British Boys having Penises Crushed

HEALTH - Falling toilet seats are injuring an alarming number of recently potty-trained toddlers in Britain, a British study reports. The medical term for the damage for it? Penis crush.

Ouch!

Heavy wooden, ceramic and ornamental toilet seats are the biggest source of injuries, says Dr. Joe Philip of Leighton Hospital who warns that parents and grandparents should be extra vigilant during the holidays.

"As Christmas approaches, many families will be visiting relatives and friends and their recently toilet-trained toddlers will be keen to show how grown up they are by going to the toilet on their own."

In the British Journal of Urology, Philip and his colleagues focus on four boys under the age of 4 who were admitted to hospital with injuries serious enough to require an overnight stay. All had been trained and were using the toilet on their own using the classic male standing up and pissing position. They had lifted the seats, which later fell back down and crushed their penises. Fortunately, the injuries did not cause lasting physical damage, although the child might become traumatized and prefer sitting down to piss for the rest of their lives.

"We are concerned that the growing trend of heavy toilet seats poses a risk not only to their health, but to their confidence," Philip says.

Because of the height of some toilets there's also devices (see image right) for toddlers too short to reach the toilet properly.

Apparently the boys aren't lifting the seat to its fully upright position and releasing it before its properly in place. Doctors and pediatricians believe boys should be warned about the dangers of crushed penises and taught to lift the seat up properly and holding the seat with one hand. Some doctors even recommend supervision, but this feels more like the parents are worrying too much and coddling the child.

For those parents worried about the issue they should really just teach their boys to piss while sitting down and when they're older they can practice standing up to piss.

The study's authors are calling for manufacturers to design more seats that fall slowly, and for heavier seats to be banished from households with young boys. Philip cites a recent market research report suggesting a "worldwide increase in the number of wooden and ceramic seats sold" will result in a similar increase in crushed penises.

I think this is a situation of survival of the fittest/smartest. These boys need to be taught, and those that don't figure it out on their own deserve to get their penises crushed. It weeds out the dumb ones from reproducing.

Brainy Sperm at Work

HEALTH/SEX - Watch out! Smart, well-endowed sperm are out there and they're looking to reproduce!

Rosalind Arden of King's College, London, and her colleagues have published a new study in the science journal Intelligence which concludes that brainy people (and their sperm) are intrinsically healthier and that intelligence is sexy.

The study is actually about the quality of men's sperm, and the correlation between intelligence, genetics and health. By intelligence they used quotient of linguistic facility, spatial awareness and several other factors measured by psychologists using a value called Spearman's "g".

G whiz.

Arden and team have discovered that an individual's g value is correlated with many aspects of his health, life-span, overall fitness.

There are two possible explanations:

1. Intelligent people make healthier choices.

2. Genetically healthy people become more intelligent.

We already know intelligence is often a deciding factor when choosing a mate, and that over millions of years mankind has evolved due to choosing mates that were healthier/smarter. Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who is one of Arden's co-authors, believes this process of sexual selection is the reason people have become so brainy.

Arden sought to test this idea in a way that excluded intelligent choice and got directly at any physiological correlations between intelligence and health. She chose sperm quality because it is both easily measured and about as far from intelligent choice as it is possible to imagine.

The relevant data had already been collected from former American soldiers enrolled in what was known as the Vietnam Experience Study. In 1985, almost 4,500 of these veterans volunteered for extensive medical and mental examinations. Some of them gave semen samples that were analyzed for three types of sperm quality: the number of sperm per cubic centimetre, the total number of sperm in the ejaculate and sperm motility.

Arden found 425 cases suitable for testing her hypothesis, namely donors with high intelligence g values, and correlated them with all three measures of their sperm quality and thus determined that intelligent men have healthier sperm.

Thus in the Darwinian sense of fitness these men have the ability to survive (through a combination of intelligence and overall fitness), to attract mates and to produce offspring.

It is an important finding, according to Arden. Up til now, biologists looked at "fitness" as a series of adaptations that are more or less independent of each other. Arden's work adds to the idea of a general fitness factor, f, that is similar in concept to g. Now we know that intelligence and fitness can go hand in hand.

So why then are jocks so dumb and nerds so weak? You see there's a false assumption there, that strength equals health/fitness. Athletes frequently have health problems because they put their bodies under a lot of stress, so they're not really healthier or smarter.

Evidently more needs to be studied on this topic and studying healthy sperm from intelligent men is only the tip of the iceberg penis...

Begging the question, does this mean men really do think with their dicks? No seriously, if we're so gung ho about reproducing and healthy sperm/brains does co-exist, maybe there is a bit of truth to it.

The race for Women's Viagra

HEALTH/SEX - For years there's only be one way to turn a woman on... and it usually involves alcohol.

Ever since the little blue Viagra pill hit the market and got a rise out of men, men who had been searching for something to fix their erectile dysfunction and hopefully please their wives more. 31% of adult men suffer from erectile dysfunction.

In theory its just a matter of time before we figure out what chemicals make a woman's libido go from zero to Wonder Woman. Except it doesn't really work that way.

This Saturday at 7 PM a documentary called Pharma Sutra will air on CTV which takes a broad, almost clinical look at the issue: multinational pharmaceutical companies, the approval process, the sex doctors, the feminists and the women and their spouses (don't forget this pill could also be used by lesbians). The documentary focuses on three products in the trial phase: a pill, a testosterone patch and a nasal spray.

It all started with a statistic reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1999, which said that 43% of women suffer from female sexual dysfunction.

After a little research it was quickly determined there is a percentage of women out there interested in seeing a Viagra for Women. And small surprise their partners took notice too. Some women have even been rooting around looking for such aphrodisiacs. Small surprise there are now pharmaceutical giants earnestly seeking the female equivalent of Viagra.

New York sex therapist Dr. Leonore Tiefer however worries about the "medicalization of sexuality" and is dubious about whether female sexual dysfunction even exists. She argues its just a myth, like the G-spot. Or if it does exist she argues it is mostly psychological.

Female sexual dysfunction is characterized by a lack of desire, arousal and orgasm. Lack of desire is the chief complaint among women, affecting about one-third of them at some point in their lives, says Cindy Meston, assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

There is potentially billions in profits at stake however for whichever company manages to patent the little Pink Pill and prove it works. Remember this pill doesn't make women horny or increase their libido, it just removes FSD.

So in theory wine, chocolate and R&B music is still a better way to get the wife in the mood. But a little Pink Pill wouldn't hurt either.

But how close are we to making such a pill? Best estimates are by 2011.

Viagra is designed to increase blood flow to the genitals. Viagra works well for many men who suffer with impotence — or erectile dysfunction — because it's considered a physical — rather than an emotional — problem. That's not to say that Viagra can't "restore function" for women, says Dr. Myron Murdoch, clinical instructor of urology at George Washington Medical School. It can help some women, but it's not for all women.

Viagra-like drugs may help the 20 percent of women reported to have difficulties with lubrication (blood flow to the female genitals increase lubrication), it's unknown to what degree such drugs would help the 43 percent of women with sexual dysfunction who either say they're uninterested in sex or that sex provides little pleasure.

Right now drug companies are focused on developing a drug that increases blood flow to the female genitals, resulting in vaginal lubrication and relaxing vaginal muscles.

So far, there are some promising drugs on the horizon. These include prostaglandin, already approved for men, apomorphine and phentolamine, both of which are being tested for arousal disorder in women.

Women also have other options. Research shows that exercise, counseling, vaginal lubrication products and sex videos all can help kickstart a woman's libido.

The three following options — still scientifically unproven — are readily available and also hold the promise for improving a woman's sex life.

L-arginine amino acid cream
The same amino acid that has been used by athletes to promote muscle development is purported to increase blood flow to the female genitals, thus sparking sexual urges. "Our informal studies on 500 patients showed that 70 percent of women who applied this cream to the clitoris and labia a half hour before sex reported more arousal and stronger orgasms," says Dr. Jed Kaminetsky, clinical assistant professor of urology at the New York School of Medicine.

DHEA
Dehydroepiandrosterone is a male hormone produced by the adrenal gland and ovaries and converted to testosterone and estrogen. DHEA, which depletes with age, can be purchased over the counter in supplement form.In one small study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Sept. 30, 1999), women who took 50 mg of DHEA daily noticed a significant increase in sexual interest. Other preliminary findings report encouraging results. However, most DHEA products lining the store shelves recommend taking only 25 mg per day. Because of its potential for heart attacks and breast cancer and masculating side-effects such as facial hair, DHEA is best used under a doctor's supervision.

Testosterone therapy
For women who have undergone oophorectomy (the removal of one or both ovaries) and hysterectomy, testosterone treatment has shown to improve sexual function and psychological well being, according to recent research from Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital.

However, women looking to boost testosterone levels should work with their physician closely so the hormone can be monitored. Too much of it can cause, among other things, facial hair and change a women's voice, which is irreversible. Meanwhile, a study looking at the combination of L-arginine glutamate and yohimbine — a natural extract from tree bark that excites part of the central nervous system — has shown that postmenopausal women were more than twice as aroused after taking the combination drug and viewing an erotic film than women who took a placebo.