Effects of standard and eccentric overload strength training in young women.

PURPOSE: According to the force-velocity relationship of human skeletal muscle, the maximal load one can lift is limited by the concentric movement phase, and the eccentric phase is always underloaded. In the present study, we hypothesized that acute exercise training using an eccentric overload compared with standard loading would lead to greater neuromuscular and strength adaptations. METHODS: Sedentary women (age 20.9 yr) were tested for concentric and eccentric three-repetition maximum (3RM), maximal isokinetic eccentric and concentric and isometric force and associated EMG activity of selected thigh muscles before and after 7 consecutive days of exercise training of the left quadriceps. The exercise program was designed so that the total weight lifted was similar between the eccentric overload (EO, N = 10) and standard group (ST, N = 10), but EO exercised with about 50% greater eccentric load whereas the controls did not exercise (N = 10). RESULTS: There was a 22% increase in the total weight lifted over 7 d. On the average, EOs compared with STs strength gains were approximately twofold greater. Changes in EMG paralleled the changes in muscle strength without changes in biceps femoris coactivity during knee extension. CONCLUSION: Because the strength gains were achieved by exercising at low intensities and over a short time period, exercise prescription of eccentric overloading appears especially suitable for elders, individuals deconditioned due to an injury, and the chronically diseased.

Congenital micropenis: long-term medical, surgical and psychosexual follow-up of individuals raised male or female.

OBJECTIVES: To document long-term medical, surgical and psychosexual outcome of individuals with congenital micropenis (13 males, 5 females). METHODS: Physical measurements from childhood were collected retrospectively from medical records and at adulthood by physical examination. An adult psychosexual assessment was conducted with a written questionnaire and oral discussion. RESULTS: Adult penile length was below the normal mean in all men. Three women had vaginoplasty resulting in normal length. All men reported good or fair erections but 50% were dissatisfied with their genitalia. Dissatisfaction with body image resulted from having a small penis (66%), inadequate body hair (50%), gynecomastia (33%) and youthful appearance (33%). Ten men were heterosexual, 1 homosexual and 2 bisexual. Among women, 4 (80%) were dissatisfied with their genitalia. Three women reported average libido with orgasm and were also heterosexual. Two women had no sexual interest or experience. Finally, males were masculine and females feminine in their gender-role identity, and both groups were satisfied with their sex of rearing. CONCLUSIONS: Regarding choice of gender, male sex of rearing can result in satisfactory genito-sexual function. Female gender can also result in success, however it requires extensive feminizing surgery.

Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome: long-term medical, surgical, and psychosexual outcome.

Controversy concerning the most appropriate treatment guidelines for intersex children currently exists. This is due to a lack of long-term information regarding medical, surgical, and psychosexual outcome in affected adults. We have assessed by questionnaire and medical examination the physical and psychosexual status of 14 women with documented complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS). We have also determined participant knowledge of CAIS as well as opinion of medical and surgical treatment. As a whole, secondary sexual development of these women was satisfactory, as judged by both participants and physicians. In general, most women were satisfied with their psychosexual development and sexual function. Factors reported to contribute to dissatisfaction were sexual abuse in one case and marked obesity in another. All of the women who participated were satisfied with having been raised as females, and none desired a gender reassignment. Although not perfect, the medical, surgical, and psychosexual outcomes for women with CAIS were satisfactory; however, specific ways for improving long-term treatment of this population were identified.

New phylism theory and the homosexualization of the visualization of lust.

Nature needs nurture is the paradigm that replaces nature versus nurture. Nature's determinants are phylismic, i.e. they belong to the person phylogenetically as a member of the species and are not individually fortuitous. Phylismically, in the human species, vision and contrectation supplant pheromones as procreative attractants. The primary visual attractant, the sexual body morphology of a potential partner, is in all likelihood hormonally encoded into the sexual brain in fetal and/or neonatal life. Should the prenatal or neonatal encoding of the visual attractant become transposed from the visual image of the body morphology of the other sex to that of the same sex, then the brain would be biased in subsequent development toward some degree or variation of homosexual or bisexual attraction.

Case consultation: ablatio penis.

In male infants, traumatic ablation of the penis, with or without loss of the testicles may occur as a sequel to mutilatory violence, accidental injury, or circumcision error. Post-traumatically, one program of case management is surgical sex reassignment to live as a girl, with female hormonal therapy at the age of puberty. The other program is genital reconstructive surgery to live as a boy, with male hormonal therapy at puberty if the testicles are missing. In both programs, the long term outcome is less than perfect and is contingent on intervening variables that include societal ideology; surgical technology; juvenile and adolescent timing and frequency of hospital admissions construed by the child as nosocomial abuse; development of body image; health and sex education; fertility versus sterility; coitus and orgasm; possible lesbian orientation if living as a girl; and long-term cost accounting, including the psychic cost of being a pawn in possible malpractice litigation on whose disability a very large fortune in compensation may devolve. There is, as yet, no unanimously endorsed set of guidelines for the treatment of genital trauma and mutilation in infancy, and no provision for a statistical depository for outcome data.

Gait adaptations before and after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery.

Gait analyses of rehabilitated individuals with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) deficiency and reconstruction have identified the final adaptations of increased hip extensor torque and hamstring electromyography (EMG) and decreased knee extensor torque and quadriceps EMG during stance. The initial adaptations to injury and surgery are, however, unknown as are the factors that influence the development of the adaptations. Identification of the initial response to injury would provide a basis for determining whether the final adaptations are learned automatically or if they are the result of a lengthy training period in which various factors may affect their development. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the initial effects of ACL injury and reconstruction surgery on joint kinematics, kinetics, and energetics, during walking. Injured limbs from nine subjects with ACL injury were tested 2 wk after injury, and 3 and 5 wk after surgery. Ten healthy subjects were tested. Kinematic and ground reaction data were collected and combined with inverse dynamics to calculate the joint torques and powers. A knee extensor torque throughout most of stance was observed in the injured limbs at all test sessions. This result was in conflict with previous observations of reduced extensor torque or a flexor torque in rehabilitated patients with ACL reconstruction and patients with ACL deficiency. This result also differed from the typical midstance extensor then flexor torque in healthy control subjects. Trend analysis showed a significant (P < 0.001) change in average position at the hip and knee, extensor angular impulse at the hip, and positive work done at the hip 3 wk after surgery followed by a partial rehabilitation at 5 wk after surgery. Power and work produced at the knee were reduced fivefold (P < 0.001) after 5 wk of rehabilitation and did not recover to pre-surgical levels. The existence of a long-lasting knee extensor torque 2 wk after injury indicated that the adaptation process to ACL deficiency is lengthy, requiring many gait cycles, and that numerous factors could be involved in learning the adaptations.

Sibling sex ratio of boys with gender identity disorder.

Sibling sex ratio (the ratio of brothers to sisters) was calculated for 444 boys with gender identity disorder (or with behaviors consistent with this diagnosis). The probands were ascertained from several researchers with expertise with this disorder and from the English language case report literature between 1938 and 1995. Among the probands with at least one sibling (N = 333), the results showed that boys with gender identity disorder had a significant excess of brothers to sisters, 131.1:100, when compared with the expected secondary sex ratio of 106:100. The excess of brothers replicated a previous study by Blanchard, Zucker, Bradley, and Hume (1995), in which the sibling sex ratio was 140.6:100. Further analyses showed that the probands were born later relative to their brothers than they were relative to their sisters. These findings are amenable to several psychosocial and biological explanations, which require further investigation.

Evolutionary sexology: the hypothesis of song and sex.

In subhuman mammalian species, lovemaps are homogeneous and are more or less biorobotically fixed, whereas in the human species they are emancipated from biorobotism and are personalized, idiosyncratic, and heterogenous-as, for example, in the paraphilias. The evolutionary sexological hypothesis described herein proposes that emancipation of all of the biorobotic mindbrain maps, the mating map included, was essential for, and coincident with the evolution of the human speechmap from the songmap. Accordingly the first human language was a love song rather than a howl of warning. The bare essentials of sexuoerotic arousal and response are in three categories: haptoerotic (cutaneous), morphoerotic (visual), and gnomoerotic (narrative).

No vacancy: the political geography of immigration control in advanced industrial countries.

PIP: This article presents a unique framework for analyzing the politics of immigration control in developed countries and reviews related political theories. The author describes distinctive patterns of immigration in selected OECD countries and standard explanations. The author argues that the costs and benefits of immigration are spatially unevenly distributed and explains how spatial concentrations affect costs and benefits, as well as how local conditions, population, and the business community create support for and opposition to immigration. Evidence from Great Britain is used to support the framework. Control of immigration is due to the power of local constituencies in creating and maintaining a national political coalition. Local constituency preferences are a systematic, but not exclusive, feature that underpin the politics of immigration control. Other factors may have periodic impacts. The case of Great Britain, during 1955-81, illustrates the importance of disaggregated analysis. Cross national analyses will reveal the variation in level of impact. Japan and Germany, with similar economic and political histories, indicate substantial differences in net demand for immigration. Conditions, such as high, rapidly increasing immigration proportions, access to social services, and higher unemployment, may lead to hostility and less community support for immigration. The theory is based on native-immigrant competition over scarce resources, variable business support depending upon the flexibility of local markets and potential for capital mobility, and the dynamics of party competition as influenced by underlying structural conditions.^ieng

Sexology of ictal masturbation in infancy.

In 1952, under the title of "Masturbation in Infants," Bakwin reported three cases of females all younger than one year of age. Bakwin's type of so-called masturbation has been considered in the differential diagnosis of epilepsy in several papers published since 1975. The cases reported display a great similarity and underscore an ictal explanation of the syndrome.

Safe sex in the era of AIDS.

The term masturbation entered the English language in 1776 in the translation of Tissot's Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Onanism. Tissot linked semen conservation theory from antiquity with degeneracy theory and attributed degeneration and death from the social disease (syphilis and gonorrhea) to semen wastage not only in the social vice of promiscuity and prostitution, but also in the secret vice of masturbation. Nocturnal semen loss became designated as spermatorrhea, a new disease requiring treatment. In the nineteenth century the campaign against masturbation became a medical mania. It reached its apogee under John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., who invented Corn Flakes and other cereal and nut foods as meat substitutes to reduce all carnal desire and, hence, masturbation. The stigma on masturbation remains. It prohibits rational discourse on masturbation, and nourishes the perpetuation of fallacies regarding its effects. The imagery of a masturbation fantasy is also the imagery of the personal lovemap, which may be unorthodox, warped and distorted paraphilically. Masturbation might become societally endorsed as a public health policy to help contain the HIV epidemic of AIDS. Nonetheless, the President of the United States in 1995 dismissed his Surgeon General, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, for advocating so sane a policy.

Sexual revolution and counter-revolution.

Adolescents of today inherit the conflicting legacies of the sexual reformation of the 1960s and the counter-reformation of the 1980s/1990s. Sexual mores are influenced by a younger age of puberty than in earlier generations and by the availability of effective contraception and antibiotics to combat sexually transmitted diseases. In the era of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, however, absolutely safe sex cannot be guaranteed, only relative degrees of safety and risk. Masturbation may be one way of achieving safe sex. Advancing technology also allows greater equality of opportunity and economic emancipation for women, enabling men and women to share equally in the care of older infants and children, also influencing sexual roles. Sex education for adolescents is provided sporadically and inconsistently, being seen by opposing factions as either encouragement to early pregnancy or a means of preventing it. In particular, the images delivered by the mass media are blatantly contradictory, ranging from endorsement of teenage sexual expression to condemnation of abortion and teenage pregnancy. Cultural traditions have strong influences on the acceptability of early pregnancy and on family structure. Black American culture is based on the three-generational family as opposed to the white tradition of the nuclear, two-generational family. It is important to realize a social policy that will respect not only the sexual rights of young people, but also the sexual health of the community.

The concept of gender identity disorder in childhood and adolescence after 39 years.

The term "gender role" appeared in print first in 1955. The term "gender identity" was used in a press release, November 21, 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon entered the vernacular. The definitions of gender and gender identity vary on a doctrinal basis. In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine. Causality with respect to gender identity disorder is subdivisible into genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social, and postpubertal hormonal determinants, but there is, as yet, no comprehensive and detailed theory of causality. Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In gender identity disorder, there is discordancy between the natal sex of one's external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine.

Specific neuro-cognitive impairments associated with Turner (45,X) and Klinefelter (47,XXY) syndromes: a review.

In Turner syndrome, there is a high incidence of neuro-cognitive impairment specific to the mental processing and sequencing of rotational transformations of shapes in the spatial dimensions of left-right, up-down, and back-front. In Klinefelter syndrome, the corresponding neuro-cognitive impairment is specific to the mental processing of sequence and synchrony in the temporal dimension, including the temporal dimension of language.

Sexuality and menopause.

Postmenopausal sexuoerotic health is multivariately determined by both intrinsic and extrinsic variables, some of which may predate the menopause. In a pilot study of 20 postmenopausal women, even when deterioration in sexual well-being was anticipated beforehand, it did not inevitably materialize, but if it did so, it was not inevitably correlated with diminished partner availability. Postmenopausal ratings of erotosexual ideation, imagery, and practices indicated nondeterioration markedly more often than they did deterioration. There is increasing professional agreement that androgen maintains erotosexual functioning in women as well as men; and that, in minimal nonmasculinizing dosage, it can be included with good therapeutic effect in postmenopausal steroid replacement therapy.

A case of autoerotic asphyxia associated with multiplex paraphilia.

During the past 20 years, the sensational aspects of autoerotic fatalities have captured the attention of medical examiners, psychiatrists, law enforcement agents, and the public, as well as the individuals themselves who engage in these dangerous practices. Reports of deaths related to sexual asphyxia have been presented numerous times at national and international meetings and have been the topic of discussion on television talk shows and in the press. Autoerotic fatalities and all the sexual curiosities related to these activities have prompted death scene investigators to publish case reports, and even textbooks, on the subject. The case presented herein is one of a multicomponent paraphilia in which self-asphyxiation (autoasphyxiophilia) led to a fatal autoerotic event.