Dr. Turek's Blog

Medicine Light

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Can prayer heal? Does touch matter in medicine? Long considered a nonrational part of Western medicine, these “lighter side” topics are now receiving close attention and study. I am reminded about distant healing on the anniversary of the death of a medical school classmate and friend Dr. Elisabeth Targ. As a psychiatrist, daughter of a […]

A Good Planet is Hard to Find

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Most couples in most countries will conceive within a year of trying. Families in the Ukraine take an average of 2.5 years, according to a new U.S. publication. Why? Radiation discharged from the ill-fated nuclear explosion at nearby Chernobyl in 1986 is the likely culprit. Male infertility is the consequence. We know that sperm production […]

Freud’s Vasectomy: Vasectomy Equals Rejuvenation?

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Analyze this (Courtesy: Shutterstock) Do you know why Sigmund Freud, esteemed psychoanalyst, had a vasectomy when he was 67 years old? How about writer William Butler Yeats having his vasectomy at 69 years of age? Were they that sexually active and worried about conceiving? God bless them if this were true! Believe it or not, a popular Austrian endocrinologist […]

Your Oldest Treasure

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

What do you own that is 600 million years old? Your old suit? That little league baseball glove? Your cologne? In fact, every man possesses something that old, and believe it or not, it’s a gene. Not the clothing kind, but the kind you keep in your genome, in your chromosomes. We’ve talked about the […]

A Secret to Living Longer

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Up at dawn, and while waiting for a perfect, crumbling long board wave at Waikiki this past week, I recalled that Hawaiians live longer than the rest of Americans and wondered why. For some reason, life expectancy at birth in Hawaii is among the longest in the nation. Indeed, people born in Hawaii have a […]

Surfing is Life

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Legend has it that surfing began in the Hawaiian Islands hundreds of years ago. In the late 1800’s, it was introduced to the U.S. mainland by way of southern California. Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic star in swimming from Hawaii, helped popularize the sport by traveling internationally and demonstrating his surfing style. He is credited with […]

The Sunny Side of a Broken Back

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

I have a lot of patients in my practice who have broken their backs. Not figuratively by working so hard, but literally, by having spinal cord injuries. Some have been crushed by rolling logs, fallen from tall heights, been victims of shooting, dived into shallow pools or took an untoward jump while skiing or skateboarding. […]

One Child China

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Just got back from China, from Beijing and Hong Kong to be exact. I lectured to several medical and academic institutions on where I believe men’s health is headed in the future. What I found was an audience eager to push the research frontiers in this field, however I also a sensed a lack of […]

The Sound and the Fury: Of Men and Maseratis

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

I am a Men’s Health specialist and a vintage car buff. On more than one early Sunday morning jaunt down the Pacific Coast Highway in an old Ghibli, I have reflected on how similar these two beasts are. 1. When they run, they run hard. Tune that old Italian just right and you are in […]

Synthetic Cells: The Latest Vinyl?

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Believe it or not, science has now claimed to have made “synthetic life.” Life created from non-living substances. J Craig Venter and colleagues, after a decade of work, produced a man-made version of the entire DNA content (genome) of a bacteria (adding in a couple of harmless “watermarks” to track it) and inserted it into […]