers. A whole generation of fitter, stronger and more active people were born in the years after the war. That was part of the same enthusiasm that really made America great.
Unfortunately, it’s been all downhill from then on. Fast food spread into all our cities and towns as we earned the disposable income to pack away ever larger portions of it. The results are now plain to see. We’re the most overweight country in the world. Now make no mistake, the rest of the world are catching us up, but that’s nothing to be proud of. It’s not like we should be in a race to see who can be the heaviest nation in the world. As a result, we’re also leading the world in the number of people dying of heart attacks. We have more strokes, there are more diabetics, and food-related cancers of the colon and prostate are reaching epidemic proportions. For the record, there’s recent confirmatory research published in Nature that restricting calorie intake reduces the size of tumors.
So here comes the message part of the article. Everywhere you look, you see talking heads and articles encouraging you to eat a healthy diet. You probably know the advice without having to think about it. Eat more fruit and vegetables, avoid high-fat diary products and pick the lean meats and fish. We can add in whole grains and make noises about regular exercise to complete the picture. Hung on the end of all this well-meaning advice is the fact it reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancers. And we all nod wisely and, with a smile, tell ourselves we’ll start the diet tomorrow. So here’s the kicker. If you won’t diet to avoid a heart attack, will you cut down the calories to avoid erectile dysfunction? more…
These days we are all keen to try and cut back on the amount that we spend and many people spend time trying to save money on everything that they purchase, from the weekly groceries or gas for the car to purchases such as toiletries and medication.
If you are a man who suffers from the condition known as erectile dysfunction you may have been advised to take a medication called Cialis, which is designed to help men with erectile dysfunction by enabling them to achieve and maintain an erection in order to engage in sexual activity.
However, for men who have to pay for their own medication it can work out expensive to keep buying treatment on a regular basis, which is why many men who are advised to take Cialis are keen to find a way to save on the amount that they pay for their treatment. This enables them to enjoy the huge benefits that Cialis can provide in terms of their sex lives, relationships, confidence levels, and overall quality of life. more…
