Low Testosterone

A Subtle Drop in Energy
Fatigue is a common effect of low testosterone. You might feel like you just don't have the energy that you're used to. Or you might be incredibly tired. But many other things can sap your energy, too, including normal aging and depression. Getting enough sleep may help raise your energy levels. Try to get at least 7 to 8 hours each night. See your doctor for more help with unusual fatigue.

Changes in Sex Life
A drop in your sex drive can be due to low Testosterone. So can erectile dysfunction. However, low testosterone alone is rarely the only reason for weaker and fewer erections. Other medical problems can be to blame, such as heart disease or diabetes. Check with your doctor. If you have low testosterone levels, your sex drive may get better with treatment.

Fuzzy Thinking
Low testosterone can hurt your mental focus and memory. You may forget what you planned to do and have trouble concentrating. This happens more often when testosterone levels are extremely low. To help, take steps to ease stress. Try meditation, yoga, exercise, or massage. The more stress hormones your body makes, the less testosterone it can make.

Changes in Mood
Low testosterone can get you down a little or to the point of depression. Some men really see a change in personality. Nothing seems to make them happy anymore and they don't want to do things they used to enjoy. When testosterone levels are back to normal, men often say they feel like themselves again.

Muscle Changes
Because testosterone helps build muscle, when it gets low, so does your muscle mass and strength. When you work out you don't see the results that you would normally expect from exercise. Regular exercise can help boost your testosterone levels. Be sure to work large groups of muscles when you exercise and do some weight lifting, too.

More Body Fat
Not only can you lose muscles with low testosterone, you can also gain fat. If you're not building muscle with the calories you take in and the physical activity you do, then your body turns the calories into fat. Eat a healthy diet. When you start to lose weight and extra body fat from dieting, you may lose some muscle. If you are overweight or obese, your body may make more testosterone as you lose weight. This will help you gain lost muscle mass.

Thinning Body Hair
Low testosterone can cause you to lose some facial hair, pubic hair, and hair on your arms and lower legs. But it doesn't usually affect the hair on your head. Yet, there's a link between testosterone therapy and male-pattern balding. Your doctor can talk to you about any side effects of testosterone treatment.

Loss of Bone Mass
Low testosterone has been linked to osteoporosis, a disease that weakens bones. But there are other causes of osteoporosis too, so check with your doctor. To keep your bones healthy, don't smoke, and cut back on alcohol. Also get regular exercise, including weight-bearing exercise.

Trouble Sleeping
When your testosterone levels are low, you might have trouble with insomnia and restlessness at night. To help get a good night's sleep, have a relaxing bedtime routine. Go to bed and wake up at the same time, even on weekends. Make your bedroom dark, quiet, and comfortable, and only use it for sleep and sex. Eliminate all light, especially BLUE.

Problems on the Job
Many of the effects of low testosterone are focus problems, mood issues, and low energy. All there can make it hard to stay on top of your game at work. If your work or home life has changed dramatically for the worse, a full medical checkup and blood test may find the cause. A blood test can show whether you have low testosterone levels. Caution regarding the numbers vs your age.

If you have low Testosterone, a healthy lifestyle change is important, along with any testosterone therapy your doctor might suggest.

Face Exercises To Help Tone and Tighten Your Face

An easy facial exercise instruction, that may help tone and tighten your face.

Leg Cramps

Most leg cramps select no certain age or gender. In ages under 45, there is doubt one has blockage of the arteries to the legs. However, everyone who has frequent recurrent leg cramps does deserve a medical examination.

Most leg cramps at night in people who do not have leg cramps in the daytime are not caused by poor circulation. They seem to be a reflex reaction. There are a number of things one can do for the common night leg cramps. One is to stretch the leg muscles thoroughly every night before going to bed.

Another is to wear warm long socks or even the bottoms of thermal underwear. The legs and feet cool off more than the rest of the body during sleep and that is one reason they are prone to cramps.

Your sleep position is important. Sleep on your side with one or two pillows tucked at the knee (my favorite), on your back with a pillow under the knees, or try sleeping with a covered board at the bottom of the bed so that your feet rest against it and your toes do not drop down. A major cause of muscle cramping is shortening of the muscle. With the toes pointed down the calf muscle is already in a contracted position and ready to cramp.

Afternoon Drowsiness

It is well known that ambient light can influence aspects of human physiology including brain function, circadian rhythm, heart rate, and hormone release. But most studies of this have focused on the effects of light during the night; few have examined the body's response to light during the day.

New studies exposed participants to 21 minutes of bright white light in the morning. They became more alert, and brain images showed that regions of the brain involved with alertness and some cognitive processes became more active.

Those brain regions are also involved with attention and arousal regulation. This means that light exposure DOES affect performance and alertness at work.

Sitting inside a poorly lit office surrounded by incandescent or fluorescent lighting day and night starve your body of the unfiltered ultraviolet light that helps your body produce vitamin D. Full-spectrum light improves our health. More lumens the better!

The human race evolved under the sun, and for thousands of years lived in close harmony with its heat and light. Sunlight not only increases your energy and general well being, but it also helps:

• Lowers your cholesterol
• Teats multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis
• Prevent and treats cancer
• Lowers your blood pressure
• Increases the value of exercise
• Improves your body's ability to detoxify

See the light ... the bright natural light.

Sinus & Allergy Problems

Throughout Southern California people are suffering from sinus trouble (sinusitis). The majority believe the symptoms to be nothing more than a slight cold in the head that periodically worsens. They do not realize they are suffering from chronic SINUSITIS, nor do they realize how rapidly a chronic sinus condition can flare up and become serious.

Sinusitis is an inflammation of the mucous membrane lining one or more of the nasal sinuses. There are 8 sinuses; cavities in the cheekbones, forehead, and on either side of and behind the nose. The function of the sinuses is to aid in the all important pollution control of air entering the lungs. Even the sweetest country air contains dust particles, pollen and other impurities. City air is often filthy with soot and smog. During the few seconds it takes for air to be sucked into the lungs, the air must pass through an intricate maze of snares and traps. The body's system of "air conditioning" begins with the hair just inside the nostrils. These hairs strain out and move obvious particles of dust, flying insects, and other large particles of filth riding the air stream as it is sucked into the lungs. Heat from the rich blood supply in the nose warms the air on its journey to the lungs, but both the warming affect and the cleansing effect of the nasal passages are lost in breathing through the mouth. Since it is highly desirable to keep impurities out of the lungs, the importance of catching such impurities in the nose is apparent. It is essential to good health that the sinuses function properly. Usually the pain is dull and aching. It may become excruciating with excessive activity.

Sinusitis can be either chronic or acute. A tendency to head colds that hang on and on is a major symptom of chronic sinusitis. Pain is often less than in acute conditions and may be merely annoying, but unless corrected completely, chronic sinusitis may stay with the victim through the major symptoms come and go.

Patients with chronic sinus trouble are often astounded at how quickly relief comes with Chiropractic care without the use of drugs and/or operations. Give it a try .... it works!

Men Also Get Osteoporosis

With all the hype about osteoporosis in women and the ads for calcium you would think it was just a disease of women, but that is very wrong. About one in six men who live to extreme old age do have a hip fracture caused by osteoporosis. the figure is one in three for women in the same age group.

Bone loss in both sexes begins as soon as the skeleton is fully mature, which is some time after age 30. The menopause is simply an accelerated phase of bone loss. This gradual loss may never cause a man a problem if he dies before the age of 70. However, a small skeleton in either a male or female means that bone loss will become more critical earlier in life.

Testosterone in males has a similar effect on calcium and bone in men as estrogen does in women. Men tend to maintain normal testosterone levels until late in life, unless they have an illness or use alcohol to excess Studies show that in medical situations where there is a decreased testosterone level, there will also be bone loss.

It is really not known how to stop osteoporosis related to age. But it is known that cigarette smoking and alcohol both increase bone loss.

The best approach to the problem is to prevent bone loss through developing a good skeleton, with challenging exercise and proper nutrition, in the development years, and to avoid alcohol and cigarettes.

IRS PHONE SCAM

Telephone scam artist: ‘Americans are fools’

Fraudster posing as IRS official tries to scam a cop, who hassles him right back.

By KELLY PUENTE

   The con man was looking for a mark, but instead he got a cop.

   Damon Tucker, head investigator for the Major Fraud Unit in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, was checking voice messages on his personal cellphone when he heard a message a lot of us get – from a scam artist.

   Tucker called back the cheat for a chat.    “Actually you are calling the police,” Tucker told the man. “That’s the part that’s hilarious.”

   “You know what’s hilarious? You calling yourself ‘police’ ” the man replied. “That’s hilarious.”

   In a YouTube video released this week, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas warns of IRS telephone scams as Tax Day approaches.

   To get his point across, Rackauckas shows a clip of Tucker’s exchange. The cheat had left a message saying that Tucker needed to call back to avoid the IRS filing a lawsuit.

   Such callers ask that money be sent to them, or try to ferret out personal information from victims.

   In the call, Tucker volleys with the man.

   “Do you have a script that they give you?” Tucker asks. “How do you guys rip off people from their money?”

   “It’s easy to rip off people – Americans are stupid,” the fraudster replies. “You don’t need a script. American are fools. Vegetables, we call them.”

   This fraudster, unfortunately, isn’t alone.

   IRS officials said they have noticed an increase in scam artists this year calling under the guise of verifying tax return information. IRS spokesman Raphael Tulino said criminals are especially aggressive during tax season.

   “There are so many ways the scammers are trying to reach out to people,” he said.

   In January, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said there had been 896,000 phone scams reported since October 2013, with more than 5,000 victims paying $26.5 million in all.

   The IRS recommends hanging up on scam artists and reporting the incident to the Tax Administration.

   In a Wednesday interview, Tucker, a longtime fraud investigator, said he decided to “con the con artists” and repeatedly called their number, giving fake names from movies until those on the other end told him to “stop calling us.”

   “I figured if I’m tying up their line, that’s time they won’t get to spend calling potential victims,” he said.

   Tucker said he spoke with the man heard in the video several times, and the man eventually became frustrated and hung up the phone.

   The District Attorney’s Office turned the case over to its Cyber Crimes Task Force, but Tucker said these types of cases are tough to investigate because the callers are usually in another country.

   To see the video, go to www.youtube.com/user/OrangeCountyDA.