Friday Factoids: TV Causes Diabetes, Diabetes Causes Erectile Dysfunction, Erectile Disfunction Is Embarassing.

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Today's Friday Factoids is about, well, to be polite, Erectile Dysfunction.  This is a taboo subject among us guys.  Women endlessly discuss everything and anything.  Men discuss sports.  And beer.  But mostly sports. Endlessly.

The fact is that as men age, an appalling percentage of us suffer erectile dysfunction, a fancy way of saying our willy won't work. From the age of 30, the number of men who have unsatisfactory erections or none at all increases. In the over-60 age group, more than half of all men have been affected by erectile dysfunction.  I'm over sixty.  I won't admit which group I'm in, but you can guess.  So, how does this happen?

According to research, the causes of that topic men won't discuss include (but are not limited to) -

• cardiovascular disease,
• diabetes,
• hormonal imbalance,
• neurological disease,
• the side-effects of medication and
• watching too much TV.

Watching TV Causes Diabetes
In fact, each hour of your day spent watching TV daily increases your risk of developing diabetes by 3.4 percent according to a study by Dr Bonny Rockette-Wagner and Dr Andrea Kriska from the University of Pittsburgh, PA and just published in the professional journal Diabetologia.  Mostly because you're parked, eating sugar and junk food while watching sports.

When it becomes time to perform, some men reach for the 'blue pills' to deal with erectile dysfunction.

However, while Viagra helps prolong an erection; it does not actually trigger it.

Oh.  There is a more organic solution, one in which you  expose your willy to blue light.  After a slight medical treatment.

From Blue Pill to Blue Light
To 'get it up', researchers led by Martin Fussenegger, professor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at the Department of Biosystems (D-BSSE) in Basel, have developed a novel biotechnological solution: a gene therapy that triggers reliable erections.

Now that sounds promising, doesn't it? 

Alas, no, this therapy involves something that as a man, I don't want to talk about.  Or think about.

Erection without sexual stimulation
A newly developed gene therapy may correct erectile dysfunction.

Cool.  Get right to the source of this unspeakable problem. 

So how does this work?  (Prepare yourself for some eye-glazing technical jargon.) 

A gene construct that reacts to blue light is injected into the erectile tissue of the penis. (They do what into what?) As soon as the penis that has been injected with this "construct" is exposed to blue light,

• a precursor molecule (guanosine triphosphate or GTP) is converted into the second messenger cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), which exists naturally in a number of human organs.
• This allows voltage-dependent calcium channels to close, thereby reducing calcium levels in the cells, which in turn
• relaxes muscle cells and increases blood flow to the erectile tissue.

And so the penis becomes stiff. An enzyme then slowly breaks down cGMP so that the erection wears off with time.  (Does a guy have to take an injection each time?  Into his willy?  That's enough to put a guy off sex.)

Thanks to the gene construct, the production of cGMP is not stimulated by sexual arousal but by exposure of the erectile tissue to blue light. "In this way, we circumvent the usual sexual stimulation that triggers a cascade of signals in the body and ultimately leads to an erection," says Fussenegger.

Being exposed to blue light seems reasonable.  But jabbing a needle into my personal favorite body part? 

I'd rather go for a walk.

And speaking of exercise. . .

Exercise improves erectile, sexual function in men
Men who exercise more have better erectile and sexual function, regardless of race, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.  According to Adriana Vidal, PhD, senior author of the study and investigator in the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute and Department of Surgery, test participants (300 men) reported an improved ability to have erections and orgasms, a higher quality and frequency of erections and a greater overall sexual function.  From exercise.  Not blue pills.  No needles in the willy.

So, turn off the TV, dump the blue pills, dump the junk food, and go for a brisk walk.

Now, some people, perhaps you, don't like to exercise because, or so they claim, exercise makes them sweat and sweat makes them smell bad.  Sorry, but that excuse no longer works.

First perfume which smells better the more you sweat
Researchers in the Queen's University Belfast Ionic Liquid Laboratories (QUILL) Research Centre just announced the first-ever perfume delivery system to ensure the more a person sweats, the better they will smell.

How could this be?  Well, this perfume delivery system was created by tagging a raw fragrance onto an ionic liquid (salt in the form of liquid) which has no smell. The 'perfumed ionic liquid' releases its aroma when it comes into contact with water, allowing more of the perfume's scent to be released onto a person's skin.  In addition, the perfume system also has the ability to remove the bad odors that come from sweat. The 'thiol' compounds that are responsible for the malodor of sweat are attracted to the ionic liquid, attaching themselves to it and losing their potency.

So now that excuse is gone, go for a good walk.  Your spouse, partner(s), girl friend(s), mistresses and especially your self-esteem will thank you.

After putting this story together, I feel stressed out.  I'm going to meet with some friends.

And discuss sports. Over beer.

How 'bout them Packers?