Remember these words: The poison is in the dose. They apply to all of the following nine items in this rogue's gallery of dangerous things we commonly do to relieve anxiety, stress and boredom. Every one of the following items has a split personality. They may be (and frequently are) a source of pleasure but all have the potential to wreck havoc with your life and health.
People who make more money are happier. So are people who are in good heath. But engaged people appear to be the happiest of all. You know what else, unsurprisingly, makes people really happy? Unprotected sex.
According to German law, anyone can be sued if they are HIV positive, have unprotected sex with a partner and don't tell the other party (or, in this case, -ies.)
Syphilis is called the "French Disease" by the Germans, the "German Disease" by the French and the "Polish Disease" by the Russians. For the last 60 years the disease was on the wane in America but a strange thing happened on our way to economic ruin and recovery: the bacteria rebounded. One county in North Carolina's beating it back with an unexpected method: Wal-Mart gift cards.
This year to mark World Population Day, the Indian Minister of Health and Welfare, Ghulam Nabi Azad, made an interesting comment regarding population control in the subcontinent. To paraphrase, he thought that if they could get electricity to the villages that locals may be too tired to baby-make thus reducing overcrowding. Not everyone thought it was brilliant.
According to the GUM (general-urinary medicine) clinics and Dr Christian Jessen, the sexual health expert and director of the Better2Know clinics, in the past five years almost all STI's have experienced a massive jump among the middle-aged divorced set in Great Britain.
2006 was a year of unprotected sex for me. No, not every time, but I started off the year with a fling with a slightly older man I was besotted with, who didn’t speak a word about condoms, and, in response, I didn’t either. I wanted to trust that he had some magical knowledge that somehow I was missing, that maybe the world had overturned itself and they were no longer necessary. I was wrong, and after a pregnancy panic as I searched for Plan B—this was right before it was so readily available—I escaped unscathed. Then later that year I met a guy I fell absolutely head over heels with, sure that we were destined to be together.
A 30-year Springer study found that happy people are watching less TV and having more sex. Surprise, surprise! Reuters Health reported a study this week that parents of a child with ADHD are almost twice as likely to divorce before the child’s 8th birthday. Also likely to divorce: couples with monstrous mother-in-laws. In Italy, a man was granted divorce for his nagging mother-in-law. He’s seeking an orphan as his next partner, according to The Daily Times in Pakistan. There’s even worse news for divorcees this morning. The Local reports a Rostock University study done in Germany found that people who get divorced die an average of nine years earlier than those who don’t.
