Scanner : sex studies

We Repeat: Smart Women Have Better Sex

Emily Farris — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:06:00 GMT

We seem to recall a study like this popping up about a year ago, but we're happy to repeat it: intelligent women have better sex.

Apparently, women who have high levels of "emotional intelligence," or the ability to express their own feelings and read others', have more fulfilling sex lives.

[Researcher Tim Spector, of King's College London] quizzed more than 2,000 female twins, aged between 18 and 83, about their sex lives.

The women were asked to rate their ability to reach orgasm on a seven-point scale, ranging from 'never' to always'.

They also filled in a questionnaire designed to gauge their emotional intelligence and covering traits like self-expression, empathy and contentment.

Those most in touch with their feelings also had the most orgasms, the Journal of Sexual Medicine reports.

Lead author, psychologist Andrea Burri, also of King's College, said: 'Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner.'

Perhaps this is also because we know that it is not hellfire that makes us burn in between our legs?

[Daily Mail: Bad luck bimbos: Intelligent women have better sex, study reveals]

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Today in Fuzzy Math: Sex + Alcohol = UTI?

Emily Farris — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:57:00 GMT

UTIs, or urinary tract infections, are the worst. Are we right, ladies? The constant feeling like you have to pee and not being able to until finally an itsy bitsy bit comes out and it burnslikeamuthafucker. And you still have to pee. But you can't until you do and it burnslikeamuthafucker again. This goes on until you can flush enough cranberry juice through your system to get it all out or, if you, unlike us, have health insurance, can get a little pill from your doctor. We usually get them after sex, especially after we have sex when we haven't had sex in a long time (which is about every time we've had sex for the past couple years). Peeing afterwards helps, and should help, but it turns out that maybe there's another way to avoid the burn.

According to a new study (we just love those) alcohol is as much to blame as sex:

Sexual activity had the strongest influence on a first UTI, but alcohol use correlated with the two strongest risk factors, both of which involved sexual activity, Charles Vincent, M.D., of the University of Florida in Gainesville, reported at the American Urological Association meeting.

But even if we cut back on the alcohol, we may still be screwed, or burned as it were:

More surprisingly, frequent consumption of caffeine also emerged as a risk factor for UTI.

Unfortunately this reeks of "one of those" studies that really just says "people who drink alcohol are more likely to engage in sexual activity and therefore.... x = y: or some shit:

"Few studies have suggested a relationship to coffee or tea consumption and alcohol consumption. Though causative relationships are not evident, these behaviors may suggest lifestyles that predispose risk factors of UTI development," he added.

Wait for it... wait for it...

The analysis also revealed a strong trend toward association between alcohol consumption and number of sexual partners within the past two weeks.

We're not the best at deciphering medical jargon (clearly) but you can read the rest of the article at Med Page Today—if you can tear yourself away from the booze and sex for a few minutes, that is.

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Polish Teens Work Hard for the Money

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Polish Teens Work Hard for the Money

Emily Farris — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:51:00 GMT

When we were 14 and decided that we just had to have every style of Doc Martens sandals and at least two pairs of boots to go with those Lucky jeans, we got our first job. We worked the counter at Chinese Delight in the food court of the Independence Center. It was fun, we made new friends, and every week we blew our entire paycheck at The Buckle. We worked hard for the money, but apparently not as hard as Polish teens who are turning to prostitution so they can buy clothes, concert tickets and expensive vacations.

A new report from the Poland Children's Ombudsman's Office shows that girls enter the sex business at fifteen or sixteen, while boys enter as young as fourteen or fifteen.

Twenty percent do it on their own free will. They choose to sell their bodies in order to earn money for brand clothes, fashionable gadgets or concert tickets. Material goods help them gain respect of their peers. “Young people feel they need to attend trendy clubs, wear brand clothes and have enough money for expensive alcohol and cigarettes in order to be accepted,” said Jacek Kurzępa, the co-author of the report.

Another reason why teenagers decide to enter sex business is the desire to earn money easily and quickly. It is a particularly tempting option for those who collect money for holidays, pets or tickets to all kinds of music and sports events, because it saves time. There is also a group of teenagers who prostitute themselves just for a thrill, to taste a forbidden fruit, says the report.

Prostitution is not perceived as bad or even shameful by many teenagers, the report shows. Young people, instead of calling prostitution by its name, use the term “sponsoring”, which softens its true meaning. For some, teenagers those who have a sponsor can even be role models.

It is becoming easier for teenagers to enter the sex trade nowadays than it was several years ago. Young people do not need to sell their bodies on the street. All they need is a computer with internet access, where they can find sex ads and place their own offers. Some of the teenagers are encouraged to prostitute themselves by their friends who already are in the business. “Twenty- or thirty-years-olds become prostitutes because they have to pay for studies or need money for their children. Teenagers sell their bodies in order to have fun,” said a sex agency owner.

Young people who choose prostitution as their source of income, a bonus to their pocket money, do not realize the real cost of it. In Poland there are not enough institutions or organizations which could help teenagers permanently free themselves from sex work, when they decide to, says the report. Even police are rather helpless when it comes to investigating consensual teenage sex cases since neither a client, nor a teen prostitute want their business to be revealed.

[News.pl: Teens prostitute themselves for brand clothes]

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Drunkenness No Longer an Excuse for Being a Creepy Old Man

Emily Farris — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:33:00 GMT

According to a new study, alcohol does not impair a man's ability to tell whether a girl is legal or not. The study, published by the University of Leicester in the British Journal of Psychology, found that alcohol had very little impact on men's perception of the ages of women in pictures.

A total of 240 members of the public in bars and cafés were asked to look at composite photographs of ten young women aged 17 and asked to rate their attractiveness.

Some of the photos were digitally altered to give the faces a younger or older appearance and make-up was applied in some cases. Half of the participants questioned had consumed at least some alcohol before the task and their blood-alcohol level was measured by a breathalyser test.

The study found that participants consistently overestimated the age of the girls in the images by an average of 3.5 years. But although men and women rated younger-looking faces as more attractive on average, “contrary to expectations, alcohol and make-up did not inflate attractiveness ratings”, the researchers write.

The lead researcher, Vincent Egan, said: “This study suggests that alcohol consumption and make-up use do not interfere with how old we perceive someone to be.

“Another interesting finding was that, overall, participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared with the participants who had not drunk alcohol.

“This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of ‘beer goggles’.”

So stop blaming your perverted (or preverted, as Scanner Colleen would say) ways on the beer, old men, and just admit you like little girls, okay?

[Telegraph: Men may not be able to blame alcohol for underage sex]

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Who Does Depression Hurt? Everybody Except Women Taking Semen Vaginally, Says a New Study

Emily Farris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:35:00 GMT

Women are diagnosed with clinical depression in higher numbers than men. This doesn't mean women are more prone to depression, only that they go to the doctor and get a diagnosis more often than men. But now a new study claims to have found the miracle cure for female depression: semen!

As women, our moods are especially dependent on hormones and, as you might expect, semen is chock full of them. So if birth control supposedly works better when inserted directly into the vagina, like vodka tampons (!?) wouldn't a straight shot of semen right in there work better than say, popping a semen pills, partaking in a Creamy Cum Crepe or even taking a shot of it orally? Yes, say the authors of the study who reported that women who did not use condoms during sex showed lower depression scores than women who used condoms or were not sexually active.

Our first thought, of course, was that women who were not using condoms were probably in long-term relationships and having regular sex, and more often. And sex, as we all know, puts one in a good mood. The authors, however, were less forgiving of women:

The authors acknowledge that there are lots of issues with the study. The women who didn't use condoms could be less depressed just because they are having sex more often. They could also be more likely to engage in risky behavior, though this trait doesn't appear to correlate with depression or lack thereof.

Other interesting results of the study:

Not only that, people who used condoms the most often were also the ones most likely to report having attempted suicide. Whether or not people were in relationships at the time had no effect. Interestingly, they also found that oral contraceptives did not have a significant effect on depressive symptoms. Finally, they found that women who did not use condoms had sex almost twice as often as those who did.

Still, the study concluded that women who have sex without condoms—not women who have more sex—are less depressed. Too bad AIDS is such a downer.

[Neurotopia: Friday Weird Science: Feeling down? Have you tried...semen?]

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Image via ebarney's flickr

Today in WTF: Penis Extenders Actually Work?

Emily Farris — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:13:00 GMT

According to a new study published in the British Journal of Urology International men who subject themselves to devices similar to the torturous one pictured above in hopes of growing their penises actually do grow their penises. And in a pretty big way, if the results are to be believed.

The study followed 21 men in Italy for up to a year as they used penis-enlarging device with "dynamic rods" and—we really can't believe this—some saw a growth of up to 33 percent over six months.

Unfortunately, the entire article is not available for non subscribers but an abstract reported that the average flaccid length at the start was 2.82 inches—after a year, it was 3.72 inches. While there was no increase in girth, erectile function "scores" also improved during the test.

Conclusion? "Penile extenders should be regarded as a minimally invasive and effective treatment option to elongate the penile shaft in patients seeking treatment for a short penis."Iiiinteresting.

If you don't want to see a picture of a penis extender hard at work, don't click here.

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Hey Ladies: That Pesky Period May Help Prevent Parkinson's

Emily Farris — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:38:00 GMT

I am scared to death of developing Parkinson's Disease. And the reason is pretty ridiculous, I admit. I resemble no one in my family but my paternal grandmother Ruth, whose middle name I also share. We ~~have~~ had the same hands, the same feet and recently my aunt gave me a picture of Grandma Ruth in her 20's. She could be my twin. In her 50's she developed the degenerative neurological disease and by the time I was old enough to communicate, it was full blown. She was shaky, her tongue was always hanging out of her mouth, her speech was slurred and slow. For a while, I was actually sort-of afraid of her. So, regretfully, I never really got to know one of my grandmothers. It was only last year that I learned she was an English teacher (I knew she taught history, but not that she also taught English; this explains why my dad had me quoting Shakespeare at the age of three). And as much as my dad tells me he thinks the factors leading to her Parkinson's were environmental, and no genetic link has been proven, I still worry that someday, I will be shaky Grandma Emily, unable to communicate with my grandchildren.

A new study at least makes me feel a little better about all of this.

Research out of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York found that longer exposure to the body's own hormones, including estrogen, may help protect the brain cells that affected by Parkinson's.

The disease occurs almost twice as often in men, and the study reports that women who menstruate for 39 years or longer are 25% less likely to develop Parksinson's, compared to women who were fertile less than 33 years. (For once, I am sort of glad I got my period at 11, now if I can just keep it going until I'm 50, I'll be golden.)

The study also found that women who have four or more children (like my Grandma Ruth) are at a higher risk for Parkinson's, possibly because "the post-partum period, which is typically one with lower levels of estrogen, subtracts from a woman's total fertile lifespan," according to the study's co-author Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and population health and the principal investigator of the WHI study at Einstein.

Of course, this is one study in probably a million and a study tomorrow could say exactly the opposite, but, hey, it makes me feel a little better.

[Science Daily: Naturally Produced Estrogen May Protect Women From Parkinson's Disease]

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Sloppy Seconds: Nicky Hilton Takes the Law Into Her Own Hands

Emily Farris — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:26:00 GMT

What would Mickey Rourke have said had he won the Oscar? Probably that Marisa Tomei is awesome because "not that many girls can climb the pole, y'know?" [Vulture]

A 30-year-old aspiring male model committed suicide in Brooklyn's Prospect Park last week, after stating his intentions to do so on his Facebook page. [DailyIntel]

Ever wonder why boys (in general) don't like pink and girls (in general) do? If the results of a recent study are to be believed, it's because mens' and womens' brains respond differently to "beautiful" objects. Of course, the study was done with paintings and we're just guessing on the pink thing; we don't think pink is that beautiful, really. [Reuters]

What's in the water in this Brazilian town where 38 pairs of twins were born among about 80 families living in a one-and-a-half-square-mile area? [NYT]

We've always thought of citizen's arrest as this weird thing that people don't actually do. To the best of our knowledge, generally they don't. Unless, of course, they're Nicky Hilton. Surprisingly, we're left with only one question: what the hell was she doing at IHOP at 5 a.m.? [Us]

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Prevent HPV With...You Know What

Emily Farris — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:51:00 GMT

Ugh. The human papillomavirus. You probably know it as HPV and also as that annoying virus that you have or probably will contract at some point in your sexually active life.

More than 100 strains of the virus have been identified and 30 to 40 are constantly being passed around the sexually active population in the United States. If you've had lots of sex with lots of partners, it's quite possible you have, at one time or another, contracted at least one strain of HPV. The virus can and often does leave your body, but some forms stick around and cause warts and others can lead to cancer—most notably cervical cancer in women.

Unfortunately, condoms can't always protect against it and while little is known about the risk factors associated with HPV in men, a new study purports that there is one way to decrease a man's chances of contracting HPV.

Circumcision.

To investigate, they followed 285 men for about 18 months, testing for HPV every 6 months. Overall, 29 percent of the men became infected with the virus over 1 year; 19 percent acquired an HPV strain linked to cancer.

Men who said they'd had more than 16 sex partners had about three times the HPV risk of those with fewer sex partners. They were also nearly 10 times more likely to contract a potentially cancer-causing strain.

When it came to HPV clearance, circumcision appeared beneficial, the researchers found.

Circumcised men were three times more likely to clear any type of HPV infection by the end of the follow-up period and six times more likely to clear a cancer-linked HPV strain.

The reasons for these findings are not clear, according to Giuliano and her colleagues. It's possible, they suggest, that circumcised men are less likely to get skin abrasions during sex, which might mean that fewer HPV particles enter their bodies.

However, the article does not state how many of the men were wearing condoms, if any. Our limited medical expertise leads us to believe that if there's a condom involved, it wouldn't really matter if the man was circumcised or not. But what do we know? (Not much).

[FOXNews: Study: Circumcision May Protect Men From HPV]

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Who's Got the Syph? We've Got the Syph! (Yeeeeah, We Got It!)

Emily Farris — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:04:00 GMT

Reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases—namely, syphilis and chlamydia—are on the rise.

According to a 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, updated earlier this month, chlamydia infections rose to 1.1 million in the United States, and rates of syphilis have been rising for seven years.

Believe it or not, this could actually be good news.

Some believe that numbers are are growing not because more people are becoming infected, but because more people are being screened and tested. If that is the case, hopefully the numbers will begin to drop off when those testing positive can treat their STDs and prevent their spread.

[Daily Toreador: Rise in syphilis, clamydia rates concern health officials]

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The New York Times Knows What Women Want, And It's Not Bonobo Porn (Or Is It?)

Emily Farris — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:33:00 GMT

Over the weekend, The New York Times said "Butt Hole" (heh heh) and also ran a really, really long article exploring what women really want. Now, we'll admit, we didn't read the entire thing, because, as we were discussing with Scanner Colleen earlier (over email, natch) the Internet is making us all illiterate. But just because we can't read nine pages of Internet doesn't mean you can't. If you can't either we pulled a few highlights for you, and they confirm that women are not turned on by bonobo porn (or are they?).

Meredith Chiver has been studying women's sexuality since 1996:

In 1996, when she worked as an assistant to a sexologist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, then called the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, she found herself the only woman on a floor of researchers investigating male sexual preferences and what are known as paraphilias — erotic desires that fall far outside the norm. She told me that when she asked Kurt Freund, a scientist on that floor who had developed a type of penile plethysmograph and who had been studying male homosexuality and pedophilia since the 1950s, why he never turned his attention to women, he replied: “How am I to know what it is to be a woman? Who am I to study women, when I am a man?

EF: Perhaps this explains why companies do such a bad job of marketing to women? Anyway, for her most recent study she showed men and women with different sexual preferences different kinds of porn (gay, straight, bonobo!):

The men, on average, responded genitally in what Chivers terms “category specific” ways. Males who identified themselves as straight swelled while gazing at heterosexual or lesbian sex and while watching the masturbating and exercising women. They were mostly unmoved when the screen displayed only men. Gay males were aroused in the opposite categorical pattern. Any expectation that the animal sex would speak to something primitive within the men seemed to be mistaken; neither straights nor gays were stirred by the bonobos. And for the male participants, the subjective ratings on the keypad matched the readings of the plethysmograph. The men’s minds and genitals were in agreement.

All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than during all the human scenes except the footage of the ambling, strapping man — as they watched the apes. And with the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren’t in much accord. During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.

EF: Maybe the reason men can't figure out what women want is because women still haven't quite figured out what women want, or at least we're not very good at expressing it... because when we do we're automatically called sluts, or something?

There is so, so much more to this story. Perhaps we'll read the rest of it tonight.

UPDATE: Thanks commenter godwal for alerting us to the fact that Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory actually took the time to read the entire thing and does a much better job than us of summing it up.

[New York Times: What Do Women Want?]

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Today in Studies that Freak Us Out: Breakfast and Sex

Hey Fellas: Let Me See That Trowel Roll!

Emily Farris — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:37:00 GMT

Doctors in the UK would like you to know that gardening as little as 30 minutes a week can dramatically improve a man's performance in bed—but not because it teaches you to use your hands or cultivate your materials.

It's exercise. Of course, you could also get off your ass and take a hike or ride a bike or any other moderate activity, but gardening is the activity du jour.

As little as 30 minutes a week tending the garden or allotment can dramatically improve men's performance in bed, according to the experts in the field.

Digging, weeding or mowing the lawn for half an hour reduced men's risk of failing to live up to expectations in bed by more than a third, the survey found.

The same study showed other forms of moderate exercise, such as dancing and cycling, could have similar benefits.

Men who spend even more time in the vegetable patch can more than halve their risk of impotence, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found in their study.

"Erectile function can be maintained even by low, regular physical activity," concludes the report. "Energy expenditure of as little as 1,000 calories a week reduces the risk. Doctors should use these findings to encourage their patients to do more physical training and adopt a healthier lifestyle."

[Telegraph: Gardening boosts men's sex lives, claims study]

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Infidelity: Blame It On My Hormones

Emily Farris — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Okay, not my hormones so much, because I apparently don't have high numbers of the hormone in question (though I wonder if it's available in pill form?). But according to a new study out of the University of Texas, women with high concentrations of oestradiol are more likely to cheat on their partners.

How do you know if you or your lady friend has high levels of oestradiol?

Well, is she hot?

High concentration of the hormone is associated with with big breasts, facial attractiveness and low waist-to-hip ratio.

Like we said, we obviously don't oestradiol coming out of our ears or anything (but we weren't joking when we asked about it in pill form) but women who do are "likelier to flirt, kiss and have a serious affair outside an established relationship" because "men solicit such women."

So, hot people are more likely cheat? Oh, sorry "sexy women" (see below).

[AP: Hormone drives sexy women to infidelity, says study]

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FOXNews Claims Jesus Will Guard Your Daughter's Vagina

Emily Farris — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:55:00 GMT

Forget everything you heard in 2008!!! It turns out hanging with that hepcat Jesus really does contribute to keeping America's youth free from sin.

According to Janet Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, young people with strong religious backgrounds become sexually active about three years later than their non-religious peers. (It should be noted that her numbers are based on data collected from middle and high school students in 1995 and 1996, way back when even we were religious and not having sex.) But don't be fooled by those pesky virginity pledges or purity rings, she says.

Rosenbaum's study showed that making a virginity pledge doesn't play a role any sexual behavior because teenagers who take a pledge are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence. The study also revealed that those who took virginity pledges where less likely to use condoms that non-pledgers, she said.

So those kids with their purity rings can stop frontin'! However, if Rosenbaum thinks the numbers reflect the actions of today's teenagers, by "sex" she must mean purely "penis in vagina," because if we remember correctly, teenagers across the nation are gladly taking it up the ass—and other orifices—these days.

Of course, only FOXNews would report on a story that's based on 13-year-old statistics about 13-year-olds.

[FOXNews: Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex]

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Today in Studies that Freak Us Out: Breakfast and Sex

Emily Farris — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:01:00 GMT

We read quite a few news stories about studies here at Scanner. Generally, we pass them over, sometimes rolling our eyes, other times not even caring enough about the subject matter to waste the energy of actually moving our eyes. Today, however, we were intrigued by a headline and after reading the first paragraph—"that those who skipped breakfast in their early teens first had sexual intercourse at an average age of 17.5"— thought, "Holy Shit! That's us!" (Us, being me, Scanner Emily, natch).

Of course, the study was conducted in Japan, where apparently the average age for first sexual intercourse is 19. But still, holy creepy correlation, Batman!

The poll was conducted in September by asking people aged 16-49 to fill in questionnaires about the age at which they first had sex and their lifestyles when they were in grades seven to nine.

Kunio Kitamura, the researcher in charge of the poll for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, said the study showed some interesting correlations.

"While it is important to delay sexual activities in order to reduce unwanted pregnancies among young people, the result suggests that the family plays a major role for that (delay) to happen," he said.

"An appropriately regulated lifestyle may be making some people prudent about sexual activities."

Those who said they did not have happy memories of family life or those who expressed feelings of hatred toward their mothers also had a tendency to have sexual intercourse early, the poll suggested.

Those who said they disliked their mothers first had intercourse at an average age of 16, compared with 18.6 for those who said they hated their fathers.

Oh, Jeebus....

[ABC: Skipping breakfast linked with early first sex: study]

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Fatties: Get Up, Get Out So You Can Still Get it Up

Emily Farris — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:48:00 GMT

Yo, men: does your waist measure more than 42 inches? Do you exercise less than 30 minutes a day? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, you might be putting yourself at risk for something much worse than wearing sweat pants while riding around on your motorized scooter stuffing McDonald's in your face.

According to a new study, overweight, out of shape men are at a much higher risk for erectile dysfunction than those who exercise at least 30 minutes a day and have a 32-inch waistline.

It should be noted that the study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the American Cancer Society, three organizations that want you to be fit and healthy. However,

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) also found strong links between obesity and impotence. When obesity was combined with smoking, the risk of impotence was even greater.

Reporting in The Journal of Urology, HSPH’s Constance Bacon said they studied more than 22,000 men aged between 40 and 75 who news releases said they had good erections prior to smoking and being obese. After that, things started to go downhill. They also found that regular physical activity could lower the risk of impotence.

"We found a 2.5-fold difference in the risk of erectile dysfunction when we compared obese men who did little exercise with men who were not overweight send press releases averaged 30 minutes of vigorous exercise a day. For men younger than 55, there was a four-fold difference in risk for the same comparison," said co-researcher Eric Rimm.

More recently, the link between inactivity and impotence was confirmed by Johns Hopkins researchers. In their study published in The American Journal of Medicine, the researchers found a high prevalence of impotence among men with hypertension and diabetes.

Still, we have to question the newsworthiness of this particular study based entirely on the last paragraph of the "story."

To prevent impotence, eat the right foods, watch your weight, and exercise regularly. If you have the misfortune of being impotent, don’t despair since the pr distribution is treatable. Seek medical help as early as possible to avoid complications later. One popular impotence remedy is Erectasil, a topical lotion designed to “lift” your spirits and your body so you can be where the action is.

[Meadowfree Press: Impotence common in overweight men]

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Which Would You Rather Give Up: Sex or The Internet?

Emily Farris — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:19:00 GMT

If you had to decide between giving up sex for two weeks or giving up the Internet for the same period of time, which would you choose?

Think about what effect each would really have on your life (how much sex do you really have in a given two week period?), then click through for our survey and the results of another...

As Scanner Brian told us last week:

As many as 46 percent of women and 30 percent of men would rather quit watching TV or sex for two weeks than renouncing internet access for the same length of time, a recent study has revealed.

Not so surprising. And, honestly, if you asked us this right now, considering we're not having sex, of course we'd rather keep the Internet. And we know that while most of the world is having more sex than we are, asking most people to give up sex for two weeks probably isn't asking them to give up that much.

[IT Proportal: Internet Better Than Sex or TV For Some Says Survey]

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Happiness by the Numbers: Sex and TV

Emily Farris — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:52:00 GMT

We can pretty much all agree that the amount of sex you have often affects your happiness, but did you know that the amount of television you watch can also play a big role?

According to a new study, television can make you feel good in the short run but can contribute to longer-term unhappiness.

“These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise,” said Professor John Robinson. He also noted that earlier general satisfaction surveys also showed people rating TV below average as a significantly less satisfying free-time activity on the whole. “What viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, the shows I saw tonight were pretty good.”

Based on our own experiences, the short-term happiness the study alludes to is more of a distraction from long-term unhappiness.

According to the same study, "very happy" people had sex ten times more a year than unhappy people (who, we guess, must also watch a lot of TV).

When the hell does LOST come back on?

[By The Numbers: Study: Happy people watch less TV, have more sex]

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