Sunday, December 25, 2011
Sex Does a Body Good
If ever there was good medical news, it's this: Sex is good for your health. Honestly.
Enjoy Sex, Live Longer
Research has linked regular, pleasurable sex to multiple health benefits, including:
Research has linked regular, pleasurable sex to multiple health benefits, including:
- Pain relief. Women report in numerous studies that sexual activity helps with relief of chronic pain, such as back pain and headaches, and that they have a higher threshold of pain when they engage in sex regularly. One reason is the increase of the feel-good endorphin hormones, the body's natural painkiller, brought on by sexual arousal and orgasm.
- Fighting flu and colds. Sex also increases your levels of immunoglobulin A (lgA), the cell protein that fights viral infections and helps you ward off colds and flu. A study of Pennsylvania college students showed that those who engaged in sexual activity once or twice a week had 30 percent higher levels of lgA than students who were abstinent.
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- Cutting down on cancer. Different studies show a strong correlation between men who ejaculate frequently (solo or with a partner) and a reduced risk for prostate cancer and heart disease, and an increased life span. Men who had 21 or more ejaculations per month from ages 40-49 and up had a lower risk of prostate cancer than those men who reported just 4-7 ejaculations per month.
- Looking younger. A 10-year study of more than 3,500 people examining factors associated with youthfulness found that the participants who had the most sexual activity were generally thought to be about 10 years younger than their actual age.
Try This
Get sweaty. Studies show that working out with a partner makes you stick to an exercise program longer. How about working out with your significant other? Try scheduling a regular run, tennis game, swim or some other physical activity with your partner. You'll both feel more energized, connected and confident.See Yourself as Sexy
It's tough, though, to feel like having frequent sex if you are not comfortable with your body. A negative body image is the number one sexual issue for women, according to a recent survey in Health Magazine. Patti Britton, PhD, a clinical sexologist and author of "The Art of Sex Coaching," says that for women, this negative self-image is most often related to weight gain, constant exposure to unrealistic media images of women and aging. While less common in men, she notes, they are also affected by body-image issues — especially related to whether there's hair or not.
It's tough, though, to feel like having frequent sex if you are not comfortable with your body. A negative body image is the number one sexual issue for women, according to a recent survey in Health Magazine. Patti Britton, PhD, a clinical sexologist and author of "The Art of Sex Coaching," says that for women, this negative self-image is most often related to weight gain, constant exposure to unrealistic media images of women and aging. While less common in men, she notes, they are also affected by body-image issues — especially related to whether there's hair or not.
To combat this negative self-image, you (or the one you love) can take two approaches. (Happily, they work together.) First, make peace with your body — imperfections and all. To "reprogram" a woman's inner dialogue, for instance, Dr. Britton helps women catch themselves when they say self-deprecating messages. "It's about demystifying the idealized imagery," she says. "A lot of this idealized imagery comes from looking at Hollywood images."
Second: Exercise regularly.
Exercise, Sex and Self-Esteem
"Exercise can help people feel better about their bodies," Dr. Herbenick says, "which can make them feel more open to sex and more interested in it." Let's face it, when you exercise regularly, you improve your overall health, which makes you feel more energetic (and feel more like making whoopee). Not only that, exercise boosts self-esteem, as does sex. Do both regularly, and you're going to feel better about yourself — and probably take better care of yourself overall.
"Exercise can help people feel better about their bodies," Dr. Herbenick says, "which can make them feel more open to sex and more interested in it." Let's face it, when you exercise regularly, you improve your overall health, which makes you feel more energetic (and feel more like making whoopee). Not only that, exercise boosts self-esteem, as does sex. Do both regularly, and you're going to feel better about yourself — and probably take better care of yourself overall.
In fact, studies show that people with active sex lives tend to exercise more frequently and have better dietary habits than those who are less sexually active. Whether a healthy lifestyle is caused by or is the result of a healthy sex life has not been determined. But one thing is clear: They are connected. If you don't have either, start working on improving one and the other is likely to follow.
Source : http://www.youbeauty.com/relationships/sex-benefits
Shortcuts To A Stress-Less Life
Let's face it. Meditation, despite its many benefits, isn't for everyone. Sitting down and focusing on only your breathing can be frustrating for some and boring for others.
Which is why psychotherapist and grief counselor Ashley Davis Bush decided to create a list of "shortcuts" that can give you the same stress-relieving benefits of meditation but without the effort. These tips don't require you to take more time out of your day; instead, they're just little practices that you can incorporate into your regular activities -- like while washing your hands or drying your hair.
"The tools are quick things to do, think, say or imagine to make you feel calmer, more relaxed and less stressed," says Davis in her book "Shortcuts to Inner Peace." The book will release later this year.
Below is a list of shortcuts adapted from Davis' book. Try them and tell us how you feel below. You can pre-order "Shortcuts to Inner Peace" here.
Trigger: When washing your hands.
How Tanning Changes the Brain
People who frequently use tanning beds experience changes in brain activity during their tanning sessions that mimic the patterns of drug addiction, new research shows.
Scientists have suspected for some time that frequent exposure to ultraviolet radiation has the potential to become addictive, but the new research is the first to actually peer inside the brains of people as they lay in tanning beds.
What the researchers found was that several parts of the brain that play a role in addiction were activated when the subjects were exposed to UV rays. The findings, which appear in the coming issue of the journal Addiction Biology, may help explain why some people continue to tan often despite awareness about risks such as skin cancer, premature aging and wrinkles.
"What this shows is that the brain is in fact responding to UV light, and it responds in areas that are associated with reward," said Dr. Bryon Adinoff, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study. "These are areas, particularly the striatum, that we see activated when someone is administered a drug or a high-value food like sugar."
Despite all the public warnings about skin cancer, tanning remains as popular as ever, with nearly 30 million Americans tanning indoors every year, and more than a million visiting tanning salons on an average day. Frequent users say they simply enjoy the way they look with darker skin.
But in recent years, scientists also began to wonder whether deliberately ignoring the potentially lethal side effects of regular UV exposure was a sign that the motivation for frequent tanners was more than skin-deep. Could habitual tanning be an addictive behavior?
A study in 2005 did show that a large proportion of sunbathers met the psychiatric definition of a substance abuse disorder, based on their answers to a variation of a test often used to help diagnose alcohol addiction.
But Dr. Adinoff and his colleagues decided to go a step further. They recruited a small group of people from tanning salons who said that they liked to tan at least three times a week and that maintaining a tan was important to them. The frequent tanners agreed to be injected with a radioisotope that allowed researchers to monitor how tanning affected their brain activity.
On one occasion, the study subjects experienced a normal tanning session. But on another occasion, the researchers used a special filter that blocked only the UV light, although the tanners weren't told of the change.
Brain images later showed that during regular tanning sessions, when the study subjects were exposed to UV rays, several key areas of the brain lighted up. Among those areas were the dorsal striatum, the left anterior insula and part of the orbitofrontal cortex – all areas that have been implicated in addiction. But when the UV light was filtered out, those areas of the brain showed far less activity.
The researchers also found evidence that the tanners appeared to know — on a subconscious level, at least — when they had undergone sham tanning sessions and not received their usual dose of UV rays. The tanners, questioned after each session, expressed less desire to tan after the real sessions, indicating they had gotten their fill. But on days when the tanners were unknowingly deprived of the UV rays, their desire to tan after the session remained as high as it was before the session began.
"They all liked the session where they got the real UV light," said Dr. Adinoff. "There was some way people were able to tell when they were getting the real UV light and when they were not."
Dr. Adinoff said the research suggests that some people appear addicted to tanning, a finding bolstered by the fact that many longtime tanners have a difficult time stopping or even just cutting back on tanning sessions. He said the research was inspired by a colleague, based on her experiences with dermatology patients.
"She approached me because of her concern about young adults who were coming to see her with these beautiful bronze tans," he said. "And she would cut out skin cancers, and they would immediately go back to tanning."
The Tans That Bond
Who says teenagers don't listen to their parents?
Public health researchers recently published an intriguing report about the indoor tanning habits of college students, based on a survey of more than 200 female students at East Tennessee State University. The report was printed as a letter in The Archives of Dermatology.
The researchers, Mary Kate Baker, a doctoral student, along with Joel James Hillhouse and Xuefeng Liu, wanted to find out two basic pieces of information. First, how old were the students when they had started indoor tanning? And second, who did they go with on their first visit to a tanning parlor?
Often, it turns out, it was their mothers.
Indoor tanning, it seems, has become in many families a mother-daughter bonding ritual, like shopping or going to the hairdresser.
Of the 227 female students surveyed, almost 40 percent had gone to tan for the first time with their mothers. Another 72 had gone with a friend, 22 with an acquaintance and 45 had gone alone. It makes sense that so many would have gone with a parent, Ms. Baker said, since the girls were teenagers and would probably have needed a ride and some money to get to a tanning salon.
What was interesting is that for the girls who were introduced to tanning by their mothers, the habit really took hold. College students whose mothers introduced them to indoor tanning were almost five times as likely as the others to be heavy tanners once they were in college. The heavy tanners used indoor tanning at least twice a month or more.
The ones who went with their mothers first also started around age 14, on average, two years earlier than the others, who started around age 16.
Skin doctors are worried about the link between indoor tanning and skin cancer. The World Health Organization has labeled indoor tanning a Class 1 carcinogen, the same class as tobacco. And some research suggests that indoor tanning may even be addictive.
Many doctors think consumers don't appreciate — or aren't aware of — the potential risks of indoor tanning. "I don't know that any mother would intentionally lead her daughter into a harmful situation," Ms. Baker said. "Most definitely, we need better education for mothers on the dangers of indoor tanning."
In addition, some women may dismiss the risk because they value having a tan so much they think it's worth it.
There's a lot of contradictory information in the medical literature about whether children model their parents' healthy behaviors. A recent review of studies on diet suggested it doesn't really matter what parents do in their own homes because their children are exposed to so many other dietary influences outside the home.
In the case of tanning, Ms. Baker added, warning people about the risk of cancer may not be effective. Mothers are also transmitting messages about the "perfect look," which in American society often involves a tan, she said. "We need to also try to help people understand that pale can be beautiful as well."
What Cellphone Calls Say About Parent-Teenager Relations
Poor communication is a common complaint when it comes to parents and teenagers. What happens when you throw a cellphone into the mix?
At least 75 percent of American teenagers today have a cellphone, often purchased by their parents so they can stay in closer touch. And parents are more likely than other adults to have a cellphone, for the same reason.
"The phone is now a huge part of parenting. It's how you reach your kids," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist with the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life project. In a survey conducted in the summer of 2009, nearly 70 percent of teenagers said they talked on the phone with their parents at least once a day.
Now researchers are starting to zero in on how cellphone use affects the dynamic of the parent-child relationship. A paper published online on Monday in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networkingsuggests that both the nature of the calls and who initiates the calls may affect relations.
Robert S. Weisskirch, a professor of human development at California State University in Monterey Bay, asked 196 parent-teenager pairs to tell him how frequently they made different types of calls. The teenagers were asked about 18 different types of situations or circumstances in which they might call parents and to rank them from "never" to "often."
The calls fell into two basic categories: "ask and confer" calls, in which teenagers checked in with their parents to ask permission or tell a parent they would be late; and "social support" calls, made when they were upset, wanted advice or wanted to tell a parent they were happy and share some good news.
Parents were asked how often they called their children to monitor their whereabouts, track their schoolwork, check in with them and get an update — or express anger or dissatisfaction with something the teenager did.
Parents and teenagers also filled out questionnaires about their relationship, how close they were, how much conflict there was and how well they communicated.
What Dr. Weisskirch found wasn't altogether surprising. When teenagers called parents frequently to "ask and confer," it was better for their relationship, and they were more likely to characterize their parents as supportive and say they were close and communicated well. Parents were gratified by the calls, too; such calls seemed to boost their self-esteem.
"What I found generally was that when adolescents are initiating the communication and are seeking out social support and guidance from their parents, then almost across the board they tend to have better reports of getting along with their parents," Dr. Weisskirch said.
On the other hand, when parents were initiating calls frequently to monitor their children's whereabouts, track their homework or tell them they were upset, there was more conflict in the relationship, and the teenagers tended to have lower self-esteem. "When the parents call and have a lot of communication around 'what are you doing?' or 'who are you with?' or when they're angry at the child and upset or scared, the kids report more conflict in the family," he said.
Ultimately, the phone is just a tool that may augment the relationship but doesn't substitute for it, he said. Still, he said, the phone may help during the transitional time of adolescence, when children are flexing their independence but tend to need guidance making decisions. "The phone has the potential to enhance parenting by giving parents an opportunity to provide guidance, even though they're not face to face, and help their kids learn how to make good decisions," he said.
But the phone can also increase tension, Ms. Lenhart said. "What this is making clear is that frequent calls from parents can be negative, that parents who are anxious and worried and constantly calling their child to monitor and ask about schoolwork or argue and try to discipline them — when you try to do the negative parts of parenting over the phone, it doesn't work particularly well."
Setting clear parameters for phone use from the outset may prevent conflict and mitigate misunderstandings, Dr. Weisskirch said. It is probably a good idea, for example, for parents to be very clear about what their expectations are about how often the teenager must make contact, he said, and to establish that not answering a parent's call is not an option.
"The adolescent needs to know what's expected of them, and how they're supposed to use this technology that has crept into our lives," he said.
Prescribing Exercise to Treat Depression
Peter Rutherhagen/Getty ImagesCan a stroll help ease depression? That questionpreoccupied Dr. Madhukar H. Trivedi, a professor of psychiatry at theUniversity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, after several of hispatients, all suffering from serious depression, mentioned that they felthappier if they went for a walk. The patients in question were taking thewidely prescribed antidepressants known as S.S.R.I.'s, for selective serotoninreuptake inhibitors, but not responding fully. They remained, by clinicalstandards, depressed. Dr. Trivedi and his colleagues began to wonder if addinga formal "dose" of exercise would increase their chances of getting better.
Certainly the possibility was worth investigating.Clinical depression, as anyone who has experienced or watched a loved onestruggle with the condition knows, can be stubbornly intractable. Even ifpatients have been taking an antidepressant for months, recovery rates tend tohover below 50 percent.
In order to increase the odds of improvement, doctorsfrequently add a second treatment — often another drug, like lithium or anantipsychotic — to the S.S.R.I. regimen at some point, Dr. Trivedi said. Mostpatients ultimately require at least two concurrent treatments to achieve remissionof their depression, he said. Studies have shown that these secondary drugtreatments help an additional 20 to 30 percent of depressed patients toimprove, but the medications can be expensive and have unpleasant side effects.
Which prompted Dr. Trivedi to look to exercise. Hisinvestigation joins a growing movement among some physiologists and doctors toconsider and study exercise as a formal medicine, with patients given aprescription and their progress monitored, as it would be if they were prescribeda pill.
In this case, Dr. Trivedi and his collaborators, whoincluded researchers at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, the PenningtonBiomedical Research Center in Louisiana and other institutions, recruited 126people with depression who had been using S.S.R.I.'s for a minimum of twomonths, without achieving remission. None of the patients exercised.
Dr. Trivedi and his colleagues divided thesevolunteers into two groups. One began a gentle aerobic exercise routine, underthe tutelage of Cooper Institute researchers, which required them to burn acertain amount of calories per session, depending on their weight. How thesubjects expended the energy was up to them. Some walked for about 10 minutes aday, on a treadmill or by strolling around the block, at a pace of three milesan hour. Others chose an equivalent easy cycling workout.
The second group was more energetic, walking brisklyfor about 30 minutes a day at a pace of four miles an hour, or the cyclingequivalent, a regimen that meets the current exercise recommendations from theAmerican College of Sports Medicine.
Each volunteer exercised for four months, whilecontinuing to take an antidepressant. At the end of that time, according to thestudy published recently in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 29.5percent had achieved remission, "which is a very robust result," Dr. Trivedisaid, equal to or better than the remission rates achieved using drugs as aback-up treatment. "I think that our results indicate that exercise is a veryvalid treatment option" for people whose depression hasn't yielded toS.S.R.I.'s, he said.
As with most scientific findings, though, there arecaveats.
One is practical. More patients improved in the groupthat completed the longer, brisker workouts than in the group assigned theeasier exercise, but more of them also dropped out of the study. "We need tofind ways to support people's efforts to exercise," Dr. Trivedi said. "It's notgoing to be enough to casually say, 'Go for a walk.'" Exercise, if it's to bemedicinal in depression treatments, will have to be monitored, he said, so itcan't be shrugged off.
Even then, many people will not respond. Almost 70percent of the volunteers in this study did not achieve full remission. Failurerates were particularly high for women with a family history of depression,perhaps as a result of some as yet unknown genetic quirk. And women in thatgroup who did recover were more likely to succeed using the lighter exerciseprogram than the more strenuous routine.
Then there is the issue of a control group, whosemembers would have continued with their S.S.R.I.'s but not exercised. Thisstudy did not have one, making interpreting the results tricky, said James A.Blumenthal, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University who wasnot involved with this study but who has written extensively about exercise and depression.Perhaps four additional months of S.S.R.I. treatment raised people's moods, andthe exercise was incidental. "Evidence is accumulating that exercise may be aneffective treatment for depressed patients who are receptive to exercise as apossible treatment and who are able to safely engage in exercise," he said. Butthe evidence is by no means definitive.
Still, Dr. Trivedi said, althoughadditional studies certainly are needed, there's no reason for people withunyielding depression not to talk now with their doctors about exercise as atreatment option. "Side effects are almost nonexistent," he said, "while youget additional benefits, in terms of improvements in cardiovascular health andreductions in other disease risks," things antidepressant drugs do not provide."Plus," he pointed out, "the cost profile is very favorable." Exercise, as medicinesgo, is cheap.
Source : http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/prescribing-exercise-to-treat-depression/
OLGA SYAHPUTRA RESMI MOHON MAAF
Olga Syahputra
Presenter Olga Syahputra akhirnya secara terbuka menyampaikan permintaan maafnya kepada para korban pemerkosaan terkait lawakan yang sempat dilontarkannya sehingga menimbulkan reaksi.
Permohonan maaf disampaikan secara resmi melalui Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat Lentera Indonesia (LSM Lentera Indonesia) dengan disaksikan pengurus Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (KPI) di gedung KPI, Jakarta, Jumat (23/12/2011).
Olga akhirnya menyadari bahwa lawakannya telah melukai perasaan mereka yang telah menjadi korban pemerkosaan. Oleh karenanya, pelantun "Hancur Hatiku" ini menghaturkan permohonan maaf yang sebesar-besarnya kepada para survivor. Hal itu dijelaskan oleh staf humas Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (KPI), Ezki Suyanto. Ezki menjelaskan, permintaan Olga disaksikan oleh Lentera, yang melaporkan dirinya ke KPI.
"Pihak Olga sudah meminta maaf kepada publik yang merasa disakiti, yang diutarakan di depan Lentera," ujar Ezki.
Pihak Lentera pada awalnya mengatakan, candaan Olga Syahputra tak hanya bisa diselesaikan dengan cara minta maaf. Lentera berharap akan ada pergerakan untuk mengampanyekan hal tersebut.
"Ini bukan persoalan maaf, kalau bisa sih kampanye bersama. Ini karena lawakan itu bukan soal sepele, dan itu disetujui sama pihak Olga," papar staf humas KPI tersebut.
Olga Syahputra dilaporkan KPI terkait candaan yang ia lontarkan saat ulang tahun Trans TV beberapa waktu lalu. Saat itu Olga yang berperan sebagai Suster Ngesot mengaku meninggal karena diperkosa.
[Sumber: EnternainmentKompas]
