All You Have To Do Is Ask

Fulfilling Your Sexual Fantasies All You Have To Do Is Ask

What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?

There’s a question that gets people thinking. (I’ll pause here while you ponder it.) It’s a line I use often in my work as a sex therapist and writer.

Since I became an author, I can’t walk down the street without being stopped by someone: the UPS man, my building super, my upstairs neighbor — heck, I may know more about what turns on the guy behind the counter at my deli than his wife does. I’ve listened carefully to every man who would talk to me about sex – hundreds of them around the country.

It was all research for my book He Comes Next (the natural sequel to She Comes First, which was a bit more fun to research, since it involved talking to lots of women about what gives them pleasure).

My best-sex-ever question unlocks doors to memories, to taboos, to the contours of a man’s sexual landscape — what turns him on. More important, it often reveals what’s missing from his sex life now.

Not only do I hear about the best sex guys ever had, I hear about the best sex they never had — experiences they’ve always fantasized about, or maybe experienced just one glorious time, and can’t get out of their heads.

 Though they’re happy to tell me, a virtual stranger, they’re often afraid to ask their partners for fear of offending or seeming weird. Public sex, threesomes, video-taping, domination — I get all the details, while the women in their lives hear nothing.

 But it’s easier to open up than you may think. It starts with a "lovemap," a term coined in 1980 by John Money, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University, to describe "the sexual template expressed in every individual’s erotic fantasies and practices." This lovemap informs your likes, dislikes, fantasies, and fears. Great sex is about exploration and discovery, using each other’s map. It’s like finding buried treasure. Savvy?

 The trick is in the asking. So I went back to a bunch of the women I interviewed for She Comes First and asked them what a man should say, or do, to get the sex he wants. Here’s the resulting list of general principles and specific lessons. With these, the best sex you’ve ever had is still in your future.

 
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Health Tip: Reduce Stress at Work

Your job can be a great source of stress, which can significantly impact your physical and emotional health.

The AARP offers these suggestions for handling stress on the job:

• Set up regular evaluations and meetings with your manager to establish expectations, goals and discuss your workload.
• Build your prioritization and time management skills, so that you avoid having to always work overtime, or take work home with you. Allow yourself free time away from work to relax and do things you enjoy.
• Take advantage of any flexible work schedules, long lunch breaks and exercise opportunities that your employer offers.
• Don’t check email or answer work-related calls at home, unless it can’t be avoided.
• Recognize when it’s time to look for another job if your current one is causing significant stress and unhappiness.

Study: Sex Makes People Feel Sexier

Sexual activity for men and women, straight or gay, raises testosterone levels, which, at least in women, fuels the desire for intercourse, increases the likelihood of experiencing an orgasm and heightens the individual’s belief in her own sexiness, recent studies have found.

The findings are among the first to suggest that men and women can alter their own hormone levels based on how often they cuddle or copulate, both of which can lead to testosterone rises.

The hormone testosterone usually is associated with the development and maintenance of male sex characteristics, but all women possess this secreted compound too. Extremely high or low amounts can lead to health concerns, but the detected rises were within acceptable ranges.

"Our (first) paper does suggest that there might be sexual benefits to higher levels of testosterone," lead author Sari van Anders told Discovery News.

Van Anders, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, and her team conducted two separate studies. Both have been accepted for publication in the journal Hormones and Behavior.

The first examined how cuddling, intercourse and exercise affected testosterone in 49 women before and after these activities. "After" included directly following sex as well as the next morning, when the test subjects also answered a questionnaire that included questions about orgasms, levels of sexual desire and feelings of sexual attractiveness.

Exercise was included as a control in the study, since physical activity itself can alter a person’s biochemistry.

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Don’t Lose Sight of Vision Care, Group Urges

As part of its efforts to educate Americans about age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Prevent Blindness America has declared February Age-Related Macular Degeneration Awareness Month.

AMD — a progressive disease that damages central vision — costs the U.S. economy $570 million a year in direct costs for outpatient and inpatient care, and prescription drugs, the nonprofit group said.

Even though AMD affects 15 million people in the United States and is the leading cause of vision loss among people aged 55 and older, only 30 percent of Americans are familiar with the disease, according to research by AMD Alliance International.

"We are seeing some promising results from research studies around the world in regards to understanding AMD and the best methods to treat it," Daniel D. Garrett, senior vice president of Prevent Blindness America and AMD Alliance International board member, said in a prepared statement.

"But even with the latest drug therapies, we are still waiting for a cure. Until that happens, the best way to save vision is through regular vision care with your eye care professional," he said.

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Unlike Fine Wine, Crabby People Don’t Age Well

FRIDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) — There’s new evidence that getting along with others is more than a key to pleasant human interaction. It also appears to be good for your health.

Researchers who studied a survey of almost 700 older adults found that those who got along with their relatives, friends and neighbors were less likely to report health problems and physical limitations.

The findings don’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between social life and health. Still, "the take-home message is that conflict in your life may have important impacts on your physical health," said study lead author Jason T. Newsom, associate professor at the Portland State University School of Community Health in Oregon.

There’s nothing really new about a supposed link between attitude and health, but Newsom said his study was unique, because it looked specifically at interactions between people.

Newsom and his colleagues looked at the results of a multi-year national survey of people aged 65 to 90. A total of 666 people completed the survey, in which researchers asked them questions about their lives and their health.

Many of the questions were designed to reveal whether the study participants were prone to have "negative social interactions" with other people, Newsom said. The questions asked whether "people have interfered or meddled in your personal matters, have they acted unsympathetically or been critical of you. We asked them in a very general way," he said.

The survey didn’t ask whether the participants were the instigators of negative encounters — by being crabby or cranky, for instance — or the victims of others who made their lives difficult.

The researchers found that those who reported more negative social encounters suffered greater declines in health.

"What we suspect is that there’s some impact on the immune system, but there are other kinds of things that might be happening as well," Newsom said. "It may be that when there’s a great deal of interpersonal conflict going on in someone’s life, they’re not able to take care of medical conditions as well."

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Fast-food binge harms liver, but boosts good cholesterol: study

A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the docu-movie "Supersize Me."

But investigators, reporting their findings on Thursday, were also stunned to find that a relentless regimen of burgers, fries and soda also boosted so-called good cholesterol, seen as a key measure of cardiovascular health.

Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks.

The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake.

Blood samples were taken before, during and after the experiment to monitor levels of an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase, or ALT, a potential marker for liver damage often seen among heavy drinkers and patients with hepatitis C.

Levels of ALT increased sharply after only one week, and quadrupled on average over the entire period, said lead researcher Frederik Nystrom, a doctor at the University Hospital of Linkoping.

"The results scared me," he told AFP. "One of the subjects had to be withdrawn from the study because he had 10 times the normal ALT levels."

For 11 of the 18 subjects, ALT rose to levels that would normally reflect liver damage, even among individuals who did not drink any alcohol, although no such damage occurred, he said.

Two of the individuals had liver steatosis, or fatty liver, in which fat cells build up dangerously in the liver, he said. Steatosis is associated with the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, which has taken on epidemic proportions, especially in industrialised countries.

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What Guys Really Want for Valentine’s Day

know, I know: Valentine’s Day is all about women, and deservedly so. Women absolutely have earned the flowers, the cards, the love notes, the sensual kisses, and everything else they have coming on that day, aside from the typical three-hour restaurant wait.

The focus should be on women (not maitre d’s). But as long as guys are chauffering the love limo on that night of nights, maybe we could take a look at what they might like, as a kind of side trip on the way to destination You? Consider this his wish list for the day. And relax. No chocolate boxes, fading roses, or $7 Hallmark cards will be necessary! But he’d love it if you’d offer up…
                 
Romance Lite. He knows he better come up with innovative ways to show his affection. Some guys will go with a flowery card, some will pile on the rose petals, and some will even pull out their guitars and write a sappy song (thanks for making the rest of us look bad, guys).

He’s not asking you to do any of that for him, but if he arrives at the office on Thursday to find an e-mail waiting with five examples of why you dig him, or if he receives an instant-message that launches a day-long e-flirtation, or if you interrupt his morning with a caress across the phone lines, then you’ve begun foreplay before you even get together, and your night will be a whole lot hotter because of it.

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Heart health for Valentine’s

L.A. County Office of Women’s Health’s data reveals startling facts

By Natalie Edwards
Special to the Daily Press

CITYWIDE This upcoming Valentine’s Day is a celebration of the heart, which is why the L.A. County Office of Women’s Health is concerned that women aren’t knowledgeable enough about risks to their cardiovascular health.

Heart disease is the chief killer of women, according to data released by the county health officials, and Los Angeles women die from heart disease and stroke at a rate higher than the national average.

“To put it into perspective, a woman dies every minute from cardiovascular disease nationally. Heart disease is still the leading cause of death among women, yet many women do not perceive themselves as being at the same risk as men,” said Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, director of public health for the county.

Instead, women are at more risk than men. In 2005, a majority of cardiovascular deaths, 459,000 or 53 percent, involved women, compared to 411,000 or 47 percent for men. Despite these statistics, many continue to believe that heart disease is principally an affliction suffered by men.

Cardiovascular disease, also known as heart disease, is a blanket term for a number of conditions — coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and heart failure. Factors associated with heart disease include cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and high blood cholesterol, with those possessing two or more of those traits defined as being at increased risk.

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Health Tip: Healthy Nails, Healthy Body

(HealthDay News) - Healthy fingernails and toe nails are strong, colorless and smooth. Yellowing, brittleness, ridges, crumbling and white spots are all signs that nails may not be completely healthy.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine says nail abnormalities may indicate health issues elsewhere in the body. The agency offers this list of what nail problems could indicate:

• Many types of infection, including bacterial, viral, fungal or yeast.
• Abnormal levels of oxygen in the blood.
• Kidney disease, liver disease, thyroid disease or psoriasis.
• Malnutrition or a vitamin deficiency.

What You Must Know About Your Cholesterol

by Jessica Snyder Sachs

Many of us are in the danger zone, and we don’t realize it. What to do right now.

How’s your cholesterol? Here’s a guess: If you’re healthy, you probably have no idea. New surveys show women tend to be clueless about their risks of heart disease, especially when it comes to managing their cholesterol.

But this kind of ignorance is anything but bliss. The reason: The artery clogging that makes heart disease the number-one killer of women late in life begins much earlier—in your 20s, 30s, and 40s—and that’s when your cholesterol numbers may be sounding alarms. So, are you ready to start paying attention? Here, the things all women need to know now.

1. High cholesterol is surprisingly common.
Researchers with the Framingham Heart Study recently delivered a nasty surprise: Nearly a quarter of women in the study who are in their early 30s have borderline-high levels of bad cholesterol, as do more than a third in their early 40s and more than half in their early 50s. A third of women in all three age groups have low levels of good cholesterol.

Bad cholesterol, also known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL), contributes to heart disease by laying down artery-clogging plaque; good cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein (HDL), helps clear it away. “The double whammy of high LDL and low HDL is particularly dangerous,” says Framingham researcher Vasan Ramachandran, MD, of the Boston University School of Medicine.

2. Your doctor may miss the problem.
Though women are better than men about seeing a doctor regularly, the care they receive isn’t as good when it comes to preventing and treating cardiovascular disease, according to new studies. “Perhaps doctors still haven’t gotten the message that women need to control cholesterol,” says Chloe Bird, PhD, author of one of these studies and a senior sociologist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. Bird found that doctors are less likely to monitor and control cholesterol in women than in men, even when the women are at superhigh risk of heart attack.

Part of the problem, she says, may be that many women see only a gynecologist. This isn’t to say that OB-GYNs can’t be good primary care doctors, but you have to make sure the doc is willing to monitor your heart health, especially if you already have diabetes or a heart issue. That means she should order cholesterol checks as part of your regular blood work and discuss the results with you. What does “regular” mean? See “How Often Do I Need a Checkup?”

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