Five things that everyone should know about sex | Alice Hoyle

What was your sex education like? Did you get any at all past the age of 16? Given that only a quarter to a third of young people have sex before they are 16, but most will have had sex at least once by the age of 19, it seems remiss not to provide high-quality sex education for the 16-25 age range (especially since that is the age group most at risk of contracting STIs such as chlamydia).

Unfortunately, sex education hasn’t moved on much from puberty, plumbing and prevention, and is often reported as being too little, too late and too biological. In the new internet world order where porn and internet hook-ups prevail, and the use of dating apps by perpetrators of sexual violence was reported last week to have increased sharply, it is time we provided sex and relationships education fit for the 21st century, to help us to enjoy our bodies safely.

You might even want to think about introducing safe words into your sexual interactions

So if you missed out on quality sex education, or could do with a top-up, here are five things relating to sex and relationships you might want to think about:

1. Sexuality – We live in a heteronormative world, where gender binary and heterosexual norms prevail. Fixed ideas about sexual identity and sexuality can be limiting. We all need to understand sex as something more than a penis in a vagina and recognise that sex with all sorts of different body parts (or objects) in all sorts of wonderful configurations can be had. That’s not to say you have to experience kinds of sex outside your own comfort levels and boundaries. Be aware of how media, cultural background, gender and power dynamics influence sexuality. Monogamous heterosexuality does not have to be your path.

2) Consent – what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like. Enthusiastic consent should be a baseline expectation, not an aspiration. Without enthusiastic consent then sex is no fun (and quite feasibly rape). If consent is in any doubt at all, you need to stop and check in with your partner. You might even want to think about introducing safe words into your sexual interactions and ensuring you and your partner are confident using them.

‘Taking time to challenge and explore ideas around pleasure will help with your sex education.’ Photograph: Image Broker/Rex Features

3) Pleasure – sex can be one of the most awesomely fun things you do with your body. All sorts of things can affect your ability to give and receive pleasure, including your upbringing, self-confidence, physical and mental health, and communication skills. If sex isn’t pleasurable and fun for you, what needs to change? It is worth noting that male pleasure is generally prioritised over female pleasure. Consider, for example, when you would consider a penis-in-vagina sexual interaction to be finished – at male orgasm or female orgasm?

Taking time to challenge and explore ideas around pleasure as well as deepening your understanding of your own body (in other words, masturbation) will help with your sex education. Always remember, you don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to.

4) Health and wellbeing – Love your body and know what is normal for you. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are all sorts of pressures on us to make our bodies look a certain way, but take some time to appreciate the non-photoshopped, non-pornified variation in our bodies. Your shape and size (of penis, or breasts) do not matter – sex can be the best jigsaw puzzle, and genuine confidence in your body can help you figure out how to use it as an instrument for pleasure.

Knowing what is normal for you is also really important. There are women who continually get treated for thrush bacterial vaginosis and cystitis because they do not understand vaginal flora and the natural discharge variation in their monthly cycle. Nobody told them that having a wee shortly after sex is a good idea.

5) Safety – We are often taught to override our gut feelings. This sometimes stems from childhood, when adults have ignored our bodily autonomy. However it is vital we remember to tune into our gut instincts, especially given the rise in internet dating and internet dating-related crime. Being aware of your own personal safety and sexual boundaries when internet dating is essential.

Remember that no matter how you have been socialised, you do not need to be polite to someone who is making you feel uncomfortable. No is a complete sentence. If someone does not respect your right to bodily autonomy and violates your consent, it is never your fault; the blame lies entirely with them. Always trust your “spidey” sense – if it is tingling, it is trying to tell you something isn’t right, be that a relationship with unhealthy elements, or plans to meet up for a blind date. If a situation doesn’t feel right, think about what needs to change.

Five things that everyone should know about sex | Alice Hoyle

"Still Alice" prescribed to individuals to support beat dementia

The novel which inspired the award-winning Hollywood film Still Alice is to be prescribed to patients who have dementia, below a new scheme for libraries.

Even now Alice, which described the descent of an academic into early onset Alzheimer’s, will be advised to patients and carers to aid them recognize much more about the condition.

The 2007 book, by Lisa Genova, rose to throughout the world fame thanks in component to a movie adaptation, which noticed Julianne Moore win a SAG Award and Golden Globe for her portrayal of the turmoil of dementia.

It is just 1 of 25 titles now launched on the updated Reading Nicely Books on Prescription scheme, which is backed by GPs, psychological wellness experts and government ministers and sees individuals being “prescribed” set books to study.

Each and every text is aimed at providing non-medicinal support for people with dementia, and will be produced offered in each Uk public library for free of charge.

It includes texts giving tips about symptoms and how the illness progresses, as effectively as how to make the most of daily life with dementia and the personalized accounts of those who have suffered it.

It also has books aimed at helping carers and family members, picture books, and suggestions for therapeutic actions to assist navigate the hard path of memory loss.

The notion is a spin-off of the scheme very first launched in 2013, which saw GPs providing individuals who suffered psychological wellness difficulties written prescriptions to pay a visit to their regional library to read through a variety of thirty accepted texts.

The initiative, run by The Reading through Company, the Society of Chief Librarians and the Arts Council, resulted in each public library having a designated listing of texts for difficulties ranging from “anger” to “worry”.

The new scheme, hailed by wellness minister Norman Lamb as “fantastic”, is supported by a host of professional, health care and charitable bodies like the Alzheimer’s Society, The British Psychological Society, Carers United kingdom, Dementia United kingdom, Royal School of General Practitioners, and the Royal University of Psychiatrists.

Other titles on the “dementia” listing contain The Little Woman in the Radiator: Mum, Alzheimer’s and Me by Martin Slevin, Dancing With Dementia: My Story of Living Positively with Dementia by Christine Bryden, and When Somebody You Enjoy Has Dementia by Susan Elliot-Wright.

The Studying Agency has also previously published a listing of “mood-boosting books”, stated to be the novels, poems and quick stories which are confident to cheer folks up.

It consists of Bill Bryson’s Notes from the Small Island, Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie, Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, children’s guide The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Goodnight Mister Tom andTo Destroy A Mockingbird.

"Still Alice" prescribed to individuals to support beat dementia

No one mention the war? Medics and the peace movement | Alice Bell

It started, as some issues do, with a letter to the Lancet. It was January 1951, the Korean War was in total force, and the letter sought to draw focus to how military investing was impacting on healthcare. Signed by seven distinguished doctors – including Richard Doll, famous for his perform on the link between lung cancer and smoking – it pulled few punches in its language: “Each pound spent on bombs signifies far more dead babies now.”

As a post from the University of Bradford describes, not absolutely everyone in the profession agreed. These have been political matters, of which there was no area in a largely scientific medical journal. But the unique signatories disagreed, extending their argument to add a deeper overall health frame to the problem: “War is a symptom of psychological unwell overall health. Its results include wounds and condition. Doctors are consequently properly concerned in preventing it.”

A forum was set up to debate this more, and after a meeting in March 1961, the Healthcare Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) was founded. The present organisation, Medact – who just lately attracted interest for their role in the BMA’s decision to divest from fossil fuels – was founded in 1992, following the merger of MAPW with the comparable Healthcare Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW).

The history of MAPW – and a few similar groups – was not too long ago marked at the the Wellcome Trust with the ‘Bed No Bombs’ conference launching their assortment of the history of anti-nuclear health care campaigning and protest. A lively event, it incorporated historical scholarship, personal reflections, photographs, archives of scientific investigation, newsclippings, banners and even song. Wellcome’s Elena Carter introduces her highlights of the collection in a post on Political Science nowadays, and you can see a gallery of far more of the archives as well.

MAPW sits inside of a more substantial neighborhood of folks energetic in the politics of science, technology and medicine of the late 20th century. As properly as MCANW, we heard from Alison Macfarlane from the Radical Statistics Group, who also presented us some historical past of Radical Nursing, Radical Midwives and the British Society for Social Obligation in Science. We learnt of the prestigious archive of Radical Statistics publications from 1975 onwards, and the way they utilized a “fanzine principle” to put their functions out and hope they would be passed on to folks have been interested. We learnt how their “Unsafe in their hands” leaflet – critiquing government’s use of statistics to talk about the NHS – ended up in Parliament, and was later on used for an episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches.

There is also a larger historical past of publish-war scientists towards the bomb (e.g. Pugwash) which was largely connected by physicists but integrated biomedical researchers as well. There is yet another Wellcome website link here. In 2007, they famously paid £250,000 for a Picasso at first drawn on the wall of scientist and peace activist JD Bernal after delegates to the 1950 Planet Peace Congress had been stranded in London. Moreover, as Peter Peter van den Dungen, also speaking at the Bed Not Bombs event noted, there is a significantly longer background of ‘medics for peace’ work, far past nuclear weapons. Georg Friedrich Nicolai created his idea of war as illness booklet in the light of the Initial Globe War, and there have been responses to biological and chemical warfare, as well as the quite notion of war, during the rest of the 20th century. Nuclear weapons brought a greater sense of urgency, as they did across the pacifist movement, but were not the complete story.

As an intriguing presentation from Christoph Laucht noted, anti-nuclear protest was – oddly probably – marked by expert activism. There is the old joke CND badge that ‘taxidermists say stuff the bomb’ but, regardless of whether a consequence of connections among peace and labour movements or one thing else, there was a proliferation of anti-war groups recognized by specific careers. Teachers, musicians, nurses, all sorts.

This left the question of weather such activity could spark again? Could we have accountants for action on climate modify, nurses against international warming, lawyers for a minimal carbon economy? Or are professions too tied up with quick worries of their own operate, and people to active, burdened by debt or just disillusioned by the chance for alter to talk up? Or maybe, the critics of Doll et al in 1951, they basically don’t really feel it is there area.

Alice Bell is a freelance author and researcher at the moment doing work on a history of the radical science movement.

No one mention the war? Medics and the peace movement | Alice Bell

Alice, 91, Attends "Controversial Issues" Class: What is Your Consider On Health-related Marijuana?

My mother in law, Alice never attended college as a youthful person. She’s producing up for misplaced time now although.  Twice a week she packs a lunch and goes to the local local community college for the Studying In Retirement series of classes. You may uncover your aging parent in class someplace, also. She loves it.  There’s Trials of the Century, taught by a retired lawyer. And then there’s Controversial Troubles.

Final week, my husband, Mikol, who is a psychologist, was going to her and he went along to class.  The subject of the day was healthcare marijuana. The instructor led the discussion by asking the class, which consisted of about 50 seniors, what their experience was and what their opinions were on using health-related marijuana. The group had many elderly retired experts in it: doctors, attorneys, accountants and other individuals. Some were not formally educated, however it appeared there were a lot of thoughtful folks of all backgrounds contributing to the discussion.

Mikol observed that about half the class shared good private experiences with medical marijuana, singing its praises as a pain reliever, tension reducer, and support for insomniacs.  The consensus was that healthcare marijuana is excellent and does not have the side effects of prescription drugs utilized for pain, tension and for sleep, say nothing at all of the dangers and higher cost of prescription pharmaceuticals.  People reported currently being “strung out” on opiate soreness medication until finally they began utilizing medical marijuana. They received much better relief and no addiction from marijuana, they stated.  Most felt it must be a mainstream treatment, not a single that is in the legal hodgepodge that exists underneath our state and Federal governments.

Health-related marijuana is legal in California, exactly where Alice lives.  However the conflict in between Federal law, which nevertheless categorizes marijuana as a Category 1 controlled substance, and CA CA law which enables it for healthcare use, is nevertheless a problem. Those in favor of healthcare marijuana in the class argued that our society legalizes the two smoking tobacco and making use of alcohol, which can do a wonderful deal of harm to many.  They expressed dismay that smoking tobacco is legal and is usually dangerous, although marijuana, which can be taken in edible merchandise, is unlawful beneath Federal law, but is far significantly less probably to trigger any harm.  Now that strains of marijuana for health-related use are offered without having the lively ingredient, THC, that causes the “high” or alteration in consciousness, there was no objection to its use amid individuals in the class. Their discussion was that you can get the benefit of the medicinal results and you can choose a kind without having THC, so there is each cause to allow it and end prosecuting its use.

1 of the leaders of the class was a retired D.A.  He described his own struggle with abdominal soreness from Crohn’s Illness which was so tough to control until he experimented with health-related marijuana. He got relief from his symptoms and will continue to use it despite the conflict with Federal law.

Alice finds the lessons quite stimulating and enjoys the discussion. As it occurs, she has been making an attempt out health-related marijuana in edible (droplet) type for soreness in her knees, which can make it tough to stand and get up from a chair or bed. This is a new energy to address her knee difficulty.  Previously, she has tried every other attainable kind of treatment method for her knees with no substantial improvement. So far, she says it’s helping. We’ll preserve you posted.  And no doubt, she will participate in the following class discussion on this topic.

Right up until following time,
Carolyn Rosenblatt
AgingParents.com

Alice, 91, Attends "Controversial Issues" Class: What is Your Consider On Health-related Marijuana?

Why you must be angry about modifications to NHS patient information policy | Alice Bell

‘People might believe in the NHS with their data now, but have been frightened about what may take place in the long term.’ Photograph: Phil Mccarten/Reuters

If you reside in England, a leaflet entitled “Far better Data Indicates Greater Care” must land on your doormat some time this month.

It truly is from the NHS and announces changes to the way that overall health officials will manage confidential health care data. Overall health policy nerds may also know it as “care.information”.

From the spring, health-related info about you that was previously only kept to help understand you as an personal – information from consultations, notes on prescriptions – will be uploaded to a central database to grow to be one particular of the world’s most complete overall health databases. Our records are getting linked to make them stronger.

This is, in numerous ways, amazing. Many medical researchers are thrilled at the prospect of all this information (eg function on superbugs like MRSA). And they ought to be. Evaluation of NHS patient information 1st unveiled the dangers of thalidomide and aided track the affect of the smoking ban. There is so much more it can do underneath care.data. This new era of socialised huge NHS information could be quite effective indeed. I like the notion that my healthcare therapy will, in the future, be a lot more robustly based on this kind of a big evidence base. I like offering components of myself to society since I get way more back out of it in return.

But there are reasons to be sceptical. Here are three.

Firstly, this expertise isn’t going to just have a social very good, or several personal health ones. It has financial value as well. Without a doubt, a cynic may possibly argue that the explanation the government is pressing this policy through now is exactly due to the fact such data will supply fiscal positive aspects, and that any to wellbeing are merely pleasant side-effects. (The very same cynic may well argue that there are parallels with the government policy on open access. I would have some sympathy with that cynic.) It is about boosting the United kingdom existence sciences sector, not patient care. This is science policy – in which science lies underneath the auspices of the Division for Enterprise, Innovation and Skills – not just health policy.

I suggest, why are we socialising well being information at a time when we are also breaking up the core of a socialised healthcare program? Isn’t that a bit weird?

As the Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample place it, the task “redefines what it means to be an NHS patient”. But is it redefining us because it asks us to give some of our info, or simply because it is turning nevertheless one more part of us into a monetary asset? This is an invitation to have a new social contract with respects to our health, one particular that is very distinct from the sort of social contract we were offered with the emergence of the NHS.

Secondly, it is worth asking no matter whether we are comfy giving this kind of individual info out to a collective pot, because it is different from paying out taxes. Privacy organisations are understandably concerned.

The Wellcome Believe in undertook some intriguing public attitudes investigation on the topic last year. In some respects, the outcomes are not surprising in that it suggests their considerations above sharing overall health information comes down to questions of trust in institutions. What was striking, however, was that the men and women the researchers talked to felt their trust in main institutions was especially reduced: with the banking crisis, MPs’ expenditures, mobile phone hacking, police spies and so on. The researchers discovered considerable fear of being a victim of fraud, with a good deal of cynicism in direction of the government, companies and press. The analysis was conducted ahead of the NSA scandal broke, which in some methods dates it, but also implies the outcomes aren’t tainted by the dominance of that story.

Despite the fact that a couple of anecdotal data breaches inside the NHS had been mentioned, faith in the NHS itself seemed reasonably robust. Even so, there was some uncertainty and concern expressed about the future ownership of well being providers. Individuals may believe in the NHS with their information now, but had been scared about what may possibly happen in the long term. There had been issues that, as far more of the NHS is sold off, personal wellness information may get into the “incorrect hands” outdoors the NHS, and must be heavily protected from employers, advertisers, insurance providers and even drug producers. Worries were also expressed that with far more funding cuts, the NHS may lower corners, or be a lot more probably to use data against individuals to withhold treatment method (eg you as soon as smoked, we won’t ever give you cancer treatment).

Most interesting perhaps were the variations among the people interviewed, specially class. Basically, the poorer research subjects felt much less effective when it came to dealing with any difficulties that may arise arguing their case on identity theft, for illustration, or fighting unfair use of information by employers. Simply because that’s what transpires when you minimize and sell off social programs like the NHS or legal aid. Society stops working as properly as it did. And then you can reap the different benefits of that society be they financial or some thing far more ambitious.

Thirdly, we should be asking why this policy is getting pushed by way of with so small debate. As the leaflet and internet site say, you have the decision to opt out. It is there in daring in the cover. But go searching for how to opt out, and it really is more difficult to find. You have to contact your local doctor. It really is not simple. The government is aware of most will not bother. It really is also really worth noting that the Wellcome research identified several gaps in public comprehending of the issue. It might well be a great idea, but if we’re not ready for it, is it genuinely honest to implement it?

As a powerful editorial in Nature last week place it, this entire method is a public-relations exercise that is far too reassuring. It glosses over data protection “overly reassuring the population that its personal information are safe is an invitation to public disillusionment in the technique down the street” in approaches that may easily backfire. It would, I believe, be awful if we lost public trust in the notion of NHS data sharing since we end up shedding believe in in the way this certain policy has been built and the institutional context close to it (actually, have they learned practically nothing from BSE, GM et al?).

Need to you go by means of the bother to opt out? It really is up to you. I suspect the time would be much better spent fighting other “reforms” to the NHS, as properly as individuals to training and legal assist. But there are huge motives to be angry about this policy, and I consider it says a lot about the government’s method to science, healthcare and the wellbeing of the folks.

Why you must be angry about modifications to NHS patient information policy | Alice Bell