Just Thinking Differently About Sexual Compatibility May Help a Dry Spell, Study Hints

Psychologists have investigated two contrasting beliefs about the nature of sexual satisfaction, to find out which is more likely to help couples better navigate sexual compatibility.   Desire for sex with a new love interest typically starts strong and then wanes over time. Priorities rearrange, small incompatibilities become big ones, and the energy that comes … Read more

When Is It Safe to Have Sex after COVID?

Recently, my husband endured a mild case of COVID—a cough, a sore throat, some aches and fatigue. Fortunately, he is vaccinated and boosted, and he recovered quickly. On day 10 after infection, he produced a negative rapid antigen test. Cool! So when can we have sex? This, it turns out, is a more complicated question … Read more

Why Sex Chromosomes Matter When It Comes to Heart Disease

Most mammals, including humans, have two sex chromosomes, X and Y. One sex chromosome is usually inherited from each parent, and they pair up as either XX or XY in every cell of the body.   People with XX chromosomes typically identify as female, and people with XY chromosomes typically identify as male. The genes … Read more

Yoga: At least one session a week may help to lower blood pressure

A large real-world study adds to clinical trial evidence that people who do yoga tend to have lower blood pressure, which may prevent heart attacks and strokes Health 9 February 2022 By Alice Klein Regular yoga may lead to health benefits Boston Globe Copyright: Aram Boghosian/Boston Globe/Getty Images Practising yoga one or more times per … Read more

There’s a Bunch of Bacteria Having ‘Sex’ in Your Gut, And It’s Wilder Than We Thought

The human gut is the host of a rampant microscopic orgy. To survive, the microbes in our digestive tract are having ‘sex’ with each other on a regular basis, all in the name of swapping secrets on how to survive deadly doses of antibiotics.   A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign … Read more

Lots of People Die Every Year During or After Having Sex. A Pathologist Explains Why

Sex has many beneficial physical and psychological effects, including reducing high blood pressure, improving the immune system and aiding better sleep. The physical act of sex and orgasm releases the hormone oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, which is important in building trust and bonding between people.   But there’s a dark side: people sometimes die … Read more

The Dolphin Clitoris Is Full of Surprises, Scientists Discover

The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research.   The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much … Read more

Clitoris evolution: What dolphins reveal about female sex organs

By Jessica Hamzelou Bottlenose dolphins are “hypersexual creatures” imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo Patricia Brennan has forged a controversial career in studying the twist and turns of the evolution of animal genitalia. A biologist based at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, her latest research suggests that bottlenose dolphins have clitorises that have evolved … Read more

Desert Beetles Rely on Oral Sex for Successful Mating

When researcher Xinghu Qin ventured through rangeland near Inner Mongolia’s Hunshandake Desert, he spotted some puzzling behavior between two little beetles mating shamelessly in the open: one was constantly licking the other’s tail. “What on earth were they doing?” wondered Qin, then a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. They were Mongolian … Read more

Adult fireflies started glowing for sex, not to avoid predators | Science

The glow of the firefly is as mysterious as it is alluring. Scientists have long argued over why the trait evolved in these adult beetles: Was it to deter predators—or identify mates? A new study argues for the latter, finding the ability arose more than 130 million years ago, tens of millions of years before … Read more