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How long does sex normally last?
If you’re a non-scientist, you might have once asked yourself, propped against the bedhead after disappointingly quick intercourse, how long does sex “normally” last?
A scientist, though, would phrase the same question in an almost comically obscure way: What is the mean intravaginal ejaculation latency time?
I know there’s a lot more to sex than putting the penis into the vagina and ejaculating, but the rest is not always easy to define (kissing? Rubbing? or Grinding?). To keep things simple and specific, we’ll just focus on the time to ejaculate.
Measuring an average time to ejaculation is not a straightforward matter. What about just asking people how long they take, you say? Well, there are two main problems with this. One is that people are likely to be biased upwards in their time estimates because it’s socially desirable to say you go long into the night.
The other problem is that people don’t necessarily know how long they go for. Sex isn’t something people normally do while monitoring the bedside clock, and unassisted time estimation may be difficult during a transportative session of love-making.
What does the research say?
The best study we have estimating the average time to ejaculation in the general population involved 500 couples from around the world timing themselves having sex over a four-week period – using a stopwatch.
That is as practically awkward as it sounds: participants pressed “start” at penile penetration and “stop” at ejaculation. You may note this could affect the mood somewhat, and might not exactly reflect the natural flow of things. But – science is rarely perfect, and this is the best we’ve got.
So what did the researchers find? The most striking result is that there was a huge amount of variation. The average time for each couple (that is, averaged across all the times they had sex) ranged from 33 seconds to 44 minutes. That’s an 80-fold difference.
So it’s clear there’s no one “normal” amount of time to have sex. The average (median, technically) across all couples, though, was 5.4 minutes. This means that if you line up the 500 couples from shortest sex to longest sex, the middle couple goes for an average of 5.4 minutes each time they do it.
There were some interesting secondary results, too. For example, condom use didn’t seem to affect the time, and neither did men’s being circumcised or not, which challenges some conventional wisdom regarding penile sensitivity and its relationship to staying power in the sack.
It didn’t much matter which country the couples came from either – unless they came from Turkey, in which case their sex tended to be significantly shorter (3.7 minutes) than couples from other countries (Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Another surprising finding was that the older the couple, the shorter the sex, contrary to the prevailing wisdom (probably peddled by older men).
Why do we have sex for so long?
As an evolutionary researcher, all this talk about how long sex lasts makes me wonder: Why does it last any time at all? All sex really needs to achieve, it seems, is to put sperm into the vagina. Why all the thrusting and bumping? Instead of sliding the penis in and out hundreds of times per sexual session, why not just put it in once, ejaculate, and then have a lemonade and get on with the rest of the day?
Before you say, Because it’s fun to go in and out! remember evolution doesn’t care about fun per se – it generally only “designs” things to be enjoyable if they helped our ancestors pass on their genes to future generations. For example, even though we like eating food, we don’t chew each mouthful of it for five minutes just to make the enjoyment last longer. That would be inefficient, and so we’ve evolved to find it gross.
Why we last so long is a pretty complicated question with no clear answer, but a clue may be in the way the penis is shaped. In 2003, researchers showed – using artificial vaginas, artificial penises, and artificial sperm (corn syrup) – that the ridge around the head of the penis actually scoops out pre-existing syrup from the vagina.
What this suggests is that men’s repeated thrusting might function to displace other men’s semen before ejaculating, ensuring their own swimmers have a better chance of reaching the egg first. Incidentally, this could explain why it becomes painful for a man to continue thrusting after ejaculating since that would risk scooping out his own semen as well.
So what to do with this information? My advice would be to try not to think about it during the throes of passion.
https://theconversation.com/how-long-does-sex-normally-last-56432
Did you know eating Curd can improve sex drive?
Curd is a staple in most Indian households so much so that it is impossible to imagine a delicious meal without this healthy milk-based food. There’s no denying that Curd is the most healthy byproduct of milk, which is packed with the goodness of probiotics, vitamins, and minerals. You must have come across a thousand good things about Curd, but did you know enjoying a bowl of Curd/Yoghurt daily can also boost your sex drive? Let’s find out more about it!
02/4Why is Curd linked to libido?
Curd is a rich source of Lactobacillus bacteria, which is also known as good bacteria making it a good option for people suffering from lactose intolerance. Apart from that, Curd is not only a libido booster, but also helps in boosting immunity, improves metabolism, gut health and the presence of minerals like calcium helps in improving bone health and reducing weight. However, what most people are unaware of is that eating Curd coupled with a healthy balanced diet and minimum exercise can enhance libido, naturally.
Is Curd actually a libido enhancer?
According to health experts and researchers, a study was conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wherein 40 male and 40 female mice were fed Vanilla Yoghurt daily in a given quantity. The result left researchers surprised as these mice developed testicles that were 15% heavier as compared to the mice that ate only junk food. Apart from that, the female mice in the Yogurt group had larger litters. Researchers attributed this development to the probiotic compounds in Curd, which resulted in improved digestion and better health conditions, and heightened sex drive in mice.
To conclude
There were several tests and studies that established that consuming curd daily can help in improving fertility and vitality in both men and women. However, when it comes to boosting libido in men, adding curd to the diet also helps in improving the quality of sperm. It was found that feeding vanilla curd helped significantly improve the mood. The observation of mice is always linked to humans, it was established that eating a single serving of curd/yogurt daily can help boost sex drive.
Source:- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/food-news/did-you-know-eating-curd-can-improve-sex-drive/photostory/92063781.cms?picid=92063998
Food as Medicine
ASN Journals Explore the New Forefront of Medical Care
The world is facing a global epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases. In fact, according to a 2020 article published in The BMJ, “one of every five deaths across the globe is attributable to suboptimal diet, more than any other risk factor including tobacco.” In response, “there is increased experimentation with the use of ‘food is medicine’ interventions to prevent, manage, and treat illness.”
Food as medicine, also known as “food is medicine,” sits at the crossroads of nutrition and healthcare. It may take many forms, including medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, and produce prescription programs. ASN Journals support the growing interest in food as medicine, publishing original research articles and reviews that help dietitians, clinicians, and other healthcare providers determine which types of food as medical interventions work, who benefits the most, and how to best implement them.
Nutrition education class participants demonstrated significant improvements in diet and health literacy.
Evidence suggests food as medicine can work. Published in Current Developments in Nutrition, “A ‘Food as Medicine’ Program and Its Effects on Healthy Eating and Cooking Confidence” evaluated a community-based pilot study that measured the effectiveness of food as medicine program designed to improve chronic disease risk factors and outcomes among African Americans living in Washington, DC. Fifty-four participants attended five nutritionist-led, culturally-tailored, nutrition education classes over a period of three months that focused on improving diet and health literacy. Upon completion of the program, ASN member DeAnna Nara et al. concluded that participants “demonstrated significant improvements in all outcome measures of interest.” Participants, for example, made better dietary choices, consumed healthier dietary patterns, and developed new cooking skills. In addition, participants started cooking more meals at home.
Produce prescription programs increase fruit and vegetable consumption and reduce BMI and glycated hemoglobin.
Saiuj Bhat et al. reviewed 13 interventional studies that investigated the effect of healthy food prescriptions on diet quality and cardiometabolic risk factors. These healthy food prescriptions typically provided either financial subsidies or direct provisions for fruits and vegetables as a treatment for patients who were experiencing food insecurity as well as cardiometabolic disease. The review, “Healthy Food Prescription Programs and Their Impact on Dietary Behavior and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” published in Advances in Nutrition, found that produce prescription programs “increase fruit and vegetable consumption and reduce BMI and glycated hemoglobin, without significant identified effects on other cardiometabolic risk factors.” The authors did add that their findings should be interpreted with caution “in light of considerable heterogeneity, methodological limitations of the included studies, and moderate to very low certainty of evidence.” They have therefore called for “well-designed, large, randomized controlled trials in various settings to further establish the efficacy of healthy food prescription programs on diet quality and cardiometabolic health.”
Future “food as medicine” studies will need rigorous study designs and validated data collection tools.
A review published in The Journal of Nutrition, “A Systematic Scoping Review of How Healthcare Organizations Are Facilitating Access to Fruits and Vegetables in Their Patient Populations,” noted significant interest among healthcare organizations to offer programs such as food prescription initiatives to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables for their patient populations “as evidenced by the high proportion of studies on this topic since 2018.” Overall, ASN member Susan Veldheer et al. found food as medicine programs had “promise,” but they cautioned that “it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the outcomes of these studies due to the methodological issues identified.” For example, the authors noted a lack of control groups, selection bias, and incomplete reporting. “Future studies will need rigorous study designs and validated data collection tools, particularly related to dietary intake, to better determine the effect of these interventions on health-related outcomes.”
Therapeutic meals improved the probability that study participants had diets that were intermediate DASH accordant.
Jennifer L. Troyer et al. conducted a one-year randomized controlled trial among 298 persons with hyperlipidemia or hypertension, in which 50% of participants received seven therapeutic meals per week for twelve months. The meals were designed around Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) principles, which studies have shown can have positive effects on health outcomes. The results of the study, “The Effect of Home-Delivered Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Meals on the Diets of Older Adults with Cardiovascular Disease,” published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that “therapeutic meals improved the probability that the older adults in the study had diets that were intermediate DASH accordant.”
If you are conducting research that addresses food as medicine, please consider publishing your original research study or review with ASN Journals. We will ensure that your important findings are quickly disseminated throughout the world, helping researchers and clinicians successfully develop and implement new food as medicine programs to improve human health and well-being.
Source:-https://nutrition.org/food-as-medicine/
Herbal medicines that actually work
Medicines have been extracted from plants for thousands of years and new ones are still being discovered. Here are several plant extracts with robust medical benefits.
Humans have been extracting the healing properties of plants for thousands of years. Although herbal remedies are often discounted as unscientific, more than one-third of modern drugs are derived either directly or indirectly from natural products, such as plants, microorganisms, and animals.
Now, researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in the US state of California have found that a chemical extracted from the bark of the Galbulimima belgraveana tree has psychotropic effects that could help treat depression and anxiety.
The tree is found only in remote rainforests of Papua New Guinea and northern Australia and has long been used by indigenous people as a healing remedy against pain and fever.
“This goes to show that Western medicine hasn’t cornered the market on new therapeutics; there are traditional medicines out there still waiting to be studied,” senior author Ryan Shenvi, PhD, a professor of chemistry at Scripps Research, told reporters in mid-May.
Which other medical drugs are found in plants?
The most well-known example of a medical drug extracted from a plant species is opium, which has been used to treat pain for over 4,000 years. Opiates like morphine and codeine are extracted from the opium poppy and have a powerful effect on the central nervous system.
Afghan farmers collect raw opium in a poppy field
But which other ancient plant-based medicines have demonstrable medical benefits, and what is the science behind them?
Velvet beans treat Parkinson’s disease
The velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) has been used in ancient Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for over 3,000 years. Ancient texts tell us how healers used bean extracts to reduce tremors in patients to treat the condition we now consider Parkinson’s disease.
Studies now show that the velvet bean contains a compound called levodopa, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease today.
Levodopa helps to stop tremors by increasing dopamine signals in areas of the brain that control movement.
The modern history of levodopa began in the early 20th century when the compound was synthesized by the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk. Decades later, in the 1960s, scientists found that levodopa could be used as an effective treatment to stop tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The drug revolutionized the treatment of the disease and is still the gold standard for its treatment today.
Hawthorn could be a future treatment for cardiovascular disease
Clinical trials using current research standards have found that hawthorn (Crataegus spp) reduces blood pressure and may be useful to treat cardiovascular disease. Hawthorn berries contain compounds such as bioflavonoids and proanthocyanidins that appear to have significant antioxidant activity.
The medical properties of hawthorn were first noted by Greek physician Dioscorides in the 1st century and by Tang-Ben-Cao in ancient Chinese medicine in the 7th century.
Hawthorn extracts aren’t yet suitable for medical use in the wider public — studies are ongoing, and more rigorous research is needed to assess the long-term safety of using the extracts to treat diseases.
Hawthorn berries taste a little like small apples and their extracts could help treat heart or blood diseases
Pacific yew tree bark can fight cancer
Yew trees have a special place in medicine in European mythology. Most parts of the tree are very poisonous, causing associations with both death and immortality. The Third Witch in Macbeth mentions “slips of yew slivered in the moon’s eclipse” (Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1).
But it’s a species of yew tree in North America, the Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia), that possesses the most beneficial medical properties.
Scientists in the 1960s found that the tree’s bark contains compounds called taxels. One of these taxels, called Paclitaxel, has been developed into an effective cancer treatment drug. Paclitaxel can stop cancer cells from dividing, blocking further growth of the disease.
Pacific yew in the US state of Oregon
The wonder drug sourced from Willow bark
Willow bark is another traditional medicine with a long history. The bark was adopted 4,000 years ago in ancient Sumer and Egypt to treat pain and has been a staple of medicine ever since.
Willow bark contains a compound called salicin, which would later form the basis of the discovery of aspirin — the world’s most widely taken drug.
Aspirin has several different medical benefits, including pain relief, reduction of fever and prevention of stroke. Its first widespread use was during the 1918 flu pandemic to treat high temperatures.
source:-https://www.dw.com/en/herbal-medicines-that-actually-work/a-61865033