Ten surprising health benefits of sex

When you're in the mood, it's a sure bet that the last thing on your mind is boosting your immune system or maintaining a healthy weight. Yet good sex offers those health benefits and more.

Black couple having romancing ready for sex

That's a surprise to many people, says Joy Davidson, PhD, a New York psychologist and sex therapist. "Of course, sex is everywhere in the media," she says. "But the idea that we are vital, sexual creatures is still looked at in some cases with disgust or in other cases a bit of embarrassment. So to really take a look at how our sexuality adds to our life and enhances our life and our health, both physical and psychological, is eye-opening for many people."

Sex does a body good in a number of ways, according to Davidson and other experts. The benefits aren't just anecdotal or hearsay -- each of these 10 health benefits of sex is backed by scientific scrutiny.

11 mistakes women make in middle age

Source: health.com

Aging mistakes

Let's not kid ourselves. Getting older is a drag, and middle age is particularly fraught with tension.
Do the sexy clothes you wore in the past now seem just plain wrong? Will smoky eye makeup that looks great on 19-year-olds make you appear just plain crazy?
Part of the problem is that aging often requires change, but most women don't want to move to a frumpy town called Middle Age, where sensible shoes and boring clothes are de rigueur.
Here are the 11 most common mistakes aging women make—and how to avoid them.

Why that Tusker bottle is a sure way to death.

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Beyond Hangovers

A brightly colored cosmopolitan is the drink of choice for the glamorous characters in Sex and the City. James Bond depends on his famous martini—shaken, not stirred—to unwind with after confounding a villain. And what wedding concludes without a champagne toast?

Alcohol is part of our culture—it helps us celebrate and socialize, and it enhances our religious ceremonies. But drinking too much—on a single occasion or over time—can have serious consequences for our health. 

Oily skin Beauty

A shiny face is the result of an increase in sebum, which is an oil that keeps your skin from drying out.

This onslaught of oil generally occurs when your body suffers a significant shift in hormones, such as puberty.

While oily skin is natural, too much oil can make your face look greasy. Excess oil also contributes to the occurrence of acne. Use beauty tips that reduce or prevent oily skin.

AIDS symptoms

The first few months after you become infected with HIV is called primary HIV infection, or acute HIV infection. You might also hear this called seroconversion. You may have symptoms of HIV infection but you may not pay attention to them, because they are like other infections such as flu. Early symptoms usually start about four weeks after the infection and can last for up to four weeks.

AIDS Orphans

AIDS orphans are children who became orphans because one or both parents died from AIDS.

In statistics from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the term is used for a child whose mother has died due to AIDS before the child's 15th birthday, regardless of whether the father is still alive. As a result of this definition, one study estimated that 80% of all orphans still have one living parent.

Origin of AIDS

Origin of AIDS can be tracked when it was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. In the beginning, the CDC did not have an official name for the disease, often referring to it by way of the diseases that were associated with it, for example, lymphadenopathy, the disease after which the discoverers of HIV originally named the virus.They also used Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections, the name by which a task force had been set up in 1981.

In the general press, the term GRID, which stood for Gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined. The CDC, in search of a name, and looking at the infected communities coined “the 4H disease,” as it seemed to single out Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users. However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the homosexual community, the term GRID became misleading and AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982.By September 1982 the CDC started using the name AIDS, and properly defined the illness.

Origin of AIDS traced back

The earliest known positive identification of the HIV-1 virus comes from the Congo in 1959 and 1960 though genetic studies indicate that it passed into the human population from chimpanzees around fifty years earlier.A recent study states that a strain of HIV-1 probably moved from Africa to Haiti and then entered the United States around 1969.

The HIV virus descends from the related simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which infects apes and monkeys in Africa. There is evidence that humans who participate in bushmeat activities, either as hunters or as bushmeat vendors, commonly acquire SIV. However, only a few of these infections were able to cause epidemics in humans, and all did so in the late 19th—early 20th century. To explain why HIV became epidemic only by that time, there are several theories, each invoking specific driving factors that may have promoted SIV adaptation to humans, or initial spread: social changes following colonialism, rapid transmission of SIV through unsafe or unsterile injections (that is, injections in which the needle is reused without being sterilised), colonial abuses and unsafe smallpox vaccinations or injections, or prostitution and the concomitant high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (such as syphilis) in nascent colonial cities.

Origin of AIDS in America.

One of the first high profile victims of AIDS was the American actor Rock Hudson, a known homosexual who had been married and divorced earlier in life, who died on 2 October 1985 having announced that he was suffering from the virus on 25 July that year. It had been diagnosed during 1984. A notable British casualty of AIDS that year was Nicholas Eden, a Member of Parliament and son of the late prime minister Anthony Eden. Eden junior, a lifelong batchelor, was also a known homosexual. The virus claimed perhaps its most famous victim yet on 24 November 1991, when British rock star Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, died from an AIDS related illness having only announced that he was suffering from the illness the previous day; however he had been diagnosed as HIV positive during 1987.

One of the first high profile heterosexual victims of the virus was Arthur Ashe, the American tennis player. He was diagnosed as HIV positive on 31 August 1988, having contracted the virus from blood transfusions during heart surgery earlier in the 1980s. Further tests within 24 hours of the initial diagnosis revealed that Ashe had AIDS, but he did not tell the public about his diagnosis until April 1992. He died, aged 49, as a result of the AIDS virus on 6 February 1993.

A more controversial theory known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis suggests that the origin of AIDS was inadvertently started in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's research into a poliomyelitis vaccine. According to scientific consensus, this scenario is not supported by the available evidence.

Origin of AIDS source: wikipedia

Move from Origin of AIDs back to AIDs Home page

AIDS Impact in Africa

Since the beginning of the epidemic, AIDs impact has been profound as more than 15 million Africans have died from AIDS. Nearly two-thirds of all people living with HIV are found in sub-Saharan Africa, although this region contains only about 10% of the world's population.

The AIDS impact on the Health Sector

Condom Use in Preventing AIDs

Condom use in HIV/AIDs prevention is a critical element in a comprehensive, effective and sustainable approach to HIV prevention and treatment. Prevention is the mainstay of the response to AIDS. Condoms are an integral and essential part of comprehensive prevention and care programmes, and their promotion must be accelerated. In 2009, an estimated 2.7 million people became newly infected with HIV. About 45% of them were young people from 15 to 24 years old, with young girls at greater risk of infection than boys.

Genital Warts Prevention

Genital warts prevention is possible when you understand how they are spread in the first place. HPV is passed on through genital contact, most often during vaginal and anal sex. HPV may also be passed on during oral sex and genital-to-genital contact. HPV can be passed on between straight and same-sex partners—even when the infected partner has no signs or symptoms.

Genital warts treatment

Genital warts treatment must be by a doctor. Do NOT use over-the-counter remedies meant for other kinds of warts.

Your doctor may treat genital warts by applying a skin treatment in the office. Or, the doctor may prescribe a medication that you apply at home several times per week. These treatments include:

Genital Warts Symptoms, signs and test

Genital warts symptoms can sometimes be mistaken with other infections but the warts can be raised or flat, and are usually flesh-colored. They may appear as cauliflower-like growths. Sometimes they are so small and flat that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Common places to find genital warts:

• Females most often have warts inside or around the vagina or anus, on the skin around these areas, or on the cervix.
• Males most often have warts on the penis, scrotum, groin area, or thighs, as well as inside or around the anus in those who have anal intercourse.
• Both males and females may have warts on the lips, mouth, tongue, palate, or throat (larynx)

Other genital warts symptoms are rare, but may include:

• Increased dampness or moisture in the area of the growths
• Increased vaginal discharge
• Itching of the penis, scrotum, anal area, or vulva
• Vaginal bleeding, with or after sexual intercourse

Signs and tests

Flesh-colored to white, flat or raised, single or clustered warts may be seen anywhere on the genitals.

In women, a pelvic examination may reveal growths on the vaginal walls or cervix. Magnification (colposcopy) may be used to see lesions that are invisible to the naked eye. The tissue of the vagina and cervix may be treated with acetic acid (dilute vinegar) to make the warts visible.

A Pap smear may note changes caused by HPV. Women with these types of changes often need more frequent Pap smears for a period of time.

An HPV DNA test can identify whether you have a high-risk type of HPV that is known to cause cervical cancer. This test may be done:

Breast Cancer

Source: The American  cancer society

Breast cancer has become a major killer disease for women in Africa and more so in Kenya. In this 2 part series we shall look at breast cancer more deeply and develop understanding and see through way and means of preventing deaths from breast cancer. Your views are welcome

What are the risk factors for breast cancer?

A risk factor is anything that affects your chance of getting a disease, such as cancer. Different cancers have different risk factors. For example, exposing skin to strong sunlight is a risk factor for skin cancer. Smoking is a risk factor for cancers of the lung, mouth, larynx (voice box), bladder, kidney, and several other organs.

But risk factors don't tell us everything. Having a risk factor, or even several, does not mean that you will get the disease. Most women who have one or more breast cancer risk factors never develop the disease, while many women with breast cancer have no apparent risk factors (other than being a woman and growing older). Even when a woman with risk factors develops breast cancer, it is hard to know just how much these factors may have contributed to her cancer.

Birth Defects: Answers to your 13 most-asked questions

1. What is a birth defect?
A birth defect is a problem that happens while the baby is developing in the mother's body. Most birth defects happen during the first three months of pregnancy.

A birth defect may affect how the body looks, works or both. It can be found before birth, at birth or anytime after birth. Most defects are found within the first year of life. Some birth defects (such as cleft lip or clubfoot) are easy to see, but others (such as heart defects or hearing loss) are found using special tests (such as X-rays, CAT scans or hearing tests). Birth defects can vary from mild to severe.

Unsafe abortions is cause of half of infertility cases - Gynaecologist

About half of infertility cases reported at the country's gynecological clinics  resulted from illegal and unsafe abortions, Dr. James Karanja, a Gynaecologist at Kenyatta national hospital has said.

He disclosed that crude methods like inserting cooked meat, stems and roots of plants are mostly used by women in terminating pregnancies.

When a miscarriage isn't a fluke

As part of the Catholic wedding vows they took four years ago, Melissa and Jacob Arnold promised to be "open to children."

Choosing not to use birth control, the couple dreamed of having a large family. Six months later, Arnold's period was late.

"One day at work, a friend came up to me and said, 'I've got a bun in the oven!' " Arnold says. "I thought, 'Maybe I do too!' So I ran home at lunch to take a pregnancy test. My husband read it and said to me, 'You're going to be a mommy!' We were so thrilled. I ran back to work and said, 'Guess what, I'm pregnant, too!' "

Female sexual problems overview

Long considered a taboo subject, women's sexuality is now openly discussed and portrayed on television, in magazines, and on the internet. Most importantly, women themselves are becoming increasingly aware of their sexuality and their sexual health. Women of all ages are learning more about their sexuality.

What is "sexuality"? For a woman, as for a man, sexuality encompasses a very broad range of physical activities and psychological experiences. These activities fulfill an important physical and emotional need for closeness and intimacy. Sexuality doesn't include just your sexual practices. Your feelings about yourself, how you relate to others, and about sex and previous sexual experiences are part of your sexual makeup. Your feelings about your partner and your relationship definitely affect your sexual satisfaction.