What Happens to Your Sex Life When You're Treated for Cancer

A cancer diagnosis and treatment can affect many aspects of a man’s life, from day-to-day tasks to more personal interactions like intimacy with a partner. After certain treatments like chemotherapy, radiation or surgery, a cancer patient’s body may no longer look or feel as it once did.

Though changes are to be expected, it’s important to recognize the ways a body might respond post-cancer, and how that can affect your sex life. Here are some differences you might notice and ways you can establish new forms of intimacy with your partner.

Why You Should Ejaculate At Least 21 Times This Month, According to Science

The key to good prostate health might be in your own hands: Ejaculating frequently may reduce your risk of prostate cancer, finds new research from the Boston University of Public Health.

The study looked at how ejaculation frequency affected prostate cancer risk over the course of 18 years.

It found that men ages 20 to 29 who ejaculated 21 times or more each month were 19 percent less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than those who ejaculated less often, between 4 and 7 times per month.

New Research: Your Risk Of 10 Types Of Cancer Dramatically Increases If You Are Overweight

Pack on the pounds and you might gain more than just a spare tire: Excess weight raises your cancer risk more than previously thought, new research suggests.

Prior studies have already linked higher weights to an increased risk of 5 types of cancer: colon, esophagus, kidney, breast, and uterine (the last two for women only.)

Now, after analyzing more than 1,000 studies that looked at excess weight and cancer risk, researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have added 8 more types of cancer to the list.

The Deadly Cancer That Grows for Two Decades

This news could leave you gasping: Lung cancer—which kills more people than any other cancer—can develop slowly for 20 years before it becomes aggressive enough to detect, finds new research from University College London.

Scientists studied 25 regions of seven lung tumors surgically removed from patients. They found that certain genetic mutations occur early in a tumor’s development, probably as a result of carcinogen exposure, especially in smokers and ex-smokers. Later—likely years later—a DNA-editing protein called APOBEC mutates DNA within the tumor, and that’s when the cancer really starts to progress, says study author Elza De Bruin, Ph.D.

Fight Insomnia and Cancer at Once!

Turn in early

  to turn cancer away. Men with higher melatonin levels—a hormone involved in regulating your sleep-wake cycle—had a 75 percent lower risk of advanced prostate cancer compared to guys with lower levels, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Beware if alcohol gives you red cheeks

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.