Tag Archive for: Sexual health

An Orgasm A Day…

An Orgasm A Day…

Better Health Through Orgasm!

An orgasm a day may not entirely keep the doctor away but it sure will help. Orgasms are decidedly good for you. When you climax, a host of feel-good chemicals are released that bring about a sense of euphoria, reduce stress, enhance relaxation and lead to an increased feeling of well-being. These are the same substances linked to the many benefits of meditation, massage and exercise.

Orgasmic Meditation

Orgasms can start your day with a bang or provide a satisfying end of the day with an easy drift into blissful sleep. Orgasms are antidepressant and come with no unpleasant side-effects (although they may be addictive). The orgasmic turn-on literally turns off the parts of the brain responsible for processing fear and anxiety. The neuro-chemical soup of coming simmers away stress, leaving calm behind. This chicken soup of sex improves immunity and promotes healing.

You can do it alone or do it with friends (real or imagined). Orgasms can be a solitary satisfaction or enhance a special connection with a certain someone. For those so inclined they can even be the highlight of a social occasion. No matter your mating situation, the pleasurable peak is always available

Bliss Benefits

However you have them, orgasms are greatly beneficial. The heavy breathing part counts as aerobic exercise, so get cranking! The muscle tension of arousal and the electrifying contractions of coming exercise your pelvis in a delightful way. Toning your pelvic muscles improves bladder and bowel function, which is surely a path to happiness. Getting turned on tunes up circulation. Sexual stimulation both soothes and energizes nerves. Excitement extinguishes anxiety and enhances mental functioning.

Prescription pad_orgasmEvery Day Orgasm

Best of all the acme of ecstasy bathes you in an endorphin-high of your very own natural opiates. And the more often you work that system, the better it functions. That’s why I believe that medical practitioners ought to prescribe regular daily orgasms. My professional recommendation is a minimum of 1 orgasm a day or 3 -4 pinnacles of pleasure per week. Naturally, you can have as many as you want since there’s no known maximum. The benefits increase as your dose does, so more is definitely better in this case. I suppose there might be a possibility of over-coming, but OD’ing on orgasm would not be a bad way to go.

Expand Your Experience

Not only are regular orgasm good for what ails you, but super strength orgasms are surely even healthier. Expanded and extended orgasms do an even better job of replicating the benefits of meditation and medication. Trust me, if you come 20 or 30 times, you probably won’t need your Prozac. If you have an orgasm lasting half an hour, your Zoloft will gather dust. You can walk around with a big ole satisfied grin on your face all day long when you rejuvenate with the original mood-altering substance of sex. Stop making excuses. It’s free, it doesn’t take long and the benefits are substantial. So, if you haven’t had your daily dose of ecstasy (the original non-pill kind), go on, pull down your pants, get out the lube and get to work! After all, it’s good for you!

Read more

Vaginal Ecology: An Owner’s Guide to Care & Maintenance (Pt 1)

Yoni SymbolVaginal Ecology: An Owner’s Guide to Care & Maintenance

Part One (Go here for Part Two)

Here’s what you need to know about vaginal health — by understanding the ecology of your vagina you can learn to keep yours healthy, and prevent most vaginal infections and problems. Your vagina is a self-regulating, self-cleaning, resilient yet delicate ecosystem and the less you disrupt the natural balance, the better off you’ll be. This is what every vagina-owner needs to know!

An Elegant System

The vagina isn’t just a nice place to own or visit, nor is it merely a passive space awaiting fulfillment; it’s a complex, integrated environment. Your vagina is a dynamic system with inherent safeguards in place to maintain a healthy equilibrium despite being susceptible to myriad influences that can alter its state of balance. After all, the vagina is exposed to fluctuating hormones, the consequences of our modern diet, our stress-filled lives and numerous artificial products that nature never intended our delicate tissues to withstand. And, of course, Mother Nature did intend our vaginas to have visitors whose presence and leavings can stimulate and impact our vaginal ecosystem. The vagina is well designed to handle many of these influences but sometimes succumbs to influences that cause imbalance, often leading to infection and general grumpiness all around when she’s out of commission.

Vaginal Ecology

Vaginal ecology is the study of the vaginal environment and its interactions. By understanding the ecology, you can better handle your vagina, and keep her happy and healthy by supporting the natural systems. When, despite your best efforts, the normal balance is disturbed and you get a vaginal infection (vaginitis), knowing how your ecosystem works can give you the power to remedy the situation and restore your environment.

Nice and Normal

A normal vagina is constantly kept moist by its slick, slippery and savory natural discharge. (I don’t like that its called discharge though — that sounds yucky — I call it vagina juice.) The smell and taste of a healthy vagina is mild, earthy and slightly pungent with a pleasant, musky aroma. It certainly doesn’t smell like fish or have a strong foul odor. A healthy vagina does not smell or taste bad! In fact, it’s full of sexy scent plus fabulous pheromones, the chemicals of attraction that we don’t consciously smell. Your vaginal juice is a naturally compelling, perfumed invitation.

Juicy Goodness

Vaginal fluid mostly comes from the cells lining the walls, which act similar to sweat glands, producing moisture from the inner mucus membrane surfaces. The rest of the juice is made up of small contribution from several types of glands, located in the cervix and near the vaginal opening. Normal vaginal fluid varies in color from clear to white, although when it dries it may appear yellowish.

The amount differs from one woman to another, as well as for the same woman at different times, and ranges from scant to moderate. Some women are naturally wetter or kunisada-43drier then others, just as some people have oily skin or dry hair or sweat more or less profusely.

What’s most important for you as your vagina’s caretaker is to know what’s typical for you in amount, color, texture and odor. The vaginal fluid reflects where you are in your cycle, your age, your sexual arousal, hormonal contraceptive use, even your diet and fluid intake.

For women who are having normal fertility cycles the shifting pattern is usually similar each month. In general, most women are juiciest during the week leading up to and including the day of ovulation. Most women are driest the week before their period. Girls prior to puberty, breast-feeding moms and post-menopausal woman are drier and less varying.

The Vaginal Garden

A healthy vagina is full of friendly bacteria, mainly particular strains of Lactobacillus acidophilus. These good bacteria protect the vagina and keep it healthy in multiple ways. Their job is to control the population of unfriendly microbes such as yeast and ‘bad’ bacteria. They do so first by filling up the space, like a garden which is profusely filled with flowers, leaving no space for weeds. Next, the acidophilus maintain the proper vaginal environment by producing two important chemicals: lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, a liquid form of oxygen. The lactic acid maintains an acid-alkaline balance (known as pH) in the vagina that’s acidic. Your helpful bacteria also produce hydrogen peroxide to create an aerobic (oxygenated) environment that discourages bad microbes. The beneficial bacteria are the essential hard-working engineers of the ecology of your vagina. When something causes a shift away from the ideal, they get working to bring your ecology back into line.

There’s more! Go here for Part Two.


Want more info on vaginas and related parts? I got more!

Arousal_frontcover-w-Book of theYear Award

Check out my award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal.

WAA-LOLC_Wegener-Self-Exam_V7-HeaderYou can also explore the online course by the same name, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal Online Course to learn about all things vagina!


 

Lube Rules!

In 2016 I offered a free online class about SEX TOYS: The Good, the Baaad and the Slutty.
(You can still get the recording here)Woman Riding Vibrator

As part of all my online education, I always give lots of extra information and resources. As a Wholistic Sexuality teacher and former health care provider, I get asked questions about lubricants all the time. I figured I may as well expand this a bit into a blog post and share it with you.

So, here’s a short primer on the rules of lube and why lube rules!

Lube Rules_Circe Invidiosa-WaterhouseWhy Lube?

Lubricants make everything wetter, slipperier, slick and slidey. Yum!

While vaginas do produce natural lubrication, even if you’re a vagina-owner who produces plenty of natural lubricant, more is better. Also, keep in mind that while vaginal lubrication is a sign of early arousal for some women, most vaginas won’t get super-slippery until the vagina-owner is in high level arousal. Beyond taking the time for a women’s entire erectile tissue network to get totally engorged, this is another good reason to wait until you’re really turned on before putting anything inside!

And, for those times in life when your vagina is dry, such as post-partum, post-menopause, or when you’re on birth control pills, using additional lubricant can make the difference between pain and pleasure.

Using lube is also essential for anal penetration play. The anus produces little natural lubricant and the tissues are fragile.

In addition, if you are using barriers for safer sex play or contraception, lube increases the pleasure quotient significantly. A few drops of lube inside the tip of the condom increases the penis-owners’ sensation (not inside the whole thing though – that would cause it to slip off!) Once the condom is on, slathering the outside will increase the pleasure for the recipient and reduce the chance of breakage—a win-win if I ever heard one! Similarly, some lube on the receiver’s side of a dental dam makes that ‘piece of plastic’ seem to disappear.

Lubricants and Moisturizers

It’s important to know the difference between lubricants and moisturizers. Lubricants make things slide and stay on the surface of your tissues. They’re good for sex, reducing friction and irritation and increasing sensation and pleasure. Moisturizers are absorbed into your tissues, improving tone, elasticity and resilience.

Lube Rules

  1. Oil doesn’t mix with latex. Oil causes latex to deteriorate rapidly leading to the dreaded breakage! (or tiny holes that are huge to sperm and microbes!)
  • There are basically two kinds of oil-based lubricant products: those based on petroleum (Vaseline, petroleum jelly, mineral oil) and those using plant-based oils (coconut oil, sunflower oil, etc.).
  • No oil-based products of either kind can be used with latex products.
    • This includes natural latex products (the vast majority of condoms) as well as polyisoprene (synthetic latex) products.
  1. Water-based lubricants can be used with any products.
  2. Silicone lubes can NOT be used with silicon sex toys. They will cause them to degrade.

Condom Sense

Most condoms are made of latex, which is stretchy, thin and comes in a wide variety of sizes and styles. They’re inexpensive and fine for most people. However, for people who are latex-sensitive (get irritated) or allergic (have serious reactions) or who wish to use plant-based oils like coconut oil, there are some non-latex options.

Types of Non-Latex Condoms that CAN be used with natural oils:

  • Polyurethane
    • Trojan™ Supra Condoms
    • Trojan BareSkin Condoms
  •  Nitrile
    • FC2 Female Condom
  • Lambskin condoms: I generally don’t recommend them as they DO NOT PROTECT AGAINST INFECTIONS!

Types of Non-Latex Condoms that CAN NOT be used with natural oils:

  • Polyisoprene (synthetic latex) These synthetic latex products can have the same issues that natural latex does, that is, oils will degrade them.)
    • LifeStyles® Skyn Condoms
    • Durex Real Feel Condoms

Natural Plant-Based Oils

If you aren’t using latex barriers, you can use any natural plant-based oil as a sexual lubricant. I recommend using organic products. You can find a wide selection at natural food store, sexuality shops and online.

My favorite natural lubricant is good old coconut oil, which acts as both a lubricant and a moisturizer! You just use it straight out of the jar. It smells and tastes delicious. It’s solid when cool and a liquid when warm and it melts deliciously at body temperature. Coconut oil is also good for vaginas as it’s mildly anti-fungal and anti-bacterial (but only against the ‘bad’ bacteria and not the ‘good’ ones that live in a healthy vaginal ecosystem).

Other nice body-friendly and yummy oils include almond oil, jojoba oil, sesame oil and apricot kernel oil.

Make Your Own: Yoni Balm

Yoni is Sanskrit for the ‘entrance to the universe’ or ‘sacred garden of life’. Here’s a recipe for some home-made Yoni Balm using coconut oil as a base.

  • ¼ cup coconut oil (You can also use a mix of coconut, almond, or other plant oils.)
  • 2 tablespoons grated and packed cocoa butter
  • 1-2 vitamin E oil capsules
  • Optional: ½ teaspoon glycerin
  • If you like add non-alcoholic flavoring extracts: vanilla, orange, etc. (No sugar or sweeteners of any kind, though.)

Melt the coconut oil and cocoa butter gently over low heat. While cooling add vitamin E oil (empty 1-2 capsules). Add flavoring and glycerin, if desired. Pour into shallow jars or small containers.

Don’t want to make your own? No worries! One of my favorite herbal companies, Avena Botanicals makes this lovely luscious velvety Yoni Creme.

Water Soluble Lubricants

Water-soluble lubricants are good for latex products and fine with silicone toys. They don’t stain and are easy to wash off. Water-soluble lubes can get sticky and tacky though, so a handy trick to keep them slippery is to use a squirt bottle filled with water and just occasionally use a spritz to rehydrate your lubed body parts.

Unfortunately, most commercial lubricants have a nasty taste and are full of non-body-friendly chemicals. Luckily, there are many natural and organic products on the market now.

My favorite natural water soluble lubes are aloe vera-based. Like coconut oil, aloe acts as both a lubricant and a moisturizer! Among my recommended brands are Good Clean Love (goodcleanlove.com) and Aloe Cadabra (aloecadabra.com). Sliquid (sliquid.com) as a variety of natural lubes, including some with aloe, some without.

Make Your Own: Natural Water-Soluble Lubricant: Flax Seed Goo

May be used internally and externally. It’s soothing, protective, and hypo-allergenic. Plus, when it’s fresh, it has hardly any taste or smell. It’s also water-soluble, thus latex-compatible.

  • One cup flax seeds (whole seeds-not ground)
  • 6 cups water (think juicy sex!)
  • Bring to a boil. Turn down heat. Simmer 6 minutes. Turn off heat. Let sit for 6 minutes. Strain the goo from the seeds. You have now made some sexy slime.Put in large jar in the fridge and put a smaller amount in a small jar or squeeze bottle to have handy for sex. It will keep for up to 2 months in the refrigerator, 2-3 days room temperature. It may be preserved with grapefruit seed extract, calcium ascorbate or a similar vitamin C compound, vitamin E, potassium sorbate, essential oil of lavender, rosemary, sandalwood oil, or tea tree oil.

Silicon Lubes

Silicone lubes are really slippery and long-lasting. They don’t wash off easily, so they’re great for use in the water. Three that I like are Wet (stayswetlonger.com), Pjur (pjurusa.com) & ID (idlube.com).

Samples & Sensitivity

Many companies offer sampler packs so you can try their various products. Also, most sex-education oriented brick-and-mortar stores have lube testers available so you can feel and taste the various products. As with any product, you may be sensitive to some ingredients even if they’re fine for other people. Start off by skin testing on a non-sensitive body part like your inner wrist. Assuming you have no negative reactions after a few hours, then try a small amount on your more delicate bits!

Slather and enjoy!


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Condom Depot for all thing condom including non-latex condoms. Beyond their selection of a wide variety of latex and non-latex condoms, they also have a supremely useful Condom Size Chart so you can get the right size to improve comfort and reduce slippage and breakage.

Condom Size: Another good condom size chart.

Female Condom FAQ

What’s The Best Lubricant? 10 Natural Lubes To Bring HomeJess Kapadia, Huffington Post

What’s the Best Natural Sexual Lubricant? You Might Be SurprisedJill Richardson, AlterNet. (Though I don’t agree with the author about plant-based oils)

The 5 Best All Natural Lubes—Lexi’s Green Guide


This blog is from the More Info & Resources that goes along with a FREE ONLINE CLASS: SEX TOYS: The Good, the Baaaad and the Slutty. (You can get the recording here.)


Do you like the idea of getting empowering, entertaining, erotic education for adults ONLINE? If so, we invite you to check out our Intimate Arts Online live and recorded online classes and courses. Discover a convenient, private and enlightening way to have more pleasure and expand your erotic universe. You’ll be glad you did!

Download your free Orgasmic Abundance ebook and get other free erotic education stuff here!

Want more? Check out our award-winning books.

Save

Save

Save

Circumcision Doesn’t Cause Women’s UTIs. What Does?

Is Circumcision A Factor in Women’s Urinary Tract Infections?
Is Sex?

Claus Rebler-Scream-UTII started writing this as a response to a Facebook post about a women who doesn’t want to have sex with her uncircumcised partner as she believed his intact penis was causing her to get recurrent urinary tract infections. I don’t know if she wants him to get circumcised but that won’t solve her problem. She has my sympathies—urinary tract infections are painful and their association with sex is distressing. Unfortunately, few people seem to actually understand why they occur or how to prevent them.

To start with since the instigation of this post focused on the status of the male member, let me say clearly—whether a male partner is circumcised or intact is not a factor in UTIs.

Sex Is NOT The Cause of Urinary Tract Infections

UTI’s are almost exclusivity caused by anal bacteria that enter and proliferate in the urinary tract. How do the little buggers get from the butt to the urethra? We transport them there by ourselves or with the help of our sexual partners. So, while sex doesn’t cause UTIs, it does tend to transfer the bacteria where they don’t belong.

Prevention

The most important thing to prevent urinary tract infections is super-great sexual hygiene to prevent any bacteria from getting in at all.

Sexual hygiene starts with the basics of good hand, genital and butt washing prior to sexual activities.

However, it’s not our before-sex behavior that’s the main problem. It’s what we’re doing while we have our erotic romps that’s really at fault. The most significant UTI prevention strategy is to keep the butt bacteria where they belong! Take care during sex! Nothing that enters in or touches near the anus should then touch in or near the vulva, vagina and urethral opening.

24969142975_bebcb585bb_zSex—It’s Messy!

Let’s face it—sex is often a wet, messy business and all of the pleasure parts are quite close together. How do we keep the butt bugs where they belong? Here are a few strategies for avoiding contamination (and the possible urinary infections that can result). Try using different hands for front and back. Gloves are a great help as they can be removed after anal play. Similarly, use condoms for anal sex then remove before vaginal contact. Dental dams work great for analingus (and prevent the giver from getting other potential infections.) What to do if you’ve used a body part for anal play and now want to employ it on the vulva? Go take a break and have a good wash.

Is the Standard Advice Useful?

In addition to doing our best to keep the bacteria segregated, we can also decrease their opportunity to flourish. The standard advice of peeing before and after sex, maintaining good hydration and using generous lube can help reduce the risk of infection, should bacteria be inadvertently transferred from back to front.

However, these measures will often be inadequate to prevent an infection, especially if the bacterial load is substantial and the environment welcomes the invaders. Inflamed tissue leads to more adherence, increasing the risk of infection if bacteria have to have been accidentally introduced. An inflamed urethra is more susceptible to infection, but only if there’s a cause of infection, that is, the presence of anal microbes. If there’s no bacteria than you only have inflammation, which is still irritating and can be painful but is likely to resolve without treatment.

It certainly makes sense to stay away from irritants to prevent inflammation and irritation with the concomitant increased susceptibility to infection. Irritants can include friction, spermicides, feminine hygiene products and for some women, certain types of lubricants. Also, if the woman is not adequately aroused and adequately lubricated, penetration can cause irritation, which make her more likely to be unable to fend off bacteria. The health of the women can also be an underlying or co-existent factor.

aloeFor sexual lubricants I strongly advise natural lubricant products, like aloe-based Aloe Cadabra or Good Clean Love (water-soluble and latex-compatible) or coconut oil (NOT latex-compatible). If you’re using condoms, extra lubrication is strongly advised. Also, lubricants are very helpful for intercourse with circumcised men since the lack of the foreskin itself increases friction. The week before menstruation, the post-partum and post-menopause phases of a woman’s life are times that the genitals drier and more fragile. Personally, I think extra lube is pleasure-enhancing at any time, even for women with abundant natural juice.

In addition, unsweetened cranberry juice (liquid or concentrate capsules), Vitamin C and a variety of herbs such as Uva Ursi can naturally kill bacteria. Their use can help in prevention efforts.

Female Ejaculation Prevents UTIs

Finally, I have found that women who ejaculate rarely get UTIs. While peeing after sex may help reduce the number of bacteria, and lessen the chances of getting an infection, the actual flow of fluid through the urethra is only mildly helpful because bacteria adhere to cells. That’s why when you have a UTI and are urinating frequently, all that peeing doesn’t cure the infection. You can’t pee out all those sticky little bacteria. Yet, anecdotally, for myself, in my clinical practice and my teaching, I’ve discovered that abundant ejaculation seems to significantly or even completely prevent urinary infections. (Plus excellent sexual hygiene, of course.) I have a theory that female ejaculate is anti-microbial—I think it’s Mother’s Nature’s UTI prevention strategy.

No More UTIs!

Urinary tract infections are awful, painful and can have dramatic impacts on our sex lives. Some basic knowledge and simple measures can easily be put to use to prevent them once we understand where they come from and how to thwart them. Great sexual hygiene and learning to work with the body’s natural defenses can stop this common problem in its tracks and keep badly behaving bacteria from colonizing our urinary tracts as well.


Want to learn how to female ejaculate (or help your partner learn to do so)? Take the online course!

ROLC_FE_March 2016_V4-HeaderThe Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation

Three Online Classes, Supporting Texts and Videos, ‘Home Play’ Assignments, and More