What he said

Health

Over the past few months, I’ve been taking some medications to deal with a couple of issues, and overall I have to say that this treatment has been a success. Last week I paid a visit to my doctor and found that my blood pressure was higher than it should be (under the medication). The result was an increase in the medication which appears to be working now, but it got me thinking: why would it increase if I have been doing most of the things I should to control it?

Apart from the obvious (more exercise), there is another element that I started to research that could contribute to this increase. This is drug interactions.

I found a great site (drugs.com) that lists many of the more commonly available drugs on the market, and each listing provides you with major, moderate or minor interactions with other drugs (including supplements).

I was surprised to find that the tummy fixers (like Rolaids, Tums, etc.) have a moderate interaction with my BP medication. These fixers are based on calcium product, and the BP medication is a calcium blocker, so by taking these fixers, I am making it more difficult for my BP to work. My multivitamin is also a moderate interaction, as it includes calcium (it’s important to note that it is the amount of extra calcium that may cause the problem, not calcium itself).

So I went through all my supplements and cold/flu/allergy pills to find out which ones work with no interaction or minor interaction, and I was actually relieved that my daily allergy pill is fine, as is the DayQuil that I took a few weeks ago when I thought I was coming down with a cold.

It’s worth checking out if you are on any medications, or just want to see what interactions exist with the common supplements that you may take.

URL is here: http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html

Health

It seems that it’s not just the North Texas region that is seeing an increase HIV infections among mid-life men (35-49). According to this article, the increase could be explained by a number of reasons:

• having survived the HIV pandemic, urban gay men in mid-life may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of decimated social networks
• the methamphetamine epidemic that has swept through urban gay communities also contributes to high levels of new HIV infections
• gay men in mid-life are at the center of a ‘perfect storm,’ in which multiple problems converge to create a very high-risk environment

I couldn’t agree more with this comment from the article, “We urgently need to create programs that directly address the real reasons that gay men engage in high-risk behavior.” It’s not always just about remembering those we’ve lost to HIV/AIDS, but sometimes the fight has to intervene and prevent more losses.

Source: Gay News Blog

Health

Recently I read an online article that discussed the practice of barebacking (generally an unsafe sex practice) and the increase that appears to be occuring with this activity.

“What we are seeing now is about 60 percent of the population is practicing safe sex most of the time, and about 40 percent of the population are barebacking or not practicing safe sex,” Zians said.

Read more…

Health

Well I thought I might do a weekend recap.

Friday night I did the usual coffee gathering with Frisco Pride members, and was suprised to see six new members in attendance (the largest we’ve had in a long time). Later we did a salad at Cotton Patch Cafe and then headed home to watch Boys Briefs 2, which was hosted by Danny Roberts. It was really enjoyable. Sometimes with these short films, you can get some depressing movies that overwhelm you. This series of shorts, didn’t have any of those.

Saturday, as I was loading the dishwasher, I pulled a muscle in my back. Talk about a great way to mess up weekend plans. I tried to recover, but it gradually got worse, so I ended up laying down and napping. The worst part of this was the reality that I was not going to be able to head to a Frisco Pride cocktail event that evening. I’d been looking forward to it for a while, and here I was moving about like an 110-year old. I did manage to cook some pretty tasty fried rice for dinner, and then proceeded to watch the two remaining films I had from NetFlix: The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and FAQS.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was really good, and actually quite educational. I was suprised to learn some of the history of evangelical television, and the fact that Jim and Tammy Baker were responsible for starting “The 700 Club”, “Trinity Broadcasting Network” and “PTL.” I was also suprised at the involvement of Jerry Falwell into the destruction of both Jim and Tammy’s lives, not to mention the apparent deceit that he manipulated to push Jim and Tammy out of PTL.

FAQS was less educational, however provided a great deal of eye candy … if you are into that kind of thing. Adam Larson (from MTV’s Road Rules) appears as a gay basher, who discovers his sexuality. The lead character, Joe Lia (India) is a little unbelievable, but has some cute naked scenes which make up for the mediocre acting. The ultra-hottie of the show is Spencer (played by Lance Lee Davis) … talk about a nice chest

Most of Sunday, I watched mind-numbing television while trying to “click” my back into place. Sunday evening we had Bobby, Ian and Kean over for dinner, and enjoyed cooking some kebabs on the new grill (the old one needed a part replaced that didn’t seem to be availble *sigh*). Chris was very happy with the new acquisition.

We finished our weekend by watching Comedy Central’s roast of William Shatner. It was okay.

Commentary, Friends, Health, Random Thoughts, Reviews

Earlier this week while looking at other people’s blogs, I found this link (courtesy of danah @ apophenia). It provides an insight to how different drugs affect our behaviours and our abilities to function, through the use of animated mice. It really is a very cool tool if you want to understand what actually happens to the brain when drugs are used.

Here is another cool tool created for the folks that use OS X. (SIGH)

WikiMania Conference 2006 kicked off yesterday, and here is a good recap of Day 1.

Rolling Stone’s most recent cover story is titled “The Worst President in History?” Guess who this might be about? (Source: Chris)

Blog Bits, Geeky, Health, Politics

It seems that someone out there is trying to address the ongoing health of our younger generation … finally! The people over at Life for Kids have developed a system that measures the level of physical activity that kids undertake each day, and then transfers that “activity time” to television time. It’s called the “Physical Activity Rewards System” and it doesn’t appear to be available yet. One wonders how successful it could be. (Thanks to Paul for posting this.)

Health, WTF?

On PBS tonight, FrontLine will be showing the first of a two part series called “The Age of AIDS.”  If you are in the DFW area, this will be shown on KERA13 at 8PM.

More information can be found by clicking on the link (or on the the logo).  Also, to coincide with this program, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) released its 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic earlier today.

While the report outlines some progress in the treatment of HIV/AIDS throughout the world, one area which is not improving is the level of HIV prevention education that is being made available to those at greatest risk.  One figure from the report, states that “only 9% of men who have sex with men received any type of HIV prevention service in 2005″ – nine percent!  Education is an important – if not the most important – component of an effective treatment against the ongoing spread of HIV, so why is this number so low?

Health