High heeled shoes to up women’s libido!

I read an interesting (read nonsensical) piece of Research result, in New Indian express, bangalore Edition, dated 7th Feb 08,  found out by the Italian scientists. I call it ‘junk research’ as the results of such researches do more harm than good to woman-kind!

They have found out that wearing high heeled shoes can boost a woman’s sexual desire, as walking with high heeled shoes improves the strength of pelvic floor muscles thus upping her sex life!!!

Can anything be more stupid than advising wearing high heel shoes to improve strength of pelvic muscles? Are there no better exercises to improve ones muscles than to resort to heeled shoes?? Have we all not heard of people breaking their back bones by falling down, unable to balance themselves with a pair of high heels? How many ladies suffer twists in ankle bones, tear in the ligaments, postural faults, all because they could not manage their steps while climbing stairs or by walking on uneven surfaces with these shoes on?

Podiatrists (foot specialists) say that the anatomical position of a heeled shoe wearer is abnormal. This causes lot of stress to the feet as well as to the back bone. This leads to many stress fractures to the foot bones. This also leads to foot ailments, swelling of toes, shooting pain caused by injuries to foot nerves, swelling of the balls of feet etc.

When such is the long list of ‘rewards’ for the high heeled shoe wearer, was there any need to pump in funds to this kind of research to declare another ‘attractive’  result of increased libido for the wearer?! I wonder which woman would want to break her bones, have plastered limbs, be bed-ridden with a ‘high- libido’ !

Any takers???

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WORLD AIDS DAY

December 1st is celebrated as World AIDS Day to spread awareness to people about the disease AIDS and how people can help prevent it, how we can reduce the stigma attached to it through disseminating information.I thought I would take this opportunity to explain to my readers what exactly AIDS is and what HIV is and what people should know about this malady.

HIV is a virus – Human Immuno Deficiency Virus – that reduces the strength of the immune system, the defense mechanism of our body to fight diseases. An analogy would be how a nation is exposed to enemy attack if its defenders, the army, become weak.

AIDS is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The HIV starts attacking the body’s immune system cells. You have all heard of white blood cells in our body that are the fighter cells against diseases. One type of such fighter cells are CD 4 T-cells. Normal CD4 counts in adults range from 500 to 1,500 cells per cubic millimeter of blood. As HIV virus start killing these CD 4 Cells, their number starts reducing in the body making our body vulnerable to catching infections very easily. Once this count decreases to a level of about 200 cells or less, the person is said to be suffering from AIDS.

It may take years before a HIV infected person becomes an AIDS patient. It sometimes takes 10 to 15 years for the disease to manifest fully. Till such time, the person may not even be aware of the infection. The virus resides and spreads through body fluids like blood, seminal fluid in men and vaginal secretions in women.

The HIV virus spreads through sexual contact between two persons, one of them being infected. outwardly the infected person may look as normal as anybody else. we would not know their background or sexual habits. Hence it is extremely dangerous to have sex with an unknown person or to have one night stands or to have multiple sexual partners. Since social stigma is heavy upon this issue, many a times, the infected persons would hide the fact from their partners and stealthily spread the disease. HIV can spread through infected blood transfusion or sharing of injectable needles among drug abusers or it can transfer to a new born child from an infected pregnant mother, either before delivery or during delivery or through breast feeding.

Other than the above modes, HIV does not spread through body contact like shaking the person’s hand or by hugging or by sharing bed clothing’s or even utensils in the kitchen. It also does not spread through mosquito bites or any other insect bites.

There are medicines that can control the progress of the infection, i.e., further spreading of HIV to other Cells. There are many people who are infected with HIV, but are on medication and who are leading a normal life. But they need to take extreme care of health and hygiene not to subject themselves to any kind of infections. We have even heard of cases of two HIV infected persons marrying each other and continuing the medication very strictly, thus improving the quality of their life. A person on medication needs to regularly undergo blood testing wherein a CD 4 cell count is done to monitor its number and also a load testing of the Virus in blood. The medicines are to be taken life long. The available treatment now is the Anti Retroviral Therapy or ART. The medicines are very costly and they are being distributed to the persons infected at a subsidized rate by our government.

Once the immune system becomes weak, there are many opportunistic diseases like, TB, Meningitis that affects the brain, Pneumonia that affects the lungs and oral candidiasis that attack the person’s body and that can lead to various complications in other organs too and thus an AIDS patient meets his death. As of now, there are no medicines that can cure AIDS.

You can browse the Net for further detailed information on HIV and AIDS. Please spread this awareness and help prevent AIDS.

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Sex Education

There seems to be lot of confusion in everybody’s mind about imparting sex education at schools and colleges. By the term ‘sex education’ people seem to think it is all about ‘sexual intercourse’ education! No, it is not that. Sex education is all about imparting knowledge on human sexuality. Sexuality is the femaleness and the maleness of individuals. Sexuality is part and parcel of the individual’s personality. From the time a child is born, it is assigned a gender as male or female. This knowledge dictates the person in every kind of behaviour that he/she indulges in. This behaviour is culture specific. However, there is a minority population in any society where the gender identity is not very clear to the individual. He or she does not believe in the biological gender assigned to them and they firmly believe in their mind and heart that they belong to the opposite gender. It is these people who sometimes go to the extent of changing their gender through surgery and then they are called the trans-gendered people. But those who have not changed their gender physically, but subscribe to the other gender psychologically, who resent vehemently their gender assigned to them by nature and by the society, are the ones who belong to the third sex and are fighting for their constitutional rights. I will discuss about them in a separate post.

Coming back to sex education, everybody needs to be equipped with the knowledge of the different changes that occur in a female or male, physically and psychologically, over a period of time through the whole length of human development, from childhood through old age. This knowledge helps a person, specially the pre-teens (also referred to as tweens – as they are in the in between stage of childhood and adolescence) and the teenagers, who are in between the stages of childhood and adulthood, to better deal with their emotional and physical changes. Otherwise, they are vulnerable to confusions, developing myths and mis conceptions about their sexuality and this wrong information creates lot of anxieties and psychological disturbances. The knowledge about their sexuality also equips persons to prevent any kind of sexual abuse taking place. Because of ignorance so many gullible children are taken for a ride and their innocence abused. And many try to experiment with various kinds of sexual behaviour that may put them into deep trouble later on.

Sex education needs to be imparted in educational institutions, not by a Biology Teacher or a Moral Science Teacher, but by a sensitive professional, like a counsellor, who can understand the needs of any particular age group and cater to those needs with authentic information and sensitize them about the physical, psychological and emotional dimensions of human sexuality. A separate meeting with parents is as much required to brief them about the need for sex education to their children and alleviate their own fears and anxieties.

I believe that knowledge is power and when imparted in the right way, it can enhance the respectful way people would treat the other gender and reduce exploitation of males/females as mere sex objects.

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