Porn can ruin your life. Is it addictive?

When volunteers and persons who regularly watch pornographic content were shown short sexually explicit videos, their brain activity being monitored using functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI), it was found that watching porn to excess produces the same brain activity as drug addiction. Does this mean that pornography is as addictive as hard drugs?

An answer to this question is important. One in 25 adults show compulsive sexual behavior. They are obsessed with uncontrollable sexual thoughts, feelings or behavior. Furthermore, difficulty in controlling sexual behavior can affect one’s life and relationships.

The conclusion arrived at after the study using pornographic videos was that pornography can ruin your life, just like abusing drugs or being a slave to food. But proving that pornography is addictive like hard drugs or diagnosing someone who is addicted to pornography was beyond the reach of the researchers.

Further reading: Brain activity in sex addiction mirrors that of drug addiction.

Fighting HIV infections through seminal bacteria

Semen contains sperm, immune factors and communities of bacteria. The latter two have been studied for their effect or relationship to the amount of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in semen or what is termed, the viral load. It was decided that infection with HIV re-shapes the relationship between semen bacteria and immune factors which in turn affects the viral load.

A recent study was a research on the relationship between semen bacteria and HIV infection using semen samples from 49 men who have sex with men (MSM). The MSM population was pertinent because of its high risk to HIV infection and transmission. Thereafter, some were put on anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for 6 months.

Both men discovered that persons infected with untreated HIV have markedly reduced seminal microbial diversity . After 6 months ART therapy, semen viral load was found reduced to undetectable levels while bacterial diversity in the semen was restored.

This result supports the hypothesis that seminal bacteria plays a role in HIV shedding and should be a possible target in the fight against HIV transmission through sexual activity.

Further reading: The Semen Microbiome and Its Relationship with Local Immunology and Viral Load in HIV Infection.