Men's Personal Care Information
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Make A Great First Impression With Your Appearance
Beyond taking a shower every morning, here is some basic tips:
Check your face
You don't necessarily have to shave, but at least ensure that your face is clean and free of "debris." A quick look in the mirror to check for nose hair, stuff in your beard or crust in your eyes doesn't take more than a few seconds, and is well worth the effort.
Groom your hair (ear, nose, chest, head, etc.)
Hair growth happens with regularity, so make trimming and upkeep part of your routine. Wash and condition your hair every day (or every other day, depending on your hair type and length). Set aside one day a week (preferably a Saturday or Sunday, when you have more time) to tend to ear, nose and chest hair.
Clean your hands
In the business world, handshakes can make or break you; in the dating world, a woman expects to see nice hands. So all you have to do is cut your nails regularly, scrape away the dirt with a "nail cleaner" or a nailbrush (which you can keep in the shower to save time), wash your hands frequently (to avoid sweaty, sticky hands), and use lotion on occasion (to keep them smooth).
Apply lip balm
There is nothing worse than looking at chapped lips, and trust me, no girl will want to kiss them. Find a good lip balm and use it regularly. Just don't put too much on, or it will end up looking like lip gloss. And if you don't like applying it in public because of the unmanly look it portrays, then do it in private when you go to the bathroom.
Dress well
You don't need a suit (unless the occasion calls for it), but you should always wear clean clothes that are wrinkle-free and smell good. In other words, wear clothes that were just in your drawer or closet, not your hamper.
On a related note, select clothes that fit. After you put on your clothes, take a look in the mirror for a few seconds to make sure they fit properly. Yes, their preferred fit will vary over time as styles change (along with your body and taste), but the key here is to pay attention to what you're putting on.
Use some sort of scent
Many guys go to town wearing some sort of fragrance, using everything from scented soap and deodorant to aftershave and cologne. Other guys prefer not to use anything. Like most things in life, the answer is moderation. Pick one scent (otherwise you'll combine fragrances, which will result in a weird smell) and go with it. Just make sure it isn't too strong and make sure not to bathe in it. One final note: Don't skimp on cost here; cheap cologne will act like repellant.
Shine your shoes
People tend to look at your shoes right away. If dress shoes are appropriate, make sure they're shined. If you're wearing casual shoes, make sure they look clean and new. Tattered shoes tell the world that you either don't have money or don't care -- neither option is attractive.
Advance Toward Test for Aggressive Prostate Cancer
MONDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Harvard researchers report what they say is a major advance toward the long-sought goal of a genetic test that can distinguish between aggressive prostate cancers that require urgent treatment and slow-growing tumors that can safely be left alone.
Today, many men diagnosed with prostate cancer are treated with radiation or chemotherapy even though most of those cancers will grow so slowly that they are not dangerous. It is the cancers that metastasize -- spread outside the prostate gland -- that typically are life-threatening.
"For the first time, we showed in a mouse model that when you take a gene out, you get metastasis and when you put it back in you don't get metastasis," said study author Karen Cichowski, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of genetics at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It looks like the entire pathway is driven by this one gene, the cascade that drives metastasis."
Studies of human prostate cancers have shown the same effect, she said: "We have looked at the genetic pathway in a large number of human tumors, and have found it to be deregulated in more advanced prostate cancers."
The finding could lead to better treatment of prostate cancer, because the molecule whose production is governed by the gene can be a target of drug therapy, Cichowski said.
The molecule, designated EZH2, is an enzyme, and "enzymes are always good potential therapeutic targets," she said. "Many companies are working to develop EZH2 inhibitors."
The Brigham and Women's program is one of a number being carried out in competitive fashion at several U.S. medical research centers. They are looking at a cluster of genes whose connection with prostate cancer was first described in 2002 by Jer-Tsong Hsieh, a professor of pathology and urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
"We complement each other; our findings are very similar," Hsieh said of the Harvard work. "I am a cell biologist and look for the protein. She uses a genetic approach."
Hsieh's group has published several papers on the research, one as recent as last month. One current effort is to develop a chemical reagent that can detect the enzyme, he said.
Another researcher in prostate cancer genetics is Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan, a professor of pathology and urology at the University of Michigan.
The newly reported study "provides a nice mechanistic link as to why EZH2 leads to metastatic cancer," Chinnaiyan said. "It is exciting because there is a lot of interest in the biotechnology world in developing inhibitors of EZH2."
His laboratory is working on such inhibitors, Chinnaiyan added.
"Chinnaiyan showed that this gene for EZH2 is highly expressed in advanced prostate cancer," Cichowski said. "Hsieh showed that a second gene in this genetic pathway was a target of EZH2 and could be silenced by EZH2. It was one of 250 genes targeted by EZH2. We showed that in a mouse model the gene is the primary target of EZH2 in prostate cancer."
That gene, DAB2IP, is suppressed in human prostate cancer, and the degree of suppression correlates with the aggressiveness of a cancer, the journal report said.
"This is the first study to definitively show not only the gene but also the pathway that drives metastasis in prostate cancer," Cichowski said. "Now that we know this pathway, there are many ways to target it."
More information
Complete information about prostate cancer is provided by the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
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