Dear Healthy Friend,

Millions of people suffer from insomnia. Although my one or two occasional sleepless nights could hardly be classified as insomnia, I know how dreadful it can be. Tossing and turning, so exhausted but never drifitng off... I can only imagine how agonising it must be after you've just drifted off to sleep, only to be woken up by the "urge to go", again and again...

Ed Martin reveals the possible causes and treatments... Keep reading...

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

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Waking up to wee? You're not alone
Edward Martin
Editor, House Calls

Next time you wake up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break, take a quick look out the window.

You might notice plenty of other bathroom lights on at the same time - because you're not the only one "going" at that hour.

In fact, researchers now say that more than one in five men wake up at last twice a night to urinate, a condition known as nocturia.

The older you are, the more likely you'll be one of them: While just 8% of men between 20 and 34 have the condition, it affects up to 56% of men 75 years and older, according to the study in the Journal of Urology.

The researchers only looked at data on men, which might not surprise people who think of nocturia as a prostate-related condition.

But that's not always the case and other studies have found that women suffer from it at roughly the same rate. And for men and women alike, it's not just a sleep-disrupting inconvenience - it could also be a serious warning from your body that something is amiss.

One study last year found that nocturia patients have double the risk of an early death. Another study found that each extra trip to the bathroom per night increased that death risk.

Nocturia could also be a sign of an undiagnosed condition, including diabetes or even heart problems, or a side effect of common meds.

Tell your doc about it and he might try to get you on even more meds - often synthetic hormones with side effects that can be even more unpleasant than those nighttime interruptions.

Some studies have found that up to 70% of the people who try those meds quit within six months.

Instead, simple lifestyle changes could often have you sleeping better and longer than you have in years.

One study last year found that a little exercise, a little less time awake in bed, keeping warm at night and drinking less (especially in the evening) led to significant improvement in just weeks.

And if it can cut back on all that flushing, who knows - it might even shave a little off your water bill, too.

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Trading cancer for cancer?
Christine O'Brien
Contribtor, Nutrition & Healing

I can only imagine that receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer sets a man's head spinning.

Want to know what sets my head spinning? Reading about some of the risky treatments  mainstream tries to pass off as marvels of modern medicine.

One of the more common treatments for prostate cancer is androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), which fights cancer by suppressing male hormones. Currently, hundreds of thousands are being treated with ADT for prostate cancer.

University of Michigan Medical School researchers recently examined data from 107,859 prostate cancer patients aged 67 and older. And what they found is, in short, disturbing.

According to their analysis, men treated with ADT had a 30 to 40% higher risk of colorectal cancer than men who didn't receive the treatment. The risk increased the longer the men received the therapy.

But this is the first of potential dangers of treating cancer with ADT. This might be the first study linking ADT to colon cancer, but it's not the first to point out a scary risk. Another previous study revealed ADT's association with structural bone decay...

This study revealed a potential loss of 4 to 5% of bone density and now this news of a 30 to 40% higher risk of developing colon cancer... Suddenly this oh-so-common treatment is looking like it should go the way of other formerly common medical treatments. You know, like bloodletting and lobotomies.

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