Tag Archives: urethra

Sexual Health Made Simple(-Minded)

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OK, here’s all you need to know if you want to be completely safe. Don’t engage in sex with anyone (or anything) except yourself. Come to think of it, do you really know where yourself has been lately? Better be safe than sorry.

Who would you rather believe? Movie stars or scientists and doctors?

Admittedly, this is a tad extreme. Fortunately, all you need do is go on Facebook or Google and you’ll find a plethora of cool-sounding, stylish, and evidence-based strategies to keep you safe. Well, maybe not the latter. But who needs evidence? Who’s got time to read dry, long-winded articles written by doctors and scientists about prissy, painstaking experiments taking years or decades when you could be out having fun? Besides, if something is on Facebook or Google then it must be true, right?

Condom Alternatives for Guys Who Hate Condoms

Need a sexual health tip fast? Just pull one off the ’net. Oh, here’s one for you guys who don’t like using condoms. Not to worry. There’s a little adhesive sticker called a Jiftip that you merely affix to the tip of your penis before sex. “Nothing gets in or out until you remove” it, the company claims on its website, which means that just before climax you must abruptly pull out of your partner as gracefully as possible under the circumstances so you can ejaculate wherever.

In all fairness to the company, which simply wishes to offer an alternative product for people who don’t like condoms, their website warns against using it to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Which does bring up a HUGE question: So why use it? Their answer? First, it’s cheap — only $6 a pack. So hey, what’s stopping you? Maybe, despite all biological facts to the contrary, the product just might work for you. “How can anyone know — until they try?” Best of all, “Jiftip has no side-effects” … that is, aside from getting pregnant or catching an STD. Continue reading →

Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does, Part 19: Prostate Exams for Cancer Screening

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prostateWelcome to the latest installment of “Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,” a series on Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona’s blog that highlights Planned Parenthood’s diverse array of services — the ones Jon Kyl never knew about.

It’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. This type of cancer strikes 1 out of 5 Americans with prostates. There are two common screening tests for it — and Planned Parenthood Arizona offers both of them. The first test, and the subject of this post, is the prostate exam. The second is the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test — which has both benefits and drawbacks, and which will be the subject of a future post.

Here’s the good news/bad news: Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of men’s cancer deaths, but it also has very high survival rates when detected and treated early — a five-year survival rate of almost 100 percent.

What’s a prostate?

A normal prostate is a one-ounce, walnut-sized gland that is part of the male reproductive system. It manufactures fluid that is mixed with sperm to create semen, which is the product of ejaculation. However, the gland can often enlarge, especially later in life. Since the prostate is nestled right in there with the bladder and the urethra, when it grows in size it can block the flow of urine (it can also cause sexual problems). An enlarged prostate, also called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), can mimic the symptoms of prostate cancer — but it’s not cancer. It may be treated surgically, however.

Am I at risk for prostate cancer?

While prostate cancer is common, there are a few factors that can increase your risk even more. These include:

  • age (two-thirds of prostate cancers occur in people 65 years of age or older)
  • genetics (a family history of prostate cancer — especially if a father or brother developed prostate cancer before the age of 65)
  • being of African-American descent (prostate cancer is more common in African Americans than in Americans of other races) Continue reading →

Expanding Options for Male Contraception

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Condoms are the only contraceptive device that does double duty in preventing pregnancy and STD transmission. But will men’s birth-control options expand?

Many have wondered why there is not a male equivalent to the Pill. The short answer to this question is that the release of one egg is easier to prevent than the flow of millions of sperm. The longer answer to that question includes a litany of failures in the search for such technology. Currently, however, there are some interesting developments in male birth control.

The condom, of course, is the only birth-control method to do double duty in reducing risk for both pregnancy and STD transmission, but many heterosexually active males would like more options than the tried-and-true rubber, and their female partners, despite having expanded contraceptive options — including the Pill, the patch, and the IUD — might prefer for the men in their lives to help shoulder the birth-control burden.

One method under investigation is ultrasound, a technology that has been around for quite some time. Though scientists have been aware of its contraceptive potential since at least the 1970s, most studies have been conducted on nonhuman animals (though human trials could be on the horizon). Ultrasound involves the application of high-frequency sound waves to animal tissue, which can absorb the sound waves’ energy as heat. The possibility for ultrasound’s use for contraception operates on the idea that briefly heating the testes, which in mammals are normally kept a few degrees below core body temperature, can halt sperm production, leading to temporary infertility for about six months. Additionally, ultrasound could affect cells’ absorption rates of ions, which itself could create an environment unfavorable to spermatogenesis. Its extremely localized effects on animal tissues make ultrasound an attractive candidate for research.

One small study conducted on five dogs applied ultrasound to the canine testicles three times over a period of a few days. The researchers compared sperm count before the procedure to two weeks after the procedure. After the ultrasound treatments none of the canine sperm samples contained sperm. Side effects included tender testicles that had been reduced in volume. Continue reading →