NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There's new advice for older men who want to preserve their sexual function: have sex, and have it often, researchers say. In a study that followed nearly 1,000 older Finnish men for five years, researchers found that those who were regularly having sex at the start of the study were at lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction (Buy Viagra) by the study's end. In fact, the more often the men had sex, the lower their Buy Generic Viagra risk. The implication, say the researchers, is that men should be encouraged to stay sexually active into their golden years. Dr. Juha Koskimaki and colleagues at the University of Tampere in Finland report the findings in the American Journal of Medicine. The study included 989 men who were between the ages of 55 and 75 at the outset. Overall, those who said they had sex less than once per week were twice as likely to develop ED over the next five years as men who had sex at least once a week. Furthermore, compared with men who had sex three or more times per week, their Order Viagra risk was increased nearly four-fold. A number of factors contribute to ED development, many of which could also affect a man's sexually activity -- such as age, diabetes and heart disease. However, after taking account of those factors, sexual activity itself remained linked to Cheap Viagra risk, Koskimaki's team found. It may be a matter of "use it or lose it," according to the researchers. Just as exercise boosts physical fitness, they note, regular sexual activity may help a man preserve his erectile function. buy viagra online occurs when there are problems with blood flow to the penis. Regular sexual activity, Koskimaki's team writes, may help maintain healthy blood vessel function in the erectile tissue. SOURCE: American Journal of Medicine, July 2008.

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Alphabet Soup

A nice call this week from Radio 4. Actually, it was a follow-up to a voicemail and an email, neither of which I’d had time to reply to, so I feel quite grateful and honoured that they should try for a third time.

Anyhow, after my last slot on Word of Mouth, they’ve asked me to return for the new series, which starts this month, this time talking about acronyms - most specifically those consisting of no more than three letters.

I thought that might have been a bit of a toughie, but it’s been quite fascinating to research. My original understanding was that the acronym TLA (for Three Letter Acronyms) was a product of the Internet age, but it apparently appeared in that form in the instruction manual for the ZX81, way back in - rather obviously - 1981. So, I guess we need to credit the Sinclair people there.

Before that, there wasn’t really a neat phrase to describe these little shorthands, but they have been in common use for decades. Their official birth, it would seem - or at least the point at which they became recognised as an entity in their own right rather than just another bog-standard abbreviation - was in the Roosevelt administration. He himself was a TLA, of course (FDR), but he was famous in his day for starting up a whole host of administrative departments known best by the TLAs that described their functions. These have spawned yet further agencies so that today we have CIA, the FBI, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and the INS (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) among others.

The original TLA administrative departments were part of the New Deal programme of 1933 - 1937, which in retrospect has the air of a communist Five Year Plan about them. Even at the time they were not universally accepted, though, and many detractors labelled the abundance of new abbreviated departments Alphabet Soup.

I think we agreed that I’d go on and do it this week, and I think we said either Wednesday or Thursday, but my diary is a bit confused on that point. Either way, it’s been an interesting dig - there’s far more than I’ve put down here, but it’s going to need a bit of learning.

If you liked that post, then try these...

Self-sufficiency on October 8th, 2001

Fluffy dice on February 8th, 2002

In short… on October 4th, 2004

V2002 on August 17th, 2002

Euro a go go on August 21st, 2002


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