A new study from researchers in Utah finds that a warm touch — the non-sexual, supportive kind — tempers stress and blood pressure, adding to a growing body of research on how emotions affect health.

The study of 34 young married couples ages 20 to 39 by researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City found that massage and other supportive and caring touch lower stress hormones and blood pressure, particularly among men, while also enhancing oxytocin, a hormone thought to calm and counter stress.

We rhapsodise and obsess about it, yet the act of sex is as likely to be ridiculous as sublime. Hannah Betts considers the paradox of consummation

[Article from UK newspaper "The Independent"]

Consummation, as set down dispassionately by the Oxford English Dictionary is "the action of making a marriage or relationship complete by having sexual intercourse"; from the Latin verb consummare, uniting con- (altogether), with summa (sum total), the feminine of summus (highest, or supreme). An end, then, that may be no less a beginning and a lofty one at that, ripe with connotations that the act itself should prove consummate.

And yet, in practice, sex is rather akin to dancing: something physical and exuberant that makes most of us look like arses.

Are you a heterosexual woman seeking a monogamous relationship? Have you ever wanted to genetically test a prospective partner for his ability to remain happily monogamous?

If so, don't pin your hopes on a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study suggests that men with a particular gene variant are twice as likely as men without it to be bad at "pair bonding." Like so many genetic findings about complex human traits, if replicated, this finding would be of genuine interest. But it wouldn't be remotely enough for a new genetic test of infidelity.

Could this research suggest why bonding-based lovemaking is protective of health?

Changing Your Lifestyle Can Change Your Genes

New research shows that improved diet, meditation and other non-medical interventions can actually "turn off" the disease-promoting process in men with prostate cancer.

Dean Ornish M.D.
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 6:32 PM ET Jun 17, 2008

More proof that dopamine surges cause indiscriminate sexual desire. Could heavy porn use/masturbation (another dopamine-surge behavior) be behind some human hypersexuality, or homosexual and bi-sexual behavior?

Courting both ways

Doped-up male fruit flies fancy other males

Boost the dopamine in a male fruit fly’s brain, and he’ll see guy flies in a whole new way.

At this website we share the benefits of strengthening inner equilibrium naturally - and thereby avoiding depression - through careful management of sexual energy. This article demonstrates the risks of turning your wellbeing over to pharmaceutical companies and their clumsy attempts to tamper with the reward circuitry of the brain.

Two years ago, scientists had high hopes for new pills that would help people quit smoking, lose weight and maybe kick other tough addictions like alcohol and cocaine.

From the New York Times
You can accuse the disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of many things in his decision to flout the law by soliciting the services of a pricey prostitute: hypocrisy, egomania, sophomoric impulsiveness and self-indulgence, delusional ineptitude and boneheadedness. But one trait decidedly not on display in Mr. Spitzer’s splashy act of whole-life catabolism was originality.

The Telegraph ran the following article in the UK. Note greater abstinence among younger men. Could porn be playing a role?

French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives.

This treatment was not approved, despite "infomercials" like this article. The benefits were considered too small, and the risk of taking testosterone (including extra body hair and so forth) were considered too great...even by today's FDA.

Gabor Maté shows we’re wired for addiction