Monthly Archives: June 2016

Parent Acts: When my son’s armpits smell like rotten cauliflower

June 8, 2016Sexual Health, UncategorizedSRH Matters

Parent Acts: When my son’s armpits smell like rotten cauliflower

2016-06-08

Parents: What do you do when your tween stinks? 02:14

Story highlights

In the “Parent Acts” video series, CNN’s Kelly Wallace asks parents to role play
Be proactive and talk with your children about body changes before they happen, expert advises

Kelly Wallace is CNN’s digital correspondent and editor-at-large covering family, career and life. Read her other columns and follow her reports at CNN Parents and on Twitter @kellywallacetv.

(CNN)“Oh, puberty,” laments Amanda Rodriguez, a mom of three boys, ages 8, 11 and 14.

I had asked her about that moment when she knew that her older boys definitely needed to start wearing deodorant.

“All of the smelly fun a girl can handle,” the Frederick, Maryland, mom joked, noting how the body odor is just beginning with her middle son.

“I would say the first few months are the hardest,” said Rodriguez, founder of the blog Dude Mom. “Initially, they are reluctant, even rebellious, and unwilling to accept the fact that deodorant is a requirement and no longer a fun novelty. It’s like they are nose-blind to the fact that they are ripe. They need constant reminders, lots of smell checks, extra time to prepare for each day.”

As a parent, there is a plenty of adjustment too, she says. “I have to remember to remind them that they need to get up early to shower and put on deodorant before they leave,” she said. “It’s a habit we all have to work together to form.”

Lisa Flick Wilson, a mom of twin boy-girl tweens who are 11, almost feels like she has this “laboratory just exploding at all times right before” her eyes.

“You harken back to that time when you were that one in grade school that stunk and you were like, ‘God, I wish my mom would have told me I stunk!’ “

But how exactly do you give your tween or teen that information, especially if they signal that they have no interest in discussing the topic?

In the second installment of our new CNN Digital Video series “Parent Acts,” we asked parents to act out what their children do and say when it comes to the body odor conversation, and then we had a parenting expert listen to their roleplay to weigh in with advice.

Tell the kids it’s ‘bacteria poop’

Erik Fisher is a psychologist working in the Atlanta area and co-author of “The Art of Empowered Parenting: The Manual You Wish Your Kids Came With.”

He says parents want to be careful not to use shame, guilt, humiliation or embarrassment to get any message across. “OK, they might feel those things as a result of the discussion, that’s part of the human experience, but when you use it as a weapon, that surrounds the whole thing with something that really doesn’t become the learning experience you want it to be,” he said.

Flick Wilson, who lives in Atlanta, says she’s honest with her kids. She’ll ask whether they put on deodorant in the morning and encourages them to choose their own when they go to the store. ” ‘You go pick it out. It’s for you. It’s your special thing. You’ve got a special place in your bathroom you keep all this stuff,’ ” she’ll tell them. “That makes them want to use it more.”

Being proactive is a good thing, said Fisher, who recommends introducing children as they are coming of age to what is going to happen to their bodies so they’ll know what to expect.

And once you start noticing changes happening, you can ask your kids whether they notice them, too. “You know, often we don’t smell ourselves very well, so you might say, ‘Are you aware of what’s going on? So every now and then check your armpits,’ something like that. ‘What do you smell?’ “

He also says parents can add more science to the conversation. They can tell kids that what’s actually happening is that skin cells are dying on their bodies, and when you have dead skin cells sticking to oils on the body, you get bacteria.

“The best part is, you say … ‘And you know what that smell really is? It’s bacteria poop,’ ” said Fisher, “And my daughter was like, ‘Oh, Dad, I didn’t need to know that.’ … A lot of kids are like that, but then they go, ‘Oh, wow.’ So then they realize why it’s not just that you smell. It’s that there’s a health issue that you have to be concerned about and be aware of as you grow older.”

Sometimes, kids just learn on their own

But even after the conversations, some kids might still be reluctant to accept their new reality, which may be partly motivated with wanting to defy their parents and not do what they suggest, said Fisher.

Some people need the social embarrassment to realize people are noticing, he said. “So you let them learn naturally. You give them enough room, and that’s kind of what I say. I give my daughter enough room to step in it and go, ‘How did that feel?’ ” he said.

Rodriguez, the mom of three, said that with her 14-year-old, and now her 11-year-old, she feels like she spends a few months when everything smells “just really rank” and she is constantly riding one of the boys about “being foul.”

“And then, all of a sudden you’re choking on Axe body spray and scraping gobs of hair gel off your bathroom sink,” she jokes. “The switch is just flipped (probably by some girl, gah!) and the ‘I don’t-want-to-stink-light’ is officially on. Parenting goal achieved.”

She started to talk with her boys about body changes in the fourth grade by giving them a book about boys’ bodies. She let them read it independently and then discusses it with them from time to time. “We try to focus on the positives, that they are going to get taller and stronger, and then we weave in some hygiene lessons as they come up,” she said.

Flick Wilson, the mom of twin teens, says she’s tried to be as open with her kids as possible, about everything from body changes to body hair to deepening voices, which is quite a contrast from the way she grew up.

“I think that as much as I loved my Catholic school upbringing, it was never a conversation you had, whether it was body changes or sexuality or you name it,” she said. “And so, I think for me, I’ve been very much like, ‘I want this not to be an anxiety-ridden conversation’ … and so we’ve kind of always talked about it.”

Any fun conversation starters on how to have the body change talk? Share them with Kelly Wallace on Twitter @kellywallacetv.

Sex life becomes more adventurous after 40! Reaching 40 could actually make your sex life more adventurous and sexual pleasure does not decrease with age, says a study.

June 2, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

Sex life becomes more adventurous after 40! Reaching 40 could actually make your sex life more adventurous and sexual pleasure does not decrease with age, says a study.

2016-06-02

Far from resulting in loss of libido, reaching 40 could actually make your sex life more adventurous, says a study. The findings are based on a survey of 2,400 Canadians, between ages 40 to 59, about their their sexual health, happiness and pleasure, in addition to their sexual behaviour and attitudes. ‘There is a public perception that as we age, sex becomes less important, less enjoyable and less frequent,’ said Robin Milhausen, sexuality and relationship researcher at the University of Guelph in Canada. ‘The study findings indicate that most midlife Canadians are indeed leading satisfying and active sexual lives,’ Milhausen said in press release. The study was conducted by leading condom company Trojan in partnership with Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN).

The researchers found that sexual pleasure does not decrease with age. Regardless of age category, 65 percent of the respondents said their last sexual encounter was very pleasurable. The overwhelming majority of the respondents said that their current primary relationship is emotionally satisfying . The research also revealed that as they got older, the respondents were more likely to be adventurous.

More than half of those surveyed (63 percent) said they are more interested in trying new things to enhance pleasure than they were a decade ago. Lubricant use for intercourse increased with age with 22 percent of men and 26 percent of women aged 55 to 59 using lube at last sexual intercourse. Vibrator use was common, with 40 percent of women reporting that they used a vibrator the last time they masturbated. ‘Sexual and relationship satisfaction were highly interrelated – and the most emotionally satisfied in their relationships reported the highest level of pleasure,’ Milhausen said. ‘And married people are reporting sex as pleasurable as their single counterparts, in fact, married men reported more pleasure at last sexual encounter than single men,’ Milhausen noted.

Source: IANS

Infertility can take the fun out of women’s sex lives

June 2, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

Infertility can take the fun out of women’s sex lives

(Reuters Health) – Women seeking fertility treatment, particularly young women, may experience a negative impact on their sex lives, although it will likely dissipate over time, according to a U.S. study.

“We weren’t surprised at all to find sexual distress in couples who are infertile,” said senior study author Dr. Tami S. Rowen of the University of California-San Francisco’s Irene Betty Moore Women’s Hospital. “Sex takes on a really different meaning for people trying to get pregnant.”

Infertility affects approximately 6.7 million women in the United States, Rowen and her colleagues write in the journal Sexual Medicine. Couples with infertility have significantly more anxiety, depression and stress, and that can have an ongoing effect on quality of life and the health of a marriage.

To gauge the impact on sexual health among women, the researchers surveyed 382 women in couples seeking fertility treatment at academic or private clinics in the San Francisco area.

Almost 60 percent of couples included in the study were seeking treatment for female infertility only, while 30 percent involved female and male infertility factors and 7 percent involved only male factor infertility.

The study team measured what they termed sexual impact with a seven-item questionnaire, including questions about a participant’s amount of sexual enjoyment, perceived attractiveness to partner, inability to have sex because of fertility problems and persistent thoughts about having a child during intercourse.

The results were then translated into a sexual impact score ranging from zero to 90, with higher scores indicating more severe impact.

The majority of participants were between 20 and 45 years old. More than 40 percent had been married at least five years and three-quarters had no children. Many had been treated with oral medications, injectable fertility drugs and intrauterine insemination before entering the study.

On average, the women had a sexual impact score of 38, compared to 25 for men in a previous study of the same couples.

Women who perceived their fertility issues as due only to male factors had the lowest sexual impact, while those who believed their own infertility was the only cause had the highest sexual impact scores.

“Women carry this burden so much and there’s so much emotion tied to women’s reproductive goals,” Rowen said. “We felt in general that most people actually attribute it to themselves more than it was overall attributable, a lot of times it’s male and female factor both.”

Women younger than age 40 had higher impact scores than those over age 40, though this was not true for women who already had a child, according to the results.

“I think it would be really interesting to do a study of how often doctors talk to patients about sex lives,” Rowen said.

When she sees patients struggling with infertility, Rowen added, she talks to them about making sure sex is fun and not a chore, even though they are having sex every day for a specific purpose.

“It seems that emotional problems are common among infertile women,” said Dr. Lucia Alves S. Lara of Ribeirao Preto Medical School at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, who was not part of the study.

“A previous study showed that women seem to be more affected than men in their sexual life and they have greater tendency to classify the marital relationship as bad when the couple fails to conceive,” she told Reuters Health by email.

SOURCE: bit.ly/25hFvj0 Sexual Medicine, online May 7, 2016.

Under the covers with men’s sexual health issues

June 2, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

Under the covers with men’s sexual health issues

New treatments on offer for many problems men may perceive as being embarrassing or distressing

Do a quick Google search for women’s health. You’ll receive approximately 152 million results. Do the same for men’s health and you will get 22.3 million. Is this sexism in another guise, or is it purely indicative of male reluctance to discuss their health issues, even with Dr Google?

Under the covers with men’s sexual health issues

Consultant urologist and andrologist at University Hospital Waterford (UHW)Ivor Cullen says men should be aware that there is a wide range of solutions to many problems they may perceive as being embarrassing or distressing.

Cullen trained in several ground-breaking techniques during his time working in the leading urology centre at University College London Hospital. Many of these have not been available in Ireland until now.

Breakthroughs in fertility medicine have not just been confined to female fertility issues; the area of male infertility has seen a revolution in recent times, says Cullen.

Sexual dysfunction has also moved on from the “little blue pill”. When Viagra doesn’t work, there are many other options for men struggling with erectile dysfunction.

The important thing to remember is that no worrying or “embarrassing” health problem can be addressed if a man doesn’t approach his GP or health professional about it, Cullen says.

Erectile dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction affects about half of all men at some point in their lives. For some it may just be temporary, but for others it can be a persistent problem. For some this can be treated with physiotherapy and muscle re-education exercises. It can also be treated with medications – the phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (such as Viagra).

However, for those men who do not respond to these treatments, there is now the surgical option of an inflatable penile prosthesis.

As part of this procedure, hydraulic pumps are inserted so that men with erectile dysfunction can have functioning erections and have sex normally.

Although this procedure has been offered in Ireland before, in Cullen’s opinion, the uptake has been quite poor, mainly owing to a lack of knowledge in the area among both patients and the health profession at large.

“Penis implant surgery is just not requested or desired by patients as they are unaware of the option,” says Cullen, contrasting this with his experience in London where a significant proportion of men with ED are aware of and will choose the implant surgery as an option when the medications fail.

“It has been offered to a limited number of patients in one or two centres. There is very little knowledge about penis implant surgery. No one talks about it here, but in other parts of the world that’s not the case, it’s quite commonplace.”

According to Cullen, common candidates for this procedure are younger men with type 1 diabetes who often ultimately get erectile dysfunction early in life, often starting after the age of 40 and medication eventually does not work.

In addition, men who have had their prostates removed or had radiation or hormonal treatment, usually as a result of prostate cancer, would also benefit from this surgery, as the majority of these will lose the ability to have an erection and often will not respond to the usual medications.

The procedure can be carried out by Cullen and his team at UHW. A three-piece hydraulic inflatable implant is inserted, which isn’t visible externally. A small pump sits in the scrotum, much like a third testicle, explains Cullen. The two-piece prosthesis is implanted in the penis, while a reservoir is laced in the lower abdomen. When the pump is squeezed, the fluid goes from the reservoir into the prosthesis and makes it erect.

This ensures a rigid erection every time, satisfactory for penetrative intercourse and dispensing with the need for expensive medications or injections.

“Obviously that’s not for everyone but it is a fantastic addition to our options. Satisfaction rates with penile implant surgery are always remarkably high – 90-95 per cent. In a well-chosen patient who is properly counselled, it can be a wonderful option for erectile dysfunction,” Cullen says.