Herbal Health – information on herbal medicine

Many of the sex laws in America have been in place for more than 100 years. They are based on the conservative English laws that the early Puritan colonists brought to this country. They vary widely from state to state and are not always enforced. During the last 25 years, certain states have liberalized their sex laws. Twenty-six states have eliminated all penalties for voluntary, private sexual behavior between adults—gay or straight.

Many states continue to keep their old statutory sex laws, even though most people generally ignore them. But keeping outdated sex laws “on the books” is dangerous. These laws are often used to harass certain individuals or groups. People are easily entrapped because they are unaware that they are breaking the law. They do not know that they may be punished for private sexual behaviors that they mistakenly believe are legally acceptable. Many lawmakers fail in their attempts to get outdated laws off the books because conservative groups fight to keep strict limitations on personal sexual expression.

Fornication

Sex between unmarried people, called fornication, is still against the law in 12 states. Each of these states defines fornication differently. For example, cohabitation is against the law in several states. Since 2.9 million unmarried couples live together in the United States, cohabiting couples in these states may not be aware that they are breaking the law against fornication. In California, a man may not know he is committing a crime if he promises to marry a virgin and has sex with her before their wedding. But he is guilty of sexual seduction and can be fined and put in jail. As recently as 1996, a 17-year-old single mother in Idaho was found guilty of fornication. She was given a 30-day suspended jail sentence under a 75-year-old law. The young woman said that she did not even know what fornication was.

Adultery

Adultery is sexual intercourse between a married person and someone who is not his or her spouse. In the past, divorces were granted based on a husband charging his wife with “criminal communication” and the other man with “alienation of affection.” It was not until the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1868 that wives were given the same legal right to divorce their husbands. Women were extended the same rights in divorce as their husbands had always enjoyed.

In 1969, adultery was a crime in 45 states, but by 1985, only 25 states punished people for adultery. In states such as Massachusetts, adultery is still a crime, punishable by a three year prison sentence and a fine of at least $500.

A more common term for sex outside of marriage is extramarital sex. Most extramarital sex is clandestine, or hidden from one’s spouse. In some marriages, however, extramarital sex, or co-marital relationships, are agreeable to both partners. These marriages are called open marriages and became popular during the 1970s.

In the United States, the incidence of extramarital sex is dropping. Prior to the 1990s, married men and women reported increasing rates of sex outside of marriage. Married women were catching up to married men in the number of their extramarital partners. More recent surveys show that extramarital sex is decreasing for both men and women.

This may be happening for several reasons. More people are marrying later in life, after they have had a variety of premarital sexual experiences. As a result, they may be more willing to commit to a sexually exclusive marriage. Others may be afraid of sexually transmitted infections, particularly AIDS.

*154/155/5*

Cytomegalovirus (sigh-tow-MEG-a-low-VI-rus), or CMV, is an infection that is transmitted through many bodily fluids. It is also sexually transmitted. Every year, CMV causes permanent disability, including hearing loss and mental retardation, for 4,000 to 7,000 babies. It is the most common infection in the United States that is spread from a woman to the developing fetus—from 10 to 20 percent of infants born to women with CMV will become infected. CMV is also very dangerous for people with weakened immune systems. It can cause blindness and mental disorders. CMV can remain in the body for life.

Common Symptoms

• swollen glands, fatigue, fever, and general weakness. CMV causes 8 percent of the cases of mononucleosis.

• irritations of the digestive tract, nausea, diarrhea

• loss of vision

There are usually no symptoms with the first infection. But reinfection with CMV, or infection with other sexually transmitted infections such as HIV and hepatitis B, may reactivate the virus and cause illness.

How CMV Is Spread: In saliva, semen, blood, cervical and vaginal secretions, urine, and breast milk by:

• close personal contact

• vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse

• blood transfusion and sharing IV drug equipment

• pregnancy, childbirth, and breast-feeding

Between 40 and 80 percent of Americans get CMV through contact (usually through saliva) with other children by the time they reach puberty. Adults, however, usually get CMV through sexual activity.

Women who want to become pregnant and who may have the virus should consider testing for CMV

Diagnosis: Blood test.

Treatment: There is no cure. Symptoms may be managed with a variety of intravenous drugs, including foscarnet and ganciclovir. Treatment is not successful during pregnancy.

Protection: Condoms can provide protection during vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse, but kissing and other intimate touching can spread the virus.

*122/155/5*

Expectations for marriage and the sexual relationship had to be based on the obscure and highly sentimentalized teachings of the times. It was not uncommon for a bride to experience

her wedding night totally unprepared for the realities of sexual intercourse, her first experience with sex being closer to rape than to her romantic dreams of sanctioned closeness. What she knew was fiction, gathered from casual talk, overheard conversations, romantic stories and novels, sermons, what her parents and teachers taught her, and her own integration of all these resulting in an utterly unrealistic expectation of what her future as a wife and a sexual partner would be like.

Advice on sexual matters for the married couple was plentiful. Unlike the contemporary emphases on both quantity and quality of sexual experience, nineteenth-century authorities, almost to a man, laid down spartan rules for permissible frequency of intercourse and discussed its quality not at all. Dr. Sylvester Graham, for example, thought that once a month was just about right, and Dr. John Cowan advised complete abstinence during pregnancy, lactation, and for an additional year after weaning. “This may not be required in a perfectly healthy woman, but healthy women being an exception, the rule holds good” (in Walter). Since women were held to be asexual (except in rare and pathological cases), there was no obligation to arouse her or to be concerned for her satisfaction.

Because a pretentious and repressive morality was the official position of family, school, and church, it is still not possible to know the extent of its influence on married couples. That even the educated were often ignorant and uninformed about sex is doubtless true. When one considers the hold that fear, guilt, and shame of sex continues to have, it seems likely that most conventional marriages of the time were affected by the prevalent attitudes.

It is worthwhile to note, however, that the Victorian era had another side, less often mentioned in chronicles of the times. Prostitution flourished, as did the institution of the mistress, at least in Europe. Pornography, the organized sexual use of children, and ritual flagellation all were common. There existed, too, a free love movement which flourished briefly toward the end of the century, a harbinger of the loosening of restraints which would appear again in the 1920s. Finally, the era brought forth the most scholarly and progressive work on sex yet to appear, the classic six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, by Havelock Ellis. Appearing between 1898 and 1910, this monumental work covered a panorama of human sexuality and demolished most of the myths cherished by the proper Victorians.

*70/187/5*

The child’s first ideas about marriage are based upon what he or she observes in the parents’ behavior and on the encounters with the parents. He or she is aware that emotion and affection are or are not displayed, that sharing does or does not take place, and that thoughtfulness and concern are or are not shown. Later on, he or she seeks to emulate or reject their patterns of behavior. On the other hand, most children do not learn much about sexual behavior even from parents who accept their own sexual activity and enjoy it, if the parents desire privacy and need to keep their sexuality secret from the child. Children often contribute to the parents’ felt need of secrecy by showing disgust or rejection of the sex displays of their parents. Young people often report that any sight of their parents showing affection toward each other embarrassed them as children.

From survey data and from case histories we must conclude that usually whenever a young child in the United States engages verbally or physically in a sexual encounter with a parent, the situation is usually one of conflict rather than accommodation, cooperation, and affection. Most sexual encounters between children and their parents are with the parent not as a participant in the encounter but as an observer of a sexual encounter between the child and a peer. The parent often makes his appearance unexpectedly and puts a stop to the activity.

The child also learns what the prevailing adult attitudes are toward sex even without parental interference in direct encounters. The tone of voice in which gossip is relayed warns him to avoid becoming a subject for similar gossip. The care and circumlocution with which certain matters of sex are avoided in books, in the press, and in other public communications subtly reminds the child of the state of public opinion on these matters. Discussions of such things as divorce, marital discord, sexual scandals in the community and gossip about public figures probably have more influence in controlling the child’s behavior than any specific action that society may take or any legal penalties. Given a framework of repression and avoidance by parents and other adults and by adult-sponsored agencies, the child receives the bulk of its sexual information, though not attitudes, but through peer relationships. The parents do not provide cognitive information about sexuality for the child, but they create attitudes and orientations through which information from other children is filtered.

*39/187/5*

When a boy enters school, he is thought to move from a situation of more or less unconditional acceptance within the family (an “ascribed” status) to one in which he must earn others’ approval (an “achieved” status). The primacy of secure family relationships is gradually replaced by a world of school and neighborhood peers, of gangs and cliques, of other children who judge him by often relentless standards.

Relationships outside the family have been viewed as providing boys with many developmental opportunities: to become increasingly independent of their parents, to modify their parents’ moral values, to solidify their gender identity through new identifications with other males, to develop self-confidence through rewarding friendships, and to move from close relationships with other boys to similar ones with girls. According to this view, the typical developmental sequence for heterosexual males includes involvement with buddies in a male subculture. During grade school, boys reinforce one another’s growing autonomy, physical daring, athletic prowess, disdain for females, and other “masculine” behaviors. In adolescence, they often reward each other for heterosexual exploits and may even make such adventures an important criterion for acceptance.

Certain opposite circumstances, it has been hypothesized, contribute to the development of homosexuality among males. According to this view, during the grade-school years prehomosexual boys, especially if they are not conventionally “masculine,” are less likely to be involved with other boys and more likely to limit their social contacts to girls. Such social isolation from peers and involvement with girls is thought to generate a sense of estrangement from other boys and to reinforce a boy’s uncertainty about his masculinity. This view considers male homosexuality an attempt to make contact with other males so as to feel less estranged from them.

A somewhat different model also relates homosexual development to isolation from male peers during adolescence. It emphasizes the extent to which, association with other boys enhances learning about, interest in, and reinforcement for heterosexual sex. Hearing his buddies talk about their sexual experiences may encourage a boy to have some of his own, and he may feel rewarded or acclaimed when he recounts them. Thus, a teenage boy who lacks this kind of preparation and reinforcement may develop little sexual interest in girls.

A number of empirical investigations have supported the notion that the peer relationships of prehomosexual boys differ from those of their heterosexual counterparts. Several studies have reported that prehomosexual boys are more likely to have been loners and to have been rejected by other boys. Another study found that during childhood, prehomosexual boys were more likely than prehetero-sexual boys to have spent most of their time with girls and less likely to have had any male buddies. Finally, psychiatrists have described their homosexual male patients as more likely than their heterosexual male patients to have been social isolates during childhood and adolescence, to have played mostly with girls, to have avoided competitive group games, and to have been clinging children, afraid to venture out beyond the safety of their households.

*13/158/5*

These include the possibility that in the development of the reproductive system in the growing foetus, something goes a bit wrong, and bits of endometrium later show up in the wrong places.

It has been demonstrated that during menstruation a little bleeding can go backwards, and spill out the end of the fallopian tube, instead of out the vagina. It may be that this spillage takes root and grows, but it is not obvious why it should happen in some people and not others.

It is more common in women who have not had a pregnancy, although it can develop in women who have borne children. It seems that having periods (uninterrupted by pregnancies) for five years increases the chance of being affected by this condition. Compared to our parents’ and previous generations we are tending to have children later in life. This may account for the apparent increase in the disease in our population. Some reports estimate that it may affect as many as one woman in ten in Australia.

The introduction of the laparoscope has allowed gynaecologists to see into the pelvises of women who have no symptoms of endometriosis, and are having an investigation or procedure for other reasons, like having fallopian tubes clipped. There is a growing suspicion among some gynaecologists that perhaps endometriosis is not always a problem. It may be that we are seeing it, presuming it must be abnormal, and treating it. It has been suggested that in fact small asymptomatic deposits may not require treatment, and may be considered almost ‘normal’. Further research will hopefully shed more light on this.

*184\52\4*

There may be factors in a woman’s past history or family history which alert a doctor to the possibility of an increased risk of certain conditions in the foetus. Some of these can be tested for in early pregnancy. Conditions which can be looked for include:

Chromosomal abnormalities

The most common chromosomal abnormality is Down’s syndrome. This occurs in one in 700 pregnancies on average, but the chances of it occurring increase with the pregnant woman’s age. (The age of the father does not affect die chances of chromosomal abnormalities.) If the woman is between the ages of 37 and 39 at delivery, the chance of a chromosomal abnormality in her baby is about one in 200. When the woman is 40 or 41, the risk is one in 100. Over the age of 41 the chance increases further.

If a woman or her partner has a chromosomal abnormality, or has had a child previously who has had one, there is also an increased risk.

Spina bifida. This condition results from incomplete closure of the tissues around the spinal cord during development of the foetus. The degree of lack of closure may be small or large, and it can be related to significant problems with the spinal cord. There are different classifications for the various degrees of spina bifida, and the incidence varies with each group.

The age of the parents is not related to the risk of spina bifida, but having had an affected baby in a previous pregnancy does increase the risk, so these women are offered testing.

*144\52\4*

Women’s HealthUlcers. An area of skin with a hole in its surface is called an ulcer. Sometimes ulcers form around the bottom area, and there are a few common (and uncommon) causes. These include:

• herpes infections.

• traumatic abrasions, like little cuts and scratches, often from intercourse. If these become painful and don’t seem to be getting better, it is usually because there is some bacterial infection in them.

• thrush (candidiasis) can occasionally cause local ulcers in the skin.

• nonspecific ‘aphthous’ ulcers, like the ones we get in our mouths from time to time, can occur in the vulval area.

• rare syndromes, such as Bechet’s syndrome, can give recurrent vulval ulcers.

• reactions to some medicines (again fairly rarely) can give vaginal ulceration, in a condition called Stevens-Johnson syndrome.

• very rarely, ulcers may be a sign of a skin cancer.

Thickened skin. If the skin is irritated for a long period of time, it will usually become thicker. People who have long-standing itchy conditions, like eczema, or recurrent thrush, may develop thickened, whiter skin around the vulval area. This is more common in middle age. Most forms of vulval skin thickening are benign, but very rarely, in older women, changes may occur which may be precancerous, so it should be examined by a doctor.

Lipomas. These are soft, discrete lumps of fatty tissue under the skin. They may occur anywhere on the body, including the bottom area. They are perfectly harmless, and have no potential to develop into anything else. They can be removed surgically, but this is usually only for cosmetic reasons.

*105\52\4*

It is pretty difficult to totally avoid this bug, particularly if it likes living in your gut. The simple, common-sense things are worth trying. These include avoiding the things which are recognized as precipitants or aggravators of thrush:

• avoid wearing tight-fitting clothes for prolonged periods

• if wearing pantyhose, wear cotton-gusset types

• avoid nylon underpants

• avoid lycra pants

• carefully dry pubic hair after showering—even using a hair dryer

• avoid vaginal deodorants, or excessive soap.

All of these suggestions aim to make the pubic area less warm, moist, and irritated, so less of a haven for thrush.

If the bug is in your gut, it is probably not a bad idea to prevent wiping the bugs past your vagina. When you wipe your bottom after going to the toilet, wiping from front to back rather from back to front has been recommended. I’m not sure how much difference this really makes, as I don’t think many researchers have spent a lot of time on it, but it seems to make sense.

If you are taking antibiotics for an infection you may find you end up with thrush. Some women have told me that eating yoghurt daily, or applying it to the vagina each day while taking antibiotics helps prevent thrush, although the scientific evidence to back this up may be lacking.

Dietary changes have been promoted by many people as a treatment for this bug. Yeast-free diets, and low-sugar diets seem to be the most commonly recommended. This is out of the field of my own experience and expertise, so I cannot comment for or against it, but many people, particularly natural therapists, advocate dietary manipulations.

Some women notice that their thrush is related to their menstrual cycle. If you have a regular recurrence, say, just before your period, using yoghurt or a medication like a pessary or cream for a night or two may be helpful around this time. Often this form of ‘therapeutic prevention’ breaks the cycle of recurrent thrush.

Women may notice that their thrush is aggravated or precipitated by having sex. Certainly if the skin is damaged there is a higher chance that any organism, thrush included, will have more of a chance to cause a problem. So it may be that intercourse is causing damage to the vaginal skin. A way of preventing this may be to use a lubricant (preferably a water-based lubricant like K-Y Jelly, which is unlikely to damage the skin or cause a reaction, and is safe to use with condoms). Using a lubricant means that you are not depending on your natural vaginal lubrication, which may be reduced for a variety of reasons. It can be particularly important if you are resuming sexual activity after a bout of thrush, because the infection may have made the vaginal skin more sensitive and more easily damaged.

*65\52\4*

Sex (or engaging in sexual contact, to be more specific), is a natural thing. Biologically it is what we animals are made for, and it is an important part of our instinctive drive to survive and reproduce. But we humans are not like other animals in many ways. Our sexual behaviour is one of the things which distinguishes us. Because it is such an important part of our lives, not getting it right can cause a great deal of stress and trauma. When it all happens well, it can be the best thing since, well, anything.

Most of us learn about sex as we grow up. We go from a state of not being consciously aware of the sexual nature of the world, to often thinking we know it all. Then many of us go through a stage of realising that there is a lot more to learn. This second stage of enlightenment usually coincides with recognising that we were learning the wrong stuff in the beginning.

The common images we see of sexual contact make it seem fairly exciting, glamorous, and universally satisfying. We see a beautiful couple on the screen, wrestling passionately and wildly until they both have simultaneous orgasms, amid shots of waves crashing on the shore, and stallions rearing up on their haunches.

The harsh, cold reality is that sex is rarely like it is on the screen, or in books and magazines. It is not all gloom and doom. There are traps for young (and old) players, but it can also be a pretty special thing to share an intimate, sexual relationship. It can be better than on the screen. It can be absolutely fantastic.

It is not somebody’s place to tell you whether or not you should be having sex, with whom, or how often, or in what positions, or pass moral judgements about sexual behaviours. The responsibility for your sexual (and other) choices rests entirely with you. Acting on your choices, however, should not infringe the rights of other people. Sexual activity should only take place between consenting participants.

What is this thing called sex? It is how babies are made. That is what we are taught when we are little. We may also be taught that it is a special thing that daddies and mummies do when they love each other very much. No one does it in public. Nice people don’t talk about it.

If we are lucky, we learn about the mechanics of sex—what fits where in order to make babies—in reproductive biology lessons, sometimes called sex education. But otherwise, we are usually on our own to glean as much information as we can from any sources. A lot of this will come from other kids, who in fact don’t know much more than us, or from ‘folk lore sexuality’, which usually hands down time-honoured traditional lies and misinformation.

Obviously, as humans, we do have sex a bit more often than is absolutely necessary for having babies. It therefore has other uses. It is, generally, an extremely pleasant and enjoyable recreational activity. Because it is such an intimate thing to do, and we tend not to have sex with just anyone, it serves a purpose in relationships.

There have been sex scientists for years exploring the scientific intricacies of sex, measuring bits and pieces during different phases of stimulation and arousal, etc. They have been useful in many ways, in letting us know how normal we really are, and getting people talking about sex. Unfortunately some have just added to the confusion.

The common names used for sex include: having sex, sexual intercourse, making love, coitus, screwing, fucking, rooting, doing it, bonking, banging, and many more (please, feel free to make up your own). Because there are so many different names used, and we have already established that we don’t often know what we are talking about, we should probably sort out a few things.

*26\52\4*