Gynecologists Don't Talk About Sex Enough; Living Alone Is Depressing
Discovered: OB-GYNs aren't talking about sex enough, living alone is depressing, C-sections are too expensive, and there's a new type of land mass in town.
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Gynecologists aren't talking about sex as much as you'd think. Funny because their entire profession relies on the act, right? But, only 40 percent of OB-GYN doctors surveyed ask questions about sexual dysfunction, on the regular. Only 29 percent, routinely ask patients about sexual satisfaction and 28 percent ask a patient's sexual orientation. Shouldn't they want to ensure their patients have satisfactory sex lives so that they'll create more babies, giving them more business? Just saying. There's also health implications to not asking. "Sexuality is a key component of a woman's physical and psychological health," explains Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau "Obviously, OB-GYNs are well positioned among all physicians to address female sexual concerns. Simply asking a patient if she's sexually active does not tell us whether she has good sexual function or changes in her sexual function that could indicate underlying problems," she explains. [Journal of Sexual Medicine]
Living alone is depressing. Sounds quite lovely to us, but solo dwellers have an 80 percent higher risk of developing depression compared with people who live with any other people. And we're not just talking about elderly folk. The study looked at 3,500 working-aged men and women for seven years and compared their living arrangements with a bunch of other risk factors. "Our study shows that people living alone have an increased risk of developing depression. Overall there was no difference in the increased risk of depression by living alone for either men or women," explains researcher Dr Laura Pulkki-Råback. [BMC Public Health]
C-Sections are expensive. Speaking of the gynecologist, curbing non-medically necessary Cesarean sections could save $2 billion worldwide. People get C-sections for all sorts of non-medically necessary reasons, like twins, vanity, avoiding hours of painful labor -- things like that. To get costs down, we gotta stop doing those, explains researcher Dr. George Macones. "I think the most important is to try to avoid first cesareans, and do them only when indicated." [Reuters]
There's a new type of land mass in town. If Mars were a town, that is. They call this land form (pictured to the right) periodic bedrock ridges and thought they look like sand dunes, they are not. "These bedforms look for all the world like sand dunes but they are carved into hard rock by wind," explains David Montgomery. [University of Washington]
Image via Shutterstock by Marcin Balcerzak
