Sunday, 29 December 2013

The Issue Erection Meds Can’t Fix

BY ASHLEY BALCERZAK

Looks like that little blue pill can’t solve all your problems.Erection drugs won’t improve your relationship, suggests a new study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Men who were treated for erectile dysfunction (ED) with PDE5 inhibitors, or medicines including Viagra or Livitra, for roughly half a year reported higher levels of sexual gratification and confidence after treatment. Yet they saw no notable improvement in overall life or relationship satisfaction.

BY MARKHAM HEID

Looks like size really does matter: Men who are 6’2’’ and up are 17 percent more likely to be contacted for a date than guys who are average height (5’8”), according to a survey from AYI.com, an online dating site.

What’s more, for fellas on the shorter side—those below 5’5’’—the odds of drawing interest from a prospective match dropped by 55 percent compared to the tall guys.

How Many Calories Do You Burn During Sex?

BY AMY RUSHLOW,

Ever wonder what kind of workout you get between the sheets? Thanks to new research from the University of Montreal, we have the precise answer: Men burn 100 calories in the average sex session, while women expend 69. (Yes, 69.)

The typical romp lasts 25 minutes from the start of foreplay to the end, but that’s just an average—the times varied widely in the study, and ranged between 10 and 57 minutes. The longer the session, the more calories burned.

BY JESSICA GIRDWAIN,

Skip the Taco Bell run: Five days of eating a junk-food diet can deteriorate your memory, finds new Australian research.
After that amount of time, rats that ate high-fat, high-sugar foods performed worse on special memory tests, and couldn't locate things as well as rodents fed a normal diet. These rats had problems noticing if an object had moved; for you, that’s like when you can’t find your keys.

Dwindling sex life? How to get more action

by AFP Relax

If stress is taking a toll on your sex life, here's your action plan to getting more action.

A large-scale study published this week in the journal The Lancet finds that Britons are having less sex these days, all due to the pileup of work and money stress and technology replacing fun romps in the bedroom, researchers said.

Prevention magazine also cites a recent study that found that the stress hormone cortisol, sparked by hectic schedules and tightening bank accounts, decreased physical arousal in women.

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | LiveScience.com

The worst stereotypes of science suggest that it's boring, staid, or overly complex.

Not these studies. More often than people may think, science gets downright dirty, peering into bedrooms and asking nosy questions about secret fantasies. The science of sex is anything but dull.

With that in mind, here are 10 of the sex stories most likely to have caused blushing in 2013.

By Vanessa Golembewski, Refinery29

It's taken us a long time, but we think the population at large is finally convinced that women not only want, but enjoy sex. Wild, right? But, according to a new study by British beauty brand Sanctuary Spa, women do have a very interesting set of priorities. The data from the study reveals that 55 percent of women surveyed chose skin moisturizer over their sex life. Ninety-four percent also chose watching the newest episode of Downton Abbey over sex, too.

Can anxiety give you a stroke? New research says yes

By Lisa Collier Cool

The more anxious you are, the greater your risk for stroke, warns a large new study conducted over a 22-year period. The new research—the first to uncover a link between stroke and anxiety—suggests that anxious people may have an up to 33 percent greater risk of stroke compared to more easygoing folks.

Earlier research linked stroke risk with depression . However, the new study—published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke—found that anxiety is an independent risk factor. When researchers accounted for incidents of depression among the over 6,000 study participants, the connection between stroke and anxiety remained strong.

Study Drop: Ditch the Vitamins, Doctors Say

by Marjorie Korn

Is taking a multivitamin in the morning as routine for you as brushing your teeth? This is one healthy habit that some doctors are urging you to ditch. In an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine published this week, the authors are blunt: "stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements." There's no good evidence that vitamin supplements offer health benefits, they say. What's more, there's some evidence that high doses of certain supplements -- beta-carotene, and vitamins E and A -- could potentially be harmful.

Healthy Obesity: Is It a Myth?

By Lisa Collier Cool

A new research review, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, seems to dispel the myth that it’s possible to be both obese and healthy if an individual has normal metabolic markers, like low cholesterol and low blood pressure.

The review, conducted at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, analyzed eight previous studies from the past decade. Researchers concluded that obesity consistently carries a higher risk of cardiovascular issues and premature death.

8 Things Men Wish Women Knew About Sex

By Diana Kelly
Chances are you would never tell your best friend’s boyfriend what she’s spilled to you about their sack sessions—and for good reason (um, awkward!). Sex therapists, however, are more loose-lipped, at least when it comes to sharing guys’ secrets that will strengthen your relationship and make for even hotter sex. Learn what he’s dishing out behind that closed door and how you can use that knowledge to make both of you happier, in and out of bed.

By Laura Schwecherl for Greatist.com

Muhammad Ali always abstained before hitting the ring. Even Plato said Olympic athletes should avoid sex before competition. But science suggests doing the deed won’t actually zap all that energy or be a distraction during the kick-off. In fact, an orgasm may help combat muscle pain for ladies, while a testosterone boost could even help build strength for men. (As if the act itself wasn’t reason to take part!)

by SHAPE editors

12 A-list experts share their top effortless advice for eating clean, staying energized, and losing weight. And yes, dessert is included!

1. Make room for dessert. "Ditch the all-or-nothing mentality. Instead of being either perfect or off the rails, aim for a realistic balance. For example, if you're craving something carb-rich, like a brownie for dessert, omit the starch from your dinner, but keep the veggies and lean protein. Making room for treats while still eating healthfully overall makes a whole lot more sense than yo-yoing between strict dieting and overindulging." -Cynthia Sass, R.D., author of S.A.S.S. Yourself Slim: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches

Could Viagra Relieve Menstrual Cramps?

By Sabrina Bachai

The little blue pill that many men turn to for relief from their erectile dysfunction might also help to alleviate menstrual cramps. A new study conducted by Pennsylvania State University found that sildenafil citrate, which is sold under the brand name Viagra, might help to relieve primary dysmenorrhea (PD) when administered vaginally.

"If future studies confirm these findings, sildenafil may become a treatment option for patients with PD," said Richard Legro, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine.

The research team led by Legro recruited women 18 to 35 years old who suffered from moderate to severe PD. Twenty five of the women were randomized to receive either sildenafil or a placebo drug vaginally. For the next four consecutive hours patients rated their pain and those who took the sildenafil felt relief without any side effects.

By From the editors of Runner's World | Healthy Living

Any exercise is good exercise, but when it comes to losing weight, it's hard to beat running. After all, running is one of the most efficient ways to burn calories and get fit without having to restrict your diet. If you're already a runner, keep on keepin' on. If you're not a runner yet but interested in losing weight, here are four reasons running can be the best exercise for weight loss.

1. Running works even when you're at rest. High-intensity exercise like running stimulates more "afterburn" than low-intensity exercise. That is, even when comparing running with walking the same distance, studies find that running will lead to greater weight loss, most likely because your resting energy expenditure stays elevated after you run. In a long-term comparison study of runners and walkers, calories burned through running led to 90% more weight loss than calories burned through walking.

Angelina Jolie reportedly eats collagen marshmallows to look youthful.

The 38-year-old actress is said to be a fan of Japanese brand Eat Yourself Beautiful's sweet treats.

In a packet, consumers will find marshmallows that taste of cherry, yoghurt and grapefruit and they have already been flying off the shelves in Asia and Australia.

Being less invasive than injections and including up to 3000mg of collagen peptides per packet, Angelina reportedly tucks into them every day.

10 Sex Facts You Need to Know

By Lucy Danziger and the staff at SELF

Because you’ve heard what they say: Knowledge is pleasure, er, power.

You might want to hit the gym before you hit the sheets. Getting just 20 minutes of cardio exercise can increase genital arousal in women, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin have found. But maybe shower between heart-pumping sessions?
Yep, size matters for women, too. A study in The Journal of Sexual Medicineshows that the clitoris becomes 15 to 20 percent larger on the 14th day of your cycle, thanks to the extra blood flow, making the spot even more sensitive.

By Laurie Stoneham | dailyRx: Relevant Health News

Women with mild forms of heart disease are thought to be at greater risk of one day having a major cardiac event and maybe dying from it. An international study has challenged this belief.

Men and women who have similar forms of coronary artery disease — characterized by plaque build-up in the heart’s main arteries — have similar heart attack and death risks, according to the new study.

The study analyzed information on thousands of people from around the world to reach this conclusion.

"To drink or not to drink coffee" has been the focus of many researchers in the past. Up to now, scientists are still in conflict on whether coffee is good or bad for the body.

Caffeine, which is the main ingredient of coffee, causes increased heart rate and blood pressure. Naturally, people would assume that increased consumption of coffee would be bad for one's health.

This idea was supported by previous studies associating heavy coffee drinking and heart disease.

Scary Symptoms You Can Relax About

Don't hit the panic button

It has been nearly 20 years since I officially practiced medicine, but my friends and family consider me their frontline medical adviser. In an age when it is hard to get a doctor on the phone and can be pricey to see one, I remain really good at screening symptoms. The vast majority of the time, I can assure people that their anxiety is unfounded. Of course, every once in a while, my advice is "Yikes, worry more!" Here are some common medical worries you can set aside—along with a little guidance on when you should indulge them.

We all have our vices. For some people, it's drinks with friends every weekend; for others, it's shopping; and for many, it's the seemingly lesser evil of eating too much junk food. As much as you love opening up a bag of chips while watching a DVD or cracking open a bottle of soda to quench your thirst, you know how bad it really is for you. Instead of completely cutting out those things that make life worth living, why not make you own healthier versions instead? Here are a few suggestions:

Exercise can override libido-dulling effects of antidepressants: study

An unfortunate side effect of taking antidepressants is loss of libido and inability to reach orgasm, but a new study finds that this can be mitigated with a dose of exercise, for women at least.

Party-Proof Your Diet

By Jan Sheehan

The holidays are a scary time for dieters, but you can stick to your diet though Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here's how to regain control after common seasonal slip-ups -- so you might even lose weight this year.

You drank too much eggnog at the office party. Undo the damage. You can blame your wicked hangover and pounding headache on dehydration and the toxins your body had to release to metabolize all that booze. "Alcohol also increases the secretion of acid in the stomach and irritates the stomach lining," says Robert Swift, MD, PhD, associate director of the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies in Providence. Relieve your misery by eating a piece of toast with honey. Greasy foods, like fried eggs and sausages, will only overtax your irritated digestive system and make it pump out more acid, Dr. Swift says. Honey is an excellent source of fructose, a sugar that research shows may help your body get rid of alcohol's toxins more quickly. Rehydrate with plenty of water and pop an ibuprofen, which was found to relieve aches faster and better than acetaminophen in a study in the journal Headache.

By K. Aleisha Fetters, Women's Health

Forget soothing sore throats. Drinking hot water with lemon and honey can help women lose three pounds a week--at least, according to the aptly named "honey diet."

Any exercise is good exercise, but when it comes to losing weight, it's hard to beat running. After all, running is one of the most efficient ways to burn calories and get fit without having to restrict your diet. If you're already a runner, keep on keepin' on. If you're not a runner yet but interested in losing weight, here are four reasons running can be the best exercise for weight loss.

Memo to all the guys out there (and the women who love you): Quit walking to the kitchen every time those bone-health commercials come on. (Sally Fields, we love you. Really, we do.) All the talk about osteoporosis is not for women only.

Twelve million men have bones that are getting thinner and more brittle each day. We've got some irresistible ways to keep yours safe, strong, and young.

How about a beer? Ah, now you're paying attention! The bone-saving secret in brewskis is silicon, a chemical that stimulates collagen production. What's collagen? A protein that makes your bones denser and your joints more flexible. Brews with the most hops and malted barley are the richest in silicon. (Here's another surprising drink for better bones.) Not big on beer? Bananas and brown rice also are silicon-packed.

3 Reasons to Get More Sleep During the Holidays

Late-night gift shopping, seasonal cocktails, and party after party can wreak havoc on your sleep schedule this time of year. But it's especially important to stick as closely as you can to a regular snooze schedule in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Here's why you need enough pillow time:

1. Your waistline
People with inconsistent to-bed and wake-up times (as well as those who sleep too much or too little) are more likely to be overweight, reports a new Brigham Young University study. A previous study, from McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., found that sleepy people have less activity in the parts of the brain that regulate willpower, making it tougher to resist the cookies, cakes, and booze that's everywhere you turn this month.

By Pamela Nisevich Bede, M.S., R.D., Runner's World

'Tis the season to be constantly reminded we're all at risk of gaining 5, 10, even 15 (!) pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Seriously? Where do these numbers even come from, and do they apply to runners?

When looking at the pounds gained across the country in the weeks leading up to the new year, there's a bit of wiggle room in the evidence. Some articles report that Americans will gain an average of five to 10 pounds, other articles report four to six, some report only a modest increase of one pound (but once gained, this pound will never come off), and then there's a report suggesting that one needn't worry about any changes in weight or body composition (whew!).

December is here at last and while everyone is counting down to Christmas, a lot of us are also counting the days of added stress caused by the holidays. The crushing weight of crowds at the malls, the interminable waiting at restaurants and in traffic--you know the holidays are here when you feel like decking not just the halls, but annoying people as well.

Check out these tips on how to manage your holiday stress and keep calm. After all, Santa still has plenty of time to move you over to the naughty list.

Ask most women what some of their body hang-ups are and chances are you’ll get this answer: “I hate how my underarms look dark and discolored.” This is something very common with darker-skin women due to the higher melanin concentration in our skin. Mela-what? Here’s a quick biology lesson for you: Melanin refers to the natural pigments found in our skin that when triggered causes skin to become darker as a way of protection. Yay for skin protection; boo for the uneven skin it leaves behind.

When it comes to your armpits, it is melanin that causes the area to become darker either through external assault or internal aggression. What exactly are these aggressions? Here are four of the most common ones that are leaving you with undesirable underarms.

Can We Blame Our Sexless Lives on Smart Phones?

By Farhana Nazir, Refinery29

The thought-provoking findings from the recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) provides us with some great insight into our sex lives. One worrisome revelation: We're getting busy far less than we used to - in fact, just three times a month on average. Shocking, right?

But, even more depressing is the revelation that our technological addictions could be to blame for our sex-starved lifestyles. Damn you, iPhone 5! Professor Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tells The Daily Telegraph, "People [are] taking laptops to bed, iPads, the fact work comes into our home now - there's no strict divide." So, that bedroom office isn't such a good idea, after all.

Experts estimate that about one in eight women born in the U.S. today will be diagnosed with breast cancer. You may already know someone who is battling it. "Much of what causes breast cancer is not something that a woman has control over," says Dr. George Sledge, professor of medicine and chief of the division of oncology at Stanford. That's a scary thing to hear about a disease that kills nearly 40,000 U.S. women a year.

It's as much a part of your daily existence as your diet and exercise routine, and yet, even those who prioritize movement and nutrition are a bit misled when it comes to sleep. Much of this in-the-dark behavior stems from a misunderstanding of some of the most important factors affecting your sleep (which, by the way, affects your waistline as well as your performance at work and in the gym). To set the record straight, we asked Equinox advisory board member and sleep expert James B. Maas, Ph.D., author of Sleep for Success!, to dispel five of the most common falsehoods.

Ancient Humans Had Sex with Mystery Relatives, Study Suggests

A new, improved sequencing of ancient human relative genomes reveals that Homo sapiens didn't only have sex with Neanderthals and a little-understood line of humans called Denisovans. A fourth, mystery lineage of humans was in the mix, too.

As reported by the news arm of the journal Nature, new genetic evidence suggests that several hominids — human relatives closer than humans' current living cousin, the chimpanzee — interbred more than 30,000 years ago. This group of kissing cousins included an unknown human ancestor not yet revealed by the ancient DNA record.

That's the average amount of money a healthy diet costs over an unhealthy one, according to a new study published in the medical journal BMJ Open. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health studied healthy and unhealthy diet patterns in ten wealthy countries and found that across the board, diets rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts, cost more than those heavy in processed foods and refined grains. On average, the healthiest diets came in at $1.50 more per day.

A contraceptive pill for men has moved one step closer after Australian researchers successfully made male mice infertile, according to a study published Tuesday.

Monash University scientists genetically modified mice to block two proteins found on the smooth muscle cells which are essential for sperm to travel through the animal's reproductive organs.

The result was that even though the mice had sex normally and were otherwise healthy, they were infertile, researcher Sabatino Ventura from Melbourne's Monash University said.

Getting a red face after downing a couple of alcoholic beverages is not a sign of strong qi (energy flow) or good blood circulation, but rather, it is an indication that your body is not metabolising alcohol efficiently. This phenomenon called Asian Flush Syndrome is common among Asians of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent.

“If you are Asian and drink alcohol frequently, you may have a higher risk of getting stomach or oesophageal cancer or peptic ulcers due to a genetic inability to efficiently process acetaldehyde, a toxic by-product of alcohol metabolism,” says Dr Victor Lee Tswen Wen, Consultant Surgeon,Department of Hepatobiliary & Transplant Surgery, Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a member of the SingHealth group.

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By Laura Schwecherl for Greatist.com

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Don't hit the panic button

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