The Great DBH Rant

Check out this title: “Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males”. It is not a title for a male health magazine article, nor a female magazine for that matter! It’s not a sex advice article. It is an article which appeared in the medical journal Medical Hypotheses (2008 71(2) pp308). Who says scientists and doctors don’t have a sense of humour – or do they? This person is not joking! Sina Zarrintan, author of this fabulous piece of work, describes the shortfalls in the current treatments, decongestants, anti histamines etc. Decongestants typically act by stimulating the alpha adrenergic receptors in the sympathetic nervous system. One of the effects of stimulating the alpha adrenergic receptors is – nasal vasoconstriction, a constriction of the blood vessels in the nose and kaboom symptoms relieved.

However, alpha adrenergic stimulation is not without side effects – hypertension is one of them. Also prolonged use of decongestants may make the symptoms worse.

Then came the truly sensational observation – that male ejaculation too has an effect on the sympathetic nervous system. Put two and two together and you get the title of this ground breaking piece of medical drivel – masturbate to get rid of that blocked nose. This is truly up there with all the high-priority medical questions, no? This piece of news is already being brilliantly mocked and covered elsewhere, like here. There are no actual data in this publication, just a suggestion. But real data might be on its way on the comments in this blog post here.

But what I wanted to point out here is that in the next issue, of Medical Hypotheses, there was a response from a Mohammad Fakhree, with this title: “Ejaculation as a treatment for nasal congestion in men is inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous”. He pointed out all the flaws with this method of managing a blocked nose – its unsafe (because having sex too much is linked to prostate cancer, apparently), it is not feasible to masturbate regularly several times a day for chronic sufferers, and apparently it is not “feasible” if the sufferer does not have a sexual partner (can you spot the problem with this statement?).

This is so trivial! Bickering and handbags over a blocked nose and giving yourself the ol’ “low five”. And these stuff gets published! True it gave me no end of amusement poking fun at it, but still.

Then I noticed something – the authors of both publications are from the same city in Iran, and very likely to be from the same institution! Which led me to think – is this a lovers’ squabble in the bedroom department that has boiled over just a tad?