Be careful when you fool around you might just fall in love.

Scientists have found that the same part of the brain which is stimulated by lust is also the part of the brain responsible for bonding and love.

In order to map out the location of sexual desire and love, researchers reviewed 20 studies that used fMRI technology. First, they looked at the regions of the brain that lit up when sparked by love. They then compared the findings of all the papers to see what regions were activated when someone felt aroused or amorous.
What they discovered was a bit surprising — love and sexual desire both activate the striatum, showing a continuum from sexual desire to love. Each feeling impacts a different area of the striatum.
Sexual desire activates the ventral striatum, the brain’s reward system. When someone enjoys a great dessert or an orgasm, it’s the ventral striatum that flickers with life. Love sparks activity in the dorsal striatum, which is associated with drug addiction.

Any man or woman with a functioning sex organ and a mind experiences sexual desire and can describe it. Yet, if you ask 10 people to describe their level of sex drive and what makes them “randy,” you’ll get 10 different answers. Despite these differences, all 10 will agree — they want more of it.

The human sex drive is so intense, and having sex is so pleasurable, people are willing to do almost anything to heighten or improve their sexual desires and experiences. This includes engaging in activities that risk and possibly ruin their personal and professional lives. But this is nothing new. People have been seeking ways to improve their sex lives for thousands of years.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see so many ads for sexual enhancement. You can buy everything from creams and pills to various contraptions, but does this stuff work? Can you increase your libido or performance? Does hormone therapy work? Does the size of a man’s johnson matter? And if it does, can you make it bigger just by taking a pill? Can over-the-counter products help erectile dysfunction?

In this recent article, Sexual Rx: The research, I have made a compilation of interesting studies I’ve seen over the last year or so I thought readers would find interesting.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has updated the package insert for its restless legs syndrome drug Requip. According to the new insert, Requip may cause ?pathological gambling? and ?increased libido including hypersexuality.?

These side effects are reportedly a class-wide effect, which impact all the drugs belonging to the non-ergoline dopamine agonist class of drugs. The insert reads:
?Impulse control symptoms, including compulsive behaviors such as pathological gambling and hypersexuality, have been reported in patients treated with dopaminergic agents.?

Another RLS drug, Mirapex (which is also used to treat Parkinson?s disease), has reported similar symptoms. The Mirapex package insert reads:
?Patients taking certain medicines to treat Parkinson?s disease or RLS, including Mirapex . . . have reported problems with gambling, compulsive eating, and increased sex drive.?

A 2005 study published in the Archives of Neurology also found that dozens of patients using Mirapex or similar drugs developed serious gambling addictions.

Hundreds of people have reportedly contacted lawyers about joining class-action lawsuits that allege Mirapex and Requip caused unusual side effects such as compulsive gambling, shopping, painting and eating.
(Arch Neurol 2005;62(9):1377-1381)

Rather than damaging a man?s sexual performance, a good, stiff drink actually improves a man?s sexual prowess in the bedroom. Australian researchers found that men who drink report as many as 30 percent fewer problems than those who didn?t drink at all.

Dr. Kew-Kim Chew, of Western Australia?s Keogh Institute for Medical Research told London?s Sunday Telegraph that men who drank within safe, moderate guidelines seemed to have the best erectile function. In Chew?s study of 1,580 Australian men, even binge drinkers functioned better sexually than those who never drank.

?We found that, compared to those who have never touched alcohol, many people do benefit from some alcohol, including some people who drink outside the guidelines,? Chew said.

The study found that low risk drinkers – those who consumed up to twenty drinks a week spread over five days – had the fewest sexual problems. Those who drank on weekends only and those who were binge drinkers suffered lower rates of erectile dysfunction than those who drank only one day a week or drank none at all. Men who performed the poorest were heavy drinkers who had stopped drinking and those who smoked or had heart disease.

Newsmax.com HealthAlert Feb.3,2009