A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1079 men with prostate cancer to fill in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1259 healthy men of the same age. The team concludes that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer.

The protective effect is greatest while men are in their twenties: those who had ejaculated more than five times per week in their twenties, for instance, were one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life (BJU International, vol 92, p 211). read full article…

If preventing all forms of cancer were this fun, I think the world would be a much better place, don’t you?

Millions of Americans took the advice to get a flu shot this season, but many are still becoming infected with the flu. This flu season is lasting longer than initially expected and has introduced unforeseen new strains of the virus, making other flu prevention steps even more important. Today, the Visiting Nurse Associations of America (VNAA) and The Clorox Company launched the inFLUenza Resource Center, an online resource with tips and tools needed to help protect families and help prevent the spread of the flu virus.

“While it is important to get vaccinated to protect yourself from contracting influenza, there are many common sense actions you can take to help protect your family and help prevent the spread of the flu virus,” stated Shelley Ludwick, Clinical Director of the Visiting Nurse Associations of America. “Our new inFLUenza Resource Center includes easy tips to help you protect your family.”

read full article…

Visit WesWELL’s Cold & Flu Prevention website.
Check out the online Self Care Guide for treatment suggestions.

Colleges across Connecticut have taken a number of steps to cast off the drinking culture that infuses so much of campus life.  The tactics they’ve employed include strictly enforcing existing rules, aggressively screening students for signs of risky behavior, establishing peer support programs and enlisting the help of local police, bar owners and those hovering “helicopter” parents.

“Have we solved the problem? Not yet,” said Walter Bernstein, vice president of Western Connecticut State University. “But I am convinced that the first step toward solving the problem is admitting that a problem exists.”

The scale of that problem was on full display Monday, when leaders from more than 20 colleges in Connecticut came to Wesleyan University to honor the work they have already done and remind themselves of just how much more remains.

• College Drinking Video

The statistics are startling: About half of all college students in the U.S. binge drink or abuse drugs.

One quarter of them meet the medical criteria for drug or alcohol dependency, compared with about 8.5 percent of the general population. And college women, though they lag behind their male peers in terms of alcohol consumption, are catching up fast.

Those are the findings of a 2005 study conducted by the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Joseph A. Califano Jr., founding chairman of the center and one-time chief domestic aide to President Lyndon Johnson, presented Monday’s keynote address.

“Thirty-two kids were killed [at Virginia Tech] by a crazy kid with a gun and the nation went into mourning,” Califano said. Yet every week, more than two dozen college students die because of injuries related to alcohol or drugs and scarcely anyone notices, he said.

Drug use is also increasing, according to Califano. Four percent of college students said they used marijuana daily, according to the study. That is even more troubling because today’s marijuana is far more potent that that of the 1960s and ’70s. “It’s not the right of passage parents might have thought it was,” Califano said.

The colleges and universities represented on Monday are part of the Connecticut Statewide Healthy Campus Initiative, a partnership of the state departments of mental health and addiction services and higher education, as well as the Governor’s Prevention Partnership. They range in size from tiny Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (total enrollment: about 180 students) to the University of Connecticut.

But each has a stake in addressing risky behavior among its students. It is “part and parcel of our mission,” said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. “You cannot learn the things you need to learn as a college student if you continue on a path” of unhealthy behavior, he said.

Click here to learn more about Wesleyan’s alcohol and other drug prvention efforts (on-campus network access only).

If a man who carries a urinal in one hand and solicits high-fives with the other isn’t enough to get college students thinking about germs, then officials at the University of Central Florida are out of luck.

A spirited campaign to promote “hand hygiene” is under way at the Orlando campus, and the urinal toter, known as UCF 5th Guy, is its front line.

Like their counterparts at many other institutions, health officials at Central Florida want students to think about the germs that lurk on their hands. And then clean them, preferably with one of 32 strategically placed hand sanitizers on the campus.

Waterless hand sanitizers like Purell, Germstar, and AeroFirst, once the province of medical examination rooms, are becoming fixtures on college campuses. Dispensers are appearing in dining halls, next to elevators, at entrances to computer labs and recreational centers, and anyplace else students are likely to share their germs.

“Pathogens are getting stronger,” says Ruth Stoltzfus, director of the wellness and health center at Goshen College, in Indiana. “We spread pathogens in ways that we weren’t aware of before.”

Students, of course, will still sneeze, cough, kiss, and otherwise spread germs with abandon. Officials just want them to reach for a zap of hand gel in between.

At Central Florida, a Web site instructs students what to do if they encounter 5th Guy, whose moniker comes from a statistic that one in five men do not wash their hands after leaving a public restroom.

“Do your best not to touch him,” say the instructions. “Or, better yet, if you happen to have some hand sanitizer, feel free to offer it to him.”

Maybe too few students have listened: 5th Guy himself, a theater student named David Cohn, took a hiatus from his $10-an-hour duties earlier this month, laid up with a cold.

Gimmicks like 5th Guy, a spinoff of a statewide health campaign in Florida, are key to getting students to think about hygiene, says Michael Deichen, medical director of Central Florida’s health services. Simply installing dispensers of AeroFirst around campus would probably not compel students to use them, he says.

Mr. Cohn, 21, hands out bottles of hand sanitizer and tissues and otherwise goads his fellow students into practicing good hygiene. “I put the goodies in the urinal and I make people grab them,” he says. “It’s obviously not a real urinal,” he adds quickly. “That would be disgusting.”

Health officials emphasize that old-fashioned hand washing is the best way to stay clean. “We have a clean-hand station in every restroom,” John Hughes, coordinator of student health services at Sul Ross State University in Texas, says in an e-mail message. “It’s called a sink, hopefully with running water and soap.” They acknowledge that generations of college students turned out just fine without the antimicrobial benefits of Purell. Some also cite evidence that widespread use of hand sanitizers could create “superbugs” that are resistant to antibacterial cleaners.

Still, hand sanitizers can be convenient. “Most people are not going to specifically go into a restroom just to wash their hands,” says Joyce Walter, director of health services at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, where health officials are in their second year of promoting Purell use.

A recent study by researchers at Boston College’s William F. Connell School of Nursing took another age group noted for its germs — second- and third-graders — and put the two hand-cleaning methods to the test. They compared the absenteeism rates of children who used alcohol-based hand sanitizers and those who used soap and water, and concluded that there was no significant difference. Teachers and school nurses, however, said they preferred the hand sanitizers over soap and water.

Some college health officials said the Purell units offered a psychological edge more than anything.

“We put the dispensers up because we like thinking they help,” Mary Rick, director of the health center at Spring Arbor University, in Michigan, says in an e-mail message. “We are in huge denial.”

A couple of years ago, an outbreak of a stomach flu so nasty that students began calling it simply “The Gastro” ran its nauseous course on Wesleyan’s Connecticut campus. Soon enough, health officials and students formed a hygiene campaign. They called it “Infection Control” and promptly got money to install Purell dispensers, at $55 apiece, in eight computer labs on the campus.

Use of the dispensers has not been quite what they had hoped, not even at the health center, where a parade of ill students traipses in each day, right past the Purell dispenser mounted next to the front desk.“Hardly anybody uses it,” says Ms. Walter, the health center director, with more than a touch of incredulity.

Are college students really dirty enough to justify all the excitement?

“They’re pigs,” says Ms. Rick, of Spring Arbor. “Just stand in the bathroom and you can’t even count how many don’t wash their hands after leaving a stall. That’s just the girls. Just think what the guys are like.”

http://chronicle.com
Section: Short Subjects, Volume 54, Issue 25, Page A1

 UPDATE: Check out the Wesleyan Infection Control website, created by the Student Health Advisory Committee