A moment of madness on holiday can result in major injuries and paralysis, a spine expert warns.

Erectile dysfunction is often treatable, but many men hesitate to discuss it with their doctor.

What’s more, doctors don’t often bring it up with their patients, according to Dr Susan MacDonald, a urological surgeon at Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center.

“I think it’s because of the stigma attached to it,” she said.

When she asks men about whether they can maintain an erection, most say they can – until she asks if they would like their erection to be better.

“Maybe you can get an erection, but you can’t keep it or it’s not fully rigid,” MacDonald said in a Penn State Health news release. “That’s erectile dysfunction, and I can help you,” she tells them.

Erectile dysfunction may not be life-threatening, but it can affect a man’s quality of life, she said.

“It’s not something people talk about over dinner,” MacDonald said. “But it is exceedingly common, so just bring it up to your doctor.”

Other options

The simplest treatments are medications such as Levitra, Viagra and Cialis, she said.

MacDonald noted that men taking nitroglycerin for heart problems cannot take these pills. In addition, health insurance may not cover the drugs.

But other options exist, too. Men can try an injectable medication, or an external vacuum pump, she said. There’s also an intra-urethral suppository that dissolves and creates an erection, MacDonald said.

A penile implant includes a pump in the scrotum so men can control their erections.

“That’s a really great option for a lot of people because it provides spontaneity and is typically covered by insurance,” MacDonald said. “A lot of it is patient preference.”

A frank discussion

Although erectile dysfunction occurs mostly in older men, it can happen in younger men. And it may be a sign of early heart disease, she said.

Men shouldn’t be afraid of having a frank discussion with their primary care doctor, MacDonald said.

“That’s the biggest thing in terms of overall men’s health,” she said. “Getting them in the door.”

MacDonald also suggests bringing your partner along for the meeting.

“It’s good to sit down as a couple and make the decisions together,” she said.

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Medical marijuana has been a beacon of hope in the opioid epidemic, with states legalising weed in hopes that its use will cut down on fatal overdoses from painkiller use.

Now, a new study is throwing cold water on that notion.

OD death rate increased

There’s no association between medical marijuana laws and opioid overdose death rates, researchers report.

The OD death rate actually increased between 1999 and 2017 in states that legalised medical marijuana, rising by about 23%, according to new results.

However, that doesn’t mean medical marijuana is spurring on opioid ODs, researchers emphasise.

“We don’t think that means medical cannabis is killing people now, and we also think it wasn’t saving them before,” said senior researcher Keith Humphreys.

“There must be other things driving this relationship this way and that way, but it’s not fundamentally a causal relationship,” said Humphreys, a Stanford University professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences.

The new report – in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – replicates and extends a 2014 study. That study found that medical marijuana might be providing patients with a less dangerous alternative to opioids for pain relief.

Landscape has changed

The earlier study discovered that state medical pot laws had been associated with a 21% reduction in opioid overdose death rates between 1999 and 2010.

“States have been using the findings from the earlier study as justification for legalising medical cannabis,” said lead researcher Chelsea Shover, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.

But the marijuana legalisation landscape has changed in the United States since then. Medical marijuana is now allowable in 47 states, up from just 13 states in 2010.

Humphreys, Shover and their colleagues decided to revisit the earlier study, broadening it by adding seven years of data gathered as pot legalisation swept the nation.

“We repeated the original study. We used the same methods,” Shover said. “We even found the same thing if we stopped at 2010. But when we looked over a longer time frame, the trend went away and even reversed.”

Emily Feinstein is the Center on Addiction’s chief operating officer and executive vice president. She said the new study shows that many states “have been misled by insufficient or misinterpreted studies into thinking that marijuana is an effective tool to fight the opioid crisis.

Treatment rather than prison

“There is a lot of wishful thinking about marijuana. People want to see it as a magic bullet, or a harmless, beneficial medicine, but that image is being driven by an industry that places profits before the public’s health,” Feinstein said. “We need to craft marijuana policies that are based in strong, credible data, not associations, suggestions or personal experience.”

Researchers suspect that the first set of positive findings was based on other state-level policies that reduced opioid deaths in states that, by coincidence, also were early adopters of medical pot.

These policies included better access to health care, an emphasis on treating addiction as a disease, and policies that steered drug offenders into treatment rather than prison, Humphreys and Shover said.

The researchers also noted that only about 2.5% of the US population uses medical marijuana, which makes it unlikely that its use could affect death stats.

A representative of the marijuana pro-reform group NORML agreed that the new results have been shaped by the inclusion of more states, but the group continues to stand by the idea that medical pot can reduce drug overdoses.

“Not all medical or legalisation programs are equal,” said Mitch Earleywine, advisory board member of NORML and a professor of psychology at University at Albany-State University of New York.

Cannabinoids do have benefits

He believes states that more recently adopted medical marijuana laws are doing a lousy job getting medicinal pot into the hands of people who would benefit from it.

“Including a state with a brand-new, barely functional distribution system in the group of ‘legal’ or ‘medical’ states will dilute any impact of the laws, because the cannabis simply isn’t as available as it might be in states with established programmes that have run for years,” Earleywine said.

Marijuana does have a place in medicine, Shover said.

“The takeaway from our study is that not that cannabis has no medical benefit. Cannabinoids do seem to have medical benefits in some contexts,” Shover said.

But people shouldn’t hold onto false hope that medical pot laws will reduce opioid OD deaths, Humphreys said. Instead, states need to focus on better policies that get addicts into treatment and make the OD-reversing drug naloxone more readily available.

“I understand the desperation that’s out there,” Humphreys said. “But we have to go with the evidence. It isn’t true.”

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One to One had contracts to provide care in the north-west of England and Essex.

Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology have developed a new methodology for the simultaneous analysis of odorants and tastants. It could simplify and accelerate the quality control of food in the future.

Late in pregnancy, the human body carefully prepares fetuses for the rigors of life outside the protection of the womb. Levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, ramp up and spike during labor. Catecholamines, another stress hormone, also rise at birth, helping to kick start the necessary functions that the baby will need to regulate breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure and energy metabolism levels at delivery. Oxytocin surges, promoting contractions for the mother during labor and stimulating milk production after the infant is born.

People who cheat on their spouses are significantly more likely to engage in misconduct in the workplace, according to a study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Parents of budding teens can breathe a little easier: A new study says adolescent “sexting” is not an epidemic.

On the other hand, it’s not disappearing, either, despite campaigns to curb it.

Most teens not involved

“Sexting is perceived as an epidemic because the news highlights extreme cases that involve tragic outcomes, and because it goes against standards of morality and decency that are historically entrenched,” said study author Sameer Hinduja, a professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.

But most teens have never sent or received a sex text, the new study found. It focused on about 5 600 students in American middle and high schools, ages 12 to 17.

Of those, about 14% had ever sent a sexually or explicit image or had received one.

For this study, researchers defined sexting as the exchange of nude or semi-nude photos or videos via text or private messaging on social media.

Other researchers have included sexually suggestive or explicit texts. Hinduja said his team didn’t include those, because they can’t lead to sextortion, child pornography charges or related fallout.

About 11% of the students said they had sent a sext to a boyfriend or girlfriend – and about 64% did so when asked to, the study found. But only 43% complied with a request from someone who was not a current romantic partner.

Frequency may be underrepresented

Boys were much more likely to have sent and received a sext from a current partner, but boys and girls were equally likely to receive them from others.

About 4% said they had shared an explicit image sent to them with someone else, without permission – and about as many suspected this had happened to them.

Hinduja said though dishonest responses were removed from the findings, “it is possible that the frequency of sexting among middle schoolers and high schoolers across the United States may be underrepresented in our research”.

While teen sexting is not rampant, the numbers have remained steady over the years, prompting many to question the effectiveness of campaigns to prevent it.

“Teens sext for a variety of reasons – the most popular are sexual exploration, fun, flirtation and to communicate sexual intent,” said Michelle Drouin, a psychology professor at Purdue University-Fort Wayne in Indianapolis. “In some ways it is part of sexual exploration in a digital age. Many teens do it – it’s not a ‘bad kid’ issue.”

Nonetheless, sexting has been linked to psychological trauma among adolescents.

“The young adults I survey sometimes feel distress about the nude or nearly nude photos they have sent,” said Drouin, who wasn’t involved with the study. “I think the only way to curb teen sexting is through targeted education. Sexting should definitely be a standard component of sex education.”

Exploring best deterrents

Hinduja said efforts to discourage sexting should not aim to stifle sexual development. Instead, they should focus on the seriousness of potential consequences – legal, financial, reputational, social or otherwise, he said.

For future research, his team is interested in exploring the best ways to deter teens from sexting.

“Are there any messages that resonate more powerfully so that they second-guess taking and sending a nude?” Hinduja said. “Do the consequences they hear about concern them at all? Do they have an invincibility complex about these sorts of things?”

In the meantime, letting teens know that a relatively small proportion of their peers engage in sexting may be a deterrent, he said.

“It underscores that it is not as normal, commonplace, or widespread as they might believe,” Hinduja said in a Florida Atlantic University news release.

The study was published recently in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. It was co-authored by Justin Patchin, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Patchin and Hinduja are co-directors of the Cyberbullying Research Center.

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Derby Hospitals’ method of calculating breaks was “irrational” and a breach of contract.