The youth vaping epidemic: Addressing the rise of e-cigarettes in schools
2020-02-24
Last December, the U.S. surgeon general raised an alarm regarding the rise in e-cigarette use among the nation’s youth, saying it has increased “at a rate of epidemic proportions.” According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, over 5 million youth are currently using e-cigarettes, primarily the JUUL brand, with nearly 1 million youth using the product daily. This substantial increase in teenage vaping is seriously impacting middle and high schools across America.
ast December, the U.S. surgeon general raised an alarm regarding the rise in e-cigarette use among the nation’s youth, saying it has increased “at a rate of epidemic proportions.” According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, over 5 million youth are currently using e-cigarettes, primarily the JUUL brand, with nearly 1 million youth using the product daily. This substantial increase in teenage vaping is seriously impacting middle and high schools across America.
Banning the sale of flavored e-cigarettes would have hefty implications on vaping companies since they employ thousands of small shop owners and hardware designers. Banning the legal sale of flavored vaping products would also create a robust black market for e-cigarettes. A black market for vapes could be lethal for youth who find themselves smoking from cartridges cut with cheaper substances
We cannot know what will happen to e-cigarettes if the minimum age increases, but we can look to the experience of increasing the minimum age on alcohol for some suggestive evidence. According to the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 30% of youth drank some amount of alcohol while 14% of youth engaged in binge drinking. Though raising the age limit for purchasing alcohol helped reduce youth alcohol consumption, youth consumption of alcohol persists.
Beyond traditional tactics like monitoring bathrooms and hallways to confiscate vaping devices, states could also take a new approach to fighting the e-cigarette epidemic, like offering grants to schools to invest in on-site counseling. South Portland High School has been addressing teen vaping by offering mental health services and guiding students away from the social influences that encourage vaping. This school—and others, like Arrowhead High School in Milwaukee—have also been getting students involved in their anti-vaping campaign via peer-to-peer education.
The teenage vaping crisis calls for innovative solutions. In collaboration with federal and state action, local actors can look at the FDA’s Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan for insight on ways to initiate community-supported approaches that restrict access to vaping products, curb teenage-focused marketing tactics, and educate teenagers about the harmful, long-term effects of vaping.
“Never give up hope,” fistula survivor tells Pakistani women
2020-01-09
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – “Helping women suffering fistula is my mission in life,” Razia Shamshad said about the maternal injury from childbirth that she thought would ruin her life. “No woman deserves to live in misery, especially when it is treatable.”
Ms. Shamshad, 29, was born in a small village in southern Punjab. Her family did not want her to go to school, so she had only received an informal religious education by age 13, when she was married off. Ms. Shamshad was already expecting her first baby within a few weeks of her wedding. Then, when she was six months pregnant, her husband died in a road accident.
Unable to afford proper medical care, Ms. Shamshad was assisted by an unskilled traditional birth attendant who was unable to manage complications. When Ms. Shamshad suffered an obstructed labour, the birth attendant did not summon medical help. Ms. Shamshad was in agony for four days, an ordeal that could have killed her.
In the end, her daughter was stillborn, and Ms. Shamshad suffered serious damage. She developed an obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. Fistula leaves women leaking urine, faeces or both, and often leads to chronic medical problems.
The condition is preventable with timely access to quality medical care, such as Caesarean section. Tragically, it persists among the most marginalized women, with pregnant adolescents and undernourished women facing particularly high risks. And its sufferers are further marginalized, often facing ostracism and discrimination.
“People would either avoid me or just make fun of me,” she said. “I never felt clean.”
A stroke of good luck
But Ms. Shamshad was able to put her life back together. Her relatives learned about free treatment available at the Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital, which specializes in treating fistula and other conditions related to reproductive health. Two years after her ordeal, her family paid for her to travel to Karachi for care.
Ms. Shamshad’s condition was complex, and required multiple surgeries between 2010 to 2016. Even so, she has been able to regain her life.
“Her determination was exceptional. She was resilient and strong and was able to pull through the difficult process successfully,” said Dr. Sajjad Ahmed, who was trained by UNFPA to perform fistula repair surgeries.
Ms. Shamshad went on to meet her current husband. They adopted a little girl. And though she was not expected to be able to get pregnant again, she surprised everyone by conceiving. With regular prenatal care and a C-section, she had a healthy baby girl.
Combating fistula since 2003
In many ways, Ms. Shamshad was lucky. The story is very different for many fistula survivors in Pakistan, who are unaware that there is treatment available.
“People would either avoid me or just make fun of me,” she said. “I never felt clean.”
A stroke of good luck
But Ms. Shamshad was able to put her life back together. Her relatives learned about free treatment available at the Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital, which specializes in treating fistula and other conditions related to reproductive health. Two years after her ordeal, her family paid for her to travel to Karachi for care.
Ms. Shamshad’s condition was complex, and required multiple surgeries between 2010 to 2016. Even so, she has been able to regain her life.
“Her determination was exceptional. She was resilient and strong and was able to pull through the difficult process successfully,” said Dr. Sajjad Ahmed, who was trained by UNFPA to perform fistula repair surgeries.
Ms. Shamshad went on to meet her current husband. They adopted a little girl. And though she was not expected to be able to get pregnant again, she surprised everyone by conceiving. With regular prenatal care and a C-section, she had a healthy baby girl.
Combating fistula since 2003
In many ways, Ms. Shamshad was lucky. The story is very different for many fistula survivors in Pakistan, who are unaware that there is treatment available.
Our modern society is quite unhealthy, with fast food and processed sugars available around every corner. As a direct result of the unhealthy environment they inhabit, many American women are struggling with their long-term health, especially when it comes to ensuring they have enough vitamins and a proper diet. It can be incredibly hard to find authoritative information pertaining to women’s health, too, leading many young women to simply give up altogether.
Rather than ignoring your health, you should be taking proactive steps to bolster it, like consuming healthy supplements. Which are the best multi-vitamins for women, and how else can they remain healthy? Here’s how to ensure your lifestyle is a healthy and prosperous one.
Find authoritative sources
The first thing you should do when searching for the best multi-vitamin for women is find an authoritative source that can give you valid information which you can depend upon. Many blogs exist and will tell you what supplements to take, but the truth of the matter is that these are often hosted by non-professionals who lack formal medical degrees. You should be relying strictly on valid sources of information that have science to back up their arguments. Look for websites that end in .gov, and you’ll generally know you’re in the clear when it comes to the medical data you’re reading.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has anexcellent webpage provided by the Office on Women’s Health, for instance, and it should frequently be reviewed by women who want to maintain healthy lifestyles for themselves. Ensuring you have enough vitamin B9, for instance, is particularly important for pregnant women who may be deprived of valid information to rely on as they prepare for a new chapter in their lives.
Many women have a vitamin B-12 deficiency, too, which is a helpful reminder to talk to your medical professionals about what your body might need that it’s naturally lacking. It’s important to remember thatnutritional supplements are only one source of these vitamins – many people often get enough in their regular diets, though some dietary restrictions may impede your ability to ingest enough of them in your food. When it comes to B-12 deficiencies, for instance, you can try to amend them by increasing the amount of fat-free milk, eggs, poultry, and nutritional yeast you consume on a regular basis.
Many women find themselves suffering from calcium deficiencies, and these can’t always be amended by eating more food groups that are rich in calcium. Young girls who are still growing may be in particular need of calcium supplements because they can be very important when it comes to bone growth and hitting your appropriate height.
Learn about multi-vitamin trends
To find the best multi-vitamins and to determine which are popular and which are fading, it can be helpful to familiarize yourself with multi-vitamin trends across the nation. The past few years have seen ageneral decline in the number of multi-vitamins consumed by American adults, for instance, though it’s not yet clear why people are taking fewer and fewer of them. Americans are taking more vitamin D, for instance, but overall the total amount of supplements they’re taking is going down.
It’s important to speak with your medical providers to ensure that you’re not following national trends which may be popular but nevertheless unhealthy when your specific body is considered. Women of reproductive age in particular are taking fewer supplements,according to data made available by the CDC, though this is often impacted by the age and ethnicity of the individuals in question.
Vitamins A, C, E, and D remain some of the most popular supplements with women even in light of this decline, however. Calcium is also particularly important for developing women of a younger age. Before ingesting any supplements, ensure their sourcing is authentic and that there are no regulatory embargos on the substance you’re consuming. By finding authoritative and well-regulated providers of supplements, you can bolster your health, but taking shady supplements from lackluster sources is highly inadvisable. Never be afraid to talk to your medical professional about taking certain multi-vitamins or a particular supplement you’ve encountered online.
5 Reproductive Health Issues We Should Be Talking About
2019-01-10
We asked readers which health topics they felt needed to be discussed openly, and got answers from an obstetrician-gynecologist.
“If someone speaks to you about your body with anything but kindness and concern, it is he who has a problem.” — Dr. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician-gynecologist
These can be serious health conditions for women, yet many of us are reluctant to discuss them, even with our doctors. In fact, the bulk of my knowledge on these and many other issues that affect women’s reproductive health have been passed along to me through word of mouth like some kind of lore.
How extensively women are uninformed, to the point that some struggle to articulate possible symptoms, hit home with me recently, after I wrote a column on menopause. (Specifically, it was about how women who were looking to find any information or camaraderie beyond the clinical were generally out of luck.
As part of the column, I asked readers if there were any other health issues we needed to start talking about more openly — and I received an onslaught of emails.
Did you know, for example, that about 50 percent of women will develop some form of pelvic organ prolapse in their lifetimes? More on that below.
Here are five conditions, which affect millions of women, explained by Dr. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician-gynecologist in the San Francisco Bay-area who writes The Cycle, a Times column on women’s reproductive health.
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
What is it? It’s a severe form of PMS, but PMDD generally includes severe depression, irritability and tension. Like PMS, it starts a week or two before your period, and ends abruptly when your period ends.
What to know: For about two weeks of the month, PMDD should be gone. Keep a symptom diary to gauge how long you’re experiencing these symptoms and, as always, consult your doctor.
Endometriosis
What is it? It is when tissue that normally lines the uterus grows outside of the uterus, in the pelvic cavity. While this tissue doesn’t shed blood as it would inside the uterus, it does undergo inflammatory changes that it would during one’s period.
What to know: It affects 6 to 10 percent of women. For some, it can cause infertility. For some, a few specks of the disease can cause severe pain. For other women, it takes a massive amount of disease to cause pain. And other women have no symptoms at all. Treatments include hormones or excision surgery.
Pelvic floor disorders
What is it? Pelvic floor disorders primarily fall into two categories: the floor being too weak or too tense. (The floor consists of a group of muscles located at the base of the pelvis.) Either condition can result in symptoms that are hard to describe and therefore hard to diagnose, such as incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse, as well as pain, particularly during sex.
What to know: A common feeling with a weak pelvic floor is that there’s something stuck in the vagina. Childbirth can exacerbate or cause a weak floor, since tissue that stretches is more vulnerable to age and injury. There is also a big genetic component, and smoking can weaken the floor.
A tense floor is more complex, in that women can have it from birth or develop it at an early age. A floor can also tighten or spasm after sexual trauma or an event that caused pain, including a yeast infection.
Pelvic organ prolapse
What is it? It’s the sagging of one’s cervix and vaginal wall toward the vaginal opening.
What to know: It occurs normally with age since pelvic tissue, stretchy by nature, is more vulnerable to gravity and aging. Fifty percent of women will develop some form of it over time, and most women don’t get symptoms until it has progressed.
The most common symptom isthe feeling that something is falling out. But it’s important to note that a pelvic floor spasm, which in many ways is an opposite condition, can cause the same sensation.
Incontinence
What is it? There are two main types: stress incontinence, when urine leaks when pressure is exerting on the bladder by coughing, sneezing, laughing, exercising or lifting something. And there’s overactive bladder, or having to urinate even though there’s only a small amount of liquid in the bladder. It’s possible to have both conditions at the same time.
What to know: A lot of women are not screened for incontinence, and ignoring it can lead to a lot of issues. If it gets severe, it can lead to social isolation. There are effective treatments, including medication, physical therapy or bladder retraining. It can also be controlled with an incontinence ring called a pessary. Injecting Botox into the bladder, a treatment for overactive bladder, is extremely effective by preventing muscles in the bladder from spasming from low volume of urine.
Genes which come into play late in life could be the answer to why women suffer poorer health than men in old age – even though they live longer.
A study has revealed going through the menopause causes women to accumulate genes evolved to benefit males, which are bad for female health.
But because men can remain fertile long into old age, their bodies do not suffer the same decline when they pass middle age and they feel better for longer.
Women are still likely to live longer – in the UK their life expectancy is 82.9 years while men’s is 79.2 – but they can expect to be in worse health.
Scientists put the effect down to a genetic ‘sexual conflict’, where different genes benefit or harm the sexes in different ways and are in a constant ‘tug of war’.
Scientists at the University of Exeter did experiments on flies to track how genes change after the female body stops preparing to reproduce – the menopause.
They found because women no longer need to pass on their genes after middle age, they don’t produce as many which would keep them healthy in later life.
Whereas men remain fertile for longer so might need to pass on their genes at any time, meaning they are programmed to stay healthy and prepared to have children.
While gynecologists are known to deal with sexual and reproductive health of women, they at times find themselves having to attend to male patients. Studies conducted over a period of time in different geographical areas show that at least 10% of people who seek professional advice and services from gynas are men.For men’s reproductive system queries, men are advised to see an urologist or an andrologist since they are trained in the field and are bound to give ways forward from their experience in the field. However, some men still find themselves straying into a gynecologist’s office once in a while.
Some of the reasons men who confessed to vising a gynecologist gave include;
Fertility problems
Being unable to sire children is a major problem for married couples and it prompts need for medial insights. Men who have issues with making their partners pregnant due to low sperm count or other infertility issues often find themselves seeing gynas. This can be as a couple or individually depending on a number of factors. Here, they get advised on why they can’t be fathers and how to go about it.
To accompany their spouse
Men and women have different needs at different times in their lives. This means that no matter how close you are to your partner, there are times you’ll be away from him and vice versa. Things like going to the salon, seeing your gyna and such are all female and most men do not even stop to wonder how it goes. For some though, accompanying you to your endeavors is not a task to them.
STDs/STIs
Sexually transmitted Diseases and Infections have bothered mankind for ages. Not keen to choose gender, they affect both men and women, often forcing them to seek health attention. According to gynecologists who talked about seeing male patients, some of the men who walk in through their doors are often in search for ways to handle STIs or such. Common diseases and infections bothering these men include Yeast infection, Gonorrhea and even Syphilis.
To know what women go through
Curiosity knows neither age nor boundaries. Just like some people want to know how some machinery works, there are men who are eager to know what happens to women at the gynecologists. These men will bear the stares they get once they walk into a gyna’s waiting roomful of women just to go through the experience. They necessarily do not have an issue to present to the gyna, they are just curious of the services offered.
Matters sexual health
Most men, almost all men are concern about their sexual life more than anything else. They want to know what is healthy for their reproductive system and its functionality from specialist. From ejaculation disorders, erectile dysfunction, low libido and such, some men get the impression that talking to a doctor who knows much about women reproductive health may give them a more satisfactory sex life.
To meet gender-related SDG targets, improve the resource allocation
2018-10-18
The low allocations, huge fluctuations over the years in funds, and the underspending clearly indicate that political interest in efficiently targeting the SDGs is marginal. Political interest is driven either for electoral gains or as firefighting mechanisms
Adequate resource allocation accounts for the continued deficit in health, nutrition and welfare outcomes for women and girls in India.
The trajectory towards realising the SDG targets is not going to be easy with the current level of political commitment to these issues. If this deficit has to be reduced in order to move towards the SDG targets in the stipulated time, budgets for service delivery have to be increased substantially without further delay.
Over the last few years, new programmes and schemes targeted at women and girls have been launched, especially in areas such as health, nutrition, livelihood and protection from abuse. Some progress has been made in law-making on domestic violence, sexual assault, and sex selection.However, inadequate allocation of resources have made implementation of these programmes and schemes ineffective or limited in their reach.
The health, nutrition and welfare deficit in India is still high when compared with countries of similar level of development such as Thailand or Mexico,or even countries which are less economically developed such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. Within this, there are class, caste and gender inequities, as well as regional inequities. A large part of this deficit is due to inadequate budgetary allocations. Even resources committed in the budget are either underspent or used inefficiently.
The picture we get from the government’s own data sets such as NFHS, SRS and NSSO is that maternal and child mortality remains a major problem in many states in India. Access to basic healthcare services, including maternal, sexual and reproductive health is grossly inadequate. Violence against women and marriage before legal age continue to be high, despite stringent legal provisions and investment in supportive programmes and services.
On the positive side, we see an increased public debate and media attention to gender issues.This periodically leads to increase in budgetary allocations – for instance, when an epidemic strikes, or children die in large numbers due to malnourishment, or rape cases get highlighted in the media.
An assessment of budget allocations and expenditures of some of the key programmes and schemes targeted at reducing gender inequities leads to the conclusion that there is lack of serious intent in achieving the goals. These programmes and schemes are launched with much fanfare but end up being populist proclamations directed towards electoral outcomes or public relations exercises.
Early study results suggest fertility app as effective as modern family planning methods
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
Early results from a first-of-its-kind study suggests that typical use of a family planning app called Dot is as effective as other modern methods for avoiding an unplanned pregnancy.
Researchers from the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University Medical Center are studying women’s use of the app for 13 menstrual cycles, or about one year. The ongoing prospective study design is the first to apply best-practice guidelines for assessing fertility awareness based methods in the testing of an app.
The interim results following Dot’s use for six cycles are published in the journal Contraception (title: Estimating six-cycle efficacy of the Dot app for pregnancy prevention.) Dot is owned by Cycle Technologies, which is solely responsible for the app.
Dot provides a woman with information about her fertility status each day of her menstrual cycle. It uses an algorithm and machine learning to identify the fertile days of her cycle based on her cycle lengths.
After women had been in the study for six cycles, the researchers found that the app had a typical-use failure rate of 3.5 percent, which suggests that Dot’s one-year typical efficacy rate will be comparable to other modern family planning methods such as the pill, injections, and vaginal ring.
“Given the growing interest in fertility apps, it was important to provide these early results,” says Victoria Jennings, PhD, principal investigator of the Dot efficacy study and director of the IRH.
718 participants in the United States enrolled in the study, and 419 participants completed six cycles of use. There were 15 confirmed pregnancies from cycles when participants used the method incorrectly (such as having unprotected sex on days of high fertility). No pregnancies occurred in cycles when participants reported correct use of the app during high risk days for pregnancy.
“Our purpose is to provide guidance to women who want to use Dot as well as to health providers and policy makers who are interested in this emerging method of family planning,” Jennings says. “We hope this paper contributes to the on-going discussion about the effectiveness of fertility apps and how their efficacy should be assessed.”
Final efficacy results are expected in early 2019.
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This study was supported by the United States Agency for International Development grant (OAAOAO13O00083).
In addition to Jennings, study authors include Liya T. Haile, Hanley M. Fultz and Dominick Shattuck of the IRH, and Rebecca G. Simmons of the University of Utah. The authors report having no personal financial interests related to the study. The Dot app is a proprietary technology developed by Cycle Technologies, a company owned by a family member of Jennings’.
The Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University Medical Center has more than 30 years of experience in designing and implementing evidence-based programs that address critical needs in sexual and reproductive health. The Institute’s areas of research and program implementation include family planning, adolescents, gender equality, fertility awareness, and mobilizing technology for reproductive health. The Institute is highly respected for its focus on the introduction and scale-up of sustainable approaches to family planning and fertility awareness around the world. For more information, visit http://www.irh.org.
Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through MedStar Health). GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis — or “care of the whole person.” The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing & Health Studies, both nationally ranked; Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute; and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization, which accounts for the majority of externally funded research at GUMC including a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health. Connect with GUMC on Facebook (Facebook.com/GUMCUpdate), Twitter (@gumedcenter). Connect with Georgetown University School of Medicine on Facebook (Facebook.com/somgeorgetown), Twitter (@gumedicine) and Instagram (@georgetownmedicine).
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Men’s anxiety: How to combat middle-aged pressures so they don’t reach crisis point
2018-09-25
The mid-life crisis is a common cliche, but an expert today explains how pressure to perform in life is driving many men into mental health difficulties.
our middle years can be a high pressure and confusing time, but don’t bottle up your feelings (or get a tattoo that you’ll regret later).
We all know the cliches of the midlife crisis – the sports car, the wardrobe overhaul, the desire to chuck yourself around at Arctic Monkeys gigs and, um, the affairs.
But there are reasons behind the stereotype.
There’s a wake-up moment in middle age when you realise most of your life is probably behind you.
Plus the stress of caring for a young family as well as ageing parents, while shouldering job pressure can take its toll on your mental health and relationships .
In fact, a report from the Office for National Statistics found middle-aged people are the least happy, have the lowest levels of life satisfaction and suffer the most anxiety.
And men are more vulnerable than women, who reported feeling more satisfied overall.
“There’s always been a clear correlation between how the economy is doing and the mental health of middle-aged men,” says Dr Rafael Euba, consultant psychiatrist at The London Psychiatry Centre (psychiatrycentre.co.uk).
“There’s pressure to achieve, which isn’t always easy, especially in times of economic hardship, and that can provoke a deep sense of failure.”
While women tend to deal with psychological distress by talking to each other, Dr Euba says men are reluctant: “Most men still think acknowledging they’re suffering is a sign of weakness, and so put up with stress which is more likely to come out in other ways, such as drinking.”
Have you reached a crisis point? Our Q&A could help you to find out, and learn how to navigate those rocky years…
Do you fail to embrace new things and feel the best is behind you?
Middle age can actually be a great time to try new things, says Dr Euba: “When you’re young there are many possibilities in the future, but by middle age it’s common to think, ‘this is my life’, and dwell on things you haven’t achieved.
“But you could argue you’re in the peak of life. Yes, if you watch films and read novels you’d think that peak time is the 20s, but people in their 20s make huge mistakes.
“By now, you’re experienced, you know what you like and what you don’t, you will probably have more money and freedom, so potential to enjoy life is huge. You may also look at life in a balanced way.”
Do you feel overwhelmed by stress, but keep it bottled up?
Planning your goals and reaching out to friends for support are key, says Dr Euba.
He says: “Stress often comes down to economic pressure and dealing with the system – providing for your family’s future and dealing with authorities over schools and care provided for elderly parents.
“You need to be able to delegate if you can, to compromise where necessary, to negotiate and to plan.
“If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s crucial to make use of your social network and don’t regard stress as a sign of weakness, but as a sign you have to plan things and get support from the other people in your life.”
Do you feel trapped or dissatisfied at work?
This is a tough one to sort out, admits Dr Euba: “Most of us can’t just walk out of a job if we have dependents. But it can help to remind ourselves of the norm – that it’s a minority of privileged people who genuinely love their job and earn good money from it. They are the exception to the rule – not you.
“Don’t compare yourself to others. These days, largely thanks to social media, if your life isn’t amazing it’s tempting to believe you’re failing. But it’s normal to have difficult days.
“Set yourself smaller, achievable goals and celebrate those wins and, if possible, try to carve out areas of your work that you’re in control of.
“It’s also important to understand there’s much more to being a man than how big your salary is and how far you go in the hierarchy.”
Are you anxious about your physical health?
Our bodies begin to decline in middle age and it can be a painful glimpse of what’s to come.
Dr Euba says: “The knowledge there’s less ahead combined with the onset of physical ailments can cause anxiety. Getting fitter is good for the mind and there’s growing medical evidence that exercise can help people beat depression. The key is, don’t overdo it.
“Pay more attention to lifestyle – don’t smoke and don’t drink too much – and just be aware of your body. Taking responsibility for your health will help you feel in control.”
Do you feel your sex life and relationship are dull? Do you want to cheat?
If you’ve been in a relationship a long time, along with a sense of stability can come a sense that life is, well, just a bit boring.
Dr Euba says: “Men’s sexual potency does start to decline in middle age, and although it’s more subtle than it is for women, it can affect self-image for some men.
“If that’s combined with a lack of sexual interest from their partner, many guys take that as a personal failure. These things make couples more vulnerable to affairs.
“It helps to know these issues are normal and seeking help in therapy doesn’t mean you’re less of a man.”
#LetsTalkSex: Is It Normal to Have a Curved Penis?
2018-08-29
Talking about sex is the best thing you can do for yourself if you are a sexually active person. You must educate yourself about safe sex practices, regardless of who you’re having sex with.
Over the past few weeks, we got multiple sexual health queries from our readers.
Dr Anurag Puri, Consultant, Department of Urology at Fortis Hospital Shalimar Bagh answer some of the queries here.
Last few days back, I slipped from the bed while sleeping. My penis was erect when I fell. There’s pain on the right side of the penis since then. Are there any home remedies for the same?
If you have fallen on erect penis and there is pain,there may be fracture of penis. You must immediately consult a urologist for clinical assessment and penile usg if required.
Is having a small sized penis genetic or is there some other issue? Will there be any problems if one has a small penis?
Small penis may be genetic or due to hormone deficiency. Even if the size is small and you are able to penetrate your female partner, then there’s no need to worry.
