Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

Super Marital Sex Rule: The strongest marriages, the super se marriages, will always be the most challenged marriages, because the spouses will develop characteristics that attract interest froi others. This outside interest challenges the super marriage to continued development and enhancement. The super marriage dot not compete with outside temptations, but provides a growing place for both growing partners.

She doesn’t have a thing to worry about. She is married to such a dip that she will never get rid of him. Nobody in her right mind would want him. Now, Jerry, that’s another matter. He is everybody’s dream. I don’t trust my best friend. They’d take him in a minute.

WIFE

If you are married to an insensitive, mean, abusive, arrogant, unreasonable, unromantic fool, relax. At least you are not in competition with anyone for your spouse. On the other hand, if you are married to a caring, kind, responsive, warm, dedicated spouse look around; there may be somebody out there moving in on him or her. One of the saddest paradoxes among the thousand couple was the fact that the persons you would assume to be the best of all spouses sometimes became involved outside the marriage. If no actually interacting sexually, they were at least flirting with the possibility.

Recent reports indicate that increasing numbers of single women are actively seeking relationships with married men. They have tired of the game of courtship, feeling that “the best are gone b now.” They refuse what they see as leftovers, and have compromised by sharing a man with another woman.

It follows that the new professional woman may find single ma who want to share her with her husband. Not only a good man, bit a good woman is hard to find, and when they are found, everyone is interested. This problem puts an additional burden on an ahead) stressed American marriage.

Until American marriage learns that familiarity can breed a sexual interest beyond that possible with new partners, it will continue to be threatened instead of enhanced by our new and less restricted gender interactions. Good partners should stimulate, not pressure good marriages.

*20\97\8*

James Parkinson, a general practitioner in London, described the condition which bears his name in 1817.

Paralysis agitans or Parkinson’s disease is a common disorder and may affect one person in 100 over the age of 60. It is equally common in men and women.

There are a number of factors which have been identified in causing what we call Parkinsonism, but most cases of Parkinson’s disease arise from causes we can’t yet determine.

The first symptom is usually tremor of one hand then clumsiness of fine finger movements, such as required when doing up buttons.

The tremor of the hands becomes more marked if the person is agitated or when he moves his hand to carry out a particular task. The tremor disappears during sleep.

There is no cure for this disorder but control is possible in most cases. A variety of drugs have been used over the years, but the most effective is levodopa. This seems to replace a chemical activator of brain tissue which may be lacking in Parkinson’s disease.

This drug is often combined with others. Amantadine, a drug introduced to prevent viral infections, particularly influenza, was found to be of benefit in relieving the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and can be used alone or in combination.

*528/71/1*

Perhaps the most common cause is simply bad habits.

If the urge to empty the bowel is ignored because it is inconvenient, the stimulus may not come back. The large bowel acts as a reservoir, holding the contents until it is convenient to be emptied.

Water is also absorbed. The contents of the small bowel are fluid, and the motion becomes firmer as water is absorbed in its passage through the large bowel or colon. If there is ‘hurry up’ and the passage is too rapid, the motion will be fluid. This is what happens in diarrhoea.

If the passage is slowed, too much water is absorbed and the motion becomes hard and difficult to pass. This is constipation.

Repeated constipation may lead to the taking of laxatives which can be habit-forming.

Laxatives may be taken by mouth or inserted into the rectum. The simplest work by lubrication and liquid paraffin is the most common of these. Long term use may lead to leakage from the anus and soiling of the underwear. It interferes with the absorption of fat and the fat soluble vitamins. Paraffin taken at night may trickle down the windpipe and slowly build up in the lung, causing a type of pneumonia.

*272/71/1*

Usually the parents themselves are under stress. The child may cry a lot, be fussy with food or often ill. The parents may be under stress for financial reasons, or may be a single parent.

Poverty, unemployment, isolation and inadequate housing may all cause stress which can show itself in abuse of children. The parents may have little understanding of child care and may see the child’s frequent waking or crying as a deliberate show of misbehavior.

Many of these parents have experienced problems in their own childhood. If they themselves have been mistreated during infancy and childhood, this may be seen by them as “normal” parent behavior.

Doctors and nurses are usually th^f irst people to be aware that child abuse may be occuring. Children are often brought to the doctor or hospital with unexplained injuries or the explanation does not tally with the injuries. Recognising that a problem exists and then seeking to refer the parents for counselling is better than seeking to punish the parent for their “crime”.

Sexual abuse of children is far commoner than we have believed. And that abuse is more likely to take place inside a family than outside.

The discovery of incest usually has led to conviction, and in the case where the father is the offender, to a jail sentence. This usually disrupts the family and may lead to pressures on the sexually abused child by the mother and family members due to the social stigma or financial problems which the family then suffers.

The United States seems to have a better policy in seeking to offer counselling to the offender, the abused child and the other family members in an attempt to preserve the unity of the family and the mental and physical health of its members. Punishing the offender often punishes the family as well.

*21/71/1*

The normal processes of growth and differentiation are involved both in creating new human beings and in repair and renewal. Every human being develops from the union of just two specialised cells—the sperm and the egg. An embryo which is only a few days old consists of a small number of very similar looking cells. Within only a few months, these multiply, differentiate and organise themselves into a complex human being with all its different parts and functions.

Throughout life, orderly, controlled growth and differentiation continues, keeping our bodies in normal working order. The baby grows to an adult. New cells replace old, worn out ones. Injuries are repaired—after an injury cells multiply, differentiate and arrange themselves so as to reproduce the original structure as accurately as possible, hor example, it you break your leg, cells which can develop into bone multiply to fill the break, mature and start to form strong bone. Damaged muscle cells, fat cells, skin cells etc are also replaced and arrange themselves so as to restore the original shape and strength of your leg as accurately as possible.

Clearly, the most incredibly complex and delicate mechanisms must exist in our body to control the normal processes of growth and differentiation. What happens if these mechanisms go haywire?

*29/40/1*

Depending on what newspapers and magazines you read, you might have seen headlines like those above. Certain parts of the press seem obsessed with the idea that taking HRT is about nothing more than having the looks and sexuality of a TV star. Every year, dozens of interviews are conducted with television and screen personalities who are now in their fifties and sixties ‘and look twenty years younger’.

In some ways, this can be a thoroughly good thing. For too many centuries, the older woman has been neglected, and treated as almost invisible. As far as The Real World is concerned, she just doesn’t exist. Newspapers and magazines seldom feature older women in their own right; if they are mentioned at all it is usually as the wife or mother of a man who is making the news. Books end when the beautiful heroine marries the hero; sometimes the story extends to the years of bringing up children, but how many novels can you think of in which the principal character is a woman of 50 or 60? It has been said that ‘Sensitive treatment of the ageing woman … is not a dominant theme in Anglo-American literature.’ Too true! Once you are past child-bearing years it is almost as if you move, in one swift step, to being an unimportant old crone.

Now all this is changing, and HRT can take some of the credit. Suddenly many older women look and feel younger. They don’t mind giving their age, because it provokes the response, ‘Goodness, are you really? You don’t look a day over 45,’ and that makes them feel good. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Being more energetic, more confident and still looking youngish, they are visible once more, and that has got to be a good thing. Good for the individual woman and her own self-esteem, and good for womankind in general.

However, this book will not be plugging hormone replacement as an elixir for eternal youth. You will not read in these pages that you, too, can be a sex-kitten forever. If your husband is glancing sideways at younger women, your elderly parents are driving you mad, and your daughter looks how you would like to look, HRT will not magically put your world to rights. It may help mend a breaking marriage, or increase your sex drive, or make you feel 10 years younger, or it may not do any of these things. But it will make you feel better able to cope with what the world is throwing at you, and give you a better feeling about yourself.

One of the problems of the ‘sex kitten’ image is that it actually puts many women off taking HRT. Or they become reluctant to tell their friends they are on it in case they get comments like, ‘Oh, is your husband going off with someone else?’, as if the only reason a woman takes HRT is to keep her husband in her bed. And many doctors wonder if a woman is enquiring about taking it just so that she can remain ‘youthful’. Yes, there are reasons why it can help you maintain a satisfying sex life for many years but, as you will have read so far, it has many other advantages, too, and to concentrate on the Eternal Youth image is to trivialise HRT and to diminish women.

‘After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?’ Sarah (wife of Abraham) in Genesis 18:12.

“I finally plucked up courage to see my doctor. He seemed surprised that a woman of my age (I’m 53 and happily married) should be reluctant to stop having sexual intercourse. He made me feel a freak, the female equivalent of a Dirty Old Man”.

The menopause is thought of by many (especially by men and by younger women) as ‘the beginning of the end’, a time of decline and degeneration, especially sexually. But it needn’t be like that. The end of fertility doesn’t mean the end of sexuality, let alone the end of femininity. With 30 years or so left, that’s just as well! The woman reaching the menopause now is unlikely to view this time as the end of her sexual years, and nor should her doctor, nor society in general. If she has sexual difficulties, they should not be pushed aside.

Many men and women are reluctant to talk to their GPs about sexual problems, as he is quite likely to dismiss it as an unimportant matter in older people. The average young doctor might be quite surprised that a couple in their sixties should still be having an enjoyable sex life, and wanting to continue for many more years. Even couples in their fifties are often considered ‘over the hill as far as all that sort of thing is concerned’.

As you have read at various points in this book, one of the symptoms of the menopause is vaginal dryness. Reduced levels of oestrogen diminish the sexual response and cause the cervix to secrete less mucus, so the vagina becomes dry, intercourse is more painful, and you get less pleasure from it.

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Information about recovery after hysterectomy is sometimes neglected in discussions between women and their doctors. Compared with the decision to have the operation and the demands of surgery, recovery may seem straightforward. Often, however, this does not prove to be the case.

The process of recovery from hysterectomy is extremely variable as illustrated by the experiences of Rosa and Denise, neither of whom had any postoperative complications. The day after her hysterectomy Rosa helped make beds in the hospital ward and, five days later, she was ready to leave. Within a few days she was doing all the housework and three weeks after surgery she was swimming and cycling. In contrast Denise was unable to leave her bed for fourteen days after her hysterectomy. She convalesced slowly at home and finally returned to work thirteen weeks after surgery. The variation in the physical recovery of Rosa and Denise demonstrates why it is difficult for a surgeon to provide a fixed schedule for post-operative recovery.

To do so might put the brakes on the recovery of some women and unduly tax the capabilities of others.

Women recover from hysterectomy at different rates for many reasons. These include the nature and severity of the problem for which the operation was carried out, the type of operation performed and the extent to which it interfered with various organs of the body, the skill of the surgeon, the general physical and psychological health of the woman pre-operatively and the effect of anaesthetic agents on her.

*53\198\4*

Every morning when we wake up and open our eyes we see the sun shining through the window. The light/dark cycle appears to be very important in the resetting of our circadian rhythm. When we open our eyes in the morning, the light stimulates the light-sensitive part of our eyes, the retina. The retinae from both eyes convey the light message along the optic nerves to a central point called the optic chiasma, which is in the middle of the brain stem adjacent to the hypothalamus. Half of this light message crosses the optic chiasma and is relayed to the rear part of the cerebral cortex. Scientists now believe that part of the light message is also relayed to a group of nerve cells in the hypothalamus adjacent to the optic chiasma. This area is called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus and is the site of master control of the circadian rhythm. In animals destruction of the SCN abolishes the circadian rhythm.

It is thought that the SCN possesses an endogenous oscillating mechanism which in free running conditions in man is 25 hours. The SCN is the master oscillator, and it is believed that there are other suboscillators which control hormone rhythm, body temperature rhythm, etc. Hence in cases of jet lag or shift work, the phase maps of the different suboscillators are thrown out of phase with each other. By resetting the master oscillator, the SCN, the circadian rhythm, and the suboscillators are put back into place.

Chronobiologists have recently studied the SCN in detail, both in animals and in man. They have found that if a strong light message is received in the SCN at an hour different to normal sunrise, the SCN is reset into a new circadian rhythm after a few days. Chronobiologists call the light signal the Zeitgeber, synchronizer, or time giver, and the resetting process the entrainment.

The Zeitgeber for crabs that are flown from one coast to the other in the USA is the light/dark cycle of the new location. The Zeitgeber for Dr Charles Czeisler to entrain his jet lag patient to a new circadian rhythm is artificial bright light Dr Thomas Wehr of the National Institute of Mental Health in the USA has been using light treatment and sleep deprivation to treat certain kinds of depressive illness. It is believed that, by adjusting the master oscillator, its suboscillator that modulates mood and depression will also be adjusted and lead to recovery from the depressive illness.

At present, in Australia and New Zealand, a great deal of research is being conducted on the chemistry of the biological clock. Melatonin, a chemical secreted from the pineal gland situated at the base of the brain, has been shown to be closely related to the circadian rhythm. During the night, the SCN relays impulses to the pineal gland and melatonin is secreted into the blood. In the day, sunlight has an inhibitory effect on the SCN, and this stops the pineal gland from releasing melatonin. The concentration of melatonin in the blood hence becomes a good marker of the circadian rhythm.

Melatonin comes from the word melanin, which means skin pigment. In some lower animals, skin colour changes according to the amount of sunlight. At night, there is more melatonin and this contracts the melanophores of the skin, making the skin pale in colour, whereas in the day, with plenty of sunlight, the skin becomes darker. This skin colour change is controlled by the light/dark – , of the circadian rhythm through melatonin.

However, in man, the exact role of melatonin is stillunknown. It has been suggested that there is a melatonin stimulates the SCN to secrete even more melatonin and a rise in melatonin concentration speeds up the resetting of the biological clock. A group of volunteers were asked to travel from New Zealand to London and back, and were given melatonin capsules to take for a few nights on arrival at their new destination. It appears that this increase in the concentration of melatonin at night speeded up the resetting of their biological clock to the new local time. They felt more alert in the day and their sleep pattern was reset much sooner than if they had not taken melatonin capsules. A new company, called Circadian Technologies, has recently been set up in Melbourne. It plans to produce melatonin capsules on a commercial scale. Of course, this has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the USA. Perhaps, one day, overseas travellers will regularly be taking melatonin capsules to minimise their jet lag. Or there may be coin-operated bright light machines available at all major airports to entrain the travellers’ biological clock to the new local time.

*51\174\4*

Ideas can be accepted into the mind by two distinct mechanisms. We can scrutinize an idea that is offered to us, and examine it logically and critically. If we find it a good idea we accept it by this intellectual process of evaluation. On the other hand, many ideas are accepted into the mind quite uncritically and without any intellectual evaluation. We see this most commonly in children and in adults who are very relaxed, fatigued, or alcoholic. In this process the acceptance of the idea depends much more on our feeling toward the person who offers the idea than on the merits of the idea itself. The process by which ideas are accepted uncritically in this way is technically known as suggestion. It is important to remember that the uncritical acceptance of ideas in this fashion does not result from the evaluing mechanism working in less degree, but results from the activity of suggestion, which is quite a different mechanism of the mind. However, if the alert critical faculties of the intellect come into play, they always put a stop to suggestion, and the idea is subjected to the intellectual process of evaluation.

If we consider this matter from the biological point of view, we see that the critical method of accepting ideas is a recent evolutionary development, whereas the uncritical method based on our feeling for the other person is a biologically primitive process which has been practically superseded by this more recent development of our ability to evaluate things critically.

The important fact from our point of view is that this primitive process of suggestion functions very much more effectively when we have regressed a little toward a more primitive mode of mental functioning. This of course is exactly what we do in the regression of our mental exercises. So while we are regressed like this, we can use the process of suggestion to influence the working of our mind in a way that would be quite impossible if we were in our normal alert waking state.

In the matter of anxiety and general nervous tension our mind is quite impervious to the logical reasoned approach of the intellect, but on the other hand it is quite amenable to the process of suggestion when in this relaxed and regressed condition. In our exercises we ourselves present the ideas to our mind, so in this case the process is known as autosuggestion.

*77\57\2*

My first question to Dr. Essen concerned the meaning of the term biological medicine. The concept of biological medicine is very exactly defined by Dr. Essen in Vidi Nova, a special publication for biological medicine issued by him, which deals with the practical results of applied biological methods. As the foremost representative of biological medicine in Sweden and the leading spirit behind the new and growing movement of progressive doctors following the principles of biological medicine in their practice, Dr. Essen was indeed a man well qualified to answer my question: “What is biological medicine?”

“May I, instead of using dry, scientific definitions, illuminate this with a concrete example,” said Dr. Essen. “A doctor is treating a case of infectious disease by the conventional methods. The determining factor for a successful result of this kind of treatment is to identify the kind of bacteria considered responsible for the infection in question. When the intruder is identified, the patient is given a specific chemical or antibiotic drug, which, as a rule, accomplishes the immediate results: the bacteria are destroyed and the patient is free from symptoms.

“After a while, it may happen that the same patient will turn up with a new infection. The diagnosis shows that either it is a question of the same kind of bacteria, which this time, however, is already immune to the specific drug, or there are new bacteria involved. Accordingly, new and more potent drugs are prescribed, which bring about immediate results, as far as the fighting bacteria is concerned. But in spite of the “success” of the treatment, the patient’s resistance to infection seems to progressively weaken and various complications set in. Now, perhaps, such potent drugs as cortisone—pain-killer and symptom-remover—and other highly toxic synthetic drugs enter the picture. The body, already weakened by the disease, must now, in addition, cope with the toxic and damaging side effects of the poisonous drugs.

Then, one day, we stand by the deathbed surprised and shocked. The patient had received all the correct treatments in accordance with medical science’s conventional practices and regulations. The laboratory tests proved that we made no errors! Bacteria samples showed that the bacteria, which our treatment was aimed at, were ‘successfully’ eradicated. As far as the direct cause of the symptoms was concerned (the bacteria) our treatment was a complete success. The only problem was the patient died! We succeeded in killing the bacteria, but we failed to save the host organism, where our war on bacteria was so successful It also could be said that the treatment was successful, but unfortunately, as a result of the treatment and resultant complications, the patient died. Or, The operation was successful but the patient didn’t survive.’

“Now, actually, this kind of a result is not so surprising, is it?” continued Dr. Essen. “After all, what did we treat? Our treatment was directed at micro-organisms which we considered pathogenic or disease-causing. In the meantime, the biological environment for this micro-organism, the host organism, the living, delicate, sensitive, and easily damaged human body, has actually been completely neglected. The man hardly comes into the picture at all. What we actually treat today are diseases, not the diseased people. The sick body, however, is subject to very different biological laws than those which could be applied in primitive germ war with chemical and antibiotic germ-killers.

“A parallel to this can be seen in today’s damage and destruction of life and natural environments as a result of man’s indiscriminate use of insecticides and other poisonous chemicals. Is there any intelligent human being who is so naive as to assume that these poisons will be less devastating to the human body, with its endlessly more intricate and delicate living mechanism? The biological laws of life are quite different from the laws which regulate chemical reactions observed in laboratory tubes. When we fail to see the difference between the two, catastrophic conditions will be the result, and we have to accept the consequences of our unwise actions.”

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