A contraceptive for men is soon going to start trials at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, just in time for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the female contraceptive pill!

Dr. Swerdloff, the director of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Male Contraceptive Clinical Trials Center, said the development of a male contraceptive has the power to change men’s view of their health and empower their reproductive decisions.

“Just as women gained greater control over their reproductive choices and their health with the advent of the birth control pill, a male contraceptive would get men more involved in their personal health care and would give them greater reproductive choices,” he said in a statement.

To this end, the institute is seeking 60 men ages 18 to 50 to test out a combination of hormone gels that will be applied to their arms and abdomens to see how they affect sperm count. The idea is that this hormonal gel will cut sperm count to levels where conception is not possible. According to researchers, discontinued use will result in the men returning to their normal sperm production.

Named after Dr. Christina Wang, one of the leading researchers involved, the test period is being called the “Wang male contraceptive trial.” If you giggle about it, we’re going to think less of you. This is very serious stuff, people.

OK, fine. Giggle. Then, if you’re a man, consider signing up for the study.

Information via the LA Weekly.

The Pill turned fifty years old this year and Time magazine has an incredible piece detailing our tumultuous, misunderstood relationship with it. If you read anything today, let this be it:

It was the first medicine ever designed to be taken regularly by people who were not sick. Its main inventor was a conservative Catholic who was looking for a treatment for infertility and instead found a guarantee of it. It was blamed for unleashing the sexual revolution among suddenly swinging singles, despite the fact that throughout the 1960s, women usually had to be married to get it. Its supporters hoped it would strengthen marriage by easing the strain of unwanted children; its critics still charge that the Pill gave rise to promiscuity, adultery and the breakdown of the family. In 1999 the Economist named it the most important scientific advance of the 20th century, but Gloria Steinem, one of the era’s most influential feminists, calls its impact “overrated.” One of the world’s largest studies of the Pill — 46,000 women followed for nearly 40 years — was released this March. It found that women who take the Pill are less likely to die prematurely from any cause, including cancer and heart disease, yet many women still question whether the health risks outweigh the benefits.

We take it for granted nowadays and its refreshing to take the time to stop and consider those who struggled for it and what the Pill itself helped catalyze. It almost makes us feel guilty for bitching about taking it every morning.

Then we read that Susan B. Anthony quote, here reiterated by Gloria Steimen: “Our job is not to make young women grateful. It’s to make them ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody.”

Well, we’ll feel a little grateful just the same. Just today. Before we get back to bringing sex out of the closet and boobquaking.

Photo of the Pill used in the montage by Jenny Lee Silver. Information from Time magazine.

Fascinating! A recent study conducted by New York City’s Department of Health recently revealed that women are having lots of unprotected anal sex!

The New York City Department of Health immediately issued a statement to remind bareback anal sex enthusiasts of the risks:

Anal membranes are easily damaged during sex, facilitating the spread of infection. Past studies suggest that anal exposure to HIV poses 30 times more risk than vaginal exposure. But the New York City findings suggest that women are less likely than men who have sex with men to use condoms during anal sex. The figure is just 23%, according to the new report, compared to 61% among men who have sex with other men.

We here at Sex and the 405 wonder how prevalent condom use is among men and women who engage in anal sex here in Los Angeles. Take care of your bodies, orchids. You only get one and there are things cosmetic surgery can’t address.

(How’s that for a Friday downer? You’re welcome.)

Information and graph from Animal New York, via @cthon1c.

When it comes to sex ed, some Wisconsin teachers are officially screwed. The state requires them to teach about contraception, but Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth has proclaimed that if any of them do, he’ll press charges.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks covers the issue at BlogHer: “Southworth believes classroom discussion of how to properly use contraceptives will lead not only to sexual activity between minors, but sexual assault on minors.”

She links a letter to school districts in Juneau County, where Southworth makes the following statement:

The teacher need not be deliberately encourage [sic] the illegal behavior: he or she only need be aware that his or her instruction is “practically certain” to cause the child to engage in the illegal act. Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior. Depending on the nature of the child’s behavior, the teacher could face either misdemeanor or felony charges with maximum punishments ranging from 9 months of jail up to six years of prison.

Can we get a WTF?

Madsen-Brooks offers some hard data:

It’s preposterous that teachers would reasonably believe that instruction on contraception could lead to sexual assault. According to data from the University of Wisconsin Health Institute, Juneau County’s teen birth rate is approximately 25 percent higher than the state average, and the county ranks 62 out of 72 Wisconsin counties in the Institute’s health behaviors index (which includes such data as chlamydia infection rates, smoking rates, smoking during pregnancy, binge drinking and the teen birth rate). Clearly, this is a county where young people need some instruction on health.

She raises a good point: a district attorney holds incredible power, and while generally elected, most voters tend to have no idea who their D.A. is. This is a big issue. Read her post to find resources and learn about your own D.A.

Information from BlogHer.

Looks like some nasty habits aren’t so nasty after all. Commenting in a recent article in O Magazine, Bryan Gibson, professor of social psychology at Central Michigan University, says: “In certain situations, what is typically a detrimental trait can turn out to be a good one.”

And just what is he talking about? Being negative, swearing, and getting pissed.

Negativity

“Picture the worst-case scenario and work your way backwards,” says Nicole Jordan, our resident PR pro. And she’s right — focusing on the negative outcomes help us prepare and thus overcome difficulties.

“Defensive pessimism—thinking specifically about what might go wrong—can turn anxiety into action,” says Julie K. Norem, professor of psychology at Wellesley College and the author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking.

Cussing

Bad words make you feel better! According to a recent study published in NeuroReport, participants who immersed their hands in icy water and were allowed to shout bad words experienced significantly less prickly, numbing pain than when they said neutral words. The reason? Swearing seems to activate the stress response, boosting our pain thresholds to better deal with crisis.

Getting Pissed

And by that, we don’t mean piss drunk. Though we’re sure researchers could find a good reason to get wasted if they really tried. Anyway, get this, so long as your rage isn’t a recurring thing, getting angry when you face a difficult situation does help deal with stress.

According to Jennifer Lerner, director of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, reacting with focused anger instead of allowing yourself to get carried away with anxiety releases less of the stress hormone cortisol. Less stress means less likelihood of losing bone mass, becoming depressed or obese. Fantastic!

So, cherish your pessimism, embrace your inner sailor and for the love of all things good and decent, let yourself get seriously pissed every once in a blue moon instead of “dealing with it.”

It’s good for you, trust us.

Image from Tambago the Jaguar. Information from O Magazine.

Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (Läkemedelsverket) has banned three brands of silicone breast implants due to their risk of bursting. Gnarly.

They estimated that some 35,000 European women have had their breasts augmented with dangerous Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) since 2001. Sweden is following France’s example, who has done the same and is now offering the 1,000 affected women an alternatives.

“This is the type of information that we are trying to find out. We hope to be able to release information as soon as possible,” said Staffan Strömberg at the agency.

Strömberg said he does not see any reason for Swedish women who have these implants to be overly concerned at this time.

Image from journal.lv. Information from The Local, via @ericludzenski.

First, it was divorce. Now, researchers at National Health Service in Britain have decided that Facebook is behind the fourfold increase in cases of syphilis in Teesside, Durham and Sunderland.

Director of Public Health Peter Kelly told the Telegraph that social networks are “making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.” Hence the increase in cases of syphilis.

As Mashable reported, the connection between the sexually transmitted disease and Facebook is a stretch. We at Sex and the 405 stand behind their suggestion that institutions in the affected areas need to shift their focus from assigning blame and work on educating the public about sexual health.

Information via Mashable.

A study out of Germany this week indicates that erectile dysfunction may be a powerful indicator of cardiovascular disease in men.

The study, which sampled 1,519 men from 13 countries with cardiovascular disease over a five-year period involved a questionnaire about erectile dysfunction that asked men to specify their degree of impotence.

During the five years that subjects participated, some of the men were given specific drugs for heart disease (which relax blood vessels and thus decrease the heart’s workload) while others were given placebos.

The study found that patients with erectile dysfunction had a higher prevalence of hypertension, stroke, diabetes and lower urinary tract surgery than those without erectile dysfunction. And deaths from all causes occurred in 11.3 percent of the patients who reported erectile dysfunction but in only 5.6 percent of those with no or mild erectile dysfunction at the start of the study.

“Erectile dysfunction is something that regularly should be addressed in the medical history of patients; it might be a symptom of early atherosclerosis,” said Dr. Michael Böhm, lead author of the study and chairman of Internal Medicine in the Department of Cardiology and Intensive Care at the University of Saarland, Germany. He stressed erectile dysfunction is “an early predictor of cardiovascular disease.”

Dr. Robert Stein — professor of cardiology at the New York University School Medicine, and spokesman for the American Heart Association — called the study a wake-up call.

The study appears in this month’s issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Information from CNN, via e*starLA.

A group of Canadian women are suing the makers of Bayer’s popular oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin, saying they were not adequately warned about the pills’ adverse side-effects.

Some women using the popular contraceptives report racing hearts, strokes and, in some cases, serious gallbladder problems that require surgery.

Christine Lovelace, one of the women involved in the suit, says that after she began taking Yaz last February (for reasons beyond birth control), she started getting heart palpitations, waking up in the middle of the night with her heart racing, and unusual menstrual changes, with periods lasting as long as 14 days. Her doctors thought the 42-year-old was suffering from anxiety or entering menopause. They told her not to worry. Then, last fall, Lovelace had a TIA stroke (transient ischemic attack, or “mini-stroke”).

She was paralyzed on her left side and lost the ability to communicate. The palpitations and racing heart stopped after she quit taking the pill and she has recovered from the stroke save for some nerve damage to her hand and foot.

Jennifer Demunnik also took Yaz. A year and a half after starting the pill, her doctors found she had developed gallstones. They told the 27-year-old her gallbladder would need to be removed. After her surgery, Demunnik went online and found other women taking Yaz and Yasmin who had similar complaints. She also found reports that some 1,100 lawsuits had been filed in the U.S. involving these pills.

Siskinds LLP filed the lawsuit Wednesday against Bayer Inc., the maker of Yaz and Yasmin, though it has not yet been court-certified.

Yasmin and Yaz were approved by Health Canada in 2004 and 2008 respectively. The pills have become bestsellers among teens and young women. More than 2 million prescriptions were filled in Canada in 2009, reports IMS Health Canada.

Bayer contends its oral contraceptives “have been and continue to be extensively studied worldwide and are safe and effective when used according to the product labeling.”

Information from CTV News.

According to Sex & A Healthier You, a site dedicated to sexual health, metabolic syndrome is one of the greatest enemies of the libido. Why? Your cholesterol level and how well your body uses insulin are linked to your sexual health.

[Metabolic syndrome] is marked by high blood pressure, abdominal obesity (typically, more than 35 inches around the waist for women, 40 inches for men), insulin resistance high blood levels of insulin, low HDL “good” cholesterol and high triglycerides. If you have at least three of these markers, you may have metabolic syndrome.

In one study, researchers enrolled 100 premenopausal women with metabolic syndrome and assessed their sexual function with a commonly used test called the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI).

Compared to women without metabolic syndrome, those with the condition had a significantly lower FSFI score. While 77 percent of women without metabolic syndrome had “good” sexual function, just 55 percent of those with the condition did. In addition, about a third of women with metabolic syndrome had an “intermediate” function and nine percent had poor function compared to 21 percent and two percent respectively.

Working out and embracing fish, nuts and fruits in one’s diet go a long way. Not to mention that working out relieves stress and helps build endurance and increases our flexibility — key components in epic sexing.

Don’t just do it to be pretty. Do it to develop this body that belongs to you and only you so that you may enjoy all the pleasures it has to offer you.

Information from Sex & A Healthier You.