Archive for the 'Men’s Health-Erectile Dysfunction' Category
BARRIER METHODS: SPERMICIDE
Author: admin
As noted previously, spermicide, in addition to offering protection against pregnancy, also kills viruses such as HIV and herpes virus, and bacteria such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, in the laboratory. It is not known whether, in practice, spermicidal foam or cream adds additional protection against infection, but it may. Spermicides are best used in conjunction with a condom, and they should not be used in place of a condom. As many as 30 percent of people may have some allergy to nonoxynol-9, and the inflammation of the tissues in the genital area from this allergic reaction may actually make STD transmission easier. The bottom line is that if you do not have an allergic reaction to this spermicide, it may aid in the prevention of STD transmission.
Studies are currently under way to determine if other substances offer any protective benefit.
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read comments (0)MAKING PSA MORE MEANINGFUL: PSA VELOCITY
Author: admin
Perhaps the most promising approach to PSA is to look at PSA velocity—its rate of change from year to year. The supposition is this: If cells double at a much faster rate in prostate cancer than in BPH, and if prostate cancer produces more PSA than BPH does, it’s likely that PSA’s yearly rate of change will be much greater in a man with prostate cancer than in a man with BPH. In other words: It stands to reason that if a man’s PSA is going up, he has a cancer—and that cancer is probably growing.
In one study, researchers at Johns Hopkins made use of a massive data base called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. (Since it was begun in 1958, about one thousand five hundred men have participated in this study, returning every other year for physical examinations and a battery of medical tests. Their blood samples from every checkup are stored for future studies.) The investigators looked at three groups of men who were involved in this study— those with BPH, those with prostate cancer, and a control group of men with no prostate disease. Looking at twenty years’ worth of stored blood samples, investigators found that the men with prostate cancer had “significantly greater rates of change in PSA levels than those without prostate cancer up to ten years before diagnosis.”” In other words, by tracking changes in PSA levels, they were able to detect prostate cancer years before it could be diagnosed by other means. For example, at five years before diagnosis—when PSA levels weren’t appreciably different between men with BPH and men with prostate cancer— there was already a big difference in PSA velocity in men who turned out to have prostate cancer versus men who had BPH and the control group.
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No, this isn’t true. Females can and do become pregnant from having sex while they’re having their menstrual period. A female whose period lasts for longer than seven days is more likely to get pregnant from having sex during her period. But, even a female whose period lasts seven days or less could get pregnant from having sex during this time.
Here’s an example of how this might work. Say Mary starts her period on 3 June. She bleeds for seven days, until 9 June. She has sex on 8 June, while she’s still bleeding. Her next period starts on 24 June. Altogether, twenty-one days have elapsed between the first day of bleeding of her period on 3 June and the first day of bleeding for her next period on 24 June. By counting back twelve to sixteen days from 24 June, we can figure that she probably ovulated between 8 and 12 June. Mary was still bleeding on the 8th; she may have ovulated on the 8th; she had sex on the 8th. So, there’s a good chance she’d get pregnant even though she was having her period.
Even if Mary didn’t ovulate until the 9th or 10th, she still might get pregnant because the sperm can stay alive for at least three days. And if the experts who say sperm can stay alive for five days are right, she might have got pregnant from having sex on the 8th even if she didn’t ovulate until the 12th.
Or, to take another example, let’s say Susan has a period on 1 August. She bleeds for seven days, until 7 August. She has sex on the seventh day, on 7 August, while she’s still bleeding. Her next period starts on 28 August, which would mean she’d had a twenty-seven-day cycle. So she may have ovulated as early as 12 August. She stopped bleeding on 7 August. But if the experts who say that sperm can stay alive for five days are right, there might still be some live sperm in her body from the time she had sex on 7 August. Therefore, when Susan ovulated on 12 August, she could become pregnant from having had sex on the 7th while she was still bleeding.
It is, then, possible for a female to get pregnant from having sex during her menstrual period.
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THE HYMEN
Author: admin
The hymen is a thin piece of skin tissue that lies just inside the vaginal opening. A slang term for it is ‘maidenhead’.
The hymen looks different in different women. It may be just a thin fringe of skin round the edges of the opening to the vagina or it may stretch across the opening and have one or more holes in it.
In young girls the hymen may not be very noticeable. During puberty it gets thicker, more rigid and more noticeable. Not every female has a noticeable hymen, though. A few are born without one. Other women’s hymens are so small or thin that it’s hard to see them.
As strange as it seems, this tiny piece of skin was once considered very important by many people. People used to think that all women had the kind of hymen that stretches all the way across the vaginal opening. They thought that the only way a hymen could be stretched or torn was if a man put his penis inside a woman’s vagina while they were having sex. Today we know this isn’t true. As we’ve said, some females are born without a hymen. Of those who do have one, not all have the kind that stretches all the way across the vaginal opening. Some have a hymen that is just a fringe of tissue round the edges of the vaginal opening. Also, once in a while, hymens are stretched or torn ‘by accident’ (for example, falling off a bike, doing the splits or some other stretching movement during vigorous exercise). Whether or not a woman has a hymen has nothing to do with whether or not she has had sex with a man. In fact, some women have sexual intercourse quite a number of times without their hymen stretching or tearing at all.
When the hymen is stretched or torn – whether it’s during sex or while a girl’s doing gymnastics or riding a horse or whatever- it may bleed a little, a lot or not at all. It may hurt a little, a lot or not at all. But only rarely does a hymen bleed or hurt so badly that a doctor’s care is needed. In fact, most girls and women never notice any blood or feel any pain when their hymen is stretched or torn.
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Some people think that if you masturbate a lot when you’re young, you’ll learn to like it so much that you won’t enjoy sexual intercourse as much when you’re older. This isn’t true. In fact, most experts agree that masturbating is a way of rehearsing for your adult sex life. By masturbating, you learn how your own body responds and what gives you the most pleasure. When you do begin to have sex, you are knowledgeable about what you like, about what ‘turns you on’. If you know this about yourself, it’s that much easier to tell your sex partner what you like and/or don’t like and how your partner can help increase your sexual pleasure.
It is true that many men find that they have more physically intense orgasms from masturbation than from intercourse. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that they like masturbation more than intercourse, because intercourse involves touching, holding and being intimate with another person. That makes it a very different kind of experience from masturbating.) However, other men find that the orgasms they experience during intercourse are more intense than those they have during masturbation. Still others don’t find any difference in intensity.
As you grow older, you may find that masturbating provides the most intense orgasms, that sexual intercourse does or that both provide equally intense orgasms. But how much or how little you masturbate when you’re young won’t have anything to do with what type of orgasms are most intense for you when you’re an adult.
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We explained that when a man and a woman are having sexual intercourse, the man may ejaculate his sperm into the woman’s vagina. When this happens, muscles in his genital area contract and sperm are pumped out of his testicles, through the urethra and out of the opening in the centre of the glans (the ‘tip’ or ‘head’) of his penis.
Men don’t always ejaculate when they’re having sex, but they usually do. A man or boy may ejaculate at other times too, even if he’s not having sexual intercourse. In fact, boys usually have their first ejaculations just before their fourteenth birthdays, long before most of them have started having sexual intercourse. In this chapter we’ll talk about the things other than sexual intercourse that can cause you to ejaculate, and we’ll also talk about your first ejaculation.
The inside story-In order to understand ejaculation it helps to have some idea of how the sex organs on the inside of the body work.
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CHANGING SHAPE
Author: admin
As you can see, we do quite a bit of growing between the time we’re born and the time we reach our full adult size. For one thing, we get taller. As explained before, a lot of this growing taller happens during puberty. We also put on quite a lot of weight. At birth, the average boy baby weighs 3.4 kg (7 ½ lb). The average grown man weighs 73.4 kg (11 ½ st). Again, a lot of this weight gain happens during puberty.
If you compare the baby’s body to the man’s body, you’ll see that some parts of the body grow more than others as we mature and grow into our adult bodies. If this weren’t true, if all parts of our bodies grew the same amount as we matured, we’d simply grow into giant babies, and we’d look pretty strange.
Of course, we don’t end up looking like giant babies. Different parts of our bodies grow more or less than other parts in proportion (in comparison to) other parts. For example, our heads don’t grow as much as other parts of our body. During puberty you may notice changes in the proportions or the size of certain parts of your body in relation to other parts. For instance, the proportions of your face change. The lower part gets longer and this changes the general shape of your face.
Your shoulders also get broader and your hips seem narrower in comparison to them. Your shoulders also become more muscular. In fact, the muscles all over your body grow larger, especially in your thighs, calves and upper arms. With this increase in the size of your muscles comes an increase in body strength. Your entire body begins to look less like a boy’s body and more like a man’s. Your arms and legs tend to grow faster than your backbone during your growth spurt. So you may notice that your arms and legs are longer in proportion to the trunk of your body than they were during childhood or than they are in adulthood. The bones in your feet also grow faster than your other bones, and so your feet usually reach their adult size before you reach your full height. Some boys whose feet are already quite large but who are still going through the growth spurt think that their feet are going to continue to grow as they get taller. They worry that their feet are going to be gigantic. But your feet do stop getting bigger before you finish getting taller.
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