A banned aphrodisiac that is sold quietly in head shops and sex shops, has caused a death in a 35 year old man, and it may be that the hunt for this natural aphrodisiac is on again by the FDA since it is obviously still being used or may still be available in certain spots for men to use.  However, one issue that is making it harder for enforcers to identify to take it off the shelves is that fact that the product is sold under several different names, including Piedra, Love Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock and Jamaican Stone.

The “natural” male enhancement product, which is sold in a solid form and purports to act as a natural aphrodisiac by being rubbed on the skin, is a  solidified mass which contains toad venom, the culprit in the health problems most likely.  It was outlawed when the FDA discovered it was linked with other males deaths and severe health complications. 

The most recent man who died from the toad venom aprhodisiac, it is said, had ingested the product, rather than rubbed it on his skin as indicated, however officials are careful to note that this product was banned for a reason, and it is not safe to use in any way, shape or form, whether taken by mouth or rubbed on the skin. 

A chemical byproduct of the toad venom derived aphrodisiac apparently interrupts the heart rhythm.  The 35 year old man who died was complaining of abdominal pain as well as chest pain when admitted to a hospital, however nothing could be done to save him, and it sounds as though he died of heart complications. 

Although the warning against this dangerous male enhancement product was issued for New York City, where the latest problem occurred, the FDA wants all men to know that if they have a product that is in solid form that is in any way suspect of being this one, do not take it.  It could literally mean the difference between life and death. 

Well guys, I have some rather bad news for those that suffer form persistent erectile dysfunction, meaning they regularly have problems achieving an erection or keeping an erection long enough to have satisfying sex.  As if ED isn’t a big enough problem in itself, causing mental anguish and frustration for the men it affects, doctors are now warning men who have it that it may be an indication of a more serious health problem, usually having to do with the heart or circulation, which indeed is very serious and needs to be looked at immediately.

They say that lots of men who suffer from ED and have for a while may be too embarrassed to go see a doctor about the problem, but in fact if they don’t, they may be putting their lives in jeopardy.  This goes especially for men who are diabetic, who often experience problems with erectile dysfunction, since they are especially high risk for other complications that are only symbolized by ED.

Not only can ED predict with some accuracy your likelihood of having heart problems but it also may predict likelihood of stroke.  It makes sense if you do think about it, since erections are essentially reliant on the fact that a man’s circulation is good enough to get the blood flowing to the penis to get and keep it hard enough to have sexual intercourse for a reasonably sustained period of time.  ED is an indicator that all is not as well as it should be on the circulation front, and a battery of tests can conclude this for men who are concerned their ED signals larger issues. 

Men often, especially in certain cultures where it is considered embarrassing to go to the doctor for such a condition, or in demographics that don’t have health insurance, ignore the problem of ED because they either are in denial or they think that it’s too expensive to treat, or that it is, in a way, a “self contained” problem that is not indicative of other problems.  In fact it is a very good indicator though of bigger issues to come, and men cannot afford to ignore it if it has happened to them on a consistent basis. 

There are also of course preventive steps that can be taken such as modified nutrition, exercise, and certain medications that can improve the underlying issues behind ED that can improve quality and span of life as well as help prevent the heart and circulation problems that may lead men to having a heart attack or a stroke. 

Well, yeah, he sort of did.  Well, besides that obvious personality flaw where he relentlessly chased an unwilling cat that had a stripe down her back and was mistaken for a fellow skunk, Pepe, the infamous Romeo of the skunk world in the Loony Tunes universe, Pepe had a few things right about appealing to the ladies and keeping them around long term for a good and healthy romantic relationships. 

How many women do you know that complain that they are in passion-free, non-romantic relationships, where her boyfriend, significant other or husband, find interesting topics of discussion to be what he just saw in the toilet after a night of pizza and beer prior to that morning?  I know lots, and the problem is that once men, and women, get comfortable in a relationship, they tend to stop doing the very things to and for eachother that made them fall head over heels in love in the first place.

Pepe Le Pew would have never let this happen, since romance, and making love, and going to the “casba” were his ideas of how life should be lived - to make romance and love to the woman he loved for the rest of his life.  But we all know that’s not possible, right?  What I do know is that even in today’s hectic world, we can all still find time to be romantic with one another and make our relationships keep that fire burning for longer, instead of watching helplessly as it peters out and soon you’re both not liking eachother too much and resenting the fact that the passion and fire is gone. 

This is all straight, smack dab on you!  The two people in a relationship have the absolute power to change that, and to make things better by keeping it fresh, making it known how sexually desirable you find eachother.  Men, it means getting your lady flowers and making sure she knows you think of her romantically in other little ways that add to the whole female sexual enhancement and intensity of sexual encounters for a woman, who tends to be more emotionally triggered by things that affect sex drive and orgasm abilities. 

Ladies, you know what men like - unfortunately we’re dirty minded all the time!  So we like sexy outfits, oral sex once in a while, and yeah, we even enjoy some embraces and touching once in a while too!  Just make sure you take care of eachother’s needs, before you succumb to the platonic room mates club that so many other couples do! 

This one goes for men and women alike, but I thought I’d write about it because I find the topic of teen angst and relationships very intriguing, remembering my own as an awkward teen who was preoccupied with thoughts of popularity and wanting to be liked.  Ehem, hope I don’t sound too pathetic there, I think everyone else knows what I’m talking about!  I remember being envious of the kids that this genuinely seemed to not matter to. 

In fact,  being so shy and awkard as a student at my high school, I think that the reason I thought about this quandry so much was that I am by nature an introvert, and introverts tend to think to themselves a lot and ponder things and gather their energies that way.  Talk about a bad combination in high school!  Being unable to communicate with my peers as well as being a natural introvert was pretty much a recipe for disaster in the popularity category for me. 

Not that I care at all now.  As an adult, I think that not being part of the popular crowd when I was younger has actually made me work all that much harder in my adult life.  It built a lot of character, and made me realize how important it really is to be nice to people and treat others how you would want to be treated. 

Apparently, recent studies have shown that for teen men and women, it does not really matter whether you really are in the popular crowd, or whether you perceive yourself as well liked and popular, you will be equally as likely to have a higher self opinion and self esteem, and therefore happiness, as you would if you truly were in the in crowd.  So, you see, it really is all about self perception, if we could only teach the youths out there that exact thing, then maybe teen angst would be a thing of the past.  Like I said though, I do think it creates and builds character in most kids.

There may be new technology for IVF (In Vitro Fertilization, where a woman can be artificially inseminated to get pregnant when there are difficulties for whatever reason in achieving pregnancy)  that may reduce the odds of a woman being impregnated with multiple embryos, as is often the case now in a lot of IVF endeavors, with women having mutliple babies from it.   In fact, most women understand this fact and have to be ok with it to be able to go through the process. 

IVF is sort of a “test tube baby” sort of process.  What happens is that eggs are taken from a woman, and the sperm is taken from the man, and  those are cultivated in a petrie dish (or however else they do this, there may be some other mechanism used for all I know).  Currently, the doctor takes the most viable of the bunch and implants them into a woman’s uterus, and the hope is that one of some of them take off and start to develop into little bundles of joy. 

The newer process, and researchers are hoping a soon to be very viable and cost effective process, is that the doctors would take the most viable cells via DNA tests to determine which are the strongest and most able to develop into these blastocysts, which are the precursor to a full blown fetus, and therefore cut down on the need to cultivate multiples of babies since this is essentially what leads to multiple births - the needs to implant multiples for maximum likelihood that one or some will take and the women will be pregnant. 

Newer DNA testing and application techniques are going to make for some very exciting advances in modern day science. Already, there are several DNA tests on the horizon or at least in research and development, that may help determine serious illness before it occurs by determining likelihood of development via DNA structure and background. 

These genetic weaknesses may be able to be exploited to help find cures and tests to prevent degenerative diseases such as cancers and other things that can be prevented if caught early or put into preventive mode before they are even a problem. 

It’s something that I guess a lot of women watch, but to be honest I had never heard of it, except for maybe a reference to a woman’s sex talk show on the Oxygen network, which is a network especially for women, which most men tend to avoid because it is very female directed, kind of how women might avoid the “Spike TV” channel, ya know.

The sex talk show called Talk Sex is ending, and the show’s host, who looks like she could be anyone’s grandmother - a new age Dr. Ruth sort of, says that she’s sad it’s ending, but all good things do come to an end after all.  The show talks frankly about sexual issues, and takes callers much like many other sex talk shows has, including the infamous Dr. Ruth’s talks shows in the past.

Johanson has been on the air in one form or another for 32 years, and is 77 years old, and she said that since the show is a taped one because of the callers they take, it was difficult for her to stay up late, which ended up being about one o’clock when taping was done.  This would mean, I guess that she wasn’t getting home for a while after that! 

The talk show supposedly was garnering it’s best ratings ever over the recent few years, so it’s a shame she’s hanging up her sex talk shoes, but she does say that she will still give lectures because she loves large audiences and loves the spotlight, and of course she enjoys talking about sex!  Who says you have to be a certain age to still want to talk about it?

Hey guys, this has to do with you too, since if you have a lady friend who’s on this there may be potential for danger here, so listen up.  The birth control patch that was hailed as a great new invention just not too long ago, is now “on trial” from many doctors and consumer advocates who claim that the risk of the patch vs. the traditional birth control pill for women proportionately outweighs it’s convenience too much, making it a much riskier choice for women who want birth control without taking a pill, and are calling for the product to be removed from market.

The patch, which I gather is made by juggernaut Johnson and Johnson, has been shown to have a much higher risk factor for women when it comes to blood clots in the lungs and the legs, because it releases almost 60% more estrogen into the blood stream, which is the primary risk factor for blood clots in women, than the pill does.  This is because it is in patch form, and the body absorbs more apparently this way, than it does if the pill is swallowed with the pregnancy preventing estrogen hormones in it.

The FDA has received many complaints about the birth control patch, and yet it has remained on market, so I’m not sure how severe the complaints and the evidence has to be for them to pull a product from market or make the manufacturer voluntarily pull it, although I’m sure they’re deluged with these types of requests on a dailly basis since we are a medicated society now unfortunately.

Good news is the the demand for the birth control patch has gone down considerably ever since word of mouth and bad publicity started occurring for the patch somewhere just a few years ago. 

The demand was cut more in half, with less than half the amount of prescriptions being written for it now than there were just a few years ago, so probably both patients are wising up to the risks and are not willing to take that extra risk for the convenience of a patch, and/or doctors are not willing to put their female patients at risk because they personally believe this link is critical enough to not put them in harms way. 

Of course the same warnings against smoking go for anyone on the patch as they do for women on the pills, since smoking patients can greatly increase their odds of blood clots when on the birth control pill.  This is a clear warning on all birth control oral and patch, and shots usually. 

We have talked about a supplement with deer antler velvet extract in it called Deer Antler Plus before, but I thought it was a good time to bring up this popular herbal product to help boost a man’s ability to have multiple orgasms again after all this talk about loss of libido!  First of all, I renewed my knowledge of the deer antler velvet extract’s legendary abilities when it comes to the male sex drive and ability to have great sex, since it has been used in traditional and Chinese herbal medicines for years and years for that reason.

Sometimes we don’t really know if something got it’s reputation for doing a certain thing through a sort of mythology or if there is actually any credence lended to it through at least anecdotal data, since herbal products are not subject to FDA approval, and many times there are not clinical tests performed on them.  That’s not saying much though, because in my honest opinion, the FDA lets a lot of pharmaceutical drugs go through their gates and be approved that many times were not thoroughly tested for long term effects, nor were they adequately confirmed safe for human consumption. 

That’s just me going on my anti pharmaceutical rant though, and trust me, I do believe that there have been some herbal and natural supplement offenders as well that are not good for long term use, but we do try to report those as we hear negative stories in the news as well. 

Deer antler velvet got it’s reputation for being a great male libido enhancement tool, and was hence used in the popular multi orgasm supplement called Deer Antler Plus (see review) because of it’s rejuvenating and energizing properties.  It also contains (naturally) trace minerals like zinc, which have been shown to help men sexually in more ways than one. 

It’s been used as an anti aging tool, to preserve the energy as well as to enhance mental sharpness and help with a man’s stregth and endurance.  Strength and endurance are directly linked to orgasmic abilities in men, because the longer a man can sexually perform, and the quicker he can recover, the more likely he is to have stronger and more powerful, mind bending orgasms. 

This is why deer antler supplements that are enhanced not only with the deer antler velvet, but also other natural energy enhancers and herbs that help with heightened sensitivity are very popular in this sexually driven world.  Because deer antler velvet has been used in Chinese medicine for hundreds if not thousands of years for multiple purposes, it can be safe to say that it has many medicinal qualities about it that have made it become a high demand additive and primary ingredient in many supplements today, even supplements for women as well. 

The deer antler is extracted from male deer in labs, and the deer are not supposed to be harmed in the process, and are let go once the velvety part of their antlers is removed as I understand it.  The velvet that comes once a year and then sheds again the next, is then usually ground into a fine powder where it can be made in capsulated supplements, tinctures, gels or what have you, for therapeutic purposes that are fairly wide ranging.  

There was an interesting column which I frequently read where people, men and women, will write in about their sexual problems with their partners, or if they are partner-less, they write in about their problems that have to do with sex in general.  Not only does this open up a whole new world of what sexual issues and frustrations other people deal with for me, but it also makes me realize that lots of “normal” couples and people experience the same things that I have experienced at one time or another so it’s a nice normalizing feeling to discover that you’re not the only one who may need natural libido help, or not be able to orgasm every time you have sexual relations. 

Speaking as a woman (guest writer here), I can say that I can identify with the woman in this one, who says that she feels like she is too busy and stressed out from her day’s work to have sexual intercourse with her husband, and that when he feels sexually aroused when he gets home from work and expects her to just give him sex to satisfy his penis.  Here’s where men and women can differ sometimes in their views on sex, and on their basic physiological differences when it comes to sexual needs and intimacy needs.

Women often put sex on the back burner, especially after they’ve had children, and in this case the couple had a 2 year old child together.  Not only that, there is scientifically documented evidence that woman’s libido goes down after having children, it’s just nature (I know, nature can be very cruel, right?)  It’s kind of like one of those last posts where we talked about nature making you extremely amorous when you’re ovulating, and making you more appealing to men when you are most likely to conceive, once you’ve conceived it’s like nature’s “done with you” in a way - they’ve already gotten a child outta ya! 

I thought this particular situation with a woman thinking her husband was being unfair was two fold.  First of all, women have to realize, men are biologically driven to seek out sex, they need to ejaculate on a regular basis, this has been shown to be true to help with stress and testosterone levels which lead to agression in men, and I’m not saying women don’t need it to, it’s just that we’re wired a little differently where we can go longer without it.  It may be our way of protecting ourselves from being pregnant 24/7, before the days of this awesome thing we call birth control today.

Women should be able to understand that, and if they feel like they are totally undersexed, then discuss the fact with their husbands, maybe take one of these fun new female sexual enhancement products, and maybe also take steps so that work isn’t eating up their lives and stressing them out so much - an automatic libido buster.  Also, there may be other things in the relationship that are creating the symptom of her low libido.  Perhaps resentment of some sort, a loss of attraction to her partner?  These issues should all be addressed too, as I believe many times when one partner loses interest in sex, it’s a symptom of bigger problems than just “being busy”.  That’s just my take. 

Guys should also be more patient, when a women says she’s not in the mood, don’t press the issue, but instead maybe try to get to the heart of the issue and be able to discuss openly their sexual needs and why they feel like they are being “shut out” in a sense.  Relationships go both ways, and men and women are definitely like Mars and Venus as the famous book claims, but if we can keep an open dialogue and our love for eachother keeps an open mind and an accomodating air about it, anything’s possible. 

The health condition that is known as persistent sexual arousal is not one that applies to only women or only men, but both.  In fact, a recent piece I read on the condition centered around a woman who constantly felt a “tingly sensation” in her nether regions, which made her feel as though she were constantly sexually aroused.  Sounds good, right? 

Except that feeling that way 24/7 is not something that anyone really wants, regardless of how sexualized we think our society has become, that’s still not an ideal way to go through life, and in fact it can cause deeper psychological issues as well as issues with your sexual partners, who may think that they can never satisfy you - because technically they never can, although it’s not their fault. 

The woman’s story that was detailed where I read about it said that she went to multiple doctors about her constant state of female sexual arousal, and was basically told that it was something mental and then she would be referred to talk to a therapist of some sort.  However, she was finally able to find a doctor that put a physical name to her condition, and explained to her that what she had was in fact a constant physiological state of sexual arousal that was causing the strong sensations in her sexual regions.

I’m not really sure what they can do medically for persistent sexual arousal, but I know for men they do have some sort of medications that help with someone who has constant erections, since in men it’s not only an alarming physical condition that can be emotionally damaging, but it’s also visible on a man and can be highly embarrassing, as most men know!  Like I said, being in a perpetual state of arousal may sound good - maybe for one day, but I could guarantee that after that day was up (no pun intended), you’d be ready to get back to your normal, flacid self!