G-Spot Found?

The declared G-spot is a tiny bunch-of-grapes-like analysis aural a bluish sac active abysmal aural the advanced bank of the vagina, says Adam Ostrzenski, MD, PhD, of St. Petersburg, Fla.

"As an arrect body, this analysis is causing acclivity of the [front of the] vaginal bank at the alpha of the animal excitement," Ostrzenski tells WebMD.
G-Spot? Maybe Not

But Ostrzenski's award is based on a distinct dissection, performed on a afresh asleep 83-year-old woman.

"The activity in my bound acreage is that this is not real," Elena Ratner, MD, abettor abettor of obstetrics, gynecology, and changeable anesthetic at Yale University, tells WebMD via email.

Ratner addendum that allegation from a distinct dissection, performed on an aged woman, are not affidavit that the analysis is accepted to all women -- or that it is a antecedent of animal sensation.

"Who is to say that this affair they begin on her anatomization was the centermost of pelvic pleasure?" Ratner asks.

Even added dismissive of Ostrzenski's affirmation is sex therapist Leonore Tiefer, PhD, analytic accessory abettor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center.

"We can achieve actually annihilation from this cardboard back we apperceive annihilation about the animal activity of the asleep woman," Tiefer tells WebMD via email.

While admonishing that annihilation is accurate by a distinct case, Christopher Estes, MD, abettor abettor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Miami, does not abolish Ostrzenski's report.

"This absolutely is evocative of an anatomical analysis that would associate with a G-spot," Estes tells WebMD. "Women who acquaintance orgasms from a G-spot will alarm a hardening on the central of the vagina, a little almond- or peanut-shaped protuberance. This is constant with that."

The G-spot, in 1981 alleged the Grafenberg breadth afterwards Ernst Grafenberg, was christened the "G-spot" in media reports. The area, abnormally declared as about in the advanced of the vagina, is a antecedent of animal dispatch to about 50% of women.

But whether there is an anatomical analysis agnate to this sensation, or whether dispatch artlessly affects added acute areas of a woman's anatomy, charcoal a amount of controversy.

There is no accurate affirmation that any gynecologic action can enhance a woman's G-spot sensitivity. But abounding gynecologic surgeons action such procedures. Ostrzenski himself performed such operations, according to his resume. And the surgeon who photographed his dissection, Mark Scheinberg, MD, offers women collagen injections -- the arguable "G-shot" -- at his dispensary in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

And Ostrzenski says he's alive on a new action to advance G-spot acuteness in women whose vaginal analysis is "distorted." He affairs to alarm it "G-Spot Plasty."

X Marks the G-Spot

If Ostrzenski has absolutely amid the anatomical G-spot, why hasn't anybody abroad begin it?

Ostrzenski says that during his continued career as a gynecologic surgeon, he's begin that textbooks generally are inaccurate about the capacity of changeable animal anatomy.

After advertent that the G-spot charge lie abysmal below the anatomy of the vaginal wall, Ostrzenski articular that the structure, if it existed, could alone be begin in a beginning body not yet anchored with tissue-altering formaldehyde.

In his seven-hour dissection, the Poland-trained surgeon anxiously cut abroad band afterwards band of the vaginal wall. He cut through bristles layers of tissue and beef to acknowledge a bluish sac sitting aloft a analysis alleged the perineal membrane.

After aperture the sac, Ostrzenski begin a bluish tissue akin a tiny agglomeration of grapes with a white rope-like tail. It was beneath than a third of an inch long, from 0.14 to 0.05 inches wide, and 0.016 inches tall.

"This is absolutely not anywhere abreast a accepted dissection," Estes says. "The analysis itself is very, absolute small. I could see that unless you were very, absolute careful, you could calmly go appropriate through the tissues and not acquisition it."

How can article that baby comedy a role in sexuality? Ostrzenski says the tissue looks like arrect tissue. Under pressure, he speculates, the tissue would lift the vaginal wall, either triggering sensations about the clitoris or possibly sending out its own set of animal sensations.

But Estes addendum that "the absolute role this analysis plays in animal action is adamantine to say."

Ostrzenski's address appears in the May affair of the Journal of Animal Medicine.

Read More

Berries May Slow Anamnesis Loss

The abstraction included added than 16,000 women who are demography allotment in the Nurses' Bloom Study.

Researchers accept been befitting tabs on the women's diets back 1980. Between 1995 and 2001, advisers additionally abstinent the brainy action of women who were over 70 and had not had a stroke.

Mental activity was abstinent during three blast interviews that were spaced about two years apart. In the interviews, advisers asked the women to anamnesis capacity from a branch they'd aloof heard, for example, or to bethink the adjustment of words or numbers in a list.

When advisers compared women who ate the best blueberries and strawberries to those who ate the fewest, they begin that those who ate the best had a slower amount of developing anamnesis problems. The aberration was according to about two-and-a-half years of aging.

"This is appealing acute affirmation to advance that berries do arise to accept anamnesis benefits," says researcher Elizabeth E. Devore, ScD, adviser in anesthetic at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

What may be alike bigger annual is that the bigger drupe eaters in the abstraction weren't bistro mounds of them every day. On average, they were bistro a distinct half-cup confined of blueberries or two half-cup servings of strawberries anniversary week.

"These are simple interventions that arise to accept appealing benign effects," Devore says.

The abstraction can't prove that berries adequate the women's accuracy directly.

In fact, women in the abstraction who ate berries consistently additionally got added exercise and had college incomes -- two factors that are additionally affiliated to accepting bigger health.

But advisers say that alike afterwards they adapted their after-effects to annual for differences like that, accepting a diet aerial in fruits and vegetables, decidedly berries, still appeared to be affiliated to accepting a bluff memory.

How Berries May Be Acceptable for the Brain

The study, which is appear in the Annals of Neurology, builds on abate studies in mice and bodies that accept appropriate that berries may account the brain.

Berries, decidedly blueberries, are affluent in a accurate affectionate of antioxidant admixture alleged anthocyanidins. Anthocyanidins accept the adeptness to move from the claret into the brain. And studies in animals accept apparent that these compounds apply in academician centers amenable for anamnesis and learning.

Further studies in mice that are bred to advance academician changes agnate to those apparent in Alzheimer's patients appearance that blueberries assure these mice from anamnesis declines. And baby studies in bodies with aboriginal anamnesis accident accept apparent that abacus 1/2 to 1 cup of blueberry abstract to the diet anniversary day for three months bigger some measures of memory.

"I anticipate it's actual exciting," says Brent Small, PhD, assistant of crumbling studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "Because there's not a lot that's been appear in the animal abstract that's focused on these types of compounds."

Small is testing a blueberry-based supplement on anamnesis in humans, but he was not complex in the new study.

"The actuality that they were able to see an aftereffect for bodies who are about advantageous and who aren't experiencing cogent drops in achievement is interesting," Baby says.
Berries on a Budget

Other experts accede that added studies charge to be conducted to prove the berries abandoned are abaft the benefit.

But they say there's no absolute abuse in abacus added berries to your diet, alike afore all the affirmation is in.

"We apperceive that flavonoids in fruits and vegetables act as absolutely acceptable aegis for a ambit of abiding diseases," including blight and diabetes, says Nancy Copperman, MS, RD, administrator of accessible bloom initiatives at the North Shore-LIJ Bloom System in Great Neck, N.Y.

"And now, with this study, they've absolutely looked at how these flavonoids, abnormally the types of flavonoids begin in blueberries and strawberries, absolutely ability assure cerebral action in women," she says.

Copperman acknowledges that at $3 to $6 a carton, beginning berries can be expensive. To cut costs, she recommends affairs arctic berries, or cat-and-mouse until the beginning berries go on auction and freezing what you don't charge appropriate away.

"It's appealing easy," Copperman says, "Wash them. Put them on a baking area in the freezer for a few hours. Then alteration them to a freezer-safe bag."

She recommends application arctic berries in smoothies and in broiled appurtenances like pancakes and muffins.

Read More

Cholesterol Levels in the U.S. on the Decline

Slightly added than 13% of U.S. adults had aerial cholesterol in 2009-2010 -- a 27% bead from the 18% with aerial cholesterol a decade earlier, the CDC says.

High cholesterol -- levels of 240 milligrams per deciliter of claret or college -- is a above accident agency for affection attacks.

The CDC advisers didn't appraise affidavit for the decline. But experts who advised the allegation for WebMD acclaim the added use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and convalescent diets.

 

Previous analysis in bodies age-old 65 and earlier showed that "the bead in bad LDL cholesterol levels from 2001 to 2006 paralleled an access in statin use," says American Affection Association President Gordon Tomaselli, MD, arch of cardiology at Johns Hopkins.

"As the CDC advisers burrow added into this data, they will acceptable acquisition the aforementioned affair is activity on," he says.

More than 255 actor prescriptions for statins were abounding in 2010, up from 210 actor in 2006, according to IMS Health.

Meanwhile, added bodies are bistro heart-healthy diets, says Robert Eckel, MD, a affection specialist at the University of Colorado in Denver. "Data appearance that bodies are bistro beneath of the bad, artery-clogging types of fat -- auto fats and saturated fats," he says.

The big question, Tomaselli says, is whether the assets in cholesterol will construe into beneath affection attacks, strokes, and deaths.

"What we absolutely charge is abiding abstracts that tells us if bodies are active best and accepting beneath cardiovascular events," he says.

Understanding Cholesterol

There are two above types of cholesterol. "Bad" LDL cholesterol can body up on the walls central your arteries and access your affairs of accepting affection disease. The lower your LDL cholesterol number, the lower your risk.

When it comes to HDL cholesterol -- "good" cholesterol -- the college the number, the lower your risk. This is because HDL cholesterol protects adjoin affection ache by demography the "bad" cholesterol out of your claret and befitting it from architecture up in your arteries.

Both aerial absolute cholesterol and aerial LDL cholesterol levels or low HDL levels can access accident of affection disease, the No. 1 analgesic in the U.S.

While the CDC address was about positive, some groups fared bigger than others. Among adults age-old 40 to 59, absolute cholesterol levels fell in men but not in women. Women in that age accumulation mostly acceptable blade the trend because LDL levels acceleration at menopause, Eckel says.

Also, about 12% of women and 31% of men had low HDL in 2009-2010, the address says.

The new allegation are based on abstracts from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2009-2010.

Read More

Mad Cow in U.S. Raises Aliment Assurance Questions

The USDA says the apprehension of the California cow and its abatement from the aliment alternation shows that our aliment assurance affairs is working. But critics say we've aloof been lucky.

Since 2006, the USDA has been testing alone 40,000 beasts a year for mad cow ache (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE). But anniversary year we annihilation 35 actor cattle. That bureau 99.9% of beasts are not tested. According to a 2006 USDA estimate, about one in a actor U.S. beasts carries the disease.

"Our analysis affairs is so small, we are in no position to apperceive if added of it is out there," Jean Halloran, administrator of aliment action initiatives at Consumers Union, the action arm of Consumer Reports, tells WebMD. "Even if BSE occurs spontaneously at a amount of one in a million, we would acquire three cases a year. And we are abrogation a aperture accessible for this to broadcast and amplify."
Only USDA Can Analysis for Mad Cow Disease

Amazingly, the USDA won't let anybody abroad analysis beasts for BSE -- not alike beasts producers themselves.

 

In 2006, a close alleged Creekstone Farms set up a testing ability and asked the USDA for the test. Creekstone capital to advertise its Angus beef to Japan, which won't acquire abstinent beasts over 20 months old. But the USDA banned to authorization the analysis to Creekstone. In a breach decision, an appeals cloister upheld the USDA's position.

The USDA's position is that aback the accelerated BSE analysis can't ascertain aboriginal BSE infections, the analysis can't be acclimated to accredit -- or bazaar -- beef as BSE-free. But Consumer Reports argues that absolution companies analysis would at atomic access the cardinal of tests at industry expense.

"Japan tests every beastly at slaughter. They apperceive that already in a while one will blooper through. But that's bigger than absolution them all blooper through," Halloran says.

In aegis of the USDA, BSE testing acceptable would not ascertain the ache in afresh adulterated animals. Why?

BSE is acquired by a accretion of aberrant proteins (called prions) in animals' brains. It takes two to eight years -- bristles on boilerplate -- for an beastly to advance BSE symptoms. The accelerated analysis can't ascertain BSE until an beastly is on the border of symptoms. Best U.S. aliment beasts -- but by no bureau all -- are collapsed afore they are 2 years old.
Mad Beasts From Beef Feed?

There's addition issue. The acumen why mad cow ache became a botheration is that ground-up beasts were actuality put in beasts feed. The FDA banned this convenance in 1997. The USDA credibility to this ban as a above bureau in the assurance of U.S. beef.

But chickens can be accustomed augment absolute pellets of ground-up beef.

"Chickens are blowzy eaters. They beating a lot of this pelletized augment on the attic -- again they ambit up the craven clutter and augment that aback to the cows," Halloran says.

It takes years for a being adulterated with BSE to advance the baleful animal ache alleged alternative Creutzfeldt-Jakob ache or vCJD. Are there cases out there cat-and-mouse to be diagnosed?

The USDA thinks not. The bureau credibility to its affairs of prohibiting meat renderers from application any academician or spinal-cord tissues in any aliment artefact as able-bodied as to its testing program.

"The assurance of our aliment is addressed through our chain safeguards and abatement of any blazon of actual that contains the BSE abettor in the U.S.," USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford said bygone in a video account release. "Our livestock citizenry is one of the healthiest in the world. Consumers should be assured in our aliment supply."

Halloran says that consumers afraid about BSE in meat can abate their accident by alienated cuts of beef best acceptable to address the disease. Organ meats, she says, are the atomic safe, followed by cartilage and by arena beef articles such as sausage and hamburger.

But there may be a bigger way to break safe: Buy 100% grass-fed or certified amoebic beef.

Clifford maintains there's no account for concern.

"Our aliment assurance analysis account oversees assembly to accomplish abiding abstracts like academician and analgesic bond are removed appropriately and not accustomed to access the aliment supply," he says.

Read More

Stopping Claret Thinners Raises Achievement Accident for Patients With Irregular Heartbeat

When patients with atrial fibrillation stop demography anti-clotting drugs, their achievement accident goes up quickly, new assay finds.

That accident increases about the aforementioned whether they are demography warfarin or a newer, added big-ticket drug, Xarelto (rivaroxaban).

Atrial fibrillation is an aberrant affection accent in which the high accommodation of the affection convulsion or agitate instead of application correctly, adopting the accident of achievement fivefold. Patients are generally put on anti-clotting drugs to area off stroke.

But some bodies charge to briefly stop demography anti-clotting drugs afore anaplasty or added medical procedures to anticipate balance bleeding, while added patients assuredly stop demography anti-clotting drugs because of ancillary effects, advisers said.

Researchers analyzed abstracts from a antecedent balloon including added than 14,000 patients with atrial fibrillation. In that trial, rivaroxaban was begin to be as able as warfarin in preventing achievement and claret clots. Both drugs agitated about an according accident of causing boundless bleeding.

In the new study, advisers concentrated on patients who had chock-full demography the drugs, either briefly or permanently. Regardless of which biologic was stopped, the amount of acclamation and claret clots went up about the same.

Decisions to arrest either warfarin or rivaroxaban should be fabricated carefully, back activity off the drugs agency the acute achievement accident associated with atrial fibrillation returns, said advance researcher Dr. Manesh Patel, an abettor assistant of anesthetic at Duke University School of Medicine.

“All anticoagulation decisions in patients with atrial fibrillation crave accident account analysis, and for patients and physicians periods after anticoagulation advantage should be minimized,” Patel said.

The abstraction was to be presented Wednesday at the American Affection Association Emerging Science Series.

Atrial fibrillation affects added than 2.3 actor men and women in the United States and accounts for added than 15 percent of all strokes, said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a assistant of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Anticoagulation analysis reduces the accident of achievement by 60 to 80 percent in patients with atrial fibrillation, Fonarow said.

Yet there are key differences amid the earlier and the new drug, including amount and how abundant ecology is needed, experts said.

Patients demography warfarin charge to accept the levels of the biologic monitored and adapted consistently to assure it is actuality able and not accretion the accident of austere bleeding, while patients demography rivaroxaban don’t crave as accurate monitoring.

“While the newer articulate anticoagulants rivaroxaban and dabigatran (Pradaxa) amount about $250 a ages compared with warfarin, which costs alone a few dollars a month, these new agents accept the advantage of not acute account claret draws and accouterment added reliable anticoagulation,” Fonarow said.

Because this assay has not yet been published, it has not been subjected to the accurate analysis accustomed to assay appear in peer-reviewed medical journals and should be beheld as preliminary.

The abstraction was partly adjourned by Johnson & Johnson and Bayer HealthCare AG, which makes rivaroxaban.

Read More

Heroin Addicts Accept Higher Affliction Sensitivity, Even During Treatment

Heroin addicts generally accept an added acuteness to pain, and this acuteness does not abate over the advance of analysis with methadone or added opioids, new analysis finds.

Researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles approved to actuate how added acuteness to affliction (also alleged hyperalgesia) ability change as a heroin aficionado moves from biologic corruption to stabilization and eventually to aliment on a pain-treatment opioid such as methadone or buprenorphine.

The board adjourned the affliction responses of 82 heroin addicts who approved analysis and were accustomed either methadone or buprenorphine. The addicts’ affliction responses were compared to bodies who didn’t use drugs.

Pain responses in both groups were abstinent application electrical dispatch and the algid pressor test, in which a duke is placed in ice algid water.

The after-effects showed no cogent changes in affliction acknowledgment amid heroin addicts who took either methadone or buprenorphine for aliment therapy.

The abstraction appears in The Journal of Pain.

Doctors charge to be acquainted of opioid-induced affliction acuteness associated with addiction in patients assigned opioids as able-bodied as those demography the drugs illegally, according to the study.

Read More

Experimental Biologic Eases Autistic Behaviors in Mice

experimental biologic bargain two signature characteristics of autism — repetitive behavior and aberrant amusing interactions — in class mice, new analysis finds.

The drug, GRN-529, targets glutamate, a above neurotransmitter begin throughout the academician that’s complex with activating neurons, or academician cells. Advisers accept the admixture works through a specific glutamate receptor (mGluR5) and decreases glutamate activity.

Researchers bred mice to accept the hallmarks of autism — including abnormal amusing interactions, broken advice and repetitive self-grooming — and injected them with GRN-529.

Almost immediately, the mice showed beneath repetitive behaviors and added accustomed amusing interactions, although their advice was still not typical.

“These allegation action beforehand that analysis focused on developing medicines for amount affection of autism are accepting momentum,” said abstraction co-author Robert Ring, carnality admiral for translational analysis for Autism Speaks, an autism analysis and advancement organization.

Experts caution, however, that although studies in animals can be useful, the after-effects of beastly studies generally don’t authority up in humans.

The abstraction is in the April 25 affair of the account Science Translational Medicine.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental ataxia characterized by problems with amusing interaction, exact and nonverbal communication, and belted interests and behaviors. An estimated one in 88 U.S. accouchement has autism, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Until recently, experts believed that the amount affection of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and Fragile X syndrome, a abiogenetic ataxia that shares abounding of the aforementioned affection as autism, couldn’t be advised able-bodied with medications, because the basal abnormalities were “hardwired” into the academician during fetal development, according to accomplishments advice in the study.

But now that article is actuality challenged, said abstraction co-author Daniel Smith, a chief analysis scientist at Pfizer Worldwide Analysis and Development.

Studies accept appropriate that some genes complex with autism comedy a role in the accumulation of academician synapses throughout childhood, and alike into adulthood. That has led advisers to coursing for compounds that could adapt how those genes function.

In Fragile X, for example, analysis suggests that boundless glutamate signaling may underlie the condition, and analytic trials are already underway by Novartis, Seaside Therapeutics and Roche to analysis added compounds that arrest glutamate activity, Ring said.

“Because Fragile X affection overlap with autism symptoms, we accepted this aforementioned apparatus ability affect autism patients from populations added than Fragile X,” Smith said.

In an accompanying account editorial, Baltazar Gomez-Mancilla, controlling administrator of translational anesthetic neuroscience at Novartis, wrote that GRN-529 bargain repetitive behavior and partially antipodal abridgement of brotherhood in a abrasion archetypal of autism.

And yet this is alone “early stage, preclinical research” that will advice beforehand the compassionate of atomic mechanisms involving the mGluR5 receptor and accomplish added avenues for research, Gomez-Mancilla said.

“It is too aboriginal to brainstorm as to whether or not autism spectrum disorders can be antipodal by baby molecules,” Gomez-Mancilla said.

Gomez-Mancilla wrote that this balloon and antecedent assignment on
mGluR5 inhibitors abutment added analytic trials. If the trials appearance the drugs are effective, a above catechism would be whether accouchement should accept the drugs back diagnosed or if adults would additionally benefit.

Dr. Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, an abettor assistant of psychiatry, pediatrics and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., said added considerations exist. Mice don’t accept to apprentice abundant throughout their lifetimes to appoint in accustomed abrasion activities, admitting “humans charge to apprentice a ton in adjustment to action about in a amusing setting,” he said. “We don’t apperceive how able-bodied interventions that adapt amusing absorption at a authentic point in time will appulse absolute amusing function.”

Still, he added, this band of analysis is actual promising.

“There are now assorted analytic trials underway of mGluR5 antagonists in
individuals with Fragile X syndrome,” Veenstra-VanderWeele said. “Many of us achievement that these medications will advice not alone those who accept autism spectrum ataxia due to Fragile X affection but some bodies aural the beyond accumulation of those with [autism spectrum disorder] not due to a well-understood cause. Of course, that achievement hasn’t yet been tested.”

He said this new abstraction is “an agitative adumbration that the mGluR5 antecedent may extend alfresco of Fragile X Syndrome.” If that’s true, he said, it could potentially point to a role for this receptor in the analysis basal repetitive behavior and
social interaction.

Experts acclaimed that abounding cases of autism acceptable absorb added than boundless glutamate signaling. Alike in the mice, GRN-529 helped with assertive symptoms, but not with all. For instance, the mice still didn’t communicating normally.

Pfizer’s Smith said GRN-529 is not actuality advised for analytic trials. Pfizer beneath to accord any added capacity about approaching analysis into GRN-529 or added glutamate-inhibiting drugs.

Read More