Two men looking to boost their sexual performance and grow bigger muscles ended up with advanced prostate cancer, after taking “herbal” supplements, American doctors reported recently.

The doctors said many supplements marketed as “safe” and “natural” could contain unknown and potentially dangerous ingredients; and pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has little authority to regulate them.

Dr. Claus Roehrborn, Chairman of Urology at the University of Texas Southwestern medical school, said in a statement:

Physicians need to ask their patients not only about the prescription drugs they may be taking, but – perhaps even more importantly – about the over-the-counter drugs and supplements, which may have a profound impact on certain health conditions”

Dr. Roehrborn’s team became concerned about what they call herbal/hormonal dietary supplements (HHDS), after two men developed aggressive and incurable prostate cancer within months of taking the same supplement.

They reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research that they analyzed the product (which was not named for legal reasons), and found it contained two hormones — testosterone and estradiol. Then, when they tested it on tumour cells in the lab, they found that it fuelled the growth of prostate cancer cells much more potently than testosterone alone.

The researchers wrote:

We filed an adverse event report with the FDA, who issued a warning letter. The manufacturer responded by removing this HHDS product from the market.

Individuals use HHDS for self-improvement, failure or distrust of conventional medicine, and because they believe that these natural products are safe and drug-free.

The researchers searched for Websites promoting other such products, and found they promised “‘fountain of youth’ effects, maintenance of a ‘youthful’ heart, relief of stress, improvements in mood disturbances, stamina, energy, strength and virility.”

The patients, a 67-year-old white male and a 51-year-old black male, have both survived but have extensive Cancer that has spread throughout their bodies.

The researchers continued:

Unlike prescription and over-the-counter drugs, the law does not require nutritional supplements to undergo pre-market approval for safety and efficacy,

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, 1994 (DSHEA) allows HHDS manufacturers to assume the sole responsibility for ensuring the effectiveness and safety of their products. Thus, the current Food Drug Administration regulatory system provides little oversight or assurance that HHDS will have predictable pharmacological effects or even that product labels provide accurate information to consumers.

Posted by Jonathan as Biochemistry, Biology at 3:27 PM GMT

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We’d all love to know what other people are thinking; but some individuals just can’t accept that the contents of someone else’s head are private and confidential, and are therefore inaccessible.

So, in just a slightly less annoying way than Psychic charlatans and get laid quick guides promise magic bullets and miracles, to part the gullible and lonely from their cash, a whole industry has sprung up writing and promoting books about Body language.

Surprisingly though, many people don’t seem to realise that Body language is the bastard child of Evolutionary Psychology and Astrology. Certainly, we can say that fat people probably enjoy their food a bit too much, and it’s a near certainty that smiling people are happy. There might even be some slight truth in claims such as people point their feet at someone they’re interested in; after all, if you’re interested in someone you’re probably going to speak to them, and if you’re going to speak to someone, you’re more than likely going to face toward them first, and generally people point their feet forwards, most of the time.

As an aside, much is also culturally dependent. If you speak to someone in England, and they nod or shake their head, you know that they are either agreeing or disagreeing with you, respectively. However, if you were to speak to someone in Sri Lanka, this pattern would be reversed.

So, now, we come to myths and dishonesty. We’ve already noted elsewhere that the rather too frequently quoted idea that all communication is 7% Words, 38% Voice tone and 55% Body language is nonsensical rubbish. If words were really only 7% of communication, why would we have to learn foreign languages? And then, how do we cope on the telephone? Many lazy and/or ignorant authors have just blindly copied an attention grabbing snippet of information, without even bothering to check if it’s true or not. This statistic is actually nothing more than a myth derived from a misquoting of an experiment carried out in 1967 by Albert Mehrabian, that asked “what factors does a speaker’s likeability depend on?”, rather than anything concerning someone’s ability to communicate. Certainly, the oft mentioned idea that people with folded arms or crossed legs are defensive must be one of the daftest things I’ve come across though…

Compliance professionals should recognise in the above paragraphs something known as a “Yes set“. – Start your communication by saying something that’s almost certainly true, move to saying something that could possibly be true, and finish with what you want to try to slip under the radar of the person you’re talking to (they have just agreed with the first two statements, and are now more likely to agree with the third). Pretty much all Body language books I’ve browsed through seem to work in that same way.

Now, it would certainly be interesting if there was some top secret way to read peoples minds through Body language, especially since so much of the subject matter appears to deal with sex and relationships. Take the following rather interesting quote that I found recently, as an example:

…men are notoriously bad decoders of women’s [body language], often assuming that a woman is interested in them when she isn’t. That’s because a man automatically assumes that an attractive woman is aiming her availability signals at him personally, when she’s actually broadcasting them to everyone. Men also have a tendency to inflate come-ons in their mind, and to assume that put-offs are only hang-ons. This tendency of men to misread women’s signals is part of a more widespread insensitivity. Not only are men less observant, they are generally not as tuned in to other people’s needs as women are.

Here, the author has invented a system; and presumably hopes that the reader will summon up a male stereotype of a good-for-nothing couch potato in their mind, and reason “Yeah, men are pretty dumb and insensitive, while women generally have a reputation as good empathisers. This Body language must be top stuff”.

So, let’s examine the above quotation more critically:-

If you’ve ever read pseudo-intellectual literature, or perhaps even looked at some of the many various explanations found on the Internet which claim to document how to seduce people, you will realise that often the material is written in such a way that it can be interpreted in two ways. The first is a radical but manifestly false way that grabs headlines and attracts attention to the author, whilst the second is a true but relatively banal way that the author can fall back to, once some bright spark has spotted the deception.

In the quoted paragraph, we’re supposed to accept that men are somehow generally defective, since they often won’t fit into this author’s system. But, if something is to be communicated, we need a compatible sender and receiver, as well as the method of signalling. And then, Evolutionary theory tells us that characteristics will only be selected for, if they are beneficial. Therefore, what is the point of a communication system that doesn’t communicate? That would be like someone trying to ring a cellphone when they know that the battery in the phone being called is flat or the phone is switched off.

If the author was telling us that women have a signalling system that men could detect more than 50% of the time, it would be an interesting idea to test. However, the more likely explanation is that a man sees an attractive woman, and then decides to talk to her simply because he likes how she looks, and thinks she’d be fun in bed; rather than because some sort of erratic subconscious signalling system is in action.

It should also be noted that it’s been claimed before that women are generally pretty good communicators, who apparently have a greater verbal fluency than men. If there’s any truth to this claim, why would women be such good verbal communicators, but such poor non-verbal communicators?

Even assuming that a woman could broadcast signals to everyone, the author’s explanation breaks down, since he claims that the hypothetical man assumes that the woman is interested in him when she isn’t. So, why would a woman broadcast to all, if she only wants the message received by specific men? This would be like someone whispering secrets to a person in the same room, through a megaphone.

Perhaps the woman is especially attractive and has dressed provocatively, in which case she would have plenty of male attention, regardless of other criteria. Ergo, it would make more sense for her signalling system to send selective messages to specific men communicating “stay away”, rather than “come here” as the author suggests.

Finally, in the last sentence of the paragraph we’re analysing, the author just becomes rude (and rather ignorant in my opinion). If men are as insensitive, unobservant and un-empathetic as claimed, then this is a slap in the face for all those men who have entered caring professions, for example, male nurses, social workers, teachers, doctors, therapists, counsellors, etc. Yet, Sociobiologists tell us that men are more visual than women (apparently it’s an adaptation from many years gone by, when men were the hunters, in hunter gatherer communities). So the explanation breaks down yet again.

It seems to me that the people teaching this overcomplicated rubbish owe their students an apology, and also a refund.

Posted by Jonathan as Philosophy, Sociology at 4:09 AM GMT

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The British Social Attitudes Survey was published recently, by the National Centre for Social Research; and it seems that according to their researchers, 70% of Britons think premarital sex is acceptable, while less than a third believe that homosexuality is wrong.

The researchers pointed out that Britain’s marriage rate is falling, and that there is a corresponding rise in the number of unmarried people who live together. There were 244,710 marriages in England and Wales in 2005 (the last year for which figures were available), which was the lowest number since 1896.

• Two-thirds of those surveyed felt that there was little difference socially between being married and living together. And only 28% agreed with the statement “married couples make better parents than unmarried couples”

• Opinion on single parents were evenly split, with 42% of respondents saying one parent could raise a child as well as two, and 41% disagreeing.

• Slightly under a third of people said two gay men in a couple could be as good parents as a man and a woman, whilst 42% disagreed.

• Only 17 percent of men agreed with the statement “a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family”. However, more than three-quarters of respondents in heterosexual relationships said “the woman does the laundry”.

The survey interviewed 3,300 randomly selected adults across the country, and error margins for sections of the report were claimed to be between two and three percentage points.

Posted by Jonathan as Sociology at 1:32 AM GMT

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New research conducted by the University of Chicago Medical Center has found that Latin girls have a strong sense of personal control over their sexual behaviours, which strongly influences their decision about when to first engage in sex, according to research published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Having a greater sense of personal control over sexual behaviours appeared to be the strongest factor which influenced delay. This suggests that Latina women’s own beliefs regarding timing of first sexual intercourse may outweigh the influence of family, friends, and partners.

The study also revealed the high correlation between a young Latina’s decision about when to first initiate sexual activity and her family’s expectations.

Study author, Melissa Gilliam, MD, MPH said:

Both personal control and family expectations had a very important role in delaying early initiation of sex, if the daughter perceived that her family felt her education was important, then it led her to delay sex.

Gilliam and colleagues conducted seven focus groups to determine the survey questions that would be most relevant to the culture and experience of the young Latina population. They then developed, tested and administered the survey in both English and Spanish to a separate group of 270 Latinas, aged between 17 and 25. The age at the time of sexual initiation ranged from 12 to 24 with 16.15 years as the mean.

The study also found a strong correlation with the young woman’s mother’s age at first pregnancy and the age of the young woman’s first sexual partner. The greater the age difference between the woman and her older partner, the more likely she was to engage in sex at an earlier age.

This study on the sexual attitudes of a specific population is unique because researchers used focus groups to develop the survey questions. If they had found that other factors influenced behaviour then they would have included questions on those subjects.

Dr Gilliam said:

If focus group participants had said that music played a big role in their behaviours or drug use or gangs, then those topics would be in the model.

Statistics from previous studies have shown that compared to African-American and white adolescents, the Latin population has higher rates of teen pregnancy despite lower rates of sexual activity; they are also less likely to use contraception the first time they have sex. “There are these health disparities that very much track along racial, ethnic lines,” Dr Gilliam said.

Many times researchers presuppose the questions that should be asked and design questionnaires based on those suppositions, said Gilliam, whose work identifies populations most at risk for unintended pregnancy and ways to improve education.

They’re often not rooted in the belief systems of a population. If we’re serious about doing research in understudied populations, especially with adolescents, we want to start moving away from cultural comparisons, we want to start thinking about questions that are culturally appropriate for the group being studied.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 11:14 PM GMT

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Taller people have generally been perceived to be more attractive; and now researchers have discovered that the average Polish woman (about 5′4″ tall, with an inside leg measurement of 29″) would need longer 30.5″ legs in order to reach perfection.

That’s the conclusion of Polish Psychologists Boguslaw Pawlowski and Piotr Sorokowski at the University of Wroclaw, who wanted to investigate whether relative leg lengths affected such perceptions.

They asked 218 male and female volunteers to rank the attractiveness of seven male and seven female subjects from digitally altered images, which had been changed so that they were all the same height but with leg lengths that varied between 5, 10 or 15 percent from the Polish national average.

The team found that regardless of the volunteers own body shape and leg length, the most attractive legs for both men and women were judged to be those which were five per cent longer than average, followed by both normal-length legs and ones that were ten per cent longer than the norm. Surprisingly, legs fifteen percent longer than normal were not considered attractive.

Dr Boguslaw Pawlowski then confused the issue, by claiming “Long legs are signalling health”.

So, why then were really long legs considered less attractive than average legs?

He went on to point out that short legs are associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes in both sexes. And also higher triglyceride levels (linked to atherosclerosis, heart disease and strokes) as well as insulin resistance in men.

Although the study, reported in New Scientist, only looked at Polish people, Dr Pawlowski suspects each culture would prefer leg lengths slightly longer than the community norm.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociobiology at 2:34 AM GMT

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Zoologists studying the mating rituals of the African Topi species of antelope, in the Masai Mara game reserve of Kenya, have reported some extraordinary behaviour.

It has long been established in biology that there are fundamental differences in the strategies of the two sexes. Males are supposed to distribute their sperm far and wide, to all comers, whereas females are noted for being choosier about whom they decide to let fertilise their valuable eggs.

Yet, the Topi have reversed this sexual stereotype, and it seems, according to Jakob Bro-Jorgensen (Zoological Society of London) that males literally have to fight off the females, who vehemently wanted to mate with them.

Topi antelopes have breeding grounds in which the males defend small territories called “Leks” (a word meaning “to play” in Swedish,) where each male advertises his sexual availability. Female Topis express preference for mating with males with the most centrally-positioned lek, and males compete to occupy these central territories. This, so far, is stereotypical of animals that breed in a lek.

However, sometimes a male with a centrally-positioned lek can find this to be an exhausting experience, and then often find that they have to turn away familiar females in favour of unfamiliar females, who are visiting for the first time.

Dr Bro-Jorgensen said:

I was interested to see that in cases where the male antelope was free to choose between females, he deliberately went for the most novel mate, rather than the most high ranking. However, some pushy females were so aggressive in their pursuit of the male that he actually had physically to attack them to rebuff their advances

When biologists talk about the ‘battle of the sexes’, they often tacitly assume that the battle is between persistent males who always want to mate, and females who don’t. However, in Topi antelopes, where females are known to prefer to mate with males in the centre of mating arenas, we’ve found a reversal of these stereotypic sex roles

When analysing sex strategies in the animal kingdom zoologists like to utilize the idea of economic investment, i.e. males invest relatively little in each sperm cell, so provided a male does not have to rear all the young he sires (in reproductive terms) it’s best for him to distribute his investment far and wide, in the hope that some of it will pay off.

Females, however, begin with a more substantial investment. Each of her eggs is a relatively precious commodity that needs to be carefully managed. It would pay her, for instance, to invest much more (in terms of time and effort) to ensure that her fertilised egg has a good chance of reaching adulthood. This explain why females of so many different species stick around to rear their young, and why they are choosy about which male they decide to mate with.

The lek system of mating is not unique to Topi antelopes. Leks are especially common in birds, where they are a useful way of letting females “play the field” and choose the best male, usually the one with the most centrally-located lek.

Similarly to the Topi, the males of some lek-mating birds, such as the Capercaillie Grouse (Tetrao urogallus) have also been observed to reject sex after excessive amounts with the queue of females. But the females just go away and come back the next day.

So why doesn’t the Topi female just do the same? The answer seems to be because she is only in oestrus for a day or so, and cannot afford to risk being barren for the entire breeding season, according to Dr Bro-Jorgensen.

The females have just a single day to ensure that they become pregnant, and preferably with a quality male, so they must focus all of their energies into ensuring that males mate with them in that time, the males, however, must focus on maximising the potential of their sperm to ensure they impregnate as many females as possible. It was not uncommon to see males collapsing with exhaustion as the demands of the females got too much for them

The Topi and the Capercaillie demonstrate a system of mating called polygyny, where a male mates with more than one female. A lek system of mating is just one expression of polygyny, and is an extreme example of female choice. Females are free to mate with any male, but are psychologically drawn to those that other females are interested in.

A harem system is another form of polygyny. Here, males dominate the females and guard them against the advances of other males, examples being Sea Lions or Gorillas. Some polygynous species are also territorial, where defending a resource-rich plot of land means that females will mate, so that they can be allowed to stay in that male’s territory.

The other form of polygamy is polyandry; here a female has more than one male as a mate, although this is rare. One of the best examples is the Dunnock (Prunella modularis), here females can have two “husbands” at the same time to help rear their young. And, this system has been shown to favour females because they can rear more young with two mates. The males however are probably less happy because they have to compete for access to the female. Indeed, it has been shown that a male Dunnock that is not allowed frequent-enough access to his shared “wife” will not feed the resulting offspring.

Even monogamy is not always what it seems to be. Since the invention of DNA fingerprinting, biologists have discovered that most supposedly monogamous species engage in what has come to be known as extra-pair copulations. DNA studies of offspring from species of socially monogamous birds have shown that the species are not sexually monogamous, as once thought. Both males and females will go for extra-pair sex. Amazingly, only a very few species are truly monogamous.

So, everything is not what it often seems, especially when it comes to the sexual games that animals play.

We should not regard coyness as the only natural female sex role just as we should not expect that it is always the natural male sex role to mindlessly accept any mating partner. Nature favours a broader range of sex roles.

Said Dr Bro-Jorgensen.

Posted by Jonathan as Sociobiology at 10:41 PM GMT

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We showed celebrities without make-up a while back, now just for good measure, here’s a couple of pictures of Kumari Fulbright (25), a former Beauty queen, Calendar pinup-girl and University of Arizona law student; accused of kidnapping, robbing and assaulting an ex-boyfriend.

So, now you see beauty is only temporary, and girls aren’t always sugar and spice (especially if they’re toting a HK51 machine gun).

Posted by Jonathan as Miscellaneous at 7:34 PM GMT

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WebMD has an interesting and informative article about why men lose interest in sex, and how to rekindle desire.

They suggest that this problem occurs incrementally, and that the causes are complex with no quick fix, since the origin could be physical, medical, psychological or social.

Importantly, they point out that loss of libido is not the same as erectile dysfunction or impotence, although when you experience one, you are quite likely to start experiencing the other shortly afterwards.

The article finishes with eight excellent tips, which I’ve summarised here, since they seem like they could be very useful to anyone with this sort of issue:

1. Get physical and Boost Libido

“When you have no desire you feel frozen. Juice is not flowing – so movement is important, figuratively as well as literally, it gets people unstuck.” Take up a sport, go walking, with or without your partner. If you already walk or run or work out, try challenging yourself just a little bit further, so you feel a sense of accomplishment and vitality. That physical confidence will carry over into sexual confidence.

2. Keep Expectations Real

It may take the pressure off performance anxiety to bear in mind that not every sexual encounter has to be perfect. Probably only about 40% to 50% of sexual events can be mutually satisfying. If you laugh off moments when things don’t work right, your partner will be more likely to want to experiment the next time around, since it takes some pressure and guilt off of her, too.

3. Use Imagination to Fight Loss of Libido

Yes, exploring your fantasies is now regarded by marriage therapists as a good thing. If you want your partner to share in the joy, you may want to both explore further some of the newer erotic literature and films that include female fantasies as well as male. After you’ve shared yours, ask your partner about her fantasies. If she says she doesn’t have any, don’t stop there. Instead, ask her to name just one thing she has ever wished a man would do to give her pleasure. (That’s a fantasy, but she may not call it that.)

4. Build Anticipation to Combat Loss of Libido

Sure, the idea of sex being utterly spontaneous — no planning, just the heat of the moment — sounds great. But for anyone with jobs, family, and real lives, there just may not be enough hours in the day to wait for the inclination to arise. Instead, turn planning into an opportunity to build anticipation, the way you look forward to going to a basketball game. Take pleasure in the details – get your partner a little gift, put on your favourite music from college days, turn off the phones and hire a babysitter to take the kids out to a long movie so there will be no interruptions.

5. Focus on the Whole Body to Boost Libido

For men, sexuality tends to be focused disproportionately on the genitals. Focusing on the other erogenous zones can ease performance pressure – and add new pleasure. Where sexual satisfaction is concerned, the shortest distance between two points – from arousal to orgasm — is not necessarily a straight line to the genitals. Take detours along the whole body, for yourself and your partner. Be pleasure oriented, not goal oriented. Tease and touch and take your time.

6. Talk about What You Want to Increase Libido

Talking is hard in the best of times, but even harder if you have been avoiding sex together and tension is high. So if you can’t talk, get one of the dozens of excellent sex books out there and point to a chapter. Cosy up and read it together. Look at the pictures, laugh – and let your partner know you’re open to making things better between you.

7. Go Out With Friends Together

Desire feeds on newness. When you go out to a dinner party with other people, you get the chance to see your partner in a fresh light. You remember how interesting and exciting she is – and she gets to see you shine as well. You remember why you were attracted to each other in the first place.

8. Specialists Can Help Combat Loss of Libido

When you have an electrical problem, you call an electrician, right? Sex and marital specialists can be just as helpful when it comes to loss of libido, so get over your resistance to asking for directions, and call one.

Check with your doctor or urologist to rule out any medical conditions that may be playing a part. If you are taking medication, such as an antidepressant, that may be causing loss of libido, discuss alternatives with your doctor.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociology at 11:25 AM GMT

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