SAFER SEX blog

Link: Not just good, but good for you - Sexploration - MSNBC.com

Not just good, but good for you

Mounting evidence suggests sex helps keep us healthy

By Brian Alexander
MSNBC contributor

July 1 - To paraphrase a great old slogan for Guinness beer: Sex isn’t just good, it’s good for you!

Okay, so maybe there’s some wishful thinking going on — the science isn’t exactly iron-clad — but evidence is accumulating that the more sex you have, the better off you are.

There is one caveat, though. “We do not have good data to show a direct connection [to all-around good health],” says Jennifer Bass, the head of information services at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington, Ind. “We know that healthier people have more sexual activity. But we do not know which comes first. Does the good health make you more willing to have sex, or does the sex have a positive impact?”

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Link: Gay South Africa Lifestyle | News | Dating

Friday, February 23, 2007

A high-speed condom, designed in South Africa, is poised to take safer sex to new heights in a nation grappling with soaring HIV infection rates.

Roelf Mulder, creator of the product, said he hoped its aesthetic appeal would help change the latex prophylactic usually thought of as a passion killer into a passion filler, while also preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

“This product is not only designed to help reduce the rate of contamination and infection by ensuring users do not touch the condom, but it can also be easily applied in the dark,” he told IRIN PlusNews.

Mulder stressed that the incorrect application of a condom or accidentally rupturing it with the fingernails could lead to the potential spread of STIs.

The new more hygienic condom is opened by means of two thumb-sized handles, which are used to slide it onto the penis. It can only be applied in one way. The applicator then pops off the bottom, and the entire operation is complete in just three seconds, compared to the 30 to 40 seconds needed to don the traditional or government issue item.

Welcoming the innovative addition to this well-known preventive tool, local sexual behaviour experts expressed concern that the product might become a “fleeting novelty” due to its limited market appeal and slightly higher cost.

Clinical sex therapist Elna McIntosh said, “Hopefully the applicator will not become a luxury and end up gathering dust on store shelves as a result of its retail price.”

Although the product is not yet available on the market, Mulder said his company was looking at a cost of between US$3 and $4 per pack of three, but this could drop dramatically if the product was included in the government’s free condom rollout campaign.

The South African government distributes 30 million free male condoms per month and recently announced plans to more than double this in coming months.

Mulder started thinking about ways of enhancing condom usage after looking at the research into South Africa’s HIV prevention problem and finding that “low condom use was still a real factor” in the ongoing spread of HIV and other STIs.

“The intention of the applicator is to make more people use condoms more readily … this is a small product that could have one of the biggest impacts on our social, cultural and economic future,” he said.

An estimated 5.5 million people are living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa - one of the world’s highest figures.

Link: Teen Sex May Take Emotional Toll, Study Says Girls Are Especially Vulnerable To Negative Emotional Consequences - CBS News

Feb. 6, 2007
By Miranda Hitti

(CBS/AP)

(WebMD) Teen sex — oral or vaginal — may have negative emotional consequences, especially for girls, according to a new study in Pediatrics.

Parents and health professionals should help teens prepare for and cope with the emotions attached to sex, say Sonya Brady, Ph.D., and Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, Ph.D. The two researchers work at the University of California, San Francisco.

They studied a diverse group of 273 sexually active students at two California public schools between 2002 and 2004. The students, 56 percent of whom were girls, all reported having had vaginal and/or oral sex by spring of 10th grade.

Of the students, 116 said they had had only oral sex, 43 said they had had only vaginal sex, and 114 said they had had both.

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Link: St Valentine’s Day Sperm Massacre

14 February 2007

Valentine’s Day isn’t about flowers and chocolates for researchers from the Florida Atlantic University (FAU), instead, they’ve been doing some hard thinking about the business-end of the courtship process - evolution and its effects on human sexual reproduction.

In sexual reproduction, natural selection is generally thought of as something that happens prior to the, er, big event. For example, one theory suggests that we are drawn to physical features in a prospective partner that indicate he or she is healthy, and will give our genes a fighting chance of continuing the family line.

But a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science suggests that the human male has evolved much more devious mechanisms to pass on his genes. FAU researchers, Todd Shackelford and Aaron Goetz, describe this as “the inevitable consequence of males competing for fertilizations.”

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Link: More Minn. schools report herpes cases - Yahoo! News

Tue Feb 6, 8:11 PM ET

ST. PAUL - Six more schools have reported cases of herpes among Minnesota high school wrestlers. The mild form of herpes was found in 16 additional wrestlers after the Minnesota State High School League shut down the sport last week because of the virus. So far, 16 teams and 40 wrestlers have reported infections of the skin-to-skin virus. Symptoms have included lesions on the face, head and neck of wrestlers.

The high school league imposed an eight-day ban on practice and competition after herpes gladiatorum was diagnosed in several wrestlers. Despite the new cases, teams were scheduled to resume practices and matches Wednesday, said Craig Perry, associate director at the league who oversees wrestling.

“You can never say there’s no more risk, but the suspension is done,” Perry said. “It accomplished what it was intended to accomplish. … We’ve been able to isolate those cases that come out of this. It helped us and it helped our programs.”

The source of the outbreak hasn’t been determined. It was thought that it might have originated with wrestlers from Valentine High School in Nebraska who had competed in a meet in Rochester. But examinations of the Nebraska wrestlers showed no evidence of herpes.

Perry said it will be up to the individiual schools to decide on when, or if, they make up for the lost matches this season. He said some have already rescheduled some meets for this weekend.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Sharon Kirkey, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Every nine- to 13-year-old girl in the country should be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, a national expert panel is recommending.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization says girls and women aged 14 to 26 should also be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) even if they are already sexually active, because they may not yet have been infected.

Even if they are infected, they’re still unlikely to have all four strains of HPV the vaccine covers.

Dr. Shelley Deeks, executive secretary of the advisory group, said the vaccine is safe and effective. “I think it’s a great vaccine.”

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