Archive for April, 2009

Why the Headache Excuse is Lame for No Sex

Well, it appears that the next time your sweeties tells you that she doesn’t want to or can’t have sex because she has a headache, that you have a little scientific ammunition in your stash to come out with on all the reasons why she should want to have sex if she has a headache, and why in fact, the sex very well may cure that headache (if that’s really the reason why in the first place).  We know that sex has many therapeutic properties for both men and women, but few knew that sex may actually make a headache go away, which I’ve actually experienced myself before, thank you very much!  And it’s more than just the fact that the sex takes your mind off the headache too apparently, there’s some real science behind this idea.

You see, when a woman has sex, there is a series of hormone releases that occur in her body.  These also occur in a man, but actually to a much lesser degree.  This is part of the reason why men can have sex with a woman without getting totally attached right away, whereas women tend to view sex as more of a bonding activity at first.  The first wave of hormones that are released when a woman has sexual intercourse is called oxytocin.

This is the hormone that is responsible for bonding a mother and child when a woman is breastfeeding, and it is also responsible for women developing feelings for sexual partners (hence why it tends to be stereotypically harder for women to sleep with men and not become emotionally involved at some point).  Oxytocin is then followed by a rush of endorphins.

We all know what endorphins do, they make us feel high and happy, and they are probably one of the greatest hormones we have because they make us feel like we can do anything.  Runner’s highs and other drugs cause us to have rushes of endorphins and because of the quality of the feelings we have, this tends to make some drugs or activities highly addictive to some people.  With the release of all of these hormones, the headache basically is conquered.  That is, if you can give it to your partner right and show her a good time.  Now that part is all up to YOU.

What is Peyronies Disease?

Think of one of the worst things that can happen to your penis.  And then imagine that this worst thing is actually a disease.  Well, that’s what a disease called Peyronies (pronounced pay-ronies) does.  It actually causes a curvature to the penis that is fairly noticeable, especially during an erection.  It is natural that men’s penises curve a little bit during an erection, but this disease does it alarmingly so, sometimes men don’t realize what is wrong with them when it first makes itself evident, or may not realize that it’s abnormal until one of their sexual partners points out that it’s not quite the status quo.

Peyronies is most common in men between forty five and sixty years of age.  It is caused by a build up of skin along the shaft of the penis over time, so it’s usually something that gradually happens over time, and this build up causes the penis to curve abnormally during an erection.  As you can imagine, such a curvature, combined with the fact that there is scar tissue involved, can cause sexual intercourse to be painful for the man, and even sometimes for his partner.

Causes for Peyronies disease range from auto immune disorders which may cause excess scar tissue to form on the body, specifically in the penis in this case, trauma to the penis that causes irregular scar tissue to grow in abundance, some medications may cause or add to the cause of the disease, and also genetically inherited gene traits that cause the scar tissue to build in this most unfortunate of areas.

What are the treatments for Peyronies?  Well, you can take certain medications, or they can do injections into the penis directly which help to break down the scar tissue along with the body’s own natural defenses, and the last resort is surgery on the penis.  I know you can imagine why surgery on the penis is always the last resort, since penis surgery is a risky endeavor and may cause further problems than the primary issue.  Just look at how disastrous penile enlargement surgery can be.

The Sneaky Laws of Sexual Attraction

You may not know it, but you are a slave to so many subconscious cues, scents and intuitions that you don’t even know it, at least not on a totally obvious conscious level for that matter.  If you’ve ever read books like the popular one now called “Blink” about how we really do pick up on so many more things subconsciously than we are aware of, then you sort of already know what I’m talking about.

It’s all about that gut reaction, as it’s been coined, and it happens that a lot of research now is telling us that the gut reaction is more than a figment of our imagination, but rather a telling sign that our evolutionary process has allowed us to tap into the powerful subconscious mind.  Sexual attraction is no different, except that is something that we more or less can’t even help.  We are at it’s beckon call, and here’s why.

We’ve talked extensively in the past about pheromones that attract women, and how these nuanced “smells” that men emit from their bodies are picked up on a very basic, instinctual and virtually undetectable level by women, either repelling them or attracting them.  The reasons for either instant attraction or repelling is something that is downright a survival instinct, and a furthering of our species.  Men are more attracted to women with immune systems that complement theirs, rather than are the same as theirs, just as women are the same with men.

This is logical if you think about it from a scientific standpoint since people with complementary immune systems would produce healthier offspring with a more well rounded immune system thanks for both parent’s contributions.  This is a survival instinct and basically the phrase “survival of the fittest” perfectly sums up this trait of human attraction at the most basic and primitive level.  Nature by no mistake designed us to be attracted to mates that would be the most likely to provide us with the healthiest and most resilient of offspring.

Another trait that we look for, and may not even realize, is the facial structure and symmetry.  It’s been found in studies that men generally find a woman’s face much more attractive when she is ovulating.  It’s thought that she may have a healthier glow during this time, accounting for the additional attraction from men, but it is possible that this can be a variety of factors, such as the lips becoming fuller.  Voice is another big one, women with higher pitch to their voice are generally considered more attractive by men because it is likely they have higher levels of estrogen, which attracts the male sex.

Take a look at your mate and try to determine some of these factors that may have put you two together, it’s really interesting!

How Old Were You When You Lost Your Virginity?

Losing your virginity probably seems like a distant happening now, but I can guarantee that it was a visceral enough experience to stick with you all these years.  The reason that most people tend to remember their first time having sex, whether it was a good, great, or so so experience, or downright awful (which isn’t farfetched, we’re very inexperienced for our first time, so it doesn’t always make for the smoothest or sexiest experience admittedly), we remember the nuances of it.

For example, I remember my first time.  We were both young and inexperienced, and a little bit scared and awkward, and it showed in the way that we went about the whole sexual intercourse part of it.  She ended up bleeding a lot, because she was a virgin too, and I think it freaked me out more than her (like I said, I was very young and naive at that point, and blood made me nervous).  It happened in the woods way back behind the house where I lived with my mother at the time, so we were a good two hundred feet back, where certainly no one would find us.

We took a blankent back there, but the mosquitoes and bugs were out full force since it was hot and hazy in August, and we were both very nervous about getting caught in the act, which definitely put a damper on the whole experience also.  Even though there was inexperience, it was also a sweet one, it was two people, coming together, not knowing what the hell they were doing, and I still remember the smell of the air as if it were yesterday.

I also remember being afraid that a train would go by, since there were train tracks in the back yard, but no one interrupted and no trains went by.  I’d say it was a decent first time experience, considering the circumstances and the awkwardness.  Do you remember your first time?

Do Kids Ruin Marital Happiness?

Guest writer : Kate (Code name, anonymous female writer, for a change of pace and perspective around here)

I recently read an interesting bit about how kids actually can make many married couples less happy in their marriage.  So, those pictures of the white picket fence, the dog, and the two children and squeaky clean house with contentment and happiness written allover it were dashed.  Well, not really, I’m embellishing.  I’m 34 years old, so many of my girlfriends have already ventured into the motherhood thing.

While they love their children, I can’t help but notice that they constantly ask me what it’s like to not have kids and to have time for myself.  I also get a lot of questions about what it’s like to actually have a clean house that’s not full of toys and kids running around. I read that bit about how more people who have children report lower marital happiness, so that kind of strengthens my stance on kids and marriage, which isn’t a good thing for a person on the fence about having children in the first place.

I never know how to answer this, because this is all I have ever known, and quite frankly, my live in partner boyfriend and I are in no hurry to change things.  We’ve seen adorable kids and babies, and I think I’ve definitely had that longing in me, as most women tend to, to have one some day, however, when I use my pragmatic senses, something tells me that I can fulfill those needs and wants without actually having a child of my own, and instead spreading myself around to the kids that are my friends and relatives, enjoying their company and the fun that goes with watching kids grow up, but while still being able to go home to no children, and having the time to fulfill my professional and career goals and my many desires to do things like travel and venture into philanthropy some day.

You see, I have a very full plate as it is.  Not only do I have a full time job on the weekdays, but I also run a full time business in my “off time”.  I try to imagine what it would be like, my patrtner and I running around after a child and trying to do all the other things we like to do, including having the occasional wild romp in bed without a care of who’s around or what might be heard, and I just can’t picture it.  Not now anyways.

I do think that our relationship would certainly suffer. I mean, if we argue now about household chores, responsibilities and commitments, then those arguments would surely escalate, along with resentment, with the introduction of the biggest responsibility of all – a child.  So, while I absolutely love babies and I really like and enjoy kids, I’m not seeing them in my future quite yet, and I like things the way they are now.

Man Has 8 Day Erection

Jeez, I know we like to get erections and we certainly don’t like when we can’t get them, but having an erection for hours or days straight sounds like any guy’s nightmare and hell on earth if you ask me.  I’ve heard that erections that last too long can be downright painful, and one guy actually was recently operated on as an emergency measure to relieve his erection which he says lasted eight days long. That’s just ridiclous.  You’ve gotta wonder if the guy ever wants to get an erection again after this ordeal.

The man was over fifty years old, and although the natural suspect here would be some sort of male enhancement drug, it was not when he was tested, and it was actually found that he had a condition called priapism, where the blood becomes trapped in the penis when an erection forms, and is unable to escape the penile chambers it fills, and this causes oxygen depletion, and of course massive discomfort and finally severe pain.

The man was operated on and his erection was relieved, but he will probably need to watch this doesn’t happen again.  Hopefully if it does he gets it taken care of before his eight days is up.  My heart goes out to this guy, that’s just not fair at all.

Economic Impact on Contraception

Many, many family planning clinics, both free and those that specialize in it and are paid for normally or through insurance, are reporting huge rises in the amount of women who are saying they are going to abort or are considering aborting a pregnancy because they can’t afford the expense of a child or an additional child, and also a huge increase in the numer of men who are coming in and asking to get vasectomies.

This is something that many places where women and men can go to receive things like condoms, birth control pills and devices, and advice on family planning, are seeing a whole lot more of in the past year, due to the fact that because of the economy and the volume of job losses as of late, people simply can’t afford to bring a child into the world, or they can’t afford to add another family member to their exisiting family unit because they just can’t afford ot both have the baby and also won’t be able to properly care for the child as it grows up.

With the fact that having a child costs thousands of dollars, even sometimes after insurance pays the tabs it can, and that having a child growing up costs around about 10k a year and up, it’s understandable why so many who have either lost their jobs or are in fear of losing their jobs, are opting to not have children or not add to their brood.  Hey, we’re not all rich and can afford nannies and world class services and educations like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie lol.  But seriously, this may actually be a time when we see less population explosion.

It’s definitely a sign of the times.  Just today I was reading that the economy is also forcing many smokers to quit, on top of the extra tax it hiked up on cigarettes, and the IRS is offering tax relief for those that were scammed by Bernard Madoff.  This is truly an interesting time that we’ll all remember living through when we look back and we’re old and grey.  Some think it may be the next depression, and I think it will be the closes thing we see in our lifetime to that event, however I don’t think it will be as severe.

Hey Guys! Smoking Just Became a Lot More Expensive

For those of you guys that smoke, let me just preach a little bit to you first, and try to talk you into the line of thought that this new ridiculously high tax that the Obama administration is putting on cigarettes is actually going to save your life in the end.  Remember, Obama himself is still a smoker, so he’s putting his money where his mouth is when he talks about improving social programs at the expense of other things that aren’t necessary I suppose. By the way, where is this money that the government will be raking in on cigarette taxes going?

It’s supposed to go to improving childrens health care, so at least you know that it is indeed going to a worthy cause.  Starting in early April, you will start to see, if you haven’t seen it already, a hike in the cigarette tax of over a dollar, which means it will most likely hike the cost of your cigarettes by about one dollar, depending on what kind you smoke and how the tobacco companies are going to handle passing this expense on to the consumer completely.

Let’s face it, smoking is incredibly detrimental to both male and female health.  It contributes in part to almost any kind of cancer because of it’s carcinogenic nature, and it also can lead other leading causes of death like heart disease, lung disease, and other ailments that we may not have even linked it to yet.  It can be responsible for increased anxiety, decreased concentration, decreased blood flow (yes guys, it can actually affect your ability to get a hard on because anything that affects the blood flow affects this natural process as well), and a host of other problems.

So, you may be like one of the many smokers that I know that throws their hands in the air, and finally says that this is the last straw, that they will quit smoking once and for all because of this new outrageous tax, or you may be one that just thinks about it and still pays the tax until they can’t stand it any more.  Or you could just afford it, because you’re rich and don’t need to worry about money.  Either way, you should use it as a tool to help you quit, for you health.

Recession Affecting Family Planning

Family planning agencies, both the type that are free of charge and the kind that insurance or the individual pays for, are saying that they are seeing incredible shifts in how people are family planning these days, surrounding the economic meltdown that is destined to go down in history as one of the worst you’ll ever see in your life most likely, especially if you are in my age group, which is the mid thirties.  A lot of people in my age group who are childless are also pondering staying that way, even if they had decided they wanted children some day.

Kids are expensive, let’s face it.  They not only are expensive to have and deliver, but they are also expensive to have after that.  It’s been estimated that the average cost for kids is about 10,000 before they get older, which is just a rough, base estimate and probably doesn’t include every kid out there, especially the ones whose parents go wild buying them anything and everything at first.

There are things like doctors and dentists bills, clothes, food, diapers, and the list goes on and on, and then when kids get older there are more expenses piled on since there are things like schools, activities, clothes that are more expensive, and all the other things like computers and other luxury items that kids now expect these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bashing kids or anything, but they are expensive to have these days, and unfortunately many people who otherwise might be fine having a child now, are coming in to ask for abortions, or giving their kids up for adoption.  There is a sharp increase in men who are asking for vasectomies as well, citing the fact that they and their partners are terrified they may get pregnant, and they cannot afford to have a child or add a child to an already existing family.

The sad thing is that many women who are getting abortions wouldn’t be getting them if they were financially better off, it’s just that they really feel they cannot have a child right now because of money.  Hopefully this recession ends and people can get on about their way of life.  It’s too tragic the stories I’ve been hearing.

PSA Screenings Help Diagnose, But Not Death Prevention

It is well known that men, when over the age of 50, should go and periodically get what’s called the PSA test done.  This is a prostate cancer screening to see if any cancer has grown or is threatening to grow, and the male specific prostate gland.  As men age, the prostate gland’s likelihood of growing cancerous, enlarging and becoming problematic in general, increase, so screenings are a sort of right of passage into male middle age, so to speak.

But new studies have called into the question the necessity and recommendation for the PSA screenings, saying that first of all, their findings may not always be accurate, and second of all, now that new evidence has come out, and perhaps more importantly, that the screenings do not prevent any percentage of deaths from occuring.  Instead, PSA screenings have only increase the amount of cases of prostate cancer that have actually been diagnosed, while unfortunately not having any effect on the impact on the number of men who die from the disease.

Most screenings are designed, ultimately, with the goal of saving human lives, and so far the PSA screenings have not shown that they actually save men’s lives, only increase the amounf of known prostate cancer cases instead.  While this is perhaps one step closer to having better and earlier treatments for men with prostate cancer, it still does not achieve that ultimate life saving goal that PSA tests were originally designed to do.

The study that unfortunately proves said findings is one that was carried out over a period of ten years on about 75 thousand participants.  The findings were that although the screenings did increase the amount of cases that were diagnosed whereas they may not have been diagnosed until later stages, they did not find that this impacted the survival rate of men who underwent the controversial protein test which helps determine the relative health of the prostate.

By the way, what the PSA test does is to quantify the proteins found coming from a man’s prostate, which may be indicative of the likelihood that the prostate will become or already has become cancerous.

It’s hard to say where to stand on this.  Doctors themselves have bickered back and forth on the usefulness and the accuracy of the PSA test, so when medical doctors can’t even agree on whether you should get one of not, it’s tough to make a decision.  I guess the best thing to do is find the best doctor you can who you feel confident and comfortable with, and ask their honest opinion, pros and cons and all, on the PSA test and go from there.