Mens Sexual Health

Is Too Much Masturbation a Bad Thing?

Hey, we all do it, right? All men masturbate, that’s pretty much an undisputed fact. It’s like saying the sky is blue, or the grass is green. It’s an accepted social and biological fact of nature. Of course, women do it too, but the perception is that women don’t do it as often. So, is that true? Well, it may be true actually simply because women are not as biologically driven to reproduce like men are.

Men are very much more driven to have sex, on a basic level, it’s as nature designed us, to want to “spread our seed” or however you want to put it. It’s not that men can’t be faithful, it’s just that men can definitely be faithful as long as they are feeling satisfied and in love with their partner. Of course, there are one offs like genuine sexual addictions, but I’m just speaking generally.

Other than being a sign of some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder if you engage in self pleasure more than a couple times a week, it can also have some physical effects that you won’t like as well apparently.

Of course, just the aspect of you spending as much time and energy on it as you do if engage that often is not healthy, and can preoccupy your life with thoughts and actions that have no purpose, and that may be the main concern, but are there some other additional health aspects you may want to consider before hitting the bathroom to do the deed too?

Honestly, I could fine no actual physiological issues that result directly from masturbating more than a couple times a week. Believe it or not, some men do it several times a day, and that I think is extremely overdoing it. It’s not socially acceptable, it’s socially isolating, and it focuses your mind on too much of a simply nonproductive activity, which just isn’t good for your psyche.

It may not have any directly bad health effects, besides maybe straining the heart too much, several times a day, or perhaps this may lead to a problem with your ejaculate being expelled too often from your body, but other than that the main concern is that you are focusing too much energy and time on a wasteful activity.

Biweekly Sex Good for the Heart

We know that sexual activity benefits us in many ways, but when it comes to sex and our tickers, we kind of get mixed messages from the medical community on whether it’s kosher to have sex as we get older, or whether it might be too hard on the ol’ heart to have it when we get older. You hear so many stories about men having heart attacks while having sex, or not being “healthy enough” to have sexual intercourse on these Viagra and Cialis ads that caution you against taking their medicine and having intercourse.

Of course, they have to warn men that have pre existing heart conditions to not go on their medication so that these men do no suffer heart attacks from the increased blood flow and over excitement and stimulation of sex, but these types of messages have a sort of lasting effect on the male psyche, that having sex as you age may become a hazardous sport.

But research has shown that by and large that is not true, unless you do have some sort of pre existing heart condition that makes getting too excited dangerous to the function and rhythm of your heart.  In fact, men who have normal functioning hearts may be up to two times more protected against heart attacks than men who do not have sex frequently.

If you think of it this way, sexual activity is sort of like a release, and it also is a little bit of physical activity that helps you to regulate your breath and condition your heart. If you are already an active person and you also have sex two times a week or more, well then, that is even better, because you get the benefits of the stress release and pleasure rush  of sex, and you also have a healthy heart and lungs to begin with, which makes the sex all that much better and more stress busting.

Men who had sex at least twice a week were about 45% less likely to suffer heart related health conditions throughout their lives, and for men that is quite significant, since we men are the most vulnerable of the sexes to heart disease, although women sadly are quickly catching up with us on that note.  We all know that sex is good for us, which is precisely the reason male enhancement has advanced so much in popularity.

But the physical aspect of having sex frequently isn’t the only likely reason that this bolsters your chances of reducing heart related conditions. Men who have sex more often with their partners are more likely to be in loving, supportive, mutually desirable relationships than men who have sex with their partners once a month or less, which also adds to their overall quality of life, and the contributing factors to heart disease are diminished in that way as well.

Men and Women Experience Sexual Arousal Differently

While it seems that women may be more in touch with their bodies when it comes to health issues and other things that have to do with our bodies telling, or screaming something at us, where we may need to give it some attention or maybe go see a doctor, and men tend to either blatantly ignore or turn off  their subconscious cues to things like that, men may have the better senses when it comes to sexual arousal – what a shock!  That’s right, men’s mind and body are better melded when it comes to the link between the physiological responses that indicate sexual arousal and the mindfulness, or psychological awareness, that they are sexually aroused.

Interestingly, when men are sexually aroused in a physically tangible way, they know it almost instantaneously, whereas if a woman’s genitals are showing signs of sexual excitement, then she is more likely to report that she does not feel any sexual arousal whatsoever at that moment.  Of course, men do sport a lot more physical evidence that is obvious in this manner, since penile erections are so much more obvious and physically evident than a woman’s genitalia showing the less obvious and more discreet and hidden signs of sexual excitement in her more hidden genitals.

So I thought, this study seems kind of pointless because a man’s erection is so much more visibly obvious than a woman’s arousal, but then I read on and discovered that men know even at the beginning of an erection that they are feeling sexual excitement, so they still have a better mind body connection when it comes to this. Also, when shown pictures of women that are sexual in nature, men reported sexual feelings right away, whereas women were not aware they were sexually aroused but by their phsysical response, they were.

This might indicate findings that are useful in the study of how to get rid of ED, or erectile dyfunction since it shows that men definitely have a lot more of a mental connection to their sexual arousal than previously thought, but it also may help with new female sexual enhancement products as well since it helps scientists understand how a woman’s mind works when it comes to her sexual thoughts and her physiological responses that comes after these thoughts of stimuli.  Interesting stuff, definitely, and it goes to show that men do put sex as a lot bigger role in their lives and their conscious thoughts than women do, which I think is something that we’ve always suspected.

Abs of Steel and Sex, Any Connection?

We all know that sex has benefits beyond physical and mental, but ones that go more into our appearance. For example, your skin looks better, more flushed, and your blood flow is much better from having sexual intercourse. The exertion alone helps with your appearance because it brings improved circulation to all areas of the body, and it gives you that certain unmistakable glow that only good sex can give, especially for the women!  I’ve experienced this myself, looking in the mirror after having a good tumble under the sheets, and I just somehow look much prettier, it’s very odd,and I can’t place my finger on it directly, but I definitely look better when I’m getting more sex.

One of the other things that sex may do for you, and this goes for both men and women, is give you better, more sculpted and defined abs.  And I do believe this one is true, because if you think about it, do your abs feel like they’re working during sex?  If you answered no then you may be doing something wrong, because most people, whether it’s a man or woman, the top or the bottom person, the ones who’s doing all the work or the one that is enjoying the fruits of all that work, then you are definitely getting some sort of muscle contractions in the abs that will help to shape and sculpt them.

I’ve noticed many times that after sex my abs actually hurt, and my husband says he definitely noticed that his abs and hit lats are sore after he has put a good sex session in where he is doing a lot of work by pumping up and down, up and down and using those stomach muscles to help keep him upright while I’m on the bottom. You even do sort of subconsciously contract your abs like I said, when you are laying there, I think as a sort of way to help intensify the feelings you are getting down there from the pleasure the sex is causing.

No doubt that sex is definitely good for the abs, but consider the full package, not just the abs. It’s great for your frame of mind, for your circulation and focus, and for your overall outlook on life to have good, healthy sex often.

Yoga for Men : What Do You Think?

I for one, and of course, I’m a woman, think that yoga is awesome for men to get into. Why?  Because most of the men I know, including my husband, simply do not do enough stretching exercises to help stretch out their muscles, and not to mention, to help relax their minds and their stress levels. And men wonder why so often they end up with degenerative joint disease like arthritis as they age.

Not that women don’t get this too, but I can certainly tell you that between my husband and myself I definitely have less muscle pulls and aches and pains than he does, and I fully attribute that to the fact that not only do I periodically practice yoga, but I also don’t refuse to stretch adequately before my cardio and muscle building workouts, which is something my husband is definitely guilty of, as much as I love the guy.

Yoga has a multitude of health benefits that men benefit from just as much as women, even if some men think it’s not the most “manly” exercise routine to engage in. Let me remind you also, that super hunky David Duchovny, whom I love from his X files days, and other all man men like Sting and some other men with incredible lean bodies and great looking, healthy faces, does yoga regularly.  If that’s not enough to get you to go out and buy a yoga mat and start doing the downward dog, then I don’t know what is.

Consider these benefits though also, that yoga can have for men – and yes fellas, there are definitely some sexual benefits you will gain from doing this ancient practice!

1.)  Improved sleep.

2.) Improved circulation, which can lead to better erections, less problems with things like premature ejaculation and the like, and even improved orgasms because it can help increase circulation EVERYWHERE, including the circulation of blood to your penis – a great exercise for penile enhancement.

3.)  Increase strength and flexibility. Men who do yoga regularly often report that this increase their sexual prowess because it helps them to maintain those daring sexual positions that drive the ladies wild.

4.)  Better blood flow to the brain. Especially in the downward positions, we don’t often get that enhanced circulation of blood and oxygen to the brain. This has a great anti aging and rejuvenating effect on our brain function.

5.)  Leaner muscle, longer muscle. Which translates into a longer, more lean look to the whole body. Oh, and add appetite suppression to that as well.  Yoga can help to suppress the appetite, unlike many rigorous cardio workouts that may increase it triple fold.

BPA Chemicals Linked to Male Impotence

It’s been long suspected that BPA’s, which is the short way for a long name belonging to a group of suspected harmful chemicals that originate from hard plastic containers, have contributed to a lot of things such as breast cancer and even other degenerative diseases. So much so, in fact, that over just the past few years people have been giving up their traditional hard plastic Nalgene type bottles and swapped them out for stainless steel or glass water drinking bottles just so that their water won’t leach those potentially harmful chemicals and diffuse them into their bodies, doing whatever type of damage they may do.

I’ve been drinking from a stainless steel water bottle for a few years now. Being a woman, I’ve been a little crazy about preventing things in my body that have been even remotely linked to breast cancer, and since BPA’s are one of them, I know that just drinking out of a bottle that is anything other than plastic is better for me or at least has the potential of being better for me, makes me feel better about what I’m drinking. What further convinced me is that their wasn’t that funky, plastic-y flavor to my water any more either, unlike when it sat in a plastic container a few hours.

This to me is further proof that your water does indeed leach something from plastics, otherwise, why would your water taste somewhat like plastic if it had even just spent a few hours in a plastic container?

I digress though with my reasons for believing this theory, however guys, this does now have something to do with you too, so you may want to listen up.  While I think it would beneficial for everyone, men and women to drink from stainless steel or glass instead anyways, there is now further evidence that it may sexually affect men as well. It has actually been linked to impotence in men.  The reason is that it was found that men who worked around BPA’s had a higher incidence of sexual dysfunction and impotence, which lead researchers to believe that it also affects men in a particularly adverse way.

The theory goes that BPA’s contain artificial estrogens, which interfere with both men’s and women’s natural ability to balance their own hormones, equally for them whatever sex they happen to be, so that they have the correct portions of male hormone, or testosterone, and female hormones, or estrogens, at any given time in their bodies.  This synthetic hormone mimicking chemical can throw that off and lead to sexual problems for men, hypothetically.

Spanish Area Teaching Students Masturbation

I know what with out somewhat archaic, prude views of sex and sexuality here in the US, we may find it shocking that elsewhere in the world they are teaching high school students about how to masturbate correctly and fulfillingly, especially when the very strictest of religious views tend to look down on masturbation and any type of sexual “deviancy” deemed too lascivious for humans.  However, if you stop to think about it, isn’t a generation of masturbating teens much better than a generation of reproducing teens, who have unprotected or risky sex with eachother and risk teen pregnancy and/or infection with various STDs?

In my estimation, the first is much more desirable and worlds more appropriate, it just may be hard for some of the more conservative attitudes to swallow, so to speak.  A spanish region called Extremadura is teaching it’s high school students the so called “art of masturbation”.  The program includes instructions on how to masturbate, and workshops on masturbation for teens.  It is open to students from age 14 to 17, and it’s primary goal is to educate students about sexuality, since we all know that not all parents get around to teaching their kids about sex and satisfying their curiousity in the right way or at the right time.

I remember when I was around that age, being curious, and my parents really didn’t tell me all that much. I learned a little bit about sex at school and through friends, but something like this would have allowed me to not feel ashamed about touching myself and wanting to touch myself or feeling so bottled up and ashamed about doing it.

In short, it tells kids that everyone does it.  It takes the shame and mystery out of sex and self exploration for kids, and perhaps makes them more comfortable with touching themselves, rather than going out and seeking sexual partners for that experience, and picking up a disease or getting pregnant.

To me, this makes sense, but I realize that not every parent will agree. As you can imagine, the masturbation workshops have garnered criticism from individual parents and groups, saying that they should have the say over how their children are educated on masturbation and sexuality in general, and that these workshops are an embarrassment to the region, and have drawn too much negative attention to them.  I hope that this is optional, I didn’t read that anywhere, but I do think it should be optional for the kids to attend or not as it is a personal choice.

Can Men Control Their Arousal?

An interesting study was done recently, which was originally intended to be done on sexual offenders, but ended up being done on men considered normal sexually (aka non offenders), to see if there is any correlation between being able to control emotions and being able to control sexual arousal.  The thought process was that men who generally are in more control of their emotional responses may also be in better control of the sexual response to stimuli of a sexual nature.  The results, in short, did end up showing that men who are better able to control their emotional response were better able to control the level of arousal.

They were shown various videos, and told what to do in response to them, and the men who exhibited greater nonsexual emotional response also happened to show much better sexual arousal command responses.  This has many implications, one being the coaching of men who seem to not have as much control over their arousal and may therefore have sexual problems with their partners, and two, it may also help to diagnose and control men who are more likely to become sex offenders.  The thought process is that sex offenders lack this control that normal men do, and that is why they can’t control their sexual impulses, and therefore end up becoming a sex offender and a danger to society.

This could also mean better cognitive psychology understanding when it comes to men’s erectile dysfunction problems and things like premature ejaculation and nonresponsive sexual arousal, or delayed arousal time. Also, it could help with men who get too aroused, too quickly. Who knows, there even may be medications that can help all sorts of these common male sexual issues and enhance their sex lives, something other than your typical men’s medications like Cialis and Viagra, which strictly address the blood flow to the penis issue of not being able to get an erection or maintain it for long enough.

Perhaps the most important part of the research though, is that it will help to effectively treat sex offenders and make it so that they are not a threat after released from doing time, as is often the concern since they almost never get lifetime jail sentences, unless they have actually murdered someone.

Breast Milk Link to Testicular Cancer?

In a Denmark based study, there is a suggested link between chemicals that may be found in a mother’s breast milk she feeds to her male infant, and testicular cancer later in life.  The link is thought to be to chemical pesticides that are used there, and the link to testicular cancer is thought to be related to breast milk since the men affected were often breast fed as babies.  Danish men are almost four times as likely to have testicular cancer than men in neighboring areas, which is pretty high statistically, and men in this country also tend to have much higher rates of other male reproductive disorders, further proving the point that there must be some common chemical link to the occurrence.

When Danish mother’s breast milk was tested against neighboring countries breast milk, the levels of certain environmental pollutants that are used as pesticides were much higher than the other tested milk, leading scientists to believe that this has something major to do with the levels of male health issues that are related to their reproductive organs.  They hypothesized that the chemicals acted as hormone disrupters, and that’s why Danish men have such high rates of sexually related disorders, including testicular cancer.

Despite that fact that the breast milk has been linked in such a way, Doctors still urge their female patients to breast feed, which still has a bevy of benefits to a child. However, what does concern me is that this story didn’t mention how they intend to address the underlying problem, which is obviously that too many pesticide chemicals are around everywhere, and are even infiltrating a woman’s breast milk.

It would be nice if they could allay people’s concerns about that first before telling women it’s ok to breast feed their infants, whether they are male or female, since chemicals most likely would have affects on both sexes.

What’s More Healthy, Single or Married?

Married women everywhere must love the findings of this study, which I may have alluded to before because I’ve read about this study and theory many times in many publications, thinking that it does sort of make sense since I can relate it to my current comfort and happiness in my long term relationship with my fiance.  The findings show that, despite that great allure to some men of terminal singleness, as in never getting married, ala George Clooney or the terminal bachelor (albeit he’s been married before as well, but single for most of his famous life), Hugh Hefner, married men are actually generally more happy and live longer.

Oh, they’re also generally healthier if you can believe that, even despite the fact that lots of men put on post marriage pounds just like women, our partners tend to help us stay healthier as well.  Very interesting, especially for those men who like myself either now or formerly used to think that they wanted to stay single forever.

Furthermore, as if the other findings weren’t enough, it was found that single men are more likely to die earlier deaths, perhaps because of more risky lifestyles or a generally more lax look at the value of life?  One can speculate what the reason for the increased death risk is, but that would be my guess, looking back at my swinging single days.

Also, a lot of these facts can be attributed to single men being isolated and possibly lonely, whereas marriage provides for constant companionship.  I’ve found this to be totally true for myself.  When I’m alone now, I tend to always think of when my partner will be coming home, what she’s doing, how I need to tell her certain things that happened in my day, and there’s a general feeling of emptiness that I feel if I’m going to be totally honest about it.  If I lived like that all the time, I do think it would become detrimental to my overall health and mental well being.

Oh, as if the health and mental well being part isn’t enough, married men also tend to have more money than single men do.  Perhaps this is because there are dual incomes, and married men tend to plan their financial futures better, maybe for the sake of their family, or because they have had dual incomes and two people saving through employee sponsored plans, who’s to say, but the generalization is definitely another reason to reconsider a life of bachelorhood.