It occurred to me recently after my partner had been away for a while, that absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder, or at least makes the libido stronger.  She was visiting relatives and the whole time she was away, sex was all I could think about.  I guess it’s that old saying that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone, or that you want what you can’t have, right?

It is true that when our partners are away for a while, we tend to get a little more randy when they’re gone, and certainly more so than when they are actually around the majority of the time, unless there is a large libido enhancer or natural sexual enhancement product at work, such as some specific seafood or a certain scent lit up, or maybe another type of food that is supposed to increase the sexual appetite. 

Experts in relationships say that being apart is actually healthy for a relationship, as long as it’s in healthy doses.  Say if you are away all of the time, it may foster feelings of resentment or distrust, but if you are attached at the hip all the time, naturally you will get tired of eachother, and guess what, your sex life would usually suffer too - go figure! 

I know for she and I, we both feel the same way when it comes to this theory on relationships, that too much togetherness can really be a bad thing, and that one must be allowed to have their own time to do their own thing so that not all sense of personal identity is lost, which fosters those negative feelings of being trapped.  Relationships aren’t easy, that’s for sure, but as long as we can do things in moderation, that’s when things go as smoothly as possible. 

I was just reading today about a new patch that women are supposed to affix to the inside of their wrist, which purports to make women feel more sexy and make them think about sex more often because it emits a scent that is supposed to olfactorily (is that even a word, I mean smell) stimulate one’s mind into thinking about sex and intimacy.  It’s around the size of a quarter by the looks of the picture of the patch it showed in the article, and it is said to combine a sort of lemon-y and floral type of scent, at least according to one user.

A sixty day supply of the Scentuelle patch is about thirty bucks, which doesn’t seem too bad, but I guess that really depends on whether the patch workd well as a female sexual enhancement and libido booster.  The woman who wrote about it and tried the product for a while said that she also got accompanying emails from the company reminding her to think about sex every day, and touch herself suggestively, such as running her fingers along her arm or other errogenous zone to help her feel more sexy, and to do other things that would increase her erotic feelings, such  as looking up online what other womens’ fantasies might be.

She did say that since she had the Scentuelle patch on, she felt more sexy and thought about sex more often, but wondered if it was just because of the emails and not the patch, which she actually said sort of gave her a headache at first.  It’s difficult to say sometimes whether sexual enhancement products for men and women work well alone, or if it’s also the idea behind them that stimulates the user to think of sex more often, as a psychosomatic symptom almost. 

Women are said to like scents such as certain floral scents as well as sweet smells that you may find in a kitchen, and men are actually attracted to the same types of things, with women being most turned off by scents such as barbeque and even heavy men’s cologne.  I could see this, except I do think it probably depends on what type fo cologne it is, because there are some that some female friends tells me makes them into a raging sex maniac. 

If we’re lucky enough in our lifetime, we’ve both heard and said the L word to partners and family members many times by the time we die.  I’m talking about the word Love, and what it means to sexual and intimate relationships.  It seems that when we are in a committed relationship it would be wonderful to hear those three little words “I love you” all the time, just as a reassurance that our partners do indeed still love us.  But is there a point where we can take it too far and actually push someone away by proclaiming our love for eachother on too frequent a basis?  Yes, absolutely.

We’ve all heard the cliche of a partner who is a bit too clingy and feels the need to constantly voice our love for the other, and indeed there is usually, statistically, one partner who is a little more needy than another - that’s how relationships usually work, one is usually able to give emotionally a bit more than the other, and this creates a balance. 

However, when one partner is constantly either saying or demanding that you say you love them, it can get old really fast, and instead of fostering a nuturing relationship based on emotional trust, can quickly turn one against the other and even create feelings of hostility and resentment toward a partner who is demanding this emotional output 24/7.

There’s always got to be a balance though, and if you approach a partner who seems overly amorous all the time and is constantly either voicing their love or making you do it or making you feel guilty for not voicing it enough, you should really sit down and talk to them about it, and get to the heart of why this is so important to them and that it makes you feel overly pressured and pushes you away.  After all, there’s nothing wrong with saying I love you, but doing it too often almost diminishes its meaning and often times can create a feeling of burden in a relationship on one partner. 

The front man of now defunct band (well, none of the original members are intact except for him), Guns ‘n Roses, Axl Rose, seems to have done something awful and inexcusable to his face, as more and more men are doing under bad judgement in an effort to stay younger looking.  It looks like Axl has gotten a facelift, which is almost never a good idea whether you’re a guy or girl in my opinion.

Recent pictures show Axl, who looks almost like his face has been scarred in a fire or something - it looks as if he got a seriously botched face
lift.  Other celebrity men who appear to have gone under the knife in a serious, and not undoable way are Mickey Rourke and possibly Michael
Douglas, although I will say that Michael’s work looks better on him now that it’s had time to “settle”.

Axl’s been well known to be somewhat of a diva, and he is usually the one blamed in the demise of the trend setting group Guns ‘n Roses, who were just hitting their high peak when I was almost ready to graduate high school.  Axl and his band were kind of like the anti hair band, but also didn’t represent the alternative crew either, so they were almost like a new breed of hard rock meets metal.

It’s a shame the guys couldn’t work it out.  With Slash as one of the best guitarists of our time, and talented guys on bass and drums as well,
they were truly a band to be reckoned with, and their original sound and lyrics made them even more revolutionary.  Stories of Axl’s temper made news a lot, and then he made an appearance a few years ago that was critically smashed at an awards show, where he also showed off his “new face” to horrified fans.

Did you know that men love liposuction just about as much as women?  Well, let me back up a bit here, what I mean to say is that for men specifically, this type of elective cosmetic surgery happens to enjoy a prestigious spot in the top five elective surgeries that men choose to get.  Yes, men are insecure about their extra belly fat and flanks too!  Among other top men’s cosmetic surgeries reported are also eyelid work, to fix drooping eyelids, which is a common problem men have as they age.

There really isn’t anything different about the way liposuction is performed on men between how it’s performed on women though.  The surgeons are still board certified by the plastic surgery board (they better be!), they use a vaccuum type suction to pull the fat out, and under regular liposuction, as opposed to the less invasive smartlipo, they go under general anesthesia, which is probably the riskiest part about full on liposuction, and the reason I’d recommend trying something like smartlipo instead unless you’re looking for a more drastic fat reduction.

The difference between smartlipo and liposuction is that the patient does not need to go under for smartlipo, and a small canula is used rather than a larger tube that sucks more fat out.  A local anesthetic is used in smartlipo, and there is minimal downtime and supposedly not as much bruising, however what smartlipo can do is a bit more limited as far as fat removal, so it is recommended only for spot reduction - say if you have a double chin or something like that you want minimized. 

Liposuction is not anything to be taken lightly, whether you’re a man or a women though.  It has a high incident of infection and a lot of pain, swelling and downtime compared to other less invasive fat removal techniques, but if you need more fat gone it might be the way to go.  Also, going under anesthesia is never preferable since people may have a bad response to it.  Just look at the story about the cheerleader in her teens that died from a reaction to anesthesia.  It’s always best to just try to lose the weight from the belly or wherever else you’re having problems first. 

Men’s health is pretty much the same as women’s health concerns, except when it comes for a few things that women simply don’t have or men simply don’t have, like a prostate or breasts for example.  One of the ways that men and women no longer differ though, when it comes to men’s health screenings and testing now, is bone health. 

It used to be the primary concern in bone health was for women to get screenings for bone density, since due to higher levels of the hormone estrogen in women, women are more susceptible to osteoporosis, which is a condition where the bones becomes porous and are more easily damaged and broken.  I know that the women in my family have not been succeptible to this, so for example, I might be one of the safer ones when it comes to the likelihood of whether I will get osteoporosis.

Not only is there just a bone screening test now, for both men and women (by the way, it’s men over seventy years old who are going to want to be most concerned with having their bone density checked), but they also factor in other variables which may help predict how likely a man or woman is to break a bone in the near future, such as whether or not a parent had ever broken a hip, which would put them in a higher risk category, since genetics is looked at in osteoporosis. 

While post menopausal women are still at the highest risk for osteoporosis, and will be the group most targeted for getting in to get bone mineral density xrays and other tests of the like, men over seventy will still be encouraged to participate as a precaution as well, and also be given men’s health supplements with calcium and other minerals and nutrients which help to fortify bone strength and naturally encourage a denser bone that is less likely to break under pressure from a fall or other similar trauma. 

Many women, and men for that matter, are under the false impression that what we see on the big silver screens in theaters when we see a hot sex scene between two actors, is how our sex life should be or look.  That is not the case, not by far, and unfortunately these scenes may be harming the outlook of Americans on their own sex lives when they compare it to the perfect looking, frequent and often long-lived sexual encounters in Hollywood. 

Yet they forget that these very same actors and actresses often date in real life, and guess what, it doesn’t work out.  And yeah, that’s because sex in real life, with all the messy variables that occur in real life, especially between a hard working couple who probably has a million and one other things going on in their life besides trying to address eachother’s each and every sexual and intimacy desire. 

Many sex therapists say that when people watch this kind of stuff, they are comparing themselves to an ideal that simply doesn’t exist in the real world, and they are essentially preparing themselves for a big disappointment when their sex lives and their partners do not act the way they see in the movies, or address each and every one of their fantasies and needs as we often times see in these movies. 

Female sexual enhancement depends on a man addressing her sexual needs, sure, but it also depends on a lot of things that happen outside the bedroom in a relationship.  Women are much more likely to harbor feelings of resentment and carry those over into the bedroom, unlike many men, who tend to be able to forget about past wrongs and fights that have occurred when it comes to havine sexual intercourse or any other sort of sexual intimacy. 

Boy, do I love my omelets on the weekends.  There’s nothing better than an omelet - made with real eggs, instead of that egg substitute, which is ok but just doesn’t have the same flavor and texture as real eggs sometimes.  Add in some cheese, onions and another big diet no no, bacon, and you’ve got yourself a little slice of heaven on earth for breakfast.  Of course, there’s a load of sodium fat and cholesterol, especially if you used the whole egg yolk, but who’s counting? 

Well, you should be, especially if you’re a middle aged male.  Apparently studies have shown a link between the consumption of seven or more eggs per week in men and a higher death rate.  Now, seven eggs may not seem like much, but that means you’d be eating two eggs at least for 3 days or more a week, and it should be easy to cut this way back if this is your current practice.  You may need to find a substitute for your breakfasts, or other foods that you may cook with eggs in them, if you want to comply with this new one.

While the study found a definite correlation between high egg consumption in middle aged men and earlier death rates, especially in men who were diabetic who should be able to eat eggs safely, it did not address at all why the eggs may cause earlier death, in other words, why nutritionally they have been labeled as “ok” for consumption.

For some reason they cut off at the odd number of seven, but if you were to eat up to six eggs per week you supposedly, as a man, did not have this higher chance of an early death.  Wow - comforting, right?  Not really.  Hopefully the next step in this study will be to determine what exactly is it in eggs that causes this strange correlation, and why is it just going over six eggs that causes them to suddenly become a danger to your longevity? 

Well, I know that it’s hard for men to eat their veggies usually, well, unless you were raised on them, as I was and my dad was.  We were raised to like fresh garden vegetables and also some fruits - although the fruits were limited, so it was no big deal to us to eat a healthy helping of veggies with every meal around spring and summer time when the garden would yield it’s freshest and ripest varieties. 

However, and this may be the key to why men have higher occurrences of certain health problems than women, men are not as likely to reach for those fruits or veggies when they’re eating.  In fact, and even worse, is that men are more likely to reach for the meats than women are, and meat is the most system clogging thing you can eat.  It’s very hard to digest, and many researchers think that high meat diets, and quite often diets high in red meat, are responsible for digestive disorders and certain types of cancers.

Another interesting fact is that men, according to this latest survey, are more likely to consume undercooked meats and also runnier eggs than women, and these both account for higher contamination rates since organisms can live in meats that are undercooked that could make people sick.  Women are more likely to eat yogurt also, and interestingly enough yogurt is one of those foods, like fruits and veggies, that are associated with improved health and stable weight or weight loss.

Men were also much more likely to eat asparagus than women, which is interesting because I know a lot of both men and women who like this expensive little vegetable.  It also has that unfortunate distinction of making your urine stinky, akin to something you’d smell in a sewer, so maybe that’s why women may have a slight subconscious aversion to the vegetable?  Hey at least us guys are getting some nutrients in our diet - asparagus!  Seriously guys, you need to eat your veggies. 

They will decrease your risk of colon cancer, many other types of digestive related cancers, and also prostate cancer since they have so many beneficial compounds in them that can help fight cancer and stop it from forming in the first place.  Fruits do as well because they are abundant in antioxidants. 

I found it interesting that a recent article linked sex on the mind and big spending, especially on gambling or chance-y spending that may result in a huge gain or a huge loss.  Apparently, the men that make these big decisions are thinking about sex when they make these decisions, and that could be costing them a fortune! 

What is it?  Pent up sexual agression?  A need to gamble to show one’s sexual prowess?  Hmm, let’s see what they say about this strange connection.  We do know that sexual feelings have a lot do with almost everything we do and every decision we make in life, especially if we subscribe to the freudian theories of psychological reasoning, but to what extend to men make risky financial decisions with sex on the back of their mind? 

To find out what men might have on their mind when they make risky financial moves, scientists have been showing men erotic images and seeing how images of a sexual nature correlate to their decisions being made that affect their finances.  The interesting thing is that, the same part of the brain that activates when shown pictures of a sexually arousing nature, is the same area of the brain that lights up when men make risky financial moves.

The bottom line is that both money and women trigger a certain area of the brain, and they are very interrelated in the male psyche.  Not surprising though, is it?  The same thrill that men may get from having money of making risky decisions that could potentially increase their status or also result in a cash windfall, is the same thrill they get from intimacy and the chase with female sexual partners. 

Does this mean you should go spending money on risky investments or buying large pieces of property that cost a lot of money to simply get a natural libido help?  No!  Quite contrary, men need to learn how to harness and control this, because it could be the reason that some men have such problems with things like gambling addiction and spending money irresponsibly.  It does explain a lot though, because men are the sex most likely to have problems with risky spending, and also why they tend to be the sex with the most gambling addiction.