Sex

I think I need to go live in Australia.I read this today, and its a real news story: An Australian woman named Penny Sullivan was bipolar and suffering from depression. When she went to the doctor he didn’t prescribe anti-anxiety medication. He did something I hadn’t heard of before. Her doctor prescribed her orgasms. He told her to “have as much sex as she could handle” to help with her low moods. Following doctor’s orders, she went home and had as much sex with her husband as the poor guy could handle. When she went back to the doctor after several weeks of “medication,” she reported that she was no longer depressed. Experts report that semen contains anti-depressant compounds, and orgasms produce endorphins that can help treat depression. Sex releases oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, which also improve depression. I am not making this up: the best part is that they actually did a study and found that women who have unprotected sex have better moods than women whose partners use condoms. Well, how about that? Can’t you just see the drug companies rushing to produce a semen pill to help women with depression? (I wonder if a daily pill would be as effective as a natural dose.) Afraid to speculate further on my own, I checked with experts—I turned to Psychology Today. Remember the McClintock effect? Supposedly women who live or work together end up with synchronized menstrual cycles. Well, scientists at the State University of New York discovered that this doesn’t happen with lesbians (Michael Castleman, M.A., “Attention, Ladies: Semen Is an Antidepressant,” Psychology Today, January 2011). I won’t bore you with all the science, but the scientists who conducted this study believe the only difference is that lesbians aren’t exposed to semen. I kid you not. To take it even further, these scientists did a survey, and what did they find? Women who had intercourse without condoms reported much better moods than women who used condoms, and much, much better than women who had no sex at all. A chemical analysis of semen revealed about 50 compounds that can affect a woman. For example, semen was found to contain FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and LH (luteinizing hormone). These are two female sex hormones and they’re in semen! What’s going on here? Evolutionary scientists think it makes perfect sense. An ovulating female chimpanzee develops red buttocks to signal her sexual readiness, but human females conceal their ovulation. Men can’t tell when women are most fertile. Those men who have higher concentrations of FSH and LH would gain a small reproductive advantage because their semen would encourage ovulation, and the sperm would be more likely to fertilize eggs. According to an article in the Huffington Post, it doesn’t matter whether the semen enters the body orally or vaginally—the effect is the same. The study also suggested that women who describe themselves as promiscuous but used condoms had no increased feelings of well-being. Who knew? It’s semen that makes women happy. I have to stop this blog now. I’m not sure where to take it that won’t get me in trouble, so I’ll leave it to you to figure out the implications of all this science.