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helping readers find health & happiness
FIN VS. FIN (2024)
The Best Delay Sprays for Premature Ejaculation
Which delay spray is best for you is going to depend on your priorities. Based on our research and testing, the best delay spray for premature ejaculation (PE) is from the brand Hims. They offer one of the most affordable delay sprays, ongoing medical support, free shipping, as well as other treatment options for PE, including delay wipes and prescription pills, making them a truly comprehensive option.
We’ve also selected three other brands to round out our list of top picks for PE sprays, including Promescent, Steady Freddy, and Roman.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best premature ejaculation sprays (and some wipes), specifically focusing on their pricing, effectiveness, unique selling points, side effects, and more, so you can find the right product for your needs.
READ MORE!ZENMASTER WELLNESS (2023)
Adaptogens 101: What Are Adaptogens, and Should You Be Eating Them?
Adaptogens are active ingredients derived from plants, herbs, or mushrooms that may help regulate and manage the body’s stress levels, energy, and more. Examples include ashwagandha, maca root, ginseng, reishi, and lion’s mane. They’re sometimes called adaptogenic substances, functional mushrooms, or herbal supplements and come as capsules, powders, or drinks.
While more research is still needed, various adaptogens have demonstrated clinical safety and efficacy for cognitive function, heart disease, chronic pulmonary disease, cold prevention, erectile dysfunction, diabetes management, and more.
If you’re wondering if it’s a good idea to incorporate adaptogens into your diet, it’s best to speak with your healthcare provider first, as some adaptogens may not be appropriate for individuals with certain conditions, such as high blood pressure. In addition, adaptogens may lead to side effects in certain individuals, such as nausea, headache, dry mouth, and more.
READ MORE!TALKIATRY (2022)
How to cope with change when you have PTSD
When you think about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), flashbacks, nightmares, and other hallmark symptoms might come to mind. One less talked-about effect of PTSD is a strong fear of change, even when it’s an expected and positive change like a new job, a graduation, or a vacation.
Of course, change can feel uncomfortable for anyone, but for people living with PTSD, that feeling can be so intense that it keeps you from stepping outside of your comfort zone. Here’s how to manage your condition so you can be present in your life no matter what happens.
How do I know if I have PTSD?
PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can affect anyone who has experienced a traumatic event. You might think of shell-shocked combat veterans when you hear “PTSD,” but any experience that triggers your body’s survival response can be traumatic. That includes not only one-time events like car accidents, but also prolonged situations like abusive relationships and unstable childhoods.
READ MORE!FACET (2021)
How to feel more confident in your own skin
When you’re living with a chronic skin condition, it’s tempting to focus on the symptoms everyone (but especially you) can see—like bumps, rashes, scars, or plaques. But skin issues can leave invisible scars too, harming your self-esteem and maybe even your mental health.
The silver lining is that you don’t have to deal with all of this alone.We understand how exhausting it can be to live with physical and emotional symptoms, especially when it seems like everyone’s focused on the former. That’s why we’re sharing tips to help set you on the path to better confidence (regardless of what’s going on with your skin).
Take control over what you can
One of the hardest parts of your diagnosis is the feeling that you have no control over your condition. It might seem like no matter what you do, outbreaks just keep happening.
READ MORE!PICNIC (2021)
Quick Question: Why Does the Sun Make Me Sneeze?
Have you ever walked outside, took one look at the bright morning sun, and immediately started sneezing? You may’ve wondered if this sudden batch of sneezes might have something to do with your allergies, but (spoiler!) it’s actually a totally unrelated condition.
Feeling confused yet? That’s why we’re about to demystify the photic sneeze reflex (a.k.a. “sun sneezing”).
Why does the sun make me sneeze?
If looking at the sun or other bright lights makes you sneeze, you’re part of the 18-35 % of people who experience something called the photic sneeze reflex—uncontrollable bursts of sneezing in response to bright light. The condition is also called “sun sneezing” or autosomal dominant compulsive helio-ophthalmic outbursts of sneezing (ACHOO) syndrome (no, really). For unknown reasons, the condition is more common among women than men.
READ MORE!KEEPS (2021)
What’s the Relationship Between Testosterone and Hair Loss?
You’ve probably heard the hair loss myth that guys with high testosterone tend to go bald. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but male pattern hair loss isn’t caused by excessive manliness.) The truth is that the relationship between hormones like testosterone and hair loss is pretty complicated.
That’s why we’re here to break it all down for you. This article will cover everything you need to know about testosterone, hair loss, and what you can do if you’re not happy with your hormone levels (or your hairline).
What is testosterone?
Let’s start with the basics. Testosterone is the hormone responsible for male secondary sex characteristics like a deep voice, lots of muscle mass, and body hair and beard growth. Naturally, it also plays a big role in sexual functioning, like maintaining your sex drive and producing sperm.
READ MORE!COVE (2019)
The Truth About Treating Migraine With CBD and Marijuana
You’ve probably seen headlines announcing the legalization of marijuana in an increasing number of states. You’ve likely also noticed CBD showing up in more and more products every time you go shopping. And as someone with a chronic condition, you’ve likely been told that one or the other (or even both) can cure basically every symptom you’re experiencing. But just because something is legal to sell doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right treatment for your needs. And when you’re living with migraine, you can’t afford to waste your time on treatments that won’t work.
That’s why we spoke to board-certified neurologist and marijuana expert Dr. Eric Baron to get the facts on this trending treatment.
PBut before we get to the interview, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what we mean when we say “marijuana” and “CBD.” Marijuana is a type of plant whose flowers are famous for their psychoactive effects. You might know it by one of its other names, like cannabis, weed, or pot. No matter what you call it, it always has two main active ingredients. One is CBD, which stands for “cannabidiol.” The other is THC (that’s where the psychoactive effects come from).
READ MORE!CLIPS
writing at the intersection of personal & pathological
AUTOSTRADDLE (2020)
I Stopped Tweezing in Quarantine and Realized I’m Nonbinary
Quarantine has a lot of downsides. The crushing isolation, the unfathomable grief of mass death, the creeping feeling that we’re living through the literal apocalypse, the constant unconscious work of repressing all that so you can cross something meaningless off of your to-do list. But I have managed to find one silver lining: longer showers.
In the early days of quarantine, most of my time was booked up by either a Zoom call or the spontaneous crying that always followed a Zoom call. Showers provided a rare opportunity to stop panicking about all of the work I wasn’t doing, slow down, and take a moment to panic about something else.
On the 24th day of quarantine, I decided to take a shower in the middle of the day. I know it was daytime because I remember the sunlight disappearing as I closed my curtains. When I felt like being kind to myself, I would do the next part by the dim light leaking through the “blackout” cloth. This time, I did not feel like being kind to myself. I turned on all of the lamps in my room and took off all of my clothes. Then I stood in front of the mirror and stared.
READ MORE!TOR (2020)
The Dreams and Nightmares of Women: Lucid Dreaming on Film
You look in the mirror and find that one of your arms has been replaced by a purple tentacle. Or you glance at a clock and find that the numbers have been swapped for alien symbols. Or maybe you just look closely at your surroundings and realize that everything is brighter and stranger than it usually is. You’re dreaming, and now that you know you are, you can do anything you want. But you’re sixteen, so all you want is to undress that girl from your history class. You conjure her and begin to re-enact your daydreams. Her body is warm, you can feel her breath, but in an instant she’s gone, the walls melt away, and a monster looms over you. You’ve lost control.
When the lucid dreams I enjoyed as a teenager turned into nightmares, I stopped sleeping. I stayed up all night staring at the television, the volume as loud as it could be without waking the neighbors. Denied their nocturnal spotlight, my nightmares seeped into the daylight. Columns of spiders crawled up walls at the edges of my vision. I constantly felt like I was being followed. Sometimes, as I sat up all night, a shadowy golem kept me company. I never looked directly at it, but I’m certain it was the most hideous thing I could possibly imagine.
Have you ever realized in the middle of a dream that what’s happening isn’t real? That’s lucid dreaming. Experienced lucid dreamers can manipulate their dreams to live out their fantasies—or their fears. No art form is better positioned to explore the pleasures and perils of lucid dreaming than filmmaking, and no film has illuminated the connection between movies and dreams for more people than Inception. What’s disappointing is how few people have seen Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, a strikingly similar and arguably superior treatment of the same theme that was released in Japan four years before Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster. Both films rely on a device that enables people to enter others’ dreams, and both include elevators used to travel through them. More importantly, the two movies share a character: a woman so skilled at lucid dreaming that she can bend others’ dreams to her will.
READ MORE!AUTOSTRADDLE (2019)
How My Badass Butch Skyrim Character Saved My Life
It was probably late afternoon by the time I woke up — I typically got out of bed around three those days. I started drinking immediately. I ate a piece of toast for breakfast, then replaced the rest of my meals with cigarettes. At 9:40 p.m. I wrote in my journal, in tiny crabbed letters that list across the page, “I want to see blood.” Less than an hour later, I skirted past my father, who was asleep on the living room couch, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and disappeared into the bathroom.
About a month earlier—June 2015—I’d crash-landed at my parents’ house in New York after weeks of gallivanting around the Midwest with friends, celebrating our graduation from college with endless rounds of drinks, joints and a few harder drugs. The hangover hit like a closed fist. I think I slept for a few days straight before I even spoke to my parents.
While I was still in school, I’d considered this my worst-case scenario: returning to a bedroom so small it would horrify Harry Potter, with no job, no money and no plan. Suddenly, most of my friends had scattered across the country, started jobs or vacations, moved on to the next chapter of their lives. But I was stuck. Stuck at home and stuck with the memories of the girl I’d wasted my senior year chasing, the girl who preferred femmes, the girl who would never feel for me what I felt for her.
READ MORE!FILTER MAGAZINE (2019)
How My First LSD Trip Led Me to Accept My Sexuality
Someone had to tell me what to do with it: under your tongue, leave it there for a while, don’t swallow. We used a laptop to film ourselves. In the video, the three of us put the paper squares on our tongues, sticking them out for the camera, then giggle nervously.
I had never taken a psychedelic before and had no idea what to expect. Part of me hoped that nothing would happen. But within the hour, the walls began to breathe, the couch transformed into a rickety ship tossed by a turbulent sea, and my organs writhed. I prepared myself for death.
This didn’t require much effort; I had been preparing myself for death for years. I had spent the previous semester living alone in London and made little effort to reconnect with friends upon my return to college in the States. My days were murky and endless, with most hours endured either in class or in bed. Whenever I passed a window I would see myself crashing through it. Knives called my name at night.
READ MORE!