Sexual & Reproductive Health Matters - SRHmatters.org

(Reuters) - French police have arrested two teenage girls they say stole hundreds of euros from unsuspecting cash machine customers after distracting them by flashing their breasts.

The 14-year old girls were taken to the Paris prosecutor’s office to face charges while a 12 year-old accomplice was placed in a home, police said.

The girls first struck last week when they approached a man withdrawing cash from an automated teller machine (ATM) in the sixth district of Paris.

One of the girls tried to distract him by sticking a newspaper under his nose. When that failed, she opened her shirt and grabbed his crotch, while the other girl swiped 300 euros ($385).

The girls struck again with the help of the 12-year old a few days later, using the same method to steal 500 euros from a woman.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67H1YP20100818

(Reuters) - Like gold, top wines are highly prized, represent wealth and are selling near their historical highs.

Prices of the five premier cru Bordeaux — Chateaux Lafite Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Margaux, Latour and Mouton-Rothschild, and the grand crus of Burgundy, particularly Romanee-Conti, are at or above 2007 levels.

“During times of economic stress and worry, buyers look to safe investments and gold is seen as a defensive strategy. It’s tangible, has intrinsic value and is a good diversifier … The same can be said for the top growth Bordeaux and for the same reasons,” said Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, an independent wine consultant.

“With markets such as China coming on board with eyes only for the top growths, it is a promising outlook for them.”

Promising for the auction houses, too.

Sotheby’s four Hong Kong wine auctions last spring were successful, according to Robert Sleigh, the company’s vice president of wine. “Obviously, Asia continues to drive the prices in wine.”

Christie’s wine auctions in London, Hong Kong, New York, Geneva and Amsterdam, had sales of $13.9 million in the first half of the year, up 18 percent from the same period a year earlier. Asian wine buyers represented 43 percent of the sales figure, Christie’s spokeswoman Erin McAndrew said.

Christie’s is starting its fall season early with its first auction on Sept 18 in Hong Kong followed less than a week later by another in New York, according to Charles Curtis, its head of wine sales.

“I’m an optimist,” he said. “I’m feeling overall very positive about the fall season - and even 2011.”

Prices at spring auctions exceeded expectations. Seventy bottles Chateau Lafite Rothschild, which auction house Acker Merrall & Condit expected to fetch between $125,000 and $175,000 in Hong Kong sold for $320,250 - including the buyer’s premium. That’s $4,575 a bottle.

Sotheby’s has 2,000 bottles of Lafite coming up for auction in Hong Kong in October with a pre-sale estimate of between $1.5 million and $2.5 million.

One Singapore-based wine broker, who managed to get a case of each of the top five growths for roughly $77,000 during spring sales, said they were being snapped up.

Saeed Shah, who works for Premium Liquid Assets Pte, Ltd, described the Asian demand for Lafite as an “obsession.”

“As we get more and more millionaires worldwide we see that these same people drink these wines,” Shah said, adding that with their limited production the law of supply and demand takes over.

As for gold, it is nearing its record high of $1,264.90 that it touched on June 27.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67G2PI20100817

(Reuters) - The slow, flowing movements of tai chi are better for relieving pain and other symptoms of fibromyalgia than conventional stretching exercises, doctors reported on Wednesday.

The improvements continued throughout the three months of lessons for 33 volunteers receiving the movement and breathing exercises, study leader Dr. Chenchen Wang of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston said in a telephone interview.

“Week by week they changed. The pain and depression improved, and a lot of people were depressed,” said Wang, whose study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“They feel better. People said it changed their life. Only two or three feel it didn’t help.”

Although they said the study should be repeated with a larger group to see if, for example, the enthusiasm of the instructor played a role, Dr. Gloria Yeh and her colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said it might be time to give tai chi a chance.

“Aside from reductions in pain, patients in the tai chi group reported improvements in mood, quality of life, sleep, self-efficacy and exercise capacity,” Yeh’s team wrote in a commentary in the same journal.

“The potential efficacy and lack of adverse effects now make it reasonable for physicians to support patients’ interest in exploring these types of exercises, even if it is too early to take out a prescription pad and write ‘tai chi,’” they wrote.

Fibromyalgia, which may affect 200 million people worldwide, is difficult to diagnose and hard to treat, with no clear guidelines for symptoms that include pain, fatigue, stiffness and sleep difficulties.

There is evidence that it may be caused by a heightened sensitivity to pain.

Patients often turn to alternative therapies such as tai chi, yoga, acupuncture or massage.

Tai chi originated as a Chinese martial art that focuses on slow, graceful movements, breathing and relaxation in an effort to move a hypothetical energy throughout the body.

Volunteers in the tai chi group took 60-minute classes twice a week for three months from a tai chi master and were encouraged to practice at least 20 minutes per day.

Another group got health lectures and stretching classes, comparable to what people do when they wake up in the morning. “This was not real exercise,” Wang said. Further tests comparing exercise to tai chi are planned.

To assess the effectiveness of both treatments, the Wang team used several assessment tools, including one that measured fibromyalgia symptoms on a 100-point scale. The people taking tai chi saw their scores improve by an average of 28 points, compared to a nine-point improvement in the stretching group.

Researchers should test the technique with a larger group for a longer period, compare different styles, and see if it is better than other forms of exercise, such as yoga, Yeh said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67H5I520100818

Older women who eat dark chocolate once or twice a week could be lowering their risk of heart failure, says a US study.

It found those eating chocolate once or twice a week cut the risk of developing heart failure by a third, but those eating it every day did not benefit.

The Boston study, in a journal of the American Heart Association, looked at nearly 32,000 Swedish women aged between 48 and 83 over nine years.

Dieticians say eating chocolate too often can be damaging and unhealthy.

The study notes that one or two 19 to 30 gram servings of dark chocolate a week led to a 32% reduction in heart failure risk.

This fell to 26% when one to three servings a month were eaten.

But those who ate chocolate every day did not appear to reduce their risk of heart failure at all.

The researchers conclude the protective effect of eating chocolate reduces as more or less is eaten than the optimum one to two servings a week.
‘Flavanoids’

Too much chocolate is unhealthy because it contains high levels of sugar and fat which can make people put on weight, the researchers say.

But chocolate also contains high concentration of compounds called flavonoids which can lower blood pressure and protect against heart disease, previous studies have found.

The researchers behind this study say this is the first time long-term effects related specifically to heart failure have been shown.

Dr Murray Mittleman is study leader and director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston.

He said: “You can’t ignore that chocolate is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risks for weight gain.

“But if you’re going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it’s in moderation,” Dr Mittleman said.
Cocoa content

Differences in chocolate quality will affect the study’s implications, the authors say. Higher cocoa content is associated with greater heart benefits.

Although the chocolate consumed by the Swedish women in the study was milk chocolate, it contained a high concentration of cocoa solids - about 30%.

This is equivalent to dark chocolate by UK standards.

Dark chocolate can contain as much as 75% cocoa while standard milk chocolate may have 25% or less cocoa.

Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said the study showed the importance of finding the right balance in our diets.

“Before you rip open those sweet treats, remember that whilst antioxidants in chocolate may be helpful to your heart, they can also be found in fruit and veg - foods which don’t come with the saturated fat and high calories that chocolate does,” she said.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10986625

Lose the Belly
If you decrease the size of your belly, this will boost your sex drive. Testosterone is normally broken down in the body’s fat cells, and abdominal fat breaks down testosterone extra quickly and leads to testosterone deficiency. By losing that belly fat, you’ll increase the amount of testosterone in your system. Other health concerns? Check out 99 Tips from Dr. Oz.

Do More Squats
By doing exercises concentrated below the waist, you can increase the blood flow in your pelvic region.

Eat More Walnuts
Or almonds. Or anything that contains an amino acid called arginine, which is also found in beans, cold-water fish (tuna, salmon), soy products, and oats. Arginine promotes a process called nitric-oxide release, which relaxes blood vessels and increases the blood flow. You can also find arginine in dietary supplements like L-arginine—though don’t exceed more than 2,800 mg in a day, and make sure to enjoy these places where men eat.

Get Serious About Lowering Your Cholesterol
Among the many other reasons for doing this: It will facilitate blood flow and increase your sex drive. Other health concerns? Read Dr. Oz’s answers to 99 health mysteries.

Pay Attention
Does it burn when you pee? Are you seeing blood? Is there any discomfort when you adjust yourself? If the answer is yes and the problem lasts for more than a few days, see a doctor. Plus, find out how to get in and out of the bathroom more quickly.

Do a Self-Exam Every Six Months
Feel around your testicles for hardness and discomfort, and if you sense anything that feels like a knuckle, see your doctor. There’s a chance it could be testicular cancer.

Get a Physical Once a Year
Ask your doctor about your blood pressure, cholesterol, and testosterone levels. If you’re having problems with any of those things, it’ll eventually influence your sex life. And here’s a guide to how to have a good heart.

Source: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=100260577&imageindex=7&q=Get+a+Physical+Once+a+Year

The public is being urged to take more responsibility for its health to cut smoking and drinking and take more exercise.

But in this week’s Scrubbing Up, Professor Richard Ashcroft, a bio-ethics expert at Queen Mary, University of London, warns that will-power is often too weak.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, it was time for people to take more responsibility for the health of themselves and their families.

Lansley argued that if we want to see people eating healthier diets, smoking less, and taking more exercise, then an approach based on lecturing people, supervising what they eat, and banning things would fail - unless people’s behaviours changed too.

He was not saying - as conservatives (small c) often do - that it is none of the state’s business what people eat.

Quite the opposite: he was explicitly arguing for the state having a role in changing how people behave.

What motivates

What Mr Lansley was doing was arguing that we need to look at the ways we try to encourage healthy eating, giving up smoking, etc.

Do they work? Or do they sometimes achieve the opposite of what we intended?
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

A prime example is smokers; despite knowing the damage their vice causes, the instant fix they get from a cigarette overrides any consideration for long-term wellbeing”

End Quote Professor Richard Ashcroft

But politicians who advocate patients taking greater control of their own healthcare fail to understand what really motivates people.

It’s all very noble, but recent behavioural science research challenges the idea that people are rational decision-makers where their personal health is concerned. People are not always in full control of their behaviour.

A prime example is smokers. Despite knowing the damage their vice causes, the instant fix they get from a cigarette overrides any consideration for long-term wellbeing.

The problem is not really that we all have things we like, and knowingly eat or drink, which aren’t all that good for us.

A little of what you fancy

Most of us know that a little of what you fancy does you good, and most of the time we’re right.

Sometimes we’ll knowingly “trade off” different goals we have: I want that ice cream, and I want lose weight, and right now I choose the icecream, knowing that the plan to lose weight is taking a hit. But that’s a conscious choice, even if I regret it later.

The problem is that often we make these sorts of choices unconsciously, or make mistakes. Or our commitment to our goals is weaker than we think. Or - hardest of all - our will is weak.

In other words, it isn’t just that I trade off icecream against weight loss in favour of icecream now. It’s that I do so systematically.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Lecturing people fails both because no one likes to be hectored”

End Quote Professor Richard Ashcroft

My behaviour is shaped by forces I don’t know about, don’t understand, and even when I do, I find hard to resist or control.

A lot of this is about getting better informed, but health education is only part of the story.

Some health information campaigns are very compelling - think of the anti-smoking campaigns which use children talking about their parents’ lung cancers. But the evidence that they work is weak.

And they rarely have the seductive appeal of the campaigns of the tobacco and alcohol industries. Health campaigns are rarely about pleasure and enjoyment, and they are rarely cool.

But even when I get ‘clean’ information that isn’t intended to bias my choices one way or another - my habits and thought processes are just as important, if not more important, than what I know.

Lecturing people fails both because no one likes to be hectored, and because people don’t necessarily learn from it. And they have other sources of information as well.

Usually what drives me is circumstance, habit and short term reward. So the trick is to find ways to rewire my habits, change my circumstances, and make the rewards pull me in ways I want to go, and not in ways that are harmful to me. And that’s hard.

It is also hard to see how getting industries which have an interest in getting me to buy their (harmful) products in increasing quantities can be trusted with promoting health education and health behaviour change at the same time.

With government advertising budgets being slashed and the Change4Life scheme being handed over to the private sector, this is a serious concern to many working for public health.

The sting in the tail of Mr Lansley’s tale is that “personal responsibility” might be what’s at the root of the problem, not the solution.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10649961

Before you use these techniques, it’s important to point out that they aren’t a substitute for treatment by qualified mental health professionals. This technique is used in cognitive therapy but there’s more to cognitive therapy than mood and thought monitoring. Also, some people may benefit from a different approach.

If you find that the techniques described here get you so far and then you become stuck - or if they just don’t work for you - then it might be better to ask your family doctor to refer you to your local community mental health team.

Using mood and thought monitoring is done using four stages.

* Stage 1 - be clear about what the problem is
* Stage 2 - monitor how bad the problem really is
* Stage 3 - find steps between where you are now and where you want to be
* Stage 4 - work through the steps at your own pace

This isn’t as daunting as it all sounds. If you’re reading this with more than just passing curiosity, then you’ve already acknowledged that there’s a problem and wish that you could do something about it. It may seem overwhelming now, but things can change - if you take it a step at a time.

A few words of warning:

1. This isn’t necessarily a quick fix. It does take working at, and there’ll be times when you feel frustrated at your lack of progress.
2. You may feel that things get worse at the beginning. This is because before you can do anything about your symptoms, you may need to concentrate on them and increase your awareness of them. Being more aware may make you feel worse but it also suggests that you’re working on the problem and (in the long run) may be successful.

Think about your problem. It could be described in general terms - you’re feeling depressed or anxious - or it could be you’ve got a certain phobia or obsessive-compulsion. These labels have their uses, but they say very little about how the problem is affecting you.

To help unpick the problem, it can be useful to split it up into behaviour, feelings and thoughts. You’ll usually find that you can link them: certain behaviours will go with certain thoughts and feelings.

It’s not important at this stage to try to work out which is causing which - as is so often the case with these problems, it’s a vicious circle. Just the same it does help to realise that they feed off each other - as in this illustration.

The behaviours may be things you’d like to do but just can’t - or things you want to stop doing, such as a compulsion, a habit, or even an addiction like smoking.

It’s important to be absolutely clear that these are very real things that you want to change. These specific definitions are, in part, what will define how successful you’ve been in changing things.

Many mental health problems are defined by the kind of emotional distress they cause: the depressed person wants to feel happy again, the anxious person relaxed and the phobic person free of fear.

A first step to dealing with your problems is to try to get beyond the sense of distress and be completely clear just what it is that’s distressing you so much. To do this you need to look at your thoughts - the third part of the cycle - that come with this distress.

The human mind always has a variety of thoughts going through it - if you’re not sure about this try to sit and think of nothing. Not easy, is it?

When you feel distressed, get a blank piece of paper and just note down the thoughts going through your head. This may take some practice. The idea is not to edit them - don’t worry about writing in straight lines or about grammar and spelling. You just need to get your thoughts recorded somewhere other than your head.

Another name for these thoughts is ‘automatic thoughts’ or ’self-talk’ - the running commentary or conversation that you may have with yourself as you move from situation to situation. For some people, this will ring a bell and they’ll immediately know what this is about. Others will find that it may take them some time to learn to ‘tune into’ this.

It will also be important (for further work) to rate how bad each part of the problem is. That is:

* How much is the behaviour getting in the way of life?
* How strong are the feelings you’re experiencing?
* How strongly do you believe the thoughts?

To help you with identifying - and assessing the strength of - the behaviours, feelings and thoughts that need to change, print out and complete the exercise below. Some points to remember when you’re filling it in:

* Sit down to do it at a time when you can be quiet and undisturbed
* Take your time - it’s important
* You may not complete it in one session
* It’s helpful, having filled it in, to wait a day and then review it
* You don’t have to limit yourself to one sheet
* You can spend as much as a week or two to think it through

You should be sure that you’ve completed this stage before moving on to stage 2.

Stage two

So far you should have developed a clearer idea of definite problem behaviours, feelings and thoughts. We’ll call these the internal workings of the problem.

There’s also an external element to the problem - all your behaviours, feelings and thoughts are affected by things happening in the world around you. It’s essential to get to know how events change the internal working of the problem.

One way to do this is to look for patterns over time. To do this, you need to extend the exercise from stage one. When you’re aware of a behaviour, feeling or thought that’s distressing - repeat stage one, but note what’s going on around you at the time, or what events lead up to the incident.

To help you do this use a new form.

If you feel that the distress is with you all the time it may be better to stop and take a few minutes three or four times a day to note down how you’ve felt and what’s been going on around you.

Whichever way you decide to do stage one, it’s also helpful to start tracking your thoughts and feelings over time. This way you may spot a general improvement - or worsening - of things, or realise that certain times of the day or certain regular events improve - or worsen - how you’re feeling.

To do this you can use the following chart either to monitor the number of incidents - such as panic attacks, or to rate each day in terms of how low, anxious or how much craving, for example, you felt.

Stage three

By now, you’ve done a lot of work around your problems. For some people, working at developing this level of insight is therapeutic; for others, becoming this aware of their distress can make things seem worse. You can ask your GP to refer you to your local community mental health team if you need help.

What you should have by now is a clearer idea of:

1. Behaviour that needs to change
2. Feelings that cause distress
3. Thoughts that contribute to the feelings and behaviours
4. Situations that set off the whole cycle or make it worse

Using this information it’s now time to decide what you want to change first. It’s very important not to be too ambitious - this is change by evolution, not revolution. The big changes will come later and by that time they won’t seem so big.

Deciding on what to change first will, of course, depend on the problem. Here are some suggested first changes for different problems:

1. Phobias - just try thinking about the thing without feeling afraid
2. Obsessive-compulsion - try to put off a ritual for one minute, or if it’s something you feel you have to do a certain number of times, try doing it one less time
3. Smoking - go without a cigarette on one occasion
4. Depression or anxiety - identify a negative thought and work on changing it

Obviously, for some problems the focus needs to be on the behaviour, while for others it’s the thoughts. It doesn’t really matter where you start though as long as it’s something that you can envisage being achievable.

Having identified this first step, think about how things would be if the problem had been resolved - not just “I wouldn’t smoke anymore” or “I wouldn’t be frightened anymore” - but what would your thoughts and feelings be like, and what situations would now be no problem.

This is your final step: write them in the goals sheet. Now we know where the journey starts and where it finishes.

Stage four

Working through the steps at your own pace sounds easy this is where the real work begins. If it were as easy as just setting yourself small goals and achieving them then there wouldn’t be a problem.

Certainly, if a step proves too difficult then move back and try something easier, but at each step it’s good to have a definite strategy for how to approach it.

This will also allow you to be clear about when it’s time to move on. The strategy we’ll use here focuses on your behaviours and thoughts.

Think of each step as an experiment in behaviour - are its consequences so terrible? So, if you suffer from a phobia, what was the consequence of thinking about the thing you’re afraid of? Obviously you felt some anxiety; use the graphs to rate your anxiety and try the exercise again the next day.

You can supplement this by practising relaxation techniques and trying to use them while you’re thinking about the anxiety-causing behaviour.

Similarly, if you’ve an obsessive-compulsion, think about not completing a ritual - or leave one small ritual out - and practise a simple relaxation exercise.

The other thing to concentrate on is your thoughts - specifically your ‘automatic thoughts’ or ’self-talk.’ These can prompt all sorts of inaccurate assessment of situations, including:

1. Split thinking - you may be telling yourself that there can only be two extremes in a situation, one totally satisfactory and one disastrous. For example, “If this happens I’ll be ecstatic. If it doesn’t, I’ll just be destroyed.”
2. Catastrophe thinking - you may fail to see any satisfactory outcome or be convinced that it could not happen. For example, “All right, it could happen, which would be great, but I just know it won’t. This is going to be a disaster.”
3. Personalisation - an action taken by another person or organisation is taken as a personal attack. For example, “The boss moved the office just to make my journey more difficult.”
4. Selective recall - the evidence that something is going to go wrong may be drawn from one occasion that something went wrong, when on most occasions everything was fine. For example, “He didn’t like my work that time, I just know it’s going to happen again.”

The list goes on and on. It’s important at each step to note your thoughts down and look at just how accurate they are. To do this, you can ask yourself four questions about each thought:

1. What evidence is there to show this is accurate?
2. Is there another equally believable interpretation of what’s going on here?
3. What action can I take to have some control of the situation?
4. If my best friend were in this situation, what advice would I give to them?

After asking yourself the four questions, re-rate your thoughts and feelings and see if things have improved. Again keep a record so that you can track improvement.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/mental_health/coping_thoughtdiaries.shtml#top

How can a pea grow in a man’s lung? That’s been a water cooler topic for the better part of this week. It happened to 75-year-old Ron Sveden, who had a half-inch-long sprout removed from his lung, which was first reported by a 20-year-old news intern at the Cape Cod Times on August 8.

The story was picked up by TV stations, newspapers and websites around the world.

Sveden was very sick when he was hospitalized on Memorial Day – he was having more difficulty breathing than he usually does with his emphysema.

Sveden was expecting to learn he had lung cancer. Instead, he tells a Boston television station: “I was told that I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted.”

Dr. Jeff Spillane removed the obstruction. He tells CNN at first he couldn’t see that a pea had been lodged in the lung because there was so much infected, swollen tissue around it. “His whole lobe was collapsed and there was pus behind…it was entrapped in what we call granulation tissue.” But once removed, he says it looked like a pea or a bean. “It had a shoot coming out.”

Spillane, a thoracic surgeon at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts, doesn’t know how long the seed was in Sveden’s lung, but he believes it stayed in the airway because Sveden’s existing lung disease didn’t allow him to breathe very well and he couldn’t cough it out.

“Most of the time I’m dealing with pretty devastating illness,” Spillane says. But this case is different. “He really did get a very good outcome.”

As for the likelihood of something sprouting inside the body, experts say it’s not impossible. Walter Reeves, a horticulturist, author and radio host in Atlanta, Georgia, says it’s conceivable if a seed gets lodged in a lung.

“Isn’t that what happens when a seed is underground and gets moisture and warmth? They [seeds] don’t need light” he adds, at least not for the first two or three days.

Reeves doesn’t have more details about Sveden’s situation than what’s been reported in the news media, but he points out that this could happen only with raw peas or beans or peanuts. Cooked peas or other legumes cannot germinate or sprout. Reeves says a raw peanut could easily sprout, as could dried peas, after soaking in water. “Those are quite capable of germinating.”

Spillane says children, in particular, are known to have a peanuts go down the wrong way and get lodged in the lung, which is a very serious problem. “Kids have died from that stuff,” he says.

Spillane is a little surprised at all the attention this story had received. He says removing objects from patients’ lungs happens frequently. “A week later [after Sveden’s surgery], I pulled a tooth out [of another patient].”

Dr. Steve Georas, a pulmonologist in Rochester, New York, agrees. He says people inhale things into their lungs frequently, probably because the trachea and the esophagus are so close to each other. “We had a similar case at the University of Rochester where I practice. A patient had a pea wedged in his bronchus – it didn’t turn into a plant.”

Spillane says he went into surgery to help people and to “pull the thorn out of the lion’s paw. ” Sveden’s sprouting pea, the surgeon says, “was the ultimate thorn in a lion’s paw, I guess.”

Source: http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/13/plant-sprouts-in-mans-lung/

(Reuters) - On the leafy fringes of Hong Kong in a shabby film studio, a nude ponytailed actor stretched out on animal-skins with his lover as the cameras rolled in a set evoking a subterranean sex lair in ancient China.

Turning away from a slightly blurred high definition TV screen as the actors writhed, director Christopher Sun shouted “cut” whilst yanking off his 3-D glasses. “Good” he yelled.

No ordinary porn flick, “3-D Sex & Zen: Extreme Ecstasy” is being touted as the world’s first IMAX-3-D erotic film.

First out of the gates, the soft porn Hong Kong film comes as the stricken industry, hit hard by free Internet porn in recent years, turns to 3-D as a potential money-spinner, following on from the success of Hollywood blockbusters such as James Cameron’s Avatar.

“Somehow when you’re doing a 3-D movie you always want to make an impressive image because the viewers … are going to buy tickets with double or even triple the ticket price to get into a world they’ve never seen before,” said the U.K.-educated Sun

“It’s not just erotica, they want some ‘wow factor!.’”

Based on a classic Chinese erotic text, “The Carnal Prayer Mat,” the $3 million film follows a young man as he befriends a duke and enters a world of royal orgies and other sexual peccadilloes.

The producers are hoping the erotic period drama will prove a titillating hit with 3-D-glasses-wearing audiences and help develop a lucrative, niche film market.

“It’s because it’s forbidden in China, (that there) is so much enthusiasm in China for this film,” said film maker Stephen Shiu, who was responsible for the original 1991 erotic film “Sex and Zen,” which grossed over USD$2.6 million and held the mantle as the city’s highest-grossing adult film for over a decade.

Taking almost twice the time to shoot than conventional films and with a higher budget, more advanced equipment and elaborate lighting, the takeup of 3-D productions has been relatively slow in the porno industry despite early excitement at its promise.

“We have to change the lenses for a long time, the setting, lighting, we need more time than a normal movie,” said Japanese porn star Saori Hara after completing a scene.

Despite this, other major 3-D sex flicks are now reportedly in the works. Adult entertainment firm Hustler is reportedly working on a three-dimensional porno-spoof of the lithe, blue aliens in “Avatar,” while Italian director Tinto Brass plans to film a 3-D version of his classic 1979 erotic film “Caligula,” based loosely on the dissolute life of the Roman emperor.

The Hong Kong film has attracted the attention of distributors across Asia and Europe.

“The sex scenes are explicit and sometimes violent, but the main theme of the story is love,” said Sun, the director.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67F0T620100816

* Study shows fructose used differently from glucose

* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars

WASHINGTON Aug 2 (Reuters) - Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.

“I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,” Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idAFN0210830520100802?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r3:c0.101504:b36265736:z0