Gynecomastia Surgery: Man Boobs / Male Breast Causes & Treatment

In US, UK: Surgery to correct “man-boobs” on the rise
“Being a man and having breasts is as bad as it sounds,” says Steve Beale who endured taunts and cruel
cruelty as he was growing up, all because he developed a condition called gynecomastia—or abnormal growth of male breast tissue.

“My breasts appeared in adolescence, around the time I was expecting mutant superpowers instead. And I got tortured for it at the rugby team changing-rooms at a West Country boys’ grammar,” Beale recalls in the article Why a bloke like me had a boob job, published by The Guardian in November 2003.

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Labiaplasty Risks and Complications

Labiaplasty Risks and Complications. The numbers of women in the United Kingdom seeking “designer vaginas” through genital surgery continue to soar after reaching record levels—and doctors are blaming this on the Internet porn boom.

Experts carrying out an ongoing study at the King’s College in London expressed alarm over the soaring rates of labiaplasty—the surgery done to make labia, or the inner lips of the vagina, smaller or more symmetrical. They warn that the surgery carries many risks in an industry that is mostly unregulated.

The number of labiaplasties in the U.K. is booming. Figures from the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology show that the number of women having this operation through the UK’s National Health System in 2009 rose almost 70% from the previous year. In 2008, there were 1,118 labiaplaties, almost double the 669 in 2007 and almost three times the 404 done in 2006.

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Acupuncture for Children: Safety and Side Effects

Acupuncture for Children: Safety and Side Effects. Acupuncture is safe for children, a recent large study in the journal Pediatrics said, but only in the hands of a trained practitioner.

The meta study—or analysis of 37 international studies—found that about one in 10 children experienced mild side effects like bruising, pain and numbness at the puncture site. But more serious side effects like infections and nerve impairment were rare.

“I would say the circumstances in which the serious harms happened do not reflect the modern-day standard of training and credentialing,” said Dr. Sunita Vohra, a professor of medicine at the University of Alberta on Canada and an author of the study.

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Norovirus Vaccine for Cruise Ship Virus? Hope For Future Treatment?

Norovirus Vaccine for Cruise Ship Virus? Researchers may soon roll out a vaccine to prevent people from catching the norovirus, the “winter vomiting bug” or “cruise ship virus,” blamed worldwide for outbreaks on cruise ships or on planes and in hospitals, schools and prisons during the winter.

That is, if the researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, are able to improve an experimental vaccine developed for the first time against the highly contagious virus that brings sudden cramping, vomiting and diarrhea to three million people across the world every year.

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