Author: The Beauty Nation

Categories
Women's Health

Sexual Values

Sexual Values

An interesting variation on this classification of repression should be mentioned. There were several primarily non-orgasmic women whose receptivity to the repressive conditioning was slightly different. Their own particular personality characteristics or their relationship to negatively directive authority was such that they fully accepted the concept of sexual rejection.

They developed pride in their ability to comply with sexual repression and did so with apparent social grace. Their selection of a mate in most cases represented a choice of similar background. The difficulty arose with marriage.

For example:

On the wedding night, a completely unrealistic, negative sexual value system usually was revealed during their attempt to establish an effective sexual interaction. These women reported either total pelvic anesthesia or isolation of sexual feelings from the context of psychosocial support.

Women entering therapy in a state of non-orgasmic return reflected the complete failure of any effective alignment of their biophysical and psychosocial systems of influence.

They had never been able to merge either their points of maximum biophysical demand or their occasions of maximum psychosocial need with optimum environmental circumstances of time, place, or partner response to fulfill the requirements of their sexual value systems.

Primary orgasmic dysfunction:

A condition whereby neither the biophysical nor the psychosocial systems of influence that are required for the effective sexual function is sufficiently dominant to respond to the psychosexually stimulative opportunities provided by self-manipulation, partner manipulation, or coital interchange.

If the concept of two interdigital systems influencing female sexual responsivity can be accepted, what can be considered the weaknesses and the strengths of each? Input required by either system for the development of peak response is, of course, subject to marked variation.

There may be some value in drawing upon the previously described psychophysiological findings returned from preclinical studies. As a human female response to subjectively identifiable sexual stimuli, reliable patterns of accommodation by one system to the other can be defined, and tend to follow basic requirements set by earlier imprinting.

Patterns of imprinting can be either reinforced or redirected by controlled experimental influence. They can also be diverted in their signaling potential by reorientation of a previously unrealistic sexual value system. The sexual value system, in turn, responds to reprogramming by a new, positive experience.

Variations in the human female’s bio-physical system are, of course, relative to basic body economy. Is the woman in good health? Is there a cyclic hormonal ebb and flow to which she is particularly susceptible? Are the reproductive viscera anatomically and physiologically within normal limits, or is there evidence of pelvic pathology? Is there evidence of broad-ligament laceration, endometriosis, or residual from pelvic infection?

Certainly, most forms of pelvic pathology would weigh against the effective functioning of the biophysical system. On the other hand, are there those biophysical patterns that tend to improve the basic facility of her sexual responsivity? Is there well-established metabolic balance, good nutrition, sufficient rest, the regularity of sexual outlet?

Each of these factors inevitably improves biophysical responsivity. There must be professional consideration of multiple variables when evaluating the influence of the biophysical system upon female sexual responsivity.

Overcome Sexual Difficulty

However, the system with the infinitely greater number of variables is that reflecting psychosocial influence. Most dysfunctional women’s fundamental difficulty is that the requirements of their sexual value systems have never been met. Consequently, the resultant limitations of the psychosocial system have never been overcome.

Many women specifically resist the experience of orgasmic response, as they reject their sexual identity and the facility for its active expression.

Often these women were exposed during their formative years to such timeworn concepts as sex is dirty, nice girls don’t involve themselves, sex is the man’s privilege or sex is for reproduction only.

There are also those whose resistance is established and sustained by a stored experience of mental or physical trauma, rape, dyspareunia which is signaled by every sexual encounter.

Again from a negative point of view, there may be extreme fear or apprehension of sexual functioning instilled in any woman by inadequate sex education. Any situation leading to sexual trauma, real or imagined.

During her adolescent or teenage years or her sexual partner’s, crude demonstration of his own sexual desires without knowledge of how to protect her sexually would be quite sufficient to create a negative psychosocial concept of a woman’s role in sexual functioning.

The woman living with residual of specific sexual trauma (mental or physical) frequently is encountered in this category.

Finally, there is the woman whose background forces her into automatic sublimation of psychosexual response. This individual simply has no expectations for sexual expression that are built upon a basis of reality. She has presumed that sexual response in some form simply would happen but has a little, idea of its source of expression.

In these instances, sexual sublimation is allowed to become a way of life for many reasons. Particularly is this reaction encountered in the woman who has failed to enjoy the privilege of working at being a woman.

The positive side:

The psychosocial value system can overcome physical disability with dominant identification that may be personal and/or situational in nature. In states of advanced physical disability, the strength of loved-partner identification can provide orgasmic impetus to a woman physically consigned to be sexually unresponsive.

When there has been a pattern of little bio-physical sexual demand, as in a postpartum period, sexual tension may be rapidly restored by the psychosocial stimulation of a vacation, anniversary, or other experience of special significance.

Again the biophysical and psychosocial systems of influence are interdigital in orientation, but there is no biological demand for their mutual complementary responsivity. It is in the areas of involuntary sublimation that the psychosocial system is gravely handicapped and would tend to exert a negatively dominant influence in contradistinction to any possible biophysical stimulative function.

Categories
Senior Health

Male Sex Steroid

Little is known of the male climacteric.

When does it occur, if it develops? Is it a constant occurrence? What is the specific symptomatology? Should sex-steroid-replacement techniques be employed? What, if any, are the patterns of sexual responsivity engendered by these replacement techniques? So little is known of the male climacteric.

Now that these definitive laboratory studies can be done with some confidence, relative rapidity, and at not too staggering a cost, much more will be known of the male climacteric within the next few years.

There will be more basic information on the effects of steroid replacement not only upon the aging male’s sexual response cycle per se but also, and infinitely more important, upon the total metabolic function of the climacteric male.

Without the gross advantage of fully supportive laboratory data, tentative clinical conclusions have been drawn concerning the influence of steroid-replacement techniques upon the aging male’s sexual functioning.

These conclusions may have to be restarted or even possibly abandoned in the not-too-distant future as more definitive information is accrued from the healthy combination of clinical and laboratory evaluations.

When the male notices alteration of his orgasmic response pattern from the usual two-stage to a one-stage process, when he consistently responds during an orgasmic experience with the loss of seminal fluid volume without significant ejaculatory pressure, when the average ejaculatory volume is cut at least in half, and when none of these reactions develop under the extenuating circumstances of a long-continued plateau phase of voluntary ejaculatory control, he may be experiencing the physiological expression of reduced production of male sex-steroid to metabolically dysfunctional levels.

Occasionally prostatic pain develops from spastic contractions of the organ during the ejaculatory process.

These spastic contractions create a continuing sense of ejaculatory urgency that may last through the entire orgasmic experience until full expulsion of the seminal-fluid bolus has occurred.

With the subjectively painful evidence of physiological prostatic spasm recurring with most ejaculatory experiences and no obvious pathology of the prostate gland demonstrable to adequate urological examination, sex-steroid replacement also may be indicated.

Until there is a more reliable laboratory definition of a general metabolic need for testosterone replacement and until the clinical existence of the male climacteric can be defined with security during treatment of older men for sexual dysfunction, individual eases must be treated empirically.

If the sexually dysfunctional male describes physiological or psychological symptomatology that appears to indicate a clinical need for the sex-steroid replacement and if the general physical and laboratory evaluations are negative, there is no professional hesitancy to institute such replacement techniques.

However, sex-steroid-replacement techniques are not employed routinely for the 50 to 70 year age group man referred for therapy.

Steroid replacement concepts and specific techniques, together with indications and contraindications for the aging male will be presented in more complete form by the Foundation in monograph format in the future.

Erection Response In Aging Male

The sexual myth most rampant in our culture today is the concept that the aging process per se will in time discourage or deny erective security to the older-age-group male. As has been described previously, the aging male may be slower to erect and may even reach the plateau phase without full erective return, but the facility and the ability to attain erection, presuming general good health and no psychogenic blocking, continues unopposed as a natural sequence well into the 80 year age group.

The aging male may note delayed erective time, a one-stage rather than a two-stage orgasmic experience, reduction in seminal-fluid volume, and decreased ejaculatory pressure, but he does not lose his facility for erection at any time.

Sexual Advantages

If this concept can be presented to and accepted by the general population, one of the great deterrents to the sexual functioning of the aging male will have been eliminated. When the conceptive ability is no longer important and reduction in seminal fluid volume and total sperm production no longer is of consequence, the aging male is potentially a most effective sexual partner.

He needs only to ejaculate at his own frequency and not based on uninformed socio-cultural demand.

There are even some sexual advantages that accrue as the male ages.

He has increased ejaculatory control and can; if he wishes, serve his female partner deftly and with full erective security. His sexual effectiveness is based not only upon his prior sexual experience but also upon the specific element of increased physiological control of the ejaculatory process.

If the aging male does not succeed in talking himself out of effective sexual functioning by worrying about the physiological factors in his sexual response patterns altered by the aging process, if his peers do not destroy his sexual confidence, if he and his partner maintain a reasonably good state of health, he certainly can and should continue unencumbered sexual functioning indefinitely.

Categories
Women's Health

Sex Drive

For many women, a basic homophile orientation is a major etiological factor in heterosexual orgasmic dysfunction. For those women committed to homosexual expression, lack of orgasmic return from heterosexual opportunity is of no consequence.

But there are a large number of women with significant homosexual experience during their early teenage years that, in time, have withdrawn from active homophile orientation to living socially heterosexual lives.

When they marry, many are committed to orgasmic dysfunction by the prior imprinting of homosexual influence upon their sexual responsivity.

Prior homosexual conditioning acts to create a negatively dominant psychosocial influence. Their biophysical capacity, freely evidenced in homosexual opportunity, continues operant in their electively chosen heterosexual environment, but it may not be of sufficient quality to overcome the negative input from their psychosocial system.

It is difficult to evaluate homosexual influence upon heterosexual function. There can be no question that both means of sexual expression will always be an integral part of every culture. So it has been for recorded time.

The problems of sexual adjustment do not rest with those committed unreservedly to a specific pattern of response. Rather, it is the gray area dweller that creates for him or herself a sexually dysfunctional status.

When moving from one means of sexual expression to the other for the first time, the sexual value system must be reoriented if the desired transfer of sexual identification is to be completed. Such was the problem of Mrs. G who had not been able to adapt her sexual value system to her elected heterosexual world when seen in therapy.

Mr. and Mrs. G

were referred for treatment after seven years of marriage, she was 33, her husband 38 years old. The current marriage was his second, the first ending in divorce.

The presenting complaint was that Mrs. G had never been orgasmic in the marriage. Her childhood and adolescence were spent in-a small Midwestern town as an only child of elderly parents. Her mother was 41 when she was born.

Introverted as a teenager, the girl did well in school but had few friends and was not popular with male classmates. When she was 15 years old she formed a major psychosexual attachment to a high-school teacher, who seduced the girl into a homosexual relationship.

The courtship continued for six months before physical seduction was accomplished. Once fully committed to the homosexual relationship, the girl matured rapidly in personality and took a great deal more care with her dress and person. She vested total psychosexual commitment in her “teacher” throughout her high-school years.

Full responsivity in the sexual component of the relationship developed slowly for the teenager, although she was occasionally orgasmic with manipulation within a few months ‘of her first physical experience.

Initially, hers was primarily a receptive role, but as she matured in the relationship psychologically, mutual manipulation and oral-genital stimulation in natural sequence became part of the unit’s pattern of sexual expression.

During the girl’s last year in high school, mutual sexual tensions were maintained at a high level, and physical release was sought by either or both women at a minimum frequency level of three to four times a week. Both women were multi-orgasmic. Mrs. G has no history of heterosexual dating in high school.

There was physical separation when Mrs. G went to college, but since the separation represented a distance of only fifty miles, she and the teacher spent many weekends together. However, toward the end of Mrs. G’s sophomore year in college, the high-school teacher was apprehended approaching other girls, was discharged, and left the geographical area.

This was a major blow to the girl. She had lost her love and at the same time was made aware that the teacher had sought other outlets. Her grades suffered and she became severely depressed and totally antisocial.

She dropped out of school for a semester, during which time she did very little but write long forgiving letters to her mentor, and even visited her for a ten-day period under the pretext of going to see friends.

It was not until Mrs. G graduated from college that the homosexual relationship was finally terminated. During the four college years, she had only two dates, both involving attendance at school events and of no sexual portent.

After graduation, Mrs. G took secretarial training and began working in a larger city in the Midwest. She still suffered from recurrent bouts of depression and finally sought psychiatric support. Helped by this counseling, she gradually enlarged her social circle, began heterosexual dating, and once more showed an interest in her dress and person.

While in college she had developed masturbatory patterns for tension release. The frequency throughout college and during her early years working as a secretary was several times per week. She usually was multi-orgasmic, as she had been during her continuing homosexual relationship.

At age 25 Mrs. G deliberately took advantage of an available partner to attempt intercourse. This experience was sought purely from curiosity demand.

There were several coital exposures with this eager but relatively inexperienced young man.

She found herself repulsed by the man’s untutored, harsh approaches as opposed to those of her high school teacher. She was not physically responsive and found the seminal fluid objectionable.

Added to this general rejection of heterosexual interest was the fact that shortly after establishing the sexual relationship there was a 10-day delay in the onset of a menstrual period. Her fear of pregnancy only contributed to her rejection of any psychosocial concept of heterosexual functioning.

Shortly thereafter Mrs. G met her husband. He had been divorced six months previously for the stated reason that his wife had wanted to marry another man. There were two children of the marriage, both living with their mother.

They were both lonely people and gravitated to each other. There was warmth and affection between them and several mutual interests, so they married.

Mr. G was sexually well versed, kind, considerate, and gentle with his wife. She felt warmly toward him and enjoyed providing him with sexual release. In doing so she lost her incipient phobia for the seminal fluid.

However, she was unstimulated by his sexual approaches beyond that degree necessary to produce adequate vaginal lubrication. Both partners agreed they did not want children, so contraceptive medication was taken by the wife.

The marriage, though warm and comfortable, for several years was essentially one of convenience. However, as time passed, the two partners grew closer together, learned to communicate, and to exchange vulnerabilities.

Yet there was no improvement in the wife’s sexual responsivity, and this became an increasingly important factor in their lives. Mrs. G had never told her husband of her homosexual experience and was guilt-ridden by the concept that her past sexual orientation might have precluded any possibility of effective response in her now desired heterosexual state. The husband and wife were referred for treatment at her insistence.

Categories
Senior Health

Ejaculations, Seminal Fluid

Seminal-fluid volume is gradually reduced during the aging process.

In the younger man with 24-36 hours of prior ejaculatory continence, the total, seminal-fluid volume averages 3-5 ml, while with a similar continence pattern, an output of 2-3 ml is within normal limits for the post 50 male.

These definitive physiological changes seem not to detract from the aging male’s orgasmic experience, subjective interpretation of which usually is one of extreme sensate pleasure.

The orgasmic episode is fully enjoyed, regardless of whether the first stage is altered significantly or even totally missing from the experience.

Obvious reductions in ejaculatory pressure and volume do not alter the male’s basic focus upon the sensate pleasure of the experience. The clinical concern that develops with the advent of these physical changes in the cycle of sexual response occurs when aging males do not understand the physiological appropriateness of their altered sexual response patterning.

If a man who experiences a brief one stage orgasmic episode and ejaculates a reduced seminal fluid volume under little or no pressure does not understand that these altered reaction patterns are naturally occurring phenomena after voluntarily prolonged excitement or plateau phases of sexual tension, he may become extremely concerned about his sexual functioning.c

He may be frightened by the fallacious concept that he is in the process of losing his ability to function in a sexually effective manner.

The fact

On the very next occasion for a coital connection, there may be very rapid progress from excitement through the plateau to a two-stage orgasmic process, significant ejaculatory pressure, and an adequate seminal-fluid volume does not appease the anxious male.

He has noted specific physiological variants in aging sexual functioning on at least one occasion and is aware of no logical explanation for their development.

It never occurs to him that during the first episode, when there was the marked alteration of his usual response pattern, the marital partners were selectively directing themselves to the wife’s pleasure, while during the second experience the sexual partners had turned the tables and obviously were intent upon deriving male release and sexual satiation.

Following the usual dictates of our culture, when any alteration occurs in the structuring of man’s sexual response pattern that he does not understand, he falls into the psychosocial trap of the cultural demand for the constancy of male sexual performance and worries about the possible loss of masculinity.

The resolution phase of the older man’s sexual response cycle also evidences marked physiological alteration from his previously established response patterning. As the male ages, his refractory period, the period following ejaculation, during which the male is biophysically unresponsive to sexual stimuli, extends in a parallel fashion.

The refractory period of the younger man usually continues for but a matter of minutes before he can return to full erection under the influence of effective sexual stimulation.

The refractory period for the aging male occasionally may continue for a matter of minutes, but usually, it is a matter of hours before return to full erection is possible.

Again, if this phenomenon is understood by women as well as by men, the older man will not worry about being unable to respond to a repetitive mounting opportunity as he could when in the 20 to 40 year age group.

Neither he nor his wife will be creating fears for sexual performance if there is no attempt to force erective return when he is in a physiologically extended refractory period. It also should be pointed out that, as opposed to the younger man;

The aging male may lose his erection after ejaculation quickly.

There may not be a two-stage loss of erection as in the younger man’s natural response pattern.

Frequently, the older man’s penis returns to its flaccid state in a matter of seconds after ejaculation, instead of the younger man’s pattern of minutes or even hours.

The informed older man will not be concerned by his response variants if educated to understand that the variants are natural results of physiological involution. But should he not have this information, the penis’s literally falling from the vagina immediately after ejaculation can stimulate real fears for the adequacy of performance.

When an uninformed older man endures the first experience of losing an’ erection so rapidly, he immediately may wonder whether he will be able to achieve a fully effective erection the next time there is a coital opportunity.

When he worries about erective capacity, he tends to try to force or will an effective erection with subsequent coital exposure. Then he is in difficulty.

A plea must be entered for the wide dissemination of information on the natural physiological variants of the aging male’s sexual response cycle, to support not only the men but also the women in our society.

The wife of the 50 to 70-year-old man also must understand the natural evolutionary changes inherent in her husband’s aging process. Once she appreciates the continuing male facility for sexual expression regardless of changed response pattern, she will be infinitely more comfortable about importuning her husband sexually.

She will not worry about his delayed erection time when fully aware that it does not mean that he no longer finds her attractive. The less than fully erect penis sometimes present in the plateau phase can be readily inserted by a perceptive woman with the sure knowledge after successful intromission that her husband’s first few penile strokes will aid in the full development of the erection.

An informed wife will not hesitate to be sexually demonstrative when she realizes that once a coital connection has been established her husband has increased facility for ejaculatory control.

Confident of her own and her husband’s facility to respond successfully, even though the typical response patterns of their younger years have been altered, the concerned wife can meet her husband freely without the usual cultural reservations.

This security of sexual performance for the aging man and woman comes only from the wide dissemination of information from authoritative sources.

Categories
Senior Health

ED in Aging Male

Composite case studies have been selected to identify and illustrate the dysfunctional characteristics of the male aging process.

Both Mr. and Mrs. A were 66 and 62 years of age when referred to the Foundation for sexual inadequacy. They had been married 39 years and had three children, the youngest of whom was 23 years of age. All children were married and living outside the home.

They had maintained reasonably effective sexual interchange during their marriage.

Mr. A had no difficulty with erection, reasonable ejaculatory control, and, aside from two occasions of prostitute exposure, had been fully committed to the marriage. Mrs. A occasionally orgasmic during intercourse and regularly orgasmic during her occasional masturbatory experiences had continued regularity of coital exposure with her husband until five years before referral for therapy.

Mr. A had recently retired from a major manufacturing concern. He had been relatively successful in his work and there were no specific financial problems facing man and wife during their declining years.

Both members of the marital unit had enjoyed good health throughout the marriage. At age 61, he had taken his wife abroad on a vacation trip which entailed many sightseeing trips with a different city on the agenda almost every day.

They were chronically tired during the exhausting trip, but because they were on vacation and away from home there was a definite increase over the established frequency of coital connections. Mr. A noted for the first time slowed erective attainment.

Regardless of his level of sexual interest or the depth of his wife’s commitment to the specific sexual experience, it took him progressively longer to attain a full erection. With each sexual exposure his concern for the delay in erective security increased until finally, just before termination of the vacation trip, he failed for the first time to achieve an erection quality sufficient for vaginal penetration.

When the coital opportunity first developed after return home, erection was attained, but again it was quite slow in development. The next two opportunities were only partially successful from an erective point of view, and thereafter he was secondarily impotent.

After several months they consulted their physician and were assured that this loss of erective power comes to all men as they age and that there was nothing to be done. Loath to accept the verdict, they tried on several occasions to force an erection with no success. Mr. A was seriously depressed for several months but recovered without apparent incident.

Approximately 18 months after the vacation trip, the couple had accepted their “fate.” The impotence was acknowledged to be a natural result of the aging process. This resigned attitude lasted approximately four years.

Although initially the marital unit and their physician had fallen into the socio-cultural trap of accepting the concept of sexual inadequacy as an aging phenomenon, the more Mr. and Mrs. A considered their dysfunction the less willing they were to accept the blanket concept that lack of erective security was purely the result of the aging process.

They reasoned that they were in good health, had no basic concerns as a marital unit, and took good care of themselves physically. Therefore, why was this dysfunction to be expected simply because some of their friends reportedly had accepted the loss of male erective prowess as a natural occurrence?

Each partner underwent a thorough medical checkup and sought several authoritative opinions, refusing to accept the concept of the irreversibility of their sexual distress. Finally, approximately five years after the onset of a full degree of secondary impotence, they were referred for treatment.

Sexual functioning was reconstituted for this marital unit within the first week after they arrived at the Foundation and as soon as they could absorb and accept the basic material directed toward the variation in the physiological functioning of the aging male.

No longer were they concerned with the delay in erective attainment; there were no more attempts to will, force, or strain to accomplish erection under assumed pressures of performance.

In short:
They needed only the security of the knowledge that the response pattern which initially had raised the basic fear of dysfunction was a perfectly natural result of the involutional process.

When they could accept the fact that it naturally took longer for an older man to achieve an erection, particularly if he were tired or distracted, the basis for their own sexual inadequacy disappeared.

Some six years after termination of the acute phase of therapy, this couple, now in the early seventies and late sixties, continue coital connection once or twice a week.

The husband has learned to ejaculate on his own demand schedule, and neither partner attempts a rapid return to sexual function after a mutually satisfactory sexual episode.

Husband and wife B

The husband, age 62, and his wife, age 63, were referred to the Foundation. They had two children, both of whom were married and lived out of the home.

Their sexual dysfunction had begun when the husband was 57 years old. He had noted some delay in attaining erection and marked reduction in ejaculatory volume and was particularly concerned with the fact that the ejaculatory experience was one of the mere dribbling of seminal fluid from the external urethral meatus, under obviously reduced pressure.

All these involutional signs and symptoms developed within approximately a year after he had noticed some delay in onset of erection attainment.

The more he worried about his symptoms the more frequent the occasions of impotence.

Mrs. B was completely convinced that this pattern of sexual involution was true to be expected as part of the aging process.

Rather than distress her husband, she suggested that they use separate bedrooms.

She changed from a pattern of free and easy exchange of sexual demand to one of availability for coital connection only at her husband’s expression of interest. To resolve her own sexual tensions, she masturbated about once every ten days to two weeks without her husband’s knowledge.

Finally, Mr. B developed severe prostatic spasm with ejaculation during approximately half the increasingly rare occasions when there was sufficient erective security to establish a coital connection. It was the persistence of this symptom of pain that first brought medical consultation and ultimately referral for treatment.

In the evaluation of this man during the physical examination, there was marked muscular weakness noted, a history of easy fatigability, and increasing lassitude in physical expression.

Mr. B also had been distressed in the last two to three years before referral to therapy with distinct memory loss for recent events. He described the loss of work effectiveness for approximately the same length of time.

With these overt symptoms suggestive of steroid starvation, testosterone replacement was initiated empirically. Within those days there was a partial return of ejaculatory pressure and a moderate shortening of the time span for the delayed erective reaction. The prostatic pain did not recur.

Husband and wife B Steroid Replacement

Once Mrs. B could accept the explanation for the onset of her husband’s sexual dysfunction, she was pleased to return to the role of an active sexual partner. The coital connection has continued regularly for the past three years with both members of the marital unit supported by steroid-replacement techniques.

In brief, for the sexually dysfunctional aging male, the primary concern is one of education so that both the man and his wife can understand the natural involutional changes that can develop within their established pattern of sexual performance.

Sex steroid replacement should be employed only if definite physical evidence of the male climacteric exists. As the newer techniques for establishing testosterone levels in blood serum become more widely disseminated, it will be infinitely easier to define and describe the male climacteric and therefore to offer testosterone replacement to those who need it, on a more definitive basis than an empirical diagnosis.

With effective dissemination of information by proper authority, the aging man can be expected to continue in a sexually effective manner into his ninth decade. Fears of performance are engendered by a lack of knowledge of the natural involutional changes in male sexual responsivity that accompany the aging process.

Really, the only factor that the aging male must understand is that loss of erective prowess is not a natural component of aging.

Statistical evaluation of the aging population and a consideration of treatment failure rates will constitute the following section. This material arbitrarily has been placed in the male rather than the female.

First, it was felt important to keep the statistical consideration of the aging marital units together, and second, because there were 56 males So years old or over in marital units accepted for treatment and only 37 wives 50 or older, it seemed appropriate to include the brief statistical discussion in the chapter reflecting the larger segment of the aging population.

 
Categories
Senior Health

Aging Male Sex

aging male, sex

Aging Male Sex

The natural aging process creates some specific physiological changes in the male cycle of sexual response. Knowledge of these cycle variations has not been widely disseminated.

There have been little concept of a physiological basis for differentiating between natural sexual involution and pathological dysfunction when considering the problems of male sexual dysfunction in the post-so age group.

If all too few professionals are conversant with anticipated alterations in male sexual functioning created by the aging process, how can the general public be expected to adjust to the internal alarms raised by these naturally occurring phenomena?

Tragically, yet understandably, tens of thousands of men have moved from effective sexual functioning to varying levels of secondary impotence as they age, because they did not understand the natural variants that physiological aging imposes on previously established patterns of sexual functioning.

Sexually Impaired at 50

From a psychosexual point of view, the male over age 50 has to contend with one of the great fallacies of our culture. Every man in this age group is arbitrarily identified by both public and professional alike as sexually impaired.

When the aging male is faced with unexplained yet natural involutional sexual changes and deflated by widespread psychosocial acceptance of the fallacy of sexual incompetence as a natural component of the aging process, is it any wonder that he carries a constantly increasing burden of fear of performance?

Before discussing specifics of sexual dysfunction in the aging population, the natural variants that the aging process imposes on the established male cycle of sexual response should be considered.

For sake of discussion, the four phases of the sexual response cycle excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution will be employed to establish a descriptive framework. Also for descriptive purposes, the term older man will be used about the male population from 50 to 70 years of age, and the term younger man used to describe the 20 to 40 year age group.

In recent years the younger man’s sexual response cycle has been established with physiological validity and will serve as a baseline for comparison with the physiological variations of aging.

If an older man can be objective about his reactions to sexual stimuli during the excitement phase, he may note a significant delay in erective attainment compared to his facility of response as a younger man.

Most older men do not establish an erective response to effective sexual stimulation for a matter of minutes, as opposed to a matter of 9f seconds as younger men, and the erection may not be as full or as demanding as that to which previously he has been accustomed.

It simply takes the older man longer to be fully involved subjectively in acceptance and expression of any form of sensate stimulation.

If natural delays in reaction time are appreciated, there will be no panic on the part of either husband or wife. If, however, the aging male is uninformed and not anticipating delayed physiological reactions to sexual stimuli, he may indeed panic and responding in the worst possible way to try to will or force an erection.

The unfortunate results of this approach to erective security have been discussed at length in the treatment of impotence.

Aging Male Erections

As the aging male approaches the plateau phase, his erection usually has been established with fair security. There may be little if any testicular elevation, a negligible amount of scrotal-sac vasocongestion, and minimal deep vascular engorgement of the testes.

Most older men who have had a pre-ejaculatory fluid emission (Cowper’s gland secretory activity) will notice either total absence of, or marked reduction in, the amount of this pre-ejaculatory emission as they age.

From the aspect of time-span, the plateau phase usually lasts longer for an older man than for his younger counterpart. When an aging male reaches that level of elevated sexual tension identified as thoroughly enjoyable, he usually can and frequently does wish to maintain this plateau-phase level of sensual pleasure for an indefinite period of time without becoming enmeshed by ejaculatory demand.

This response pattern is age-related; the younger man tends to drive for early ejaculatory release when plateau-phase levels of sexual tension have accrued. One of the advantages of the aging process with specific reference to sexual functioning is that.

Generally speaking, control of ejaculatory demand in the 50 to 70 year age group is far better than in the 20 to 40 year age group.

In the cycle of sexual response, the largest number of physiological changes to come within an objective focus for older men occurs during the orgasmic phase (ejaculatory process). The orgasmic phase is relatively standardized for younger men, varying minimally in duration and intensity of experience unless influenced by the psychosexual opposites of long-continued continence or a high level of sexual satiation.

For younger men, the entire ejaculatory process is divided into two well-recognized stages. The first stage, ejaculatory inevitability, is a brief period of time (2 to 4 seconds) during which the male feels the ejaculation coming and no longer can control it before ejaculation actually occurs.

These subjective symptoms of ejaculatory inevitability are created physiologically by regularly recurring contractions of the prostate gland and, questionably, the seminal vesicles. Contractions of the prostate begin at o.8-second intervals and continue through both stages of the male orgasmic experience.

The second stage of the orgasmic phenomenon consists of the expulsion of the seminal-fluid bolus accrued under pressure in the membranous and prostatic portions of the urethra, through the full length of the penile urethra.

Again, there are regularly recurring 0.8-second inter-contractile intervals. This specific interval lengthens after the first three or four contractions of the penile urethra in younger men.

Subjectively, the sensation is one of the flows of a volume of warm fluid under pressure and emission of the seminal fluid bolus in ejaculatory spurts with a pressure sufficient to expel fluid content distances of 12 to 24 inches beyond the urethral meatus.

As the male ages, he develops many individual variants on the basic theme of the two-stage orgasmic experience described for the younger man. Usually, his orgasmic experience encompasses a shorter time span.

There may not be even a recognizable first stage to the ejaculatory experience so that an orgasmic experience without the stage of ejaculatory inevitability is quite a common occurrence.

Even with a recognizable first stage, there still may be marked variation in reaction patterns. Occasionally, the older man’s phase of ejaculatory inevitability lasts but a second or two as opposed to the younger man’s pattern ranging from 2 to 4 seconds.

In an older man’s first-stage experience, there may be only one or two contractions of the prostate before involuntary initiation of the second stage, seminal-fluid expulsion.

Alternatively, the first stage of orgasmic experience may be held for as long as 5 to 7 seconds. Occasionally the prostate, instead of contracting within the regularly described pattern of 0.8-second intervals, develops a spastic contraction, creating subjectively the sense of ejaculatory inevitability.

Inadequate Testosterone

The prostate may not relax from spasm into rhythmically expulsive contractions for several seconds, hence the 5-7-second duration of the first-stage experience. In addition to objective variants in a first-stage orgasmic episode, there may be no possible objective or subjective definition of the first stage of orgasmic experience at all.

The stage of ejaculatory inevitability may be totally missing from the aging male’s sexual response cycle. A single-stage orgasmic episode develops clinically in two circumstances.

The first circumstance is that of clinical dysfunction developing as the result of inadequate testosterone production.

Actually, the lack of a recognizable first stage in orgasmic experience can result from a low sex-steroid level for the male just as steroid starvation in the female may produce an orgasmic experience of markedly brief duration.

The second occasion of an absent first stage in the orgasmic experience develops after there has been a prior denial of ejaculatory opportunity over a long period of intravaginal containment to satisfy the aging male’s coital partner sexually.

There also are obvious physiological changes in the second stage of the orgasmic experience that develop with the aging process.

The expulsive contractions of the penile urethra have onset at 0.8second intervals but are maintained for only one or two contractions at this rate:

The expulsive force delivering the seminal fluid bolus externally, so characteristic of second-stage penile contractions in the younger man, also is diminished, with the distance of unencumbered seminal-fluid expulsion ranging from 3 to 12 inches from the urethral meatus.

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Senior Health

Aging Male & Female

Arbitrarily, statistics reflecting the failure rates of treatment procedures for sexual dysfunction in the aging population will be considered in this section rather than dividing the material between the discussions of sexual inadequacy in the aging male and female.

A brief single presentation seems in order since only marital units are available for consideration in this age group. The male and female statistics are essentially inseparable from a therapeutic point of view, and the overall sample is entirely too small for definitive individual interpretation.

Statistics

In 51 of the total of 56 aging marital units treated for sexual dysfunction, the husband was the instigating agent in bringing the marital unit to therapy. Among the remaining 5 couples, the referral apparently was by the mutual accord in 3 and only at the demand of the wife in 2 couples.

There also was a higher incidence of referred male sexual dysfunction than of female sexual inadequacy in the aging population. Therefore the discussion will focus on the male partner’s age as a point of departure.

Since the husband was the partner most often involved in dysfunctional pathology and was the member of the unit that usually took the necessary steps to accomplish referral to the Foundation, the aging male will be statistically highlighted.

The 56 marital couples referred for treatment divide into 33 units with bilateral complaints of sexual dysfunction and 23 units with unilateral complaints of sexual inadequacy. Thus, there were 89 individual cases of sexual dysfunction treated from the 56 units with husbands’ age 5o years or over as a common baseline.

This 33:23 ratio is a reversal of the overall statistics for dual-partner involvement of marital units as opposed to singly involved units. The fact that bilateral sexual deficiency was dominant among the older marital units is in accord with previously expressed concepts of cultural influences.

Certainly, the older the marital unit the better chance for the Victorian double standard of sexual functioning. With these pressures of performance, one could almost expect more male than female sexual pathology to be in identified unit partners over 50 years of age referred to the Foundation.

The clinical complaints registered by the aging population (male and female) in the 56 marital units referred for treatment. There was a 30.3 percent failure rate to reverse sexual dysfunction, regardless of whether both partners or a single partner is involved, in any marriage with the husband over 50years of age. With gender separation, for the aging male (50 to 79) there was a 25 percent failure rate to reverse his basic complaint of sexual inadequacy as compared to a 40.7 percent failure rate for the aging female (50 to 79).

These statistics simply support the well-established clinical concept that the longer the specific sexual inadequacy exists, the higher the failure rate for any form of therapeutic endeavor.

On the other hand, there was significantly less than the 50 percent failure rate in treatment for any form of sexual dysfunction, regardless of the age of the individuals involved. In short, even if the sexual distress has existed for 25 years or more, there is every reason to attempt the clinical reversal of the symptomatology.

There is so little to lose and so much to gain. Presuming generally good health for the sexual partners, and mutual interests in reversing their established sexual dysfunction, every marital unit, regardless of the ages of the partners involved, should consider the possibility of clinical therapy for sexual dysfunction in a positive vein. The old concept “I’m too old to change” does not apply to the symptoms of sexual dysfunction.

Categories
Men's Health

Penis Irritations

Many men complain:
Burning, itching, and irritation after coital connection with women contending with chronic or acute vaginal infections.

Not infrequently small blisters appear on the glans penis, particularly around the urethral outlet. If there are any abrasions on either the glans or shaft of the penis, secondary infection can occur in these local sites.

Irritative Penile Reaction

The same type of irritative penile reaction may develop from exposure to a non infectious vaginal environment as a response to the chemicals in contraceptive creams, jellies, foams, etc.

It may not be the female that responds in a sensitive manner to an intravaginal chemical contraceptive agent but rather her male partner. Sensitivity to intravaginal chemical contraceptives is seen quite frequently in the male and, if symptoms develop, contraceptive technique should be changed.

The same sort of irritative penile reaction can be elicited by a repetitive pattern of vaginal douching.

There are some douche preparations to which not the female but the male partner becomes sensitive.

Not infrequently, vesicles form on the glans penis. If these blisters rupture, the raw areas on the glans are quite painful, particularly during sexual connection.

Gonorrhea

In the actual process of ejaculation there are many situations that return painful stimuli to the involved male. If the individual has had gonorrhea there may be strictures (adhesions) throughout the length of the penile urethra, and attempts to urinate and/or to ejaculate may cause severe pain spreading throughout the penile urethra and radiating to the bladder and prostate.

Infection in the Bladder, Prostate, or the Seminal Vesicles

There may be the sensation of intense burning during and particularly in the first few minutes after ejaculation. Particularly if the offending agent has been the gonococcus, the pain with ejaculation sometimes is exquisite. Immediate medical attention should be given to any complaint of burning or itching during or immediately after the ejaculatory process.

Prostate and Ejaculation

There is a spastic reaction of the prostate gland seen in older men during the stage of ejaculatory inevitability. In this situation the prostate contracts spastically rather than in its regularly recurring contractile pattern, and the return can be one of very real pelvic pain and/or aching radiating to the inner aspects of the thighs or into the bladder and occasionally to the rectum.

This pathologic spastic contraction pattern can be treated effectively by providing a minimal amount of testosterone replacement therapy.

Care should be taken to evaluate the possibility of concurrent infection in the prostate. Occasionally, chronic prostatitis has caused significant degrees of pain during an ejaculatory process.

As a point in differential diagnosis, the painful response with prostatic infection is with the second, not the first, stage of the orgasmic experience, while that of prostatic spasm has just the reverse sequence. Careful questioning usually will establish specifically the timing in onset of the painful response and thus suggest a more definitive diagnosis.

Prostate

Benign hypertrophy of the prostate gland primarily and carcinoma of the prostate rarely may be responsible for onset of pain with the ejaculatory process. The pain is secondary (acquired) in character and radiates to bladder and rectum.

Usually confined to older age groups, onset of this type of dyspareunia should be investigated immediately by competent authority. This review of the major causes of dyspareunia has been primarily directed toward the female partner, for from her come by far the greater number of complaints of painful coital connection.

However, male dyspareunia no longer should be ignored by the medical and behavioral literature. The review of the etiology of male dyspareunia has not been exhaustive, nor is it within the province of this text to do so.

In concept, the entire chapter has been designed to suggest to cotherapists, faced daily with a myriad of problems focusing upon both male and female sexual dysfunction, that there are physiological as well as psychological causes for sexual inadequacy.

Combined pelvic and rectal examinations for the female and rectal examination for the male partner are a routine part of the total physical examination provided for both members of any marital unit referred to the Foundation for treatment of sexual dysfunction.

To attempt to define and to treat the basic elements of sexual dysfunction for either sex without including the opportunity for thorough physical examination and complete laboratory evaluations as an integral part of the patient’s diagnostic and therapeutic program is to do the individual and the marital unit a clinical disservice.

Categories
Men's Health

Penis Foreskin

penis

Painful Coition Is Not Limited to Women.

Many men are distracted from and even denied effective sexual functioning by painful stimuli occasioned during or after sexual functioning.

The symptoms will be described in relation to the anatomical site of pain, the external anatomy, such as the surface of the penis and the scrotal sac, or the internal anatomy, such as the penile urethra, the prostate, or the bladder.

No attempt will be made to provide definitive discussion for the varieties of male-oriented dyspareunia. Situations are mentioned only to emphasize their existence and to provide the therapist with an awareness of the fact that, in truth, there are badly mated men.

Penis Exterior Anatomy

Many men complain of severe sensitivity of the glans penis, not only to touch but to any form of containment, including intravaginal retention, immediately after ejaculation. This severity of glans pain recalls the intensely painful response that may be elicited from the clitoral glans when it is approached during forceful male manipulative attempts to incite sex-tension increment for his female partner.

Once a man is fully aware that immediately after his ejaculatory episode there may be exquisite tenderness of the glans, he realizes that he must immediately withdraw from intravaginal containment.

Generally there is marked variation in the severity of the individual response pattern. Men noting variation in the severity of glans pain have no pre-ejaculatory warning of the intensity of the particular response pattern, which may range from minor irritation with containment to crippling pain with the slightest touch.

The glans
Occasionally is irritated rather than protected, as might be presumed, by a retained foreskin. Two men have been referred to the Foundation complaining that relief from painful stimuli immediately after ejaculation can be obtained only by retracting the foreskin well back over the glans and in this fashion relieving the irritation of glans confinement.

Foreskin
There are occasional irritative responses created by the retained foreskin of uncircumcised men. In almost all instances these irritative responses have to do with lack of effective hygienic habits.

Primarily, smegma and, secondarily, various bacterial, trichomonal, or fungal infections sometimes collect beneath the foreskin. If the foreskin is not retracted regularly and the area washed with soap and water, chronic irritation can easily develop.

With chronic irritation or even frank infection present, there usually will be pain with coital thrusting or with any form of penile containment. In almost all instances the dyspareunia responds readily to adequate cleansing principles.

Phimosis

A tightness or constriction of the orifice of the prepuce, clinically is marked by a foreskin that cannot be retracted over the glans penis. With an excessively constrained foreskin, infection is almost always present to at least a minor degree, and penile irritation is a consistent factor for men so afflicted.

Adhesions frequently develop between the foreskin and the glans proper so that there is no freedom of movement between the two structures.

Engorgement of the penis with sex-tension increment may bring pressure to bear on the foreskin constraint of the glans. Without freedom of foreskin movement, this constriction frequently causes local pain with penile erective engorgement. When any male is diagnosed as having a degree of clinical phimosis sufficient for chronically recurrent infectious processes and/or pain or irritation with coital connection, circumcision certainly is in order.

There are also occasional men with a true hypersensitivity of the penile glans. These men are almost constantly irritated by underclothes or by body contact. They are continually aware of a multiplicity of irritants and are particularly susceptible to trauma to the glans.

One man referred for consideration found glans constraint in the vaginal environment intolerable. There was a constant blistering and peeling of the superficial tissues of the glans surface.

Despite a history of numerous changes in sexual partners, the postcoital results were identical. This individual simply could not tolerate the natural pH levels of the vagina. Since the reaction was confined to the glans area and never involved the penile shaft, there is room for presumption that if he had not been circumcised routinely, he might not have been so handicapped.

Protective coating of the glans area precoitally resolved his problem but was a nuisance factor for him and possibly for his sexual partners.

There are occasional instances of referred pain from the posterior urethra (usually occasioned by posterior urethritis) that produce pain in the glans penis. Very rarely, this type of glans pain is a factor in coition.

Categories
Men's Health

Male Sex Distress

Among the most distressing of the many factors in dyspareunia are the complaints of burning, itching, or aching in the vagina during or after intercourse. The existence of chronic vaginal irritation frequently robs women of their full freedom of sexual expresssion, for they are well aware that any specific coital connection may be severely irritative rather than highly stimulative.

Presuming adequate production of vaginal lubrication, rarely, if ever, does a woman complain of burning, itching, or aching during coition or describe these symptoms immediately after or even in a delayed postcoital time sequence without concomitant evidence of established pathology in the vaginal barrel.

This form of dyspareunia registered as a complaint by the female partner should have an important connotation to the cotherapist. This specific response pattern is not described by women who are subjectively impelled to register an excuse to avoid impending or threatened coital connection.

When women use the complaint of pain to avoid or delay the necessity for submitting to psycho genically unappealing coital experience, their most frequent complaint is one of severe pain with penile thrusting, “a hurting” deep in the pelvis.

When considering the complaints of burning, itching, or aching in the vagina, initially clinical concern is focused on infectious vaginal invaders. The primary sources of vaginal infection are coition and rectal contamination; secondary sources are manual contact, clothing material, insertion of foreign material, and functional disuse.

Support of and control of the acidity of the vaginal environment is the fundamental means of protection against the bacterial pathogens that can create symptoms of burning, itching or aching. The vagina naturally maintains a strongly acid environment as a protective mechanism against all forms of infectious invasion.

With an experimentally controlled environment, vaginal acidity has been established as varying clinically from pH 3.5 to pH 4.0. Thus, there is a rather wide margin for error in vaginal protection against concurrent infectious agents, for acidity must be sufficiently neutralized to raise the pH level to five or above, before bacterial invaders can flourish freely in the vaginal environment.

The one time that natural vaginal protection against infection breaks down is during the period of established menstrual flow. For many women vaginal acidity consistently registers in the neighborhood of pH 5 or above during menstrual flow, particularly if vaginal tampons are employed.

The neutralizing effect of blood serum constrained to the vaginal tract by retentive tampons directs vaginal acidity into pH 5 levels routinely. It is not surprising, then, that most vaginal infections either have clinical onset or flourish during menstrual flow.

Bacteria

The infective organisms most constantly encountered in vaginal infections, yet trichomonal and fungal forms of infection are seen frequently enough to provide additional causes for clinical concern. Probably the most persistent vaginal-tract invader in any woman’s lifespan are the coliform organisms (Strepto coccus faecalis, Escherichia coli, and the type of Streptococcus viridans), which are the basic contaminants of bowel environment.

From the point of view of patterns of sexual functioning alone, a persistent vaginitis, from which pathogenic organisms repeatedly are cultured in the adult, sexually functioning woman, should always make the therapist question the possibility of occasions of rectal intercourse.

A popular technique employed during rectal intercourse includes the expected format of initial rectal penetration during the excitement phase and repetitive thrusting during the plateau phase of the male sexual response cycle.

Infected Penis

But many men withdraw from the rectum and plunge the bacterially contaminated penis into the vaginal barrel just before or during the stage of ejaculatory inevitability, terminating the orgasmic phase of their sexual cycle by ejaculating intravaginally. Recurrent coliform vaginal infections that are resistant to treatment may have origin in this coital technique.

When rectal intercourse is practiced, the ejaculatory episode should be confined to the lumen of the bowel. There should never be penetration of both rectal and vaginal orifices during any single coital episode, if the woman wishes protection against the probability of recurrent vaginal infections.

If coliform vaginitis persists despite both adequate treatment and patient denial of rectal intercourse, a direct rectal examination frequently will solve the therapist’s diagnostic dilemma. If a woman is experiencing rectal intercourse with some regularity, there may be a specific involuntary reaction of the sphincter to the rectal examination.

When the examining finger is inserted, the response of the rectal sphincter at first will be one of slight to moderate spasm, following the expected reactive pattern of most men or women undergoing routine rectal examinations. But if the examining finger is retained rectally for a few seconds, the sphincter may relax quite rapidly in a completely involuntary manner, as opposed to the routine response pattern of continuing in spastic contraction for the duration of the examination.

If involuntary sphincter relaxation develops, this response pattern, while certainly not reliably diagnostic, should make the cotherapist skeptical of the patient’s denial of rectal coital episodes.

The involuntary sphincter relaxation develops because the retained examining finger stimulates a pleasurable response for those women enjoying regularity of rectal coital exposure as opposed to those finding rectal examinations subjectively objectionable and objectively painful.

Clinical note:
The same type of involuntary sphincter relaxation may develop in male homosexuals whose preferred pattern of sexual expression includes interest in regularity of rectal penetration. Again, the involuntary sphincter response pattern has been used by the Foundation’s professional staff as a clinical diagnostic aid when dealing with homosexual male patients employing the rectum as the means of providing ejaculatory release for sexual partner or partners.

When the cotherapist can be reasonably certain by both history and examination of some regularity of rectal intercourse, techniques to avoid vaginal contamination with fecal material should be discussed at length with the women involved.

Although the basic premise of the clinical advice is to avoid recurrent episodes of coliform vaginitis if possible, there is an accrued secondary effect of reducing dyspareunia during occasions of intravaginal coitus.

Uncircumcised Penis

When trichomonal vaginitis is suggested by direct inspection of the vaginal barrel and confirmed by adequately stained vaginal smear or hanging-drop preparation of the vaginal discharge, which may be profuse and irritating.

The husband also should be suspected of harboring the trichomonads, possibly beneath the foreskin if he is uncircumcised, but more frequently in the prostate gland, the seminal vesicles, or the urinary bladder.

If both husband and wife are not treated simultaneously for this particular distress, the infection may become a source of chronic dyspareunia, as it may be exchanged frequently between marital partners during repeated opportunity at coital connection.

It does little good to treat the wife for trichomonal vaginitis and then have her reinfected by her husband. And it obviously does little good to treat the husband individually and have him reinfected by his wife. With chronic trichomonal vaginitis there may be recurrent bouts of dyspareunia, particularly with coital connection of any significant duration.

Fungal vaginitis is seen clinically more and more frequently. Incidence of this particular infectious entity used to be primarily confined to the late spring, summer, and early fall months, but now such pathogens as Monilia and Candida albicans are encountered regularly throughout the year.

Chronic fungal infection creates a debilitating situation for the recipient woman. Burning and itching is intense and swelling and weeping of soft tissues are frequent complications. Coital connection is virtually impossible due to the pain involved when a fungal infection dominates in the vaginal environment.

Infections with antibiotics frequently will protect women from the complications of fungal vaginitis.