When Adam Zeldis was 16, Howard Stern changed his mind about his penis forever. On his show, Stern was talking about how circumcision changes sexual sensations for men, and Zeldis’s curiosity was piqued. He had been circumcised as a baby, and he hadn’t ever thought about whether it had reduced sexual sensation for him before. In fact, up to that point, he had no idea that there were even men who weren’t circumcised.

So Zeldis decided to do some research. And when he learnt what a circumcision procedure actually entailed – the surgical removal of the foreskin of the tip of the penis – he was outraged.

“I felt a loss for a sex life that I could never have,” Zeldis told Men’s Health. “Basically, if you’re circumcised you can never experience sex the way nature intended it.”

Today, Zeldis is a senior strategy advisor for Intact America, an activist organisation designed to educate people against circumcision, which it views as a medically unnecessary and cruel practice. Intact America isn’t the only organisation that harbours this view: In fact, there is an entire movement – “Intactivism” – devoted to propagating the idea that male circumcision is a cruel and barbaric practice.

But what are the cold, hard facts about circumcision? Are there actually health benefits, or is it a cruel, outdated practice that permanently reduces male sexual sensation? We asked doctors and sexuality experts to weigh in.

Does circumcision have health benefits?

For decades, circumcision has been something of a given in the United States. It was considered a standard procedure for baby boys, regardless of their cultural or religious background, with doctors citing its health and hygiene benefits. For this reason, approximately 75% of men in the United States are circumcised, according to the World Health Organization.

Read more: Sex tips: What to do when she’s on top

The potential health benefits aside, “parents who choose circumcision often do so based on religious beliefs, common myths about hygiene, or cultural or social reasons, such as the wish to have their child resemble his father,” says sex therapist Kimberly Jackson, LCSW.

Doctors also believed circumcision cut down on the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and urinary tract infections (UTIs), which, if left untreated, can lead to kidney infections.

“The cited health benefits included [a decreased risk of] STIs, especially HIV and HPV; penile cancer; paraphimosis (when foreskin gets trapped behind the glans, which can cut off blood supply to the tip of the penis) and balanitis, or infection of the glans,” says sexual health counsellor Aleece Fosnight, MSPAS, PA-C, CSC, CSE.

Are the benefits of circumcision legit?

To a degree, the consensus in the medical community is still that circumcision does slightly reduce the risks of certain UTIs and STIs. In 2012, the American Academy of Paediatrics issued a statement saying that notwithstanding the potential rare complications of circumcision, including bleeding, infection and (shudder) penile necrosis, “the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks”.

But over the years, emerging research has thrown some of the stated benefits of circumcision into question. For instance, while some studies of African men indicated that circumcision could reduce the risk of HIV transmission by as much as 60%, “the research design was inherently flawed – [they] only examined the health behaviours of heterosexual men, and the results cannot be generalised across cultures,” says Jackson.

Read more: If my partner is HIV positive, how can I protect myself?

That’s why more and more parents are choosing to forego the procedure. Circumcision is on something of a decline, with the number of newborns who are circumcised dropping from 84% in the 1960s to about 77% in 2010. Some doctors are also refusing to perform the procedure.

“I have not performed a circumcision since 1994,” says Dr Steven Dorfman, a paediatrician at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. “It is a cruel, unnecessary and… substandard practice which belongs in the history books, not in the hospital or the clinic.”

As to the question of whether circumcision is more hygienic than being uncut, it is true that guys who are uncut do have to contend with smegma, an odourless (and harmless) cheese-like substance underneath the foreskin. But washing underneath the foreskin daily and rinsing the head of the penis can easily remedy that issue.

Does being circumcised reduce sexual sensation?

For many guys, this is the million-dollar question: Does circumcision reduce penile sensitivity?

Some health experts claim that circumcision can reduce sexual sensation, as the procedure removes thousands of nerve endings in the penis. In fact, a 2007 study found that the glans of the uncircumcised penis was more sensitive to light touch than the glans of a circumcised penis.

Read more: Do you have low penis self-esteem?

“It is also thought that the extra skin adds more friction and stimulation to the clitoris during penetration (both get extra pleasure!), and causes increased sensation to the glans as well,” says Fosnight.

That said, “studies show that there is no significant change in sensation in adult men who undergo circumcision,” says Dr Alex Shteynshlyuger, director of urology at New York Urology Specialists. A 2016 study confirmed this, finding that men who were circumcised experienced the same level of sexual pleasure as men who were not.

Do people prefer uncircumcised penises?

Although the research on the health and sexual benefits of circumcision is mixed, some parents still would prefer to circumcise their kids for aesthetic reasons – i.e., because they don’t want their sons to feel weird next to the other kids in the locker room. And some guys still do think that their sexual partners prefer circumcised penises to uncircumcised ones.

But when it comes down to it, that’s probably not the case. While there are few surveys indicating what people’s preferences are, a lot of people really don’t care if their sexual partners are circumcised or not – especially as more and more parents choose not to circumcise their kids.

Read more: Your ultimate guide to lasting longer in bed

“I don’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter to me. Plus, I’m not everyone’s idea of ‘perfect’ down there, either,” says Maria*, 38. Karina*, 26, agrees: “I don’t care one way or the other so long as it’s clean and disease-free. Cut, uncut, whatever, it’s the guy that matters. Not how his penis looks.”

^{*Names changed to protect privacy}

^{This article was originally published on www.mh.co.za}

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People may rely on social media such as Facebook to showcase the highlights of their lives, like vacations. But new research suggests the language they use in posts might also help predict depression.

Using sophisticated software, researchers were able to scan social media posts and detect depression months before it was apparent on clinical screening tests.

“Social media has made it possible for people to share a little bit of their daily life with researchers,” said study author Andrew Schwartz, an assistant professor of computer science at Stony Brook University in New York.

“Basically, we used the language people wrote on a daily basis and related it to whether they had a diagnosis of depression,” he explained.

Looking at Facebook posts “was slightly more accurate than standard screening questions in finding depression,” Schwartz said.

So what types of language might reveal someone suffering from depression?

Using first-person pronouns was one of the patterns researchers saw. That means people used “I” or “me” frequently in their social media posts.

Schwartz said people eventually diagnosed with depression often talked about their feelings, physical aches and pains, and being alone.

But he cautioned against trying to diagnose your friends or family based on a couple of social media posts.

“A single post isn’t enough to see depression. We were looking at six months of posts before a diagnosis of depression, so I wouldn’t advocate that people try to judge their friends and family,” he said.

Every year, more than 6% of Americans experience depression, the study authors noted. But fewer than half receive treatment for the disorder. These high rates of underdiagnosis or undertreatment suggest that current ways of identifying depression could be improved.

The research team was led by Johannes Eichstaedt, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The investigators accessed the Facebook posts of nearly 700 people who had gone to the emergency department of an academic center, including 114 who had been diagnosed with depression. All consented to sharing their Facebook information and their health records.

The researchers reviewed more than half-a-million Facebook posts to build the depression-detecting software algorithm. They determined the most frequently used words and phrases to identify depression-associated language markers.

Using these language markers, the researchers were able to predict future depression as early as three months before it was documented in medical records.

“Social media gets a lot of negative attention, but there’s a flip side. It could be a very powerful tool for the overburdened mental health industry,” Schwartz said.

The researchers envision this could be a screening tool for clinicians to use to perhaps detect depression sooner. But Schwartz also said more study is needed.

Dr Alan Geller is a psychiatrist at Gracie Square Hospital in New York City who was not involved with the new study. He said, “Depression is a real problem and preventive treatment is better than having to rescue someone.

“The idea that you could capture someone’s risk on Facebook is engaging. Any sort of technology for mental health – especially because we don’t have tests like labs or imaging and have to rely on what people tell us – could help,” he added.

The study was published online October 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Let’s talk orgasms: They’re supposed to feel good, right? (Or, you know, meh…but that’s another story altogether.) What I’m getting at: They’re most definitely not supposed to hurt. Like, at all.

And yet, because the human body is full of mysteries, sometimes orgasms actually do hurt – and that sucks. Yep, we’re talking about those annoying cramps that strike seemingly out of nowhere right after sex.

What causes painful orgasms, anyway?

Okay, so the official name for this pain is dysorgasmia, which again, means you’re having pain either during or after your orgasm, says Dr Christine Greves, a board-certified obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies.

For women who experience pain after they orgasm, the cramping (which can feel like period cramps) usually happens right away and can cause pain for a few hours after sex, Dr Greves says. You can feel the pain or the cramping anywhere in your vagina, and/or in your lower abdomen or back.

Here’s the thing: Your uterus is a muscle, and it contracts when you orgasm. “Just like any other muscle in your body, you may have some discomfort after it gets a workout,” Dr Greves explains.

But in some cases, an underlying gynaecological condition can also trigger that pain or cramping after sex, like pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), endometriosis, an ovarian cyst or uterine fibroids, says Dr Greves.

To put it as delicately as possible, the pain here usually stems from the, uh, friction that happens during sex. In PID and endometriosis, the inflammation and pain already associated with those conditions can be worsened by, well, the penis; though this is less an issue directly related to orgasms, and more about pain during sex as a whole, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Read more: 8 reasons why you’re having painful sex

Pain during sex isn’t just something you should deal with.

For starters, this is a serious barrier to your pleasure (I’ll say it again for the people in the back: Sex isn’t supposed to hurt). And then there’s the fact that you could have an underlying condition that needs treatment.

“If this is new for you, see your gynae for an evaluation,” Dr Greves says.

If you don’t have any underlying conditions like PID or endometriosis, your doctor may recommend that you try using a hot pad on your pelvic region (to try to get your uterine muscles to chill out) and taking some OTC anti-inflammatory medication to help with the pain.

But again, don’t sit on this and assume that you’re doomed to suffer through crampy orgasms for the rest of your life. “If you notice a change in your body, you should always get it checked out,” Dr Greves says.

^{This article was originally published on www.womenshealthmag.com}

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Korin Miller

Your mother told you not to do it, and new research confirms that nose-picking isn’t healthy for you or those around you.

In a study involving 40 adults, British researchers found that the bacteria behind potentially lethal pneumonia could be spread by picking and rubbing the nose.

It was known that the pneumococcus bacteria that cause pneumonia spread through airborne droplets from coughs and sneezes. But this study is the first to show that it can easily spread between the nose and the hands.

The health implications are nothing to sniff at, the research team said.

“Pneumococcal infection is a major cause of death around the world, and it is estimated that it is responsible for 1.3 million deaths in children under 5 years [of age] annually,” said lead researcher Victoria Connor. She’s a clinical research fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England.

“The elderly and people with other causes of impaired immunity, such as chronic illness, are also at an increased risk of pneumococcal infections,” she added.

Connor called the current understanding of how pneumonia is transmitted “poor, so we wanted to look at how it may be spread in the community.”

In the study, the hands of the 40 healthy adults were contaminated with pneumococcus bacteria. Participants were divided into four groups. The “wet sniff” group sniffed their hands, which had been contaminated with water laden with pneumococcus bacteria.

The “dry sniff” group did the same, but this time the bacteria were applied dry, to the back of the hand. A third group, called “wet poke,” picked or poked their nose with a finger that had been contaminated with bacteria-laden water, while the “dry poke” group did the same, but with fingers tainted with air-dried bacteria samples.

The result: while pneumococcus was readily passed on in all of the test groups, hand-to-nose spread of the germ was highest among the “wet sniff” and “wet poke” groups, probably because bacteria die off more in dryer environments, the team said.

The findings were reported October 10 in the European Respiratory Journal.

The study suggests that good hand hygiene, as well as keeping kids’ toys clean, could help protect youngsters from catching and spreading the bacteria to other children. It could also cut down on spread to a child’s elderly relatives, who may be more susceptible to infection, the researchers noted.

Of course, Connor acknowledged that “it might not be realistic to get children to stop picking, poking and rubbing their noses.”

There might even be one positive side to nose-picking. “[The] presence of the bacteria can sometimes boost the immune system of children and can reduce their chances of carrying it again later in life,” Connor noted in a journal news release.

But spreading these germs can cause real harm to others, she stressed.

So, restraining kids from picking their noses “may be important when children are in contact with elderly relatives or relatives with reduced immune systems,” Connor suggested.

“In these situations, ensuring good hand hygiene and cleaning of toys or surfaces would likely reduce transmission, and reduce the risk of developing pneumococcal infection such as pneumonia,” she said.

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If a pregnant woman eats a lot of high-gluten foods, the odds that her child will have type 1 diabetes rise significantly, new research suggests.

In the study, published online in the BMJ, pregnant women who had the highest consumption of gluten had double the risk of having a child with type 1 diabetes compared to those who ate the least gluten. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.

However, the study authors noted that it’s too soon to recommend that pregnant women change their diets based on the results of this one study.

“The study brings new ideas to how type 1 diabetes develops. We did not know that the pregnancy period is important for the development of the disease or that the development of the disease is starting that early in life,” said study co-author Dr Knud Josefsen.

Changing one’s diet during pregnancy 

“And it also holds the potential to reduce the frequency of the disease by simply changing the diet during pregnancy,” added Dr Josefsen, a senior researcher at the Bartholin Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

However, “the study is observational and the link that we describe is an association,” and not a cause-and-effect relationship, Dr Josefsen said. The research also needs to be repeated in other populations.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that causes the body’s immune system to mistakenly attack the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, according to JDRF (formerly Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). Insulin is a hormone that helps usher the sugar from foods into the body’s cells to be used as fuel.

The attack on the immune system cells leaves someone with type 1 diabetes with little to no insulin. Without insulin injections, via multiple shots a day or an insulin pump, someone with type 1 diabetes doesn’t have enough insulin to survive.

Gluten is found in many foods, including bread, pasta, cereal, crackers and cookies, according to the Celiac Disease Foundation. Gluten triggers the immune system disorder called coeliac disease that causes damage to the small intestine when gluten is consumed.

There’s already a known link between coeliac disease and type 1 diabetes, approximately 10% of people with type 1 diabetes also have coeliac disease, Dr Josefsen said.

Findings of the study

The latest study included data from almost 64 000 pregnant women enrolled from 1996 through 2002. Nearly 250 of these women’s children developed type 1 diabetes.

The women answered questions about the foods they ate when they were 25 weeks’ pregnant.

The average gluten intake was 13 grams per day. The range was less than seven grams per day to more than 20 grams per day. Dr Josefsen said a slice of bread has about three grams of gluten. A large serving of pasta, about two-thirds of a cup, has five to 10 grams of gluten, he said.

The researchers found that a child’s risk of type 1 diabetes increased proportionally with every 10 grams of the mother’s daily gluten intake.

Maija Miettinen, co-author of an editorial that accompanied the study, said most of the theories as to how these two conditions might be related come from animal models. Like Dr Josefsen, she said more research is needed.

“This is the first study to suggest an association between high gluten intake during pregnancy and the risk of type 1 diabetes in the offspring. Therefore, it is too early to change dietary recommendations concerning gluten intake,” she said. Miettinen is a researcher with the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, Finland.

Miettinen also pointed out that women who have high-gluten diets in pregnancy may also continue to serve their children high-gluten fare. “We do not know whether the possible risk associated with high gluten intake comes through prenatal exposure, childhood diet or both,” she said.

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