Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

APHRODISIACS

Children and Sexual Response Cycle

It may be hard for us to imagine children as sexual creatures. Boys and girls may say that they think that the other sex is “yucky.” Therefore, we think of sexual attraction as something we grow into at puberty and in adulthood. Or we may think that we learn sexual attraction. We mistakenly think that without sexual attraction there is no physical response of the sexual systems.

Erotic response is not a learned behavior or a process that happens only in adult life. Children respond to stimulation and touch from the moment they are born. Baby girls are capable of lubricating. Their clitorises swell. Baby boys get erections. The sexual response system is a reflex that we are born with. It is associated with sexual desire, attraction, and fantasy as we grow older.

Aphrodisiacs

Drugs, foods, drinks, and odors that are supposed to create or increase sexual desire are called aphrodisiacs. “Aphrodisiac” comes from the name of the mythical Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Some well-known examples of so-called aphrodisiacs are rhinoceros horn, oysters, perfume, and vitamin E. Most aphrodisiacs don’t work. In fact, some of them may be harmful to your health. There are chemicals that are known to affect sexual desire. However, these chemicals are often illegal and dangerous, and in some people, they may produce a lack of sexual desire. All aphrodisiacs may pose health risks during pregnancy—for the woman and her fetus. They may also interfere with our intentions to practice safer sex.

Here is a list of aphrodisiacs, their rumored effect, and the real results.

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Resolution is the last phase of the sexual response cycle. This is the time after orgasm when the body returns to the way it was before sexual excitement. Both women and men enter this state. While a man’s body is returning to a nonaroused state, he loses his erection and experiences a refractory period. During this time, men cannot get another erection. The length of the refractory period for young men is normally very short. The length of the refractory period increases with age. It will take an older man longer to be able to get another erection after he has ejaculated.

Women do not have a refractory period. They can be sexually aroused immediately after orgasm. The box on the next page shows what happens to our couple during the resolution phase.

Changes in our bodies during resolution phase

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Successful ageing is like fence maintenance. As we age some of the slats in our fences break, become wobbly or fall over.

Traditionally, this is when we seek help. We go to doctors, who then dash around the outside, fixing, patching and trying to stop the whole structure from sagging.

But the latest approach to successful ageing is different. Rather
than waiting for damage to declare itself, it urges us to keep check
ing the fence for vulnerable spots and to strengthen it from the
inside.    ’

There are several ways of doing this, and any improvement in diet and exercise will help, but the most recent notion is to keep control of the bodily systems that implement ageing.

Once the body has received the signal to begin ageing, the process is put into effect largely by the endocrine system. It is almost as if an order is received for a murder, and the endocrine system is the hitman.

Through carefully monitoring and modifying six hormones in this system, the fence can be strengthened and ageing partially held at bay. These hormones are mighty powerful. They bring on the major transformation from childhood to adolescence from which two or three decades of adult vigour follow. But then, from about the age of 40, they start turning down.

From mid-life onwards, there is a subtle decline in six essential hormone systems: insulin, oestrogen, testosterone, DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), thyroxin and growth hormone. These subtle declines set in motion the adverse metabolic changes of later life. Once begun, this ageing process can be amplified by lifestyle factors such as inactivity, poor nutrition, cause of    mental turmoil, rising blood pressure, high cholesterol and declining cardiac function.

As new century turned, anti-ageing clinics begun popping up in Australia. Just as in the last decade impotence clinics proliferated across the country, so in the next decade it is predicted there will be a rash of anti-ageing clinics.

One Sydney clinic based strictly on orthodox medicine says a lot of what it does is, in clinical terms, old hat. But its approach is different in that it focuses on wellness, not illness. With great caution, it also uses some therapies that are theoretically sound but have not yet stood the full test of time.

Ageing is a complex process. It is a steady loss in functional reserve that slowly reduces what we can accomplish. We continue to go down gradually until a significant stress, such as a disease, comes along and one of our systems fails.

The aim of anti-ageing medicine is to help people retain function as long as possible and to compress morbidity into the very end of life. We have partial insight into how we can achieve this.

Just look at societies outside the affluent West. Many people there die young, but those who do not do so retain their function deep into old age. We see it on television every week, as another tragic group of refugees flees its home. Among these refugees are fit elderly people walking along, carrying bundles, enduring tremendous hardship and looking well, if exhausted.

The Sydney clinic covers all the traditional areas of health and then focuses on the endocrine system.

The first hormone to be tested is insulin. The body’s ongoing ability to burn sugar is pivotal in determining how it will age.

Oestrogen and testosterone are next. At high levels, these hormones drive sexual differentiation, but at low levels they have other vital metabolic roles. In both sexes, small amounts of oestrogen are crucial for bone remodelling and for nurturing brain cells; small quantities are also essential for male fertility.

At low levels, testosterone is important for brain development, muscle and bone strength, fat control, emotional stability and libido.

The fourth hormone tested at this clinic is DHEA, which has been called the mother of all hormones. It is the raw material for the manufacture of oestrogen and testosterone, and since it has fallen into lay hands, extravagant claims have been made for its remedial effects. It has, however, been established that it is safe when administered in correct doses, and supplementation in mid-life is said to assist in maintaining bone and muscle mass, promoting a feeling of wellbeing and lifting female libido.

The fifth hormone tested for is from the thyroid. While 5 per cent of older women are known to have thyroxin deficiency and need a full replacement, a much larger proportion of ageing men and women suffer relative thyroid inefficiency and may benefit from judicious thyroxin supplementation. This can help counter listlessness, dry, puffy skin, brittle hair and middle-age spread.

The final test is for growth hormone, which triggers the growth of fresh cells in bones, organs and muscles. It plays a large part in the hormonal abundance that creates that ‘bloom of youth’ and declines rapidly with age. At 60, people have less than a quarter of the growth hormone they had at 20. It is effective in converting fat to muscle and small studies have shown it can take 10 years off a body.

The primary rationale of this endocrine approach is not so much to reclaim youth as it is to forestall age-related diseases.

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You may not feel like one, but technically speaking, you’re a ‘young blood’. No matter how old you are chronologically, no single red blood cell in your body is older than about 4 months.

Your blood is constantly being renewed, and if you look after yourself well and don’t become ill, at the age of 70 you could have a blood profile indistinguishable from that of a healthy 30-year-old.

The Red Cross Blood Service knows this, which is why it is willing to let people donate blood up to the age of 70. It will even take blood from those older than 70 if they have a letter from their doctor confirming that they are in good health. There is no formal cut-off date beyond that.

There is nothing wrong with an older person’s blood, and the routine age limit is there for the protection of the donor, not the recipient. As older people are more likely to have cardiovascular disease, donating blood may be risky for them. Such is the confidence of the Red Cross in older people’s blood that 3 years ago, when blood services were standardised across Australia, some States had their age limits lifted from 65.

Blood has an enormous capacity for self-renewal. Stem cells in the marrow and in the blood have the unique capacity not only to generate new blood but also to renew themselves. Blood does not deteriorate because you age; it deteriorates because diseases that interfere with it become more common with age.

The worst of these are the blood malignancies of leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma that no-one yet knows how to prevent.

But while the blood in your veins is fresh, it bears many signs of what is going wrong in the rest of the body. From blood you can, for example, determine how low your level of hormones has sunk, how far over the cholesterol safety limit you are and whether you are a candidate for diabetes.

Importantly, you can also tell your body’s iron status. Iron can be a crucial determinant of how well you age. Too much can lead to cancer, while there is now an informed suspicion that too little may be linked to dementia.

If your body keeps accumulating iron and can’t get rid of it, you have what is known as haemochromatosis. There is too much iron in your blood and the excess is deposited in major organs. Australians have an unusually high potential for this disease, which begins insidiously and can end disastrously in liver cancer. Along the way it may cause general malaise, fatigue, joint pain, impotence and diabetes.

A study of the population around Margaret River in Western Australia found that one in seven people carry one gene for this disease. To have hereditary haemochromatosis you must have two genes. One in nineteen people have both genes. Most of them will accumulate excess iron and become unwell as a result. A quarter will develop liver problems. The tragedy of this is that haemochromatosis is easily diagnosed and just as easily treated. Next time you go for a routine health check, it is worth asking for a haemochromatosis blood test. You’ll be tested for the level of iron in your blood and for the gene. If you have the disease, you can control it simply by donating blood regularly. If you are diagnosed before the age of 40, you can avoid the discomfort of having a liver biopsy.

There is a common misconception that menstruation protects women from haemochromatosis for life. It doesn’t. Once past menopause, if they have the genes, women accumulate iron and catch up quickly. Too little iron, on the other hand, is a common cause of anaemia and there is now a suspected link between anaemia and dementia.

An anaemic person has low levels of haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood. This condition can be caused by other factors too, including a poor diet or vitamin B12 and folate deficiency. Even relatively mild long-term anaemia might have serious consequences for the brain. With age, the blood vessels to the brain can ‘harden’ and restrict the flow of blood, thereby depriving the cells of oxygen. This can compromise brain function and leave the person with what is known as vascular dementia. If the person is also anaemic, the problem is compounded. Not only is the volume of blood reaching the brain reduced, but it also carries less oxygen than it could.

About 20 per cent of Australians over the age of 75 are anaemic and often something simple can be done to correct it. However, because anaemia has many different causes, it is important to consult a doctor about which treatments are appropriate.

Current research suggests vascular dementia may be involved in a third or more of all dementia cases in Australia. It is possible that if anaemia could be diagnosed and treated earlier, fewer people would develop dementia. But once a person has dementia, treating their anaemia is not likely to cure it. At best it may relieve some symptoms.

It may be that the risks are greatest for people with cardiovascular disease and related factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. If you are such a person, you could probably benefit from a more aggressive management of your condition so that rather than risking disease and dementia, you allow your perpetually youthful blood to work its miracles and keep you well and functional.

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A high peak occurs during the plateau phase. This peak is called orgasm. Orgasm is defined as the phase where sexual tension is released. This is the shortest of all the phases and lasts less than a minute. However, when an orgasm occurs, more than just muscles are relaxed. During orgasm, the body releases chemicals—called endorphins—that produce good feelings. These are chemicals that reduce pain. Endorphins are produced in both men and women.

Ejaculations and orgasms in men often occur at the same time. Orgasms are not the same as ejaculations. The stimulation of the shaft and glans of the penis helps create sexual and muscle tension. The release of this tension is an orgasm. An ejaculation is the pushing and contractions of the prostate and seminal vesicles to move semen out of the penis. A man can ejaculate and not have an orgasm. A man can also have an orgasm and not ejaculate, as in retrograde ejaculation. Orgasm in men is usually limited to the genital area.

What is an orgasm in a woman? This question has caused many arguments, discussions, and much research, because it was once believed that women did not have orgasms. However, women’s bodies do create and maintain sexual and muscle tension. The release of this tension, combined with the muscular contraction felt in the pelvic organs, and the release of endorphins create orgasms in women. Women, like men, can be stimulated to orgasm. Unlike men, however, women seem to have more than one way in which they experience orgasm, and they are more likely to have orgasms that involve more than the genital area.

Clitoral and vaginal orgasms may produce different effects inside the body. Stimulation of the clitoris causes the vagina to become longer. It also causes a pocket to be formed beneath the uterus. The indentation it creates looks much like a tent or a balloon. Stimulation of the vagina or G-Spot makes the uterus drop lower. This shortens the vagina.

Some researchers believe that there is only one type of female orgasm. They believe that there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. Instead, they believe that a clitoris is necessary in stimulating a vaginal orgasm. Other researchers disagree. In fact, women’s diverse experiences with orgasm make it difficult to define the female orgasm in one way. Some women may not feel contractions of their uterus during a uterine orgasm. Some women can reach orgasm with imagination as the only source of stimulation.

It is important for women to understand what feels good and what orgasm is for them as individuals. Ideally, women can ask their partners for the kind of satisfying physical contact that they need. This may be more important than striving to create an orgasm defined in terms that may have no relevance for a particular woman.

Women and a few men can have multiple orgasms. This means that a person can have more than one orgasm while staying inside the high state of the plateau phase. Multiple orgasms are more common in women. Most men enter the next phase—the resolution phase— before they are able to have another orgasm or ejaculation.

In the box above are the changes that take place during orgasm in women and men.

Types of orgasm in women

Type                         Stimulus That Causes Orgasm

clitoral/tenting orgasm             stimulation of the clitoris alone

vaginal/A-frame/uterine orgasm         stimulation of the vagina alone (includes

stimulation of the G-Spot alone)

blended orgasm                stimulation of the vagina and clitoris

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There is no truth that girls respond more to sounds and boys to sights. Neither sex is more ‘visual’ nor more ‘auditory’ than the other. This is interesting because it is still believed that adull women respond less to erotic visual stimuli than do men, which 11 >. i \ be the basis of the publication of a large amount of erotica In newspapers and magazines showing curvaceous, nubile women; while erotica of naked males exposing their genitals are rar found.

There is no truth that boys are better at understanding complicated ideas than girls, and that girls are better at rote-learning and doing simple repetitive tasks than boys. Nor is there any truth in the belief that boys can analyse problems better and can reason logically better. This means that the following verse is a libel on women:

It was written by a man, of course!

It does seem that girls do better academically, as judged by school grades, until adolescence is reached, but the difference between boys and girls is not great. And when a boy is aroused to compete, by pressure from his parents or from his age-mates, he becomes a greater ‘achiever’ than a girl.

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Increasingly in adolescence, the youth is influenced by others of his own age group. Peer group influence starts in childhood but becomes much stronger in adolescence. In the period of adolescent adjustment, his group of friends is important in helping the adolescent to interact with his age-mates, to share feelings, and to solve problems with his contemporaries. The friendships of adolescence, which are often intense, though short lived, may compensate for the weakening of family relationships, particularly if these are emotionally charged, as the adolescent strives to become independent while yearning for the security of dependence. In relationships between parents and adolescents, in which warmth and understanding may be minimal, a deep friendship with one of his friends may provide much needed support and enable the youth to develop his personality.

It is also true that peer group influence can be harmful, as the group influence may induce the adolescent to suspend his own judgement and to behave in a way which he may later regret.

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During the early adolescent spurt of growth, sex differences in body shape become apparent. The pelvic region of a girl grows more than her shoulder girdle, becoming wider, roomier, and more shallow than the male pelvis. Fat is deposited over her hips, so that she begins to develop feminine contours. In boys, the reverse occurs. A boy’s shoulders become wider and heavier. These changes are due to the secretion of a pituitary hormone – the human growth hormone.

A boy’s body growth starts later than a girl’s but goes on for longer, until the age of 20 or so, which is why men are usually taller than women.

The secretion of the sex hormones into the blood circulation produces an even greater difference between the sexes than does the secretion of the growth hormone. In boys the main sex hormone secreted is testosterone, in girls it is oestrogen (but each sex secretes a quantity of the main sex hormone of the other sex). The hormones are secreted by the sex glands, or gonads. These are a boy’s testicles and a girl’s ovaries. They start producing hormones because they are stimulated by hormones produced in the pituitary gland, called gonadotrophins.

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These are that only a man can impregnate a woman (although to do this sexual intercourse is not essential, as in the case of artificial insemination of a woman with a donor’s semen). Only a woman can carry the growing foetus in her uterus and give birth to it, and provide it with breast milk once it is born.

Beyond these biological imperatives the sex hormones impart no more than a ‘flavour’ to a person’s behaviour. Almost all of the way the two sexes behave is learned by observing ‘models’ in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. This implies that most (or all) differences in behaviour of the two sexes are learned.

In our society, until recently at least, most people had – and still have – fixed beliefs of how men and women should look, how they should behave, and what roles they should perform. These beliefs are beginning to weaken, but are still present to a greater or lesser degree in different sections of society.

In this time of rapid social change, and of more open discussion about the relations between the sexes and about sexual roles, society has two choices.

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The gender-role in children fostered so assiduously by parents induces the child, if a boy, to behave as a boy should behave in our culture, and also to feel that he is a boy. In other words, he develops a gender-identity. He knows he is a boy and accepts that he will behave to others in a specific male way. The lack of ability to have a completely male gender-identity, at least in erotic matters, is a problem faced by homosexuals in our critical, disapproving, society.

The contribution of the parental (and later peer-group) behaviour towards the child in the development of his gender-identity is further emphasized by studies of intersex children. These children are genetically of one sex, in other words they are XX-female or XY-male, but because of the abnormal development of their external (and sometimes internal) genitals they are classed, at birth, as being of the other sex. They are ‘intersex’. The child can be brought up happily, and confidently complete in its adopted sex, and will behave in a manner conforming to that gender-role once it has developed the gender-identity of its adopted sex.

The evidence shows that the process of change is met with the least disturbance if the parents decide (after advice) which sex they wish the child to have and if, having made the decision, they (and all other people) behave consistently towards the child as if it were of that sex. They will be helped in their behaviour if surgery is used early to correct an obvious genital ambiguity. This is because many parents find it difficult to behave to the child as if it were a girl, if it has an apparent penis; or as if it were a boy if the child has only a tiny phallus, with a urinary opening in the female position.

In most cases, the decision is made to rear intersex children as females, and to perform surgery on the external genitals to make them concordant with the chosen sex. This is a sensible approach, for the ‘girl’ can have a reasonable psychosexual life after puberty when additional surgery and hormones can make her into a woman, capable of enjoying sexual intercourse although, of course, unable to bear children. Conversely, if the child is made into a male, he will always be defective sexually because of his small abnormal penis, and will fear the mocking of his companions and the distress of any female partner he may find.

In a few cases, the parents continue to be in doubt about the desired sex of the child, and transmit this doubt to the child by their behaviour. These children also have ambiguous genitals, and can observe that they are different from other children – the girls have an apparent penis, the boys have an inadequate penis and pass urine in a non-male way. These psychological and anatomical uncertainties may lead to emotional conflicts in the child and to failure at school and in human relationships. When sex reversal is made early, when the surgery is skilful, and, most importantly, when the parents (and the community) accept and behave to the child as if it really belonged to the chosen sex, the adopted sexual identity of the child is strongly established. It becomes an individual of that sex.

It would seem from the study of these children that gender-identity is not preordained by the genetic or chromosomal sex of the child, nor by pre-natal hormonal effects on its developing brain circuits, although these play a part in modifying some behaviours, but is due to the way others behave to it in its first four years of life.

A criticism of this theory is that the children in these studies had surgery to correct (as far as possible) the ambiguous genitalia and to remove their testes, so that no male hormone was secreted, particularly at puberty when the quantity of testosterone in the blood increases considerably. In the absence of this surge of testosterone, the individual is likely to remain in his assigned sex, and the pre-natal ‘imprinting’ of maleness does not become apparent.

In a remote area in the Dominican Republic thirty- eight individuals (whose chromosomes are the normal male 46XY) have been found to have a rare enzyme disorder. This disorder prevents testosterone from being converted into dihydrotestosterone, so that in foetal life their genitals are not converted into male genitals and at birth they resemble those of a girl, although they do not look completely like those of a girl. Nineteen of these individuals were reared as girls, and behaved as girls, until they reached the age of between 9 and 12 when strange events occurred which coincided with the surge of testosterone production accompanying puberty. The high quantities of testosterone in the blood permitted the enzyme to convert some of it into dihydrotestosterone. The circulating hormones led to unexpected changes. The ‘girls” breasts failed to develop, their small phallus began to grow into a penis, two lumps appeared in their labia, and their voices deepened. They also began to feel they were not girls, and to have male sexual fantasies. As the years passed, they developed a strong male gender-identity, and began to have orgasms and ejaculations. By the age of 16, the individuals believed themselves to be men, although they were worried about being ridiculed because of the small penis and because they urinated like women. However, they felt that they were men and fifteen are living with women and have sexual intercourse.

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