Health News and Information

At the present time an increasing number of physicians choose a group of drugs called ‘beta-blockers’ because they have fewer side-effects than previously available drugs.

The dose of beta-blocker drugs which most effectively reduces a person’s high blood pressure will differ because each person seems to respond differently to a fixed dose. It takes a few weeks for your doctor to find the dose most appropriate for you, but once he has found it, you can continue on that dose for a long time, and you will only need to have check-ups every three or six months. Unfortunately, the beta-blockers have some side-effects. These are not disabling but may be disturbing. They include a feeling of lassitude, occasional light-headedness, and sometimes episodes of insomnia or of weird disturbing dreams, but they usually only occur with large doses of the drug. Some people are unable to take the beta-blocker drugs. They include people with asthma, diabetes, and heart failure. Other drugs are available to help them.

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There is also no evidence in humans that homosexuality is due to an abnormal hormonal balance which occurred pre-natally. This is in contrast to lower animals (and birds) whose sexual ‘preferences’ and attitudes can be reversed if sufficient doses of the inappropriate sex hormone is injected into the mother at a precise time during her pregnancy.

Nor is there any evidence that once adult, people with a homosexual erotic preference have lower blood levels of the male hormone, testosterone, although one investigation suggested this. Recent, more accurate measurements of blood levels of testosterone show that there is no difference between those of heterosexuals and those of homosexuals.

A homosexual preference is neither inherited nor due to hormonal imbalance, but it may be due, to some extent at least, to conditioning during infancy and childhood. In several studies of homosexuality by psychoanalysts, one or more of the following relationships or behaviours were said to lead to a homosexual erotic preference.

-Too intense or possessive mothering

-A weak, affectionless, or absent father

-A combination of an intense relationship with the mother and a distant or weak relationship with the father

-Strict, unbending, moralistic, uncommunicative, sexually repressed parents

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Recently it has been clear why this is so. It is now possible to measure the levels of testosterone circulating in the blood with considerable accuracy. Dr Lawrence and Dr Swyer, who conduct the endocrinology clinic in University College Hospital in London, found no difference in the circulating levels of testosterone between impotent men with normal genitals and men who were not impotent. Low testosterone levels were only found among men whose impotence was associated with a disease of the pituitary gland which prevents the normal development of the genitals at puberty. Very few impotent men have low blood testosterone levels. However, if they have, their impotence may respond to testosterone injections, or tablets of a special form of testosterone. These men tend to be old and, in their case, testosterone often works, although it is uncertain whether the hormone has a direct effect or whether the cure is due to the expectation that the drug will work.

More imaginative, if less aesthetic, has been the development of splints to treat impotence. It is the scientific equivalent of the old army gibe ‘If your cock won’t stand up, lash it to a toothbrush’. An original, if bizarre, suggestion was to implant the penile cartilage of a whale into the penis of a man. This experiment is said to have been attempted in Russia and has never been repeated! The disadvantages are obvious.

Research in recent years has shown the limitations of the ’stopwatch’ definition, and another definition has been proposed. This is that premature ejaculation occurs if a man ejaculates either before entering or, more usually, after his penis is in his partner’s vagina, so quickly that a normally orgasmic woman gets little or no enjoyment from the episode of sexual intercourse. By avoiding any time-interval, this definition excludes a man who ejaculates soon after entering the woman’s vagina, but who has satisfied his partner sexually by helping her to orgasm during an extended period of sex-play, or whose partner reaches her orgasm very quickly. But the definition fails to recognize that many women obtain sexual pleasure from the feel of the man’s penis thrusting in her vagina, and from the close body contact which occurs during prolonged sexual intercourse.

A man who ejaculates prematurely has the problem that he is unable to delay his sexual response voluntarily, and he passes rapidly from the late plateau stage (in which many men can remain for long periods) to the stage when ejaculation is inevitable. In other words, a premature ejaculator is the reverse of a woman who cannot reach orgasm. In her case, messages from the sex centre in the brain inhibit the reflex which causes orgasm; in his case, messages from the brain facilitate the reflex which controls orgasm and ejaculation.

Once all these sperms have been ejaculated, the man is sterile, although he continues to ejaculate fluid which is made in the prostate gland so that neither he nor his partner notices any difference in their sexual pleasure.

What happens to the spermatozoa which are produced in the testicles but cannot escape because of the cut vas?

Although they continue to be produced at the rate of 50,000 every minute, an increase in the blood supply to the testes helps to dispose of them quickly and efficiently, and there is no need to be anxious that the testicles will become swollen, bloated with sperms!

Some men who are thinking of having a vasectomy worry that the sperms, being prevented from escaping, may be absorbed into the body and will produce a group of diseases called auto-immune diseases. Investigations have shown that, although some men form antibodies in their blood to sperm, none of the other indicators of auto-immune disease is produced, and vasectomy does not lead to this type of disease.

The effect of the operation on the sexual pleasure of a couple has been investigated sufficiently to establish that over 70 per cent of men find that after vasectomy their sex life is improved, in 28 per cent it is unaltered, and only 2 per cent of men find it to be worse.

What are the advantages of the man having a vasectomy rather than his wife having a tubal ligation, when their family is complete?

The main advantage is that a vasectomy is an easier operation, which is nearly painless and which can be done without admission to hospital. Tubal ligation, whether this is done by a small incision in the abdomen, or by pushing an instrument like a narrow telescope into the abdomen, is a much more complicated procedure.

Neither operation should be contemplated unless the couple are certain in their minds that they will never want any more children because operations to restore fertility are complicated and not always successful. Recent experience in Australia and Britain has shown that if a microsurgical technique is used, no more than half the men treated are able to impregnate their partner within two years of the operation.

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