Hey everybody!

Check out my very first podcast! I recorded this with Dan of Charismacoaching.org  and would love to hear your thoughts on it.! The subject is sex and premature ejaculation.  www.charismacoaching.org  then click on blogs!

Thanks!

The medical facts behind Dr. Sloan's 'penile fracture' on 'Grey's Anatonmy'

BY ROSEMARY BLACK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, January 23rd 2009, 5:47 PM

D'Amico/ABC/© 2007

Eric Dane stars as Mark Sloan on the ABC Television Network's "Grey's Anatomy."

Last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy gave male viewers something new to obsess about: a painful and embarrassing condition involving a very private body part.

After Mark ''McSteamy'' Sloan suffers a penile fracture while enjoying some illicit closet sex with Lexie Grey in the episode, the Internet lit up with searches for information about the injury.

Searches for keywords ''penile fracture'' and ''broken penis'' were still high on the top search gainers list well into Friday morning as men everywhere asked in horror: Can that really happen?

Bad news, guys: the answer's yes. ''It's actually pretty common,'' says Dr. Daniel Ronel, a plastic surgeon in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who's treated the condition many times.

''The literature reports about 2,000 cases a year, which means there are probably more like 5,000 to 10,000 cases a year. It's underreported, for obvious reasons.''

The most common reasons for a penile fracture involve sexual intercourse, masturbation, and trauma (such as a car accident, he says.)

Though there are no bones in this organ, when an engorged penis is bent sideways, it's possible to fracture the spongy areas on the sides, Ronel explains.

Dr. Salvatore Giorgianni, pharmacologist and expert on men's sexual health, explains that extreme trauma results when the penis is bent. '

'A fracture is not the exactly the most correct term, but it's a good general term for what we would call penile trauma,'' he explains.

Victims are embarrassed and tend to just load up on Tylenol and stay in bed, says Jack Mydlo, professor and chairman of the department of urology at Temple University School of Medicine.

''But when the penis is in the wrong position and it bends too much, it ruptures, so to speak. This is what leads to swelling.''

The condition requires emergency surgery, says Ronel. ''For years, people thought it could be treated with ice, rest and splinting, but that led to a 30 percent complication rate,'' he says.

''They need to go to the OR right away. The doctor will put stitches in to repair it and make sure the urethra did not get cut.''

Possible complications include infection. ''You could have a disfigurement of the urethra which could impair urination or injury to your erectile function,'' says Giorganni.

Though there was plenty of silly slapstick humor on the show last night as the interns speculated about who ''broke'' Sloan, the fact is that it's a very unfunny situation to the sufferer because there is, of course, speculation about why it happened.

''A penile fracture can occur during masturbation of the guy doesn't know what he's doing, and it can happen during sex, especially when alcohol is involved.''

Though some may wonder if the Grey's plots are getting increasingly implausible, in this case, medical experts are to see this condition front and center.

''They did a favor on the show by getting it out there, because it happens,'' says Giorgianni. ''So if we lose some of the stigma and you know you're not a dork it if happens, then that can be a really positive thing. The most important thing is to get care.''

I thought I had seen it all in this job. But I was wrong.  A 22 year old woman is selling her virginity at a brothel in Nevada. Has it really come to this people? Is this how low we have sunk?

Also, what proof do we have she is really a virgin? And how are we defining it? Has she had other sexual experiences? Does she value her vagina so little that she is willing to sell it to the highest bidder?

What do you think? send me your thoughts and comments….

What is virginity worth today?

(CNN) — Is a woman's virginity worth $3.8 million? That's how much a 22-year-old from San Diego, California, said she has been offered through an auction she announced in September.

Natalie Dylan, 22, said she has put her virginity up for auction through the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

The woman, who goes by "Natalie Dylan," set up a private auction through the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada, has given her lots of "business opportunities," she said.

Her top bid comes from a 39-year-old Australian, but she has no immediate plans to settle the auction, she said in a recent interview with CNN.

Some men may seek virgins because they want them as trophies, or desire purity. But as to why men would bid so much money on virginity, she said she has no answer.

"I honestly don't know what they see in it," she said.

If you think Dylan's auction amounts to prostitution, she completely agrees. She also said she's not breaking any laws — after all, prostitution in Nevada is legal.

"I feel people should be pro-choice with their body, and I'm not hurting anyone," she said. "It really comes down to a moral and religious argument, and this doesn't go against my religion or my morals. There's no right or wrong to this."

The idea that virginity has a high value harkens back to the days of early humans — if a man has sex with a virgin woman, he knows for sure that her children will be his, anthropologists reason. In early civilizations, women were also considered the property of men, said Laura Carpenter, assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Through the 1950s in America, women were expected to remain virgins until marriage, Carpenter said. But with the availability of the pill and the IUD in the 1960s, combined with youth counterculture and gay rights movements, it became more common for women to engage in premarital sex, she said.

Attitudes shifted toward the conservative side in the 1980s with the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, which made the stakes much higher for choosing a sex partner, especially for men. Abstinence-based education programs also took off around that time, with government support, she said.

Today, about 95 percent of Americans have sex before they're 25, Carpenter said. But worldwide, virgin prostitutes can claim larger fees, certain cultures still attach larger dowries to virgin brides, and some women undergo reconstructive surgery to restore their hymens.

In looking at Dylan's auction, "To some extent it's not new. The new part is the Internet," Carpenter said.

Dylan is not the first to hold a public sale for her sexual innocence. An Italian model reportedly had plans to sell her virginity for more than $1 million in September. Dylan said she was inspired by a report of a Peruvian woman who put her virginity up for sale.

Some think Dylan's auction may be indicative of a shift in the way society treats sexuality.

"In a world that is teeming with brand messages, with sponsorships everywhere, intimacy is really just the next thing to go," said Jon Ray, a 24-year-old marketing consultant in Austin, Texas, and author of the blog Who is Jon Ray?

Brett Austin Vanderzee, a 19-year-old student at Oklahoma Christian University who has pledged to stay a virgin until marriage, finds Dylan's actions somewhat appalling, but not shocking.

"It's kind of crazy, but I think it's the general direction that society has been heading in for a while," he said. "We're becoming more accepting of things that normally would have been considered unwise."

Kiara Daines, a 17-year-old from Detroit, Michigan, said she's saving herself until marriage for personal and religious reasons. Both Vanderzee and Daines said they have endured teasing from their peers because of their choice to remain abstinent.

Others say there's just too much hype around virginity. Martha Kempner, vice president for information and communications for the nonprofit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S., said telling a young woman to stay"pure" misses the point that sexuality will influence her long after she loses her virginity.

"By putting the emphasis there, [on virginity], we're actually devaluing the rest of women, the rest of her, and the rest of her sexuality for the rest of her life," she said.

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics showed that religious teens who take virginity pledges are as likely to have sex before marriage as their religious peers, and less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active.

Many people say losing one's virginity has different implications for men than women. While young women see the act as a symbolic giving of themselves, young men are more prone to want to get it over with and brag about it. Similarly, says Kempner, women are taught to keep themselves "pure" and help men exercise control, while there's a "boys will be boys" attitude around men.

Do men really think that virginity is worth millions of dollars?

Audacia Ray, a 28-year-old former sex worker from New York and author of "Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration," is skeptical. She views Dylan's auction as a publicity stunt and doesn't anticipate she'll "continue in the industry."

The importance of a woman's virginity may vary in different cultures, but generally there's not the high value there used to be, Ray said.

"It begins to be viewed more as a burden over time — a burden in that losing virginity is an event, so that it has to somehow mean something, which is part of the reason why people are all up in arms about Natalie," she said.

How do Dylan's friends and family feel? Dylan, who said she was raised in a conservative, non-Christian religious household, said although her mother doesn't agree with her, she still loves her as a daughter. Generally people have been supportive, said Dylan, who uses "Natalie Dylan" as a pseudonym.

"I've talked with my exes, some different guys, and they understand it's just a business deal, and they know me, and they know I'm not this promiscuous girl. Honestly, even if I didn't do this, I'd always be the girl who thinks prostitution is OK," she said. "I would always want to find a partner that can accept me for me."

 As I have been working on promoting my website, I have come across literally thousands of websites devoted to making your sex life better.  Sex tips, sex enhancements, give your partner mind blowing orgasms, last longer, anything and everything to make you the best lover ever.

But as I was checking out all these different sites I realized there was one important component missing in the discussion. Intimacy.  Why is no one talking about intimacy when they are exploring how to improve their sex lives?  It is not the act of sex that binds people together. It is intimacy. 

When we share intimacy with someone we make the choice to be close and loving to them. But we also choose to be vulnerable. We open ourselves up and take risk. We risk our heart, our feelings, the private thoughts we confide in someone all in a relationship we don’t know will last. There is a cost to everything in life, every choice we make. Risking emotional pain and disappointment is the cost of having love and intimacy in our lives, of possibly really connecting with another. 

It amazes me how many questions I get from people asking me how they can talk to their partner about their sex lives.  While sexual communication is an important part of a healthy sex life, I am often surprised when people can get naked with someone, explore every part of their body but cannot or do not have the skills to talk to their partner about what is on their mind when it comes to sex. Being able to have those conversations also helps intimacy develop.

When people ask how they can give their partner multiple orgasms or improve their sexual technique or breathe new life into what they report is a dull, unsatisfying sex life, I can’t help but wonder if there is the underlying issue of lack of intimacy.

Having sex with someone is easy. Anyone can learn how to please someone physically. Having intimacy with someone is the real challenge.