Men Are More Attracted In Women In Red

My dearest female friends who would like to get more dates with men, or to spice things up on your date, say maybe to get a nicer dinner or for the men to splurge more on you, you should wear red clothes on your date!

A study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that, men find women in red more attractive!

This study was conducted involving more than 100 men, excluding gay and colour blind men. Most of them were college undergraduates. They were asked to rate pictures of women on how pretty these women were, how much the men would like to kiss them, and how much the men would like to have sex with them.

The men were shown pictures of women bordered in red, white, grey or green. Even with the picture of same woman, men found she was more attractive when bordered with red frame than with another colour.

Second stage, the men were shown photos of the same woman, with digitally coloured red shirt and blue shirt. The men strongly liked the woman in red shirt.

Third stage, the researchers asked the men, hypothetically if they only have $100 in their wallet, how much money they would be willing to spend on the date. The men also would spend more money on women wearing red.

The red colour affects the woman's level of attractiveness in men's eyes. However, do not affect the men's perception on the woman's likability, intelligence or kindness.

As for guys, if you have started to wonder if you should start buying more red clothes for your wardrobe collection, DON'T!

Interestingly, red colour do not have any effect on women. The researchers had a group of young women rate whether the pictured woman was pretty, and the findings shows the red colour do not have any impact on whether women rated other women as pretty.

So ladies, head up to your fave shops and start piling up red clothes or red accessories for your dates.

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For reference

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology : http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/

Men: All The More Reasons To Have Frequent Sex

A US study. published in Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that men who have active sex life or masturbate frequently reduced their chances in developing prostate cancer.

This topic indeed has always been controversial among experts. Previous research suggests that increased production of testosterone, a male hormone, can faciltate the growth of prostate cell. However, this new study suggests that frequent ejaculations may decrease the concentration of chemical carcinogens that accumulate in prostatic fluid, and thus may reduce the development of crystalloids that are associated with prostate cancer in men.

This study results found that men who ejaculate 13 times a month or more, were much less likely to develop prostate cancer than men who do it 4-7 times a month. In comparison to men who ejaculate 4-7 times a month, men who ejaculate between 13-20 times a month had 14% lower lifetime risk; and 33% lower lifetime risk for those ejaculate 21 times and more a month.

These findings still need further investigation though. The previous study that concluded increased prostate cancer risk with higher sexual activities was published in the journal Epidemiology in 2002.

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For reference
Journal of the American Medical Association: http://jama.ama-assn.org/

The Right Lifestyle to Improve Chances of Pregnancy

There are several reasons underlying why women are hard to conceive. These include, possibility of a structural problem with the reproductive organs, like blocked fallopian tubes, or a disease of the uterus like fibroids or endometriosis.

Most of the cases are due to a failure of ovulation. The eggs do not ripen and release when they are supposed to, usually caused by a hormonal imbalance. And at older age, our body is not producing enough sex hormones at the right time and in the right amounts to ovulate successfully.

There are good news to couples who are trying to conceive, without having to undergo methods of assisted reporductive technology. In late 2007, the US. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School say that adopting a few lifestyle measures can drastically improve the chances of getting pregnant, at any age.

They followed a group of 17,544 married women who were infertile due to ovulation failure but who were trying to get pregnant. The women were part of a larger study of women's health called the Nurses' Health Study II, based at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard. The researchers followed them over an eight-year period, looking in particular whether or not they followed a range of dietary and lifestyle measures.

They looked at:
- the ratio of mono-unsaturated to trans fats in their diet
- protein consumption (and whether it came from animals or vegetables)
- carbohydrate consumption (including the amount of fibre they ate, and whether high or low glycaemic index)
- consumption of dairy products (and whether low or high-fat)
- iron consumption
- use of vitamin supplements
- body mass index (BMI, i.e. weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in metres)
- degree of physical activity.

The researchers took into account whether a woman smoked, drank alcohol or coffee, and/or had used oral contraceptives in the past.

Those women with the lowest rate of infertility (and most likely to fall pregnant) were those who ate less trans fat, less sugar, ate food with a low glycaemic index such as pasta and whole grains, ate more protein from vegetables than from animals, had a good iron intake, took multivitamins, exercised daily, kept their BMI between 20 and 25, and (surprisingly) consumed more high-fat dairy products and less low-fat dairy products.

The more of these measures they adopted, the lower the infertility rate and the higher the pregnancy rate. This was regardless of the woman's age, or whether she'd had children before.
For example, those who adopted just five of these measures had a 69 per cent reduced risk of infertility compared to those who adopted none of the measures.

Even following just one of these lifestyle measures reduced the risk of infertility by 30 per cent compared to those women who followed none. Of all the lifestyle measures, weight and diet, rather than exercise, were the most important.

These measures improve fertility was believed is to be caused by improved insulin resistance. They help regulate insulin and blood sugar levels and this in turn may help the sex hormones to regulate ovulation successfully.

Why high fat dairy products help remains a mystery though.
Now adopting these measures won't necessarily work for other types of infertility, such as blocked fallopian tubes. But what it does mean is fertility due to ovulation problems, which account for most infertility cases, can be partly prevented through modifications of diet and lifestyle, the authors say.

The researchers also added that these measures are also good for the pregnancy if a woman does conceive. Taking multivitamins containing folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects in the foetus. And keeping weight down reduces the chances of pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia.

How to Lose Weight, and How to Maintain is The Hardest Part

I believe many of us do experience this so-called yo-yo diet. Sometimes we lose weights, we get happy, allow ourselves some snacks and yummy guilty foods to celebrate our 'achievements', and before we know it, the fat is back on!!!

Of course those with very very strong willpower and self control can manage to keep the fat off for a long period of time. But not everyone of us is very strong willed. At times, we will fall down to the "pampering" ourselves with good food.

Not that good food is bad. What you can do is eat in moderate amount, spread your food intake into many times a day, 5 times a day will be enough to keep you feeling full, and avoid hunger which can lead you to eat excessively at once. Regular exercise will keep you in the right track.

But willpower and self control tend to fail. The question is, how to keep yourself in check.

There is a US trial involving over a thousand people started with a six-month weight loss program, during which they lost an average of 8.5 kg.

After this they were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 groups for 2 and 1/2 years: doing things for themselves with some written advice; a web-based interactive program which got them to feed in their weight and activity levels and encouraged increased exercise and sensible eating behaviours; and finally, a third group was allocated to monthly personal contact from a trained person, both by phone and face to face.

The good news was that everyone weighed less than they did at the start. The bad news was that it wasn't the intial 8.5 kilos.

Almost everyone regained weight, but those who'd had personal contact put less back on than the others, to the tune of about 1.5 kg.

The web-based program looked good to begin with, but soon lost its effect.

It's not cheap, but it looks as though to slow the passage of food from hand to mouth, what you need is having someone on your back.