Apparently there may be a shortage of a necessary component of human life beginnings in sperm banks right now.  According to reports, sperm banks are suffering because European donors are cut way back, since there has been a ban on sperm from any geographical area where mad cow disease has been reported, in an effort to help prevent the disease from spreading.  Interesting - I didn’t know the disease could be “genetically spread”, so to speak. 

This has led to a probably shortage of sperm that provides the right genes for blond haired blue eyed babies, which is supposedly best obtained through Danish sperm, one of the donors that are currently on the FDA imposed sperm blacklist these days.  Looks like those that want those specific attrbutes in their offspring are out of luck, for now at least, until the ban is lifted. 

Some are saying the reason for the ban is not only ridiculous and prohibitive, but it also is not scientifcally based, since there is currently no proof that mad cow disease can be spread via male sperm.  The proposal is to do some sort of a screening process instead of an all out ban, so that these donors from areas exposed to the feared disease can be at least prescreened.  I mean, arent’ they screened for certain diseases already that are pretty serious, like HIV and other transmittable diseases?

This ban does seem rather silly actually, and I didn’t even know it existed to be honest.  I’m wondering how they can actually think they can screen for every single disease that might be transmitted this way?  Perhaps they are just trying to cut down on the risk of the disease while fear is still fairly high about it, and it’s in the news, I’m sure it will die down after a while….we hope. 

I just finished reading an article about how men who are over thirty tend to have a declining libido (sex drive), hence the surge in demand for natural male sexual enhancement products as well as prescription male enhancement products like Viagra.  The studies that have been done on this declining sex drive after this age are mostly linked to the fact that men start to produce less testosterone, which is largely responsible for the sex drive, after the age of thirty.  This kind of is the yin to the yang of women’s estrogen levels steady decline after the age of thirty, and after this age, it seems that we generally become, well, less of a man, and less of a woman, respectively.

Supplements like VigRX, the immensely popular male enhancement product that not only greatly increases the sex drive, but also increases penis erectile size as well as longevity in bed, are enjoying a huge popularity these days with men in their thirties and forties, not just young men in their twenties looking to improve their sexual performance, for exactly this reason. 

Studies had found that nearly 1 in every four men over the age of 30 years old had testosterone deficiencies, and that these low levels of the male hormone many times contributed to sexual side effects such as loss of desire to have sexual contact, lack of endurance during the sex act, inability to get or maintain an erection (one of the most common sexual dysfunctions today), and a general lack of ability to properly orgasm and function correctly when it came to sexuality and libido. 

The loss of this important hormone in the male body as it ages accounts for most sexual dysfunction, as it is unfortunately termed, but many times the cause is not just age, but a buildup of medications in the body, diet, and other factors that we cannot even begin to get into since researching that would just take too much time and effort, and quite frankly there are much more worthy research causes than male libido that science needs to be concerned with.  Testosterone is definitely a man’s best friend when it comes to sex though, we do know that much! 

Remember the story we told you a little while ago about a dead man’s sperm being granted to his family?  Well, that soldier who had passed away in the Iraq war had his sperm harvested from him moments after death, and the sperm was intended to be artificially implanted into a woman who was chosen by the family (he did not have a wife or fiancee).  Well, this new situation is a little different. 

The man in question this time, is a dying man who was involved in what sounds like a near fatal motorcycle accident.  He is currently in critical condition and has suffered multipled strokes since the accident.  He has little brain activity, and is expected to die very shortly, and the family, or more specifically, his young fiancee, is requesting that she be able to harvest his sperm before he dies.

She does make sense.  She says that he is all his mom and dad have, and to take his sperm and be able to prolong his genetic line, his parents will be able to, in essence, keep a part of him alive.  Initially the hospital who is keeping the young patient on life support did not want to honor his fiancee’s request for his sperm, but they have actually been ordered to by a court, who found in favor of the dying man’s fiancee. 

The hospital says that it wants to take care of its patient, and will no longer decline the fiancee’s request for her dying husband-to-be’s sperm.  I wonder how this works though, because artificial insemination is supposed to be very difficult to do, and many times takes more than one try to “take”. 

I had recently read an interesting piece in the health section about how teen males and females who either battle weight problems that relate to being underweight or overweight - so obesity, and underweight kids, may actually have more problems later in life than those that maintain a healthy weight throughout their lives and do not have the “yo yo” phenomenon, or have not had problems with too little weight or too much weight on their bones in their teen years.  Men’s health and women’s health has significantly impacted fertility in the past, and believe me, a huge part of health is the body fat you carry, as well as how slim you are and your food choices. 

The studies apparently were conducted on men and women from Finland.  This study is significant and believable because it tracked the subjects through much of their life, into adulthood, so it knew of all health factors in the men and women it tested, since a very early age, so that is significant, statistically speaking. 

Men and women who had been obese as teens had significantly lower amounts of children than men and women who were of a normal weight, and men and women who were underweight in their teens still had exhibited less fertility than their normal-weighted counterparts, but not nearly the gap that we see in the obese teens that had a lot less children and therefore, conclusively, were substantially less fertile than those maintaining a normal weight throughout their teens. 

The relationship between the weight issue as teens and the fertility issue in men and women has a lot to do with what’s called the BMI, or Body Mass Index, which essentially measures how much body fat a person has, or how much of their body is represented by fat.  The teen women who had a very low BMI as teens had interruptions or irregularities in their menstrual cycles because of essentially not enough nutrition, and the teen wome and men with obesity in the teens may have had hormonal influences, throwing their hormones off since their blood sugar most likely was affected by the obesity. 

Well, this is a story you won’t hear every day, or at least not for a while after this!  I read the other day that in a groundbreaking and unusual case, an Israeli soldier who was shot in combat and died, and was twenty years old, was harvested for samples of his sperm just hours after his death, at the request of his family.  Sound a little weird?  It gets even a little weirder. 

The sperm has gone through the court systems as the dead soldier’s family fights to have a woman impregnated with the sperm after the soldier died.  And, the real kicker is that the family does not even know the woman whom they wish their son’s sperm to impregnate.  The family did, however, choose the woman who will potentially be impregnated by their son’s sperm after his untimely death.  The grief stricken family says that while they know this move cannot bring back their dead child, they feel that this is what he would have wanted - offspring, since he always wanted to raise his own family.

However, I’m not so sure how this is carrying out that wish, seeing as though he will not be here to raise the child, but I do know that people do things sometimes that sound strange, but really would have been the wishes of the deceased, or at least ok with them.  The case did go through the courts, after the hospital that kept the son’s sperm sample refused to give it to the family, saying that only a spouse can request it, and their son was unmarried.

After winning “rights” to the sperm and their sons genetics essentially, and the right to decide what to do with it, the family went about picking the woman that will carry the child if the artificial insemination is successful.  I’m wondering how much sperm was harvested from the young man, and why their seems to be such confidence that this will impregnate  a woman, since artificial insemination is often very difficult to get to take, hence the reason that couples waste thousands of dollars on trying to conceive this way.  It should be interesting how this story plays out.  I wonder if the parents will have visitation rights with the child if the impregnation is successful? 

As men age, it a well known fact and unfortunate truth that the male hormone testosterone, responsible for masculine attributes, some male muscle tone, sex drive and virility and a slew of other things that are important to men, declines slowly at first and then more rapidly as men grow older.  This accounts for a number of issues sexually, and often leaves a man feeling, well, old, for lack of a better word! 

Testosterone therapy, much like HGH enhancing supplements or the controversial HGH growth hormone injections, is supposed to make men feel better, more invigorated, more virile, and in short, much like they did when they were young bucks, so to speak. 

The decrease in testosterone in men who age has been likened to a female phenomena, menopause, and is termed by some docs as Andropause, the male equivalent of menopause, where the aging process so ungraciously takes away the very hormones that make us what we are - a man or a woman, respectively. 

New research, however, has suggested that although the testosterone suppelementation may make men feel better, it often can have side effects that are not so cool, such as increase high blood pressure (which can lead to strokes and increases in heart troubles), and kidney function problems. 

The studies so far have focused on control groups of  rats given testosterone, and rats not given testosterone, and reportedly the rats that had the testosterone had higher blood pressure in a statistically significant number, and the rats that did not have the testosterone infusions did not have high blood pressure, and the rats that had the testosterone also exhibited signs of potential kidney functioning problems, with higher levels of protein in their pee, indicating tha the kidneys were not functioning at peak levels. 

About 30% of men have them, and the medical situation which is called “gynecomastia” or “Man boobs” as we mostly know the condition.  They are acutally a medically insignificant condition, and benign as far as actual health hazard goes, but nonetheless, no man wants them and every man that has them is inevitably embarrassed by them and wants them gone.  Many men now that have gynecomastia are turning to surgery for help.  Surgery for gynecomastia in men involves a liposuction, and then many times removal of the gland in the breast that actually causes breast tissue to form. 

There are a variety of causes for gynecomastia to form in men, but some of the leading causes and known causes are obesity, which just naturally lends itself to the formation of additional fat in the breast area as well as other areas on a  man’s body, such as his belly.  Another one is street drug use, such as marijuana, which can add to gynecomastia, and prescription drug use, which many times gives the unpleasant side effect of the development of breast tissue in men.

Other causes can include genetic factors and hormonal imbalances, and the only fix unfortunately, aside from losing weight and toning the pec muscles by doing specific exercises designed to help tone and strengthen this area of the man’s body, surgery has been the answer for a lot of men suffering from this embarrassing condition. 

Many times, when a boy is going through puberty and his body is reproportioning itself, as well as hormonal fluctuations that commonly occur around this time in adolescent men, will greatly contribute to the formation of male breasts, and this can be a subject of embarrassment and shunning for young men, however, they do sometimes outgrow it and grow into their own skin, so to speak.  One things for sure, man boobs will be around for years to come, and will still continue to be a source of insecurity in the men that have them. 

In yet another hit to the herbal male enhancement industry, and many times the reason the industry gets an unfair rap for a few bad eggs, another story about a supplement for herbal male enhancement that claims to be all natural and herbal in nature is actually self-outed as containing traces of an ingredient used in prescription-only Cialis, an erectile dysfunction drug that is sold only to those holding a prescription. 

As we all know, it is illegal for herbal male enhancement products to contain anything that normally is prescription grade strength, because serious health consequences can occur if the person is not under doctor supervision while taking the supplement, which they think is non prescription and natural in nature.

This time, the culprit is an over the counter herbal male enhancement pill that I had actually never heard of called Top Gun for Men Herbal Extracts, but apparently the company is recalling the product of its own accord, and it looks like they are saying they found this out, but had no intentional knowledge that the herbal supplement contained traces of tadalafil, which is the main active ingredient in Cialis, which is one of the top selling erectile dysfunction drugs here in the US and abroad right now. 

All of the products that have been voluntarily recalled by the company will have an expiration date of December of 2008.

Not only does Viagra act as a stimulant to make men get erections, or to have longer erections or help with erectile dysfunction, but new research is pointing to the fact that many men find the medical pill for erectile dysfunction and male sexual enhancement to also be an aphrodisiac of sorts, or an instrument which gets them in the mood.

The way that Viagra supposedly also helps with actual sex drive, or desire enhancement, is that it enhances the stimulation of a hormone called oxytocin, which is naturally emitted by both men and women when in a sexually aroused state, and this leads to the craving for sex.  More specifically, an enzyme that the sildenafil (the generic drug name for what is marketed as Viagra here in the US) blocks, actually has a negative effect on the emission of the pleasure hormone oxytocin that is linked to orgasming, lactation and even labor in women, and also linked to orgasms and sexual stimulation in men. 

So, they are thinking that because of this blockage of the enzyme, sildenafil is having an indirect effect on sexual intimacy by actually promoting more intimacy and cravings for intimacy - AKA aphrodisiac properties.  Scientists are thinking that since oxytocin has other relationships to human bonding and relationships, as well as the ability for humans to bond with one another and also to enhance certain body stress coping mechanisms, so there may actually be additional therapeutic medical benefits uses for sildenafil in the future.  And there you have it!