Even if you’re past your prime and have a hard time getting an erection, you might still need to worry about unprotected sex, according to U.S. doctors.
In fact, they report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in older men taking erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra is twice as high as in their non-medicated peers.
In both groups, however, the numbers are swelling. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than six new cases of STDs per 10,000 men over 40 in 2008, up almost 50 percent since 1996.
“Younger adults have far more STDs than older adults, but the rates are growing at far higher rates in older adults,” said Dr. Anupam B. Jena of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the study.
While the reasons for this development aren’t well understood, he said more divorces and better health might have conspired to boost sexual prowess and activity among graying heads.
The problem, however, is that older adults appear to flaunt safe sex practices. For instance, the researchers note, 50-year-olds are six times less likely to use a condom than men in their 20s.
“We are typically unaccustomed to practice safe sex over the age of 50, because the risk of pregnancy is eliminated,” Jena told Reuters Health.
To test whether the introduction of Viagra in 1998 might explain some of the STD surge, Jena and colleagues examined insurance records for more than 1.4 million U.S. men over 40. The average age in the study was about 60 years.
The most commonly found STD was HIV, followed by chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea.
Among the few percent of men who had filled prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs, more than two in a thousand had been treated for an STD in the year before they got the drug.
A year later, the number dropped to half that, suggesting that Viagra and its chemical cousins didn’t fuel STDs.
However, the risk of contracting an STD turned out to be more than twice as high in men taking erectile dysfunction drugs compared with those who didn’t.
“These users have a different sexual risk profile than non-users,” said Jena, adding that the data didn’t reveal any good explanation.
In an editorial, Dr. Thomas Fekete, of Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, noted that it would have been valuable to know more about the frequency of sexual encounters, sexual partners and orientation.
He added that prevention strategies should still be directed at younger age groups, whose STD risk is at least 10 times higher than in middle-aged and older adults.
Still, he said, the authors remind us “that men older than 40 years remain sexually active, even if they need chemical assistance to do so. This study also serves as a reminder that sex after age 40 years is not necessarily safe.”
Jena recommended that doctors take a few minutes to discuss safe sex with older men when they prescribe Viagra.
His advice? “Look, just realize that you are at higher risk for STDs, and try to be careful like you used to be 30 years ago.”
from Reuters
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UNITED KINGDOM – The four-year-old, called Boris, had failed to sire a calf for a year. He was given the treatment by owner Dave Joyce for a week. Two days before he was due to be slaughtered the French Limousin’s performance improved.
Mr Joyce, 41, from Solihull. West Midlands, said: “He just couldn’t perform and we just thought – he’s got to go. He was destined for the slaughterhouse.
“But he is such a nice bull and we didn’t really want to get rid of him so we started looking into alternative solutions.
“And since we have fed him this herbal Viagra he been rampant. When the cows come out – he’s the first in there.
“Calves are back on the agenda.
“It means we dont have to turn him into burgers. He is on a rigid regime of the herb formula in his daily feed.
Mr Joyce’s assistant Rob Smith, 52, discovered the product on the internet. The capsules are a blend of Horny Goat Weed, Cordyceps, Damiana, Avena Sativa and Muira Puama.
from The Telegraph

Arentina President Christina Fernandez

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez is telling her country, and now the world, that she had a wonderful getaway with her husband, and she owes it all to pork, according to a Reuters report .
“Things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true,” she said last week.
The Associated Press reports that after the speech, it created a buzz across the Argentinean airwaves, setting off a whirlwind of discussion of whether or not to start eating more pork.
Red meat is the meat of choice in Argentina. To expand the meat industry, Fernandez is hoping that her comments will help promote the consumption of pork in her nation.
Reuters said that Fernandez specifically credits barbecued pork for her spicy weekend.
She told pig farmers, “I’ve just been told something I didn’t know: that eating pork improves your sex life … I’d say it’s a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra.”
Juan Luis Uccelli, the head of the association of pork producers, agreed with Fernandez when he cited Denmark and Japan as examples of countries that had “harmonious” sex lives because of their consumption of pork.
“In Osaka, Japan, there is a village in which the people who reached 105 years old and ate a lot of pork had a lot of sexual activity,” Uccelli said.
Amado Bechara, a specialist in sexual dysfunction told La Nacion, “There is no study showing that pork meat significantly improves sexual activity,” reports the AP .
Fernandez doesn’t see the financial harm in testing it out.
In her televised speech, she said, “Trying it doesn’t cost anything, so let’s give it a go.”
from FOX Spokane

Research done at the University of Florida has concluded that men who use the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra are not necessarily more likely to indulge in risky sexual behaviour. There has been a lot of concern that the increased erectile function that accompanies the use of Viagra allows men who are under the influence of drugs and alcohol to make poor and potentially reckless sexual decisions such as sleeping with many different partners and not using condoms.
Professor Robert Cook, from the University of Florida and who led this research explained that the idea of the study was to see whether when doctors prescribed erectile dysfunction medication they could be contributing to the spread of the AIDS virus. He said that doctors should relax because provided that men obtained Viagra legally with a prescription it tended to be used to responsibly.
This study however did not look at the large numbers of men who buy counterfeit Viagra illegally or those who obtain the real version by deception. Some men are known to use Viagra to specifically counteract the effects of drinking too much and using controlled drug substances and these men tend not to get proper prescriptions and are reckless with their health.
Professor Cook explained that the study was designed to see how erectile dysfunction medication affected the risk taking of the general population rather than specific groups of those people known to get impotence medication without a prescription, who had drug problems and multiple sexual partners of both sexes.
Almost 2,800 men with an average age of 52 took part in the study. Around 50 percent of these men were HIV positive. The results show that around ten percent of men who used erectile dysfunction medications indulged in risky sexual behaviour which was the same percentage for those men who did not use impotence medications.

Firing shock-waves into the body could be a radical new way to boost the love lives of men with erection problems.
The pain-free therapy boosts performance by stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in the genital area.
A small trial involving 20 men who were taking Viagra or similar drugs for impotence problems was so successful that, by the end of the experiment, 15 of them were able to throw their pills away.
None of the volunteers reported any pain or side-effects from the treatment.
The radical new therapy, which is on trial in Israel, uses a very mild form of lithotripsy, a technique developed more than 20 years ago for the treatment of kidney stones.
Waves of sound are beamed through the skin, and although they pass harmlessly through body tissue, they are at just the right pressure to smash up kidney stones into tiny sand-like particles that are then passed out of the body in urine.
But in recent years, several studies have also shown that this type of shock-wave therapy appears to have a healthy effect on blood vessels.
It triggers the release of an important substance called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor, or VEGF, which sends out a signal for new blood vessels to start growing.
As a result, shock-wave therapy has also attracted increasing interest from cardiologists looking for new ways to treat heart disease.
U.S. and Japanese researchers are investigating whether firing shock-waves towards the heart will help it sprout healthy new blood vessels.
If so, it could offer a lifeline to patients who are too ill to undergo heart bypass surgery.
According to Israeli research, the same benefits could help men who suffer persistent erection problems.
Some health experts are now convinced there is a close link between impotence and heart disease, and that problems in the bedroom can often signal hidden blockages in blood vessels near the heart which are reducing blood flow around the body.
Doctors at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, recruited 20 men with an average age of 56 to take part in the trial.
All 20 were already on medication and had suffered mild to moderate erection problems for an average of three years.
During the three-week course of treatment, low-intensity shock-waves were repeatedly fired into five specific points in the genital area, using a handheld device.
Doctors then assessed the severity of the men’s ailments on a 30-point scale called the International Index of Erectile Dysfunction, widely used to measure impotence problems.
The lower the score, the greater the problem.
Before the trial, the men averaged scores of between 12 and 20 points, which meant they had mild to moderate sexual dysfunction. But after treatments, their scores increased by between five and ten points.
Experts say anything in excess of five points is a significant improvement.
Viagra and similar medications, such as Cialis and Levitra, have transformed the treatment of impotence in the past ten years, around 30 per cent of men who take them see no improvement.
For these men, the only other options are to inject drugs straight into the penis, or use a pump that manually increases blood supply to the organ.
Dr Yoram Vardi, who led the trial, says: ‘Drugs are not a cure. When patients stop taking their medication, then they cannot function.
‘With shock-waves, we can do something biological for the problem. These patients can then function without the need for medication.’
Dr John Dean, president of the International Society of Sexual Medicine, said the findings were ‘intriguing’ and worth following up in larger studies.
But he warned that earlier attempts to use shock-wave therapy for another condition called Peyronie’s disease – where the penis is bent and painful when erect – had failed.
‘These findings are interesting and definitely warrant further investigation,’ Dr Dean said.
‘But we are a long way off saying that men should go to their GP asking for this treatment.’
from The Daily Mail UK

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UNITED KINGDOM – David Gest signed up for Celebrity Come Dine With Me after getting cooking tips from his Prostitute cousin.
And the I’m a Celebrity star – ex-hubby of Liza Minnelli – revealed he uses Viagra to perk up his roast spuds.
David, 56, said his culinary skills are down to cousin Rita who gave up her job as a supply teacher to become a £400,000-a-year Hooker.
“She has been doing it more than 30 years,” said David. “Rita taught about cooking because she’s always been one to heat up a fire.
“She showed me how to spread a little bit of Viagra on my goose fat when cooking roast potatoes so they would stand up tall!”
David appears in the Christmas edition of the Channel 4 show alongside gardener Diarmuid Gavin and actress Hannah Waterman. He said of Rita, who lives on The Wirral, Cheshire: “She was so thrilled I did this show with Diarmuid.”
He invites another wacky relative – gospel-singing half-cousin Sister Rosetta Hump – along when he hosts the dinner at his London flat. But a close pal said: “David talks about many of his ‘cousins’. Whether it is all tongue in cheek, who knows?”
from The Sun

OTTAWA, CANADA – Health Canada is advising Canadians not to use certain Acai Berry products after a large number of shipments of adulterated products were stopped at the border. The product names include: Anti-Aging Acai Berry, Guarana Blast, Brazillian Pure, Anti-aging Vital Rez V, Weight Loss VitalAcai, Dietary Supplement Acai Power Blast and Muscle Mass.
These products are advertized for anti-aging and weight loss and were found to contain undeclared Sildenafil, a prescription drug used to treat erectile dysfunction. Sildenafil may cause serious side effects in some individuals and should only be used under the supervision of a health care practitioner.
Sildenafil should never be used by individuals taking any kind of nitrate drug (e.g. nitroglycerine) as it can cause potentially life-threatening low blood pressure. Individuals with heart problems are at increased risk of cardiovascular side-effects such as heart attack, stroke, chest pain, high blood pressure and abnormal heart beat. Other side-effects include headache, facial flushing, indigestion, dizziness, abnormal vision, and hearing loss.
These products are not authorised for sale in Canada but it is possible they may have been brought into the country by travellers or purchased over the internet.
Drugs and natural health products that are authorized for sale in Canada will have either an eight-digit Drug Identification Number (DIN), a Natural Product Number (NPN) or a Homeopathic Medicine Number (DIN-HM) on the label. These numbers indicate that the products have been assessed by Health Canada for safety, effectiveness and quality and have been licensed for sale.
Canadians who have purchased or used these products and are concerned about their health should consult a health care practitioner. Health Canada has not received any domestic reports of adverse reactions associated with the use of these 7 products.
from Health Canada
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Research from America shows that men who make use of the medications Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are four times more probable to end up with broken condoms than men who do not use these medications. However another study done by the same researchers last year showed that there was no link but nevertheless more research needs to be done in this area for a better understanding of the way that Viagra affects condom use.
The study was done with a group of 440 volunteers who regularly used condoms for vaginal sex. Just under ten percent of the men used a condom and for this group twelve percent reported condom breakage compared to only five percent of the group who did not make use of an erectile dysfunction medication. The researchers also reported that men who had sex for a longer period of time were also be more likely to experience their condom breaking.
The group of researchers said that it is possible that because the use of erectile dysfunction drugs increases the strength and hardness of an erection it may be that that the condoms are put under more pressure than usual. They suggested that the drugs manufacturers should possibly advise that when using a condom with their products it would be important to check that the size of the condom was sufficient.
When conducting this sort of research it is extremely difficult to come up with accurate results unless a very large pool of volunteers can be found to conduct research over a long period of time. In order to get 100 percent accurate results it would also be necessary to use standard condom products.
Since erectile dysfunction drugs allow you to have sex for a longer period of time it is pretty obvious that condom breakage is more likely to occur, however to blame Viagra, Cialis and Levitra alone for these incidents is not really justifiable as many other factors come into play. It could be the use of poor quality condoms, badly fitting condoms or just incorrect usage of them.
This research which was published in the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections is likely to aggravate the debate surrounding the use of Viagra and its cousins and the spread of STD’s which we have previously written about at Ukmedix News and also which AIDS charities often complain about.
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