The Champs of Sex

Here come the results for the 2007-2008 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey. It was made on a pool of 26,000 people from 26 countries around the world, and the results may be surprising or not.

The list is topped by the Greeks, 87% of them having sex at least once a week, followed by the Brazilians, with 82%. Third on the list, with 80%, are the Russians. 60% of the Australians have sex weekly.

Only 55% of the British have sex at least once a week; the number is 53% for Americans and Nigerians, and 34% (!) for the Japanese. Read More »

More Alcohol, More than 10 Sex Partners

Alcohol is considered by many a sexual stimulant and aphrodisiac. Alcohol “loosens up” a bit, removing inhibitions and making the inter-personal contact a lot easier. Alcohol gives people more (sometimes significantly more) guts to do what they desire, also being less aware of consequences. Frequent bingers engaged in unplanned sexual activity in 41% of the cases compared to just 8% in occasional drinkers and they had unprotected sex in 22% of the cases compared to 4%, as revealed by American studies.

Now a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed a direct connection between clinical diagnosis of alcohol dependence in young adults and increased number of sex partners in its research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Read More »

A Stable Family and Low Body Weight Mean Later Puberty Onset for Girls

You may say that, in a stable family, children are less exposed to sex imagery and these more protected girls are less prone to early sex. But a new research, published in “Child Development”, shows they really turn later from little girls into little women. The research team at the University of Arizona and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, shows that girls growing up with supportive family experience have a delayed puberty onset.

Early puberty has been connected by various researches to mood disorders, substance abuse, adolescent pregnancy and increased risk of reproductive system cancers. Knowing these risks means early intervention and improved prevention strategies. Read More »

Too Much Sugar Kills Your Sex Life

Could you imagine your life without pumping every day countless amounts of sugar in your body? If not, you should at least know that it can affect your sexuality: high levels of fructose and glucose entering your blood can deactivate the gene controlling the amounts of sex hormones in both men and women, as revealed by a Canadian research published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The research made on mice and human cell cultures warns that we should replace simple sugars (like table sugar, glucose and fructose) with complex ones, like starches. Table sugar is a dimer made of glucose and fructose (and as glucose and fructose it enters the blood), while fructose abounds in sweetened beverages, syrups, and many other products. In North America, the annual average intake per person is of 33 kg (74 pounds) of table sugar and 20 kg (45 pounds) of fructose corn syrup. Read More »

Why Are Women More Prone to Addictions?

We know that testosterone makes men aggressive and muscular, while female hormones turn women into protecting “mothers” but also more vulnerable to addictions. But a new Yale research shows that it’s not all about hormones; genes too are involved in shaping the sex-related behavior and the females’ proneness to addiction could be linked to genes located in the sex chromosomes.

“This is the first time that any behavior has been associated specifically with sex chromosomes independent of gonadal hormones,” the lead author Jennifer Quinn of Yale University told AFP.

Female mammals (including women) are known for long to be more likely than males to get habit-forming behavior, including addiction. Sex-specific hormones, secreted by gonads, explain just partially the difference. Read More »

Human Brain and Sex

No matter to which culture human beings belong, they tend to react similarly to many things. Most people hate spiders and snakes, and consider some other beings sexy, feminine or masculine, and totally dislike certain smells. All these are an inheritance we got from our remote past.

Everything that’s ‘rotten’ disgusts us because we have learned to generate negative reactions to everything that would be harmful for our own survival. Rotten food can cause diseases, and by giving us nausea, we diminish the risks. But for a cockroach, the rottenness is attractive, as these insects eat rotten stuff. The repulsive smell does not belong to the molecules per se, but it is generated in our brain.

Another instinct inherited from our ancestors seems to be our ability to feel by smell the compatible partners. Experiments proved that females prefer men with a genetic pool as differently as possible from their own, thus they are attracted by these men. Read More »