Male readers be advised! Using your laptop placed on your knees to read this post may cause your testicles to heat up quite significantly. However surprisingly, this is not due to the heat dissipated by many laptops, but rather due to the positioning of the legs. A study just published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility investigated ways to avoid the testicles from overheating while using a laptop computer.
Right and left scrotal temperatures were measured in 29 volunteers while working on the laptop in different positions: With closely approximated legs, with closely approximated legs with a lap pad below the laptop, and sitting with legs apart at a 70° angle with a lap pad below the laptop. After 60 minutes with closed legs, temperature increased about 2.4 degrees Celsius, using the lap pad yielded a slightly smaller increase of 2.1 degrees, while spreading the legs resulted in a modest increase of 1.4 degrees.
The authors conclude that prevention of scrotal hyperthermia in laptop users is not feasible, although we would like to disagree and suggest using a flat surface, such as a table or desk, to position your laptop in order to preserve your fertility.
November is American Diabetes Month, and in the video below I talk with a local TV news reporter about risk factors, complications, and ways to prevent diabetes. The interview was only about two minutes and there’s much more to be covered, so check out the American Diabetes Association’s website for more information.
If you find this video helpful, I invite you to view more of my TV interviews on my YouTube channel. Happy November!
It is important to listen to what physicians are saying. An article appeared in SERMO, a physicians’ social network, which expressed a physician’s frustration. It is appropriate to publish some of that physician’s thoughts:
“I first heard this statement over twenty years ago, when I was an intern in general surgery, struggling to find my professional self.”
“My chief resident said; “The patient owns the disease,” “You’re not trying to make them suffer, you’re trying to help. They’re sick, you’re not.”
“The human body is unpredictable. Disease complications happen.”
The author thought his chief resident was heartless and callous. In a way, he was but he was getting at the heart of the matter. What is the patient’s responsibility in the evolution of disease? Read more »
I got my Medicare card last summer, so I am now officially one of the “elderly.” A recent review by Goodwin et al. showed that the antibody response to flu vaccines is significantly lower in the elderly. They called for a more immunogenic vaccine formulation for that age group. My age group. One manufacturer has responded. Read more »
It’s a scene that plays out thousands of times every day in doctors’ offices across the country — the moment the doctor shifts from addressing the concerns that brought the patient into clinic to when he or she attempts to make sure everything else is going okay.
Often this happens at the end of a sick visit, after working up an upper respiratory infection or back pain. Sometimes it happens after following up a chronic medical problem such as high blood pressure or arthritis, and occasionally it happens under ideal circumstances, during an annual physical or routine wellness visit. It doesn’t necessarily happen at the end of the visit. Often it sneaks it’s way into various points in the encounter — as when the doctor places his or her stethoscope over a patient’s chest while evaluating for knee pain.
What I’m referring to is so indistinct that it doesn’t even have an universal name, but rather goes by many titles — “preventive health,” “preventative health,” “preventive medicine,” “preventive care,” “healthcare maintenance,” “routine healthcare,” “routine checkup,” “annual physical,” and “health and wellness” — to name a few.
But whatever you call it nearly everyone agrees how important it is. The healthcare reform debate was ripe with calls for more “health”-care not just “sick”-care, and one of the most welcome measures in the new healthcare legislation across both sides of the aisle are provisions to support it. Outside of Capitol Hill, from cereal boxes to magazine racks and celebrity doctors, messages about staying healthy are everywhere, as is the general belief that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Read more »
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
Male readers be advised! Using your laptop placed on your knees to read this post may cause your testicles to heat up quite significantly. However surprisingly, this is not due to the heat dissipated by many laptops, but rather due to the positioning of the legs. A study just published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility investigated ways to avoid the testicles from overheating while using a laptop computer.
