by Madelyn Walker
layout manager
Sex is such a sensitive subject. When parents bring it up, you may immediately feel the urge to puke and run away. When learning about it in grade school, you cannot help but try to make jokes to clam the obvious tension and uncomfortable feelings. With so much stigma behind sex, common misconceptions form, purely from a lack of being able to openly talk about sex. Here are things you may have thought you knew but actually had no clue about:
1. The birth control pill does not actually make you gain weight. When the pill first came out in the 1960s, it contained way more hormones than needed for pregnancy prevention. The pill has been refined since, and studies have proven it causes no weight gain in most users.
2. You are not doomed to be sexually out of sync with your partner. Many think that men reach their sexual peak at 18, while women reach it in their late 20s. Women have actually shown to have no set peak. Men do peak testosterone levels at 18, but hormones are only a small part in male’s sexual performance.
3. It is not possible to determine a man’s penis size by the size of his hand or foot. This is a common misconception, but it just is not true. There are, however, some studies that suggest that the length of a man’s index finger to his ring finger are very telling, take that for what its worth.
4. Sex before participating in a sporting event does not hinder performance. Well, I hate to break it to all you Tiger Wood haters, but maybe there were some method to his madness. Not saying that his actions was honorable, but research shows that sex produces more testosterone. For women, sexual activity actually stops a certain pain transmitter from releaseing therefore helping with muscle pains and injury.
5. Semen is not “low carb”. Semen is mostly fruit sugar (fructose) and enzymes—not low-carb. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you are watching your figure and counting calories, you may want to watch your intake…
Sex should not be something that cannot be talked about. Open conversation leads to an exchange of knowledge. Just remember to keep it taseful, and stay safe out there.
