For those in the herbs business, the extraordinary success of Viagra surely came as no surprise. After all, Viagra does work for almost all men, though the stiff price of the Pfizer product for many men puts limitations on the frequency of that other Pfizer-caused stiffness.

No, muira puama is no substitute for Viagra, and it does not work as an aphrodisiac. Maybe it works as a general tonic. But in the arena of tonics, it competes with a wide range of other products, from green tea to red ginseng. Tonics are no miracle medicines, and the sales potential for just one more tonic is of course much lower than it would be for a so-called herbal Viagra.

It is our intention to set the record straight and slow down a little bit the moneymaking machines of those who promise you that you don't need Viagra if only you take your muira puama diligently (and purchase a generous supply from them).

You can buy your muira puama and feel good about having contributed to the preservation of the plant's habitat, the Amazon basin. There will probably also be some rather indistinct tonic effect. But the bottom line is that muira puama will do nothing to enhance your sexual function and performance.

In no way are we against tapping into the knowledge of traditional medicine's use of plants. But not every herb, Mongolian shamans or South American medicine men have been using, actually will work. This is especially true when it concerns herbs that allegedly improve male sexual performance.

Shamans and medicine men have found many a good herb against indigestion, or to induce sleep, or to treat nausea. But what their best clients, elderly tribal chieftains, always requested more than anything else, they were never able to deliver: a herb that would restore their sexual prowess. A notable exception: traditional healers in West Africa did have something at hand: the bark of the tree Corynanthe yohimbe.

Yohimbe is one of only two herbal remedies that indeed have the power to enhance sexual desire, function, and performance (and no, we do not sell any yohimbe). The other one is tongkat ali. (For information on tongkat ali, please see www.TestingTongkatAli.com.)

The active ingredient of yohimbe, yohimbine, has been isolated decades ago, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific studies that attest to the power of yohimbine in the treatment of erectile dysfunction or impotence, and in enhancing sexual parameters in healthy individuals.

You can check Medline, the huge database of scientific medical research, and you won't find a single document coming to the result that muira puama were to improve sexual function. Actually, you will have a hard time finding any scientific study on muira puama at all. If indeed, muira puama would work as aphrodisiac, this would hardly have escaped the medical profession, at least not in Brazil and other countries were muira puama is sold by quacks as ingredient of potency pills.

But there are thousands of scientific studies on the Medline database that attest to the aphrodisiac qualities of yohimbine, and there are some scientific studies that prove the sexual enhancement qualities of tongkat ali (scientific name: eurycoma longifolia).

I am not prejudiced. I have tried a bottle of muira puama myself. Taking muira puama alone, I haven't noticed any effect. In combination with yohimbine, muira puama didn't add to the yohimbine's power.

If the effect of muira puama probably is that of a general tonic, and if it were advertised as such, there would be nothing wrong with it. The nuisance is that anywhere it is sold as aphrodisiac because as aphrodisiac, the marketing potential is so much better.

Of course, those selling other herbal products often also cannot resist the temptation to drive up sales by ascribing some pro-sexual effects to the herbal they carry. The bluntest attempt in that direction, we have seen on a web site dedicated to saw palmetto. Saw palmetto capsules were advertised there as "the sex pills of the nineties". My God, saw palmetto is an anti-androgen, it interferes with dihydrotestosterone, and if anything, then it will make erections more difficult to achieve.

Muira puama isn't that bad. But it's also not an aphrodisiac.

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Buttock augmentation

There are two types of buttock augmentation:
The lifting of the buttocks.
The surgical enlargement of the buttocks through the insertion of a synthetic implant or through the use of substances like silicone.

Brazilian Butt Lift or Butt injections

The most famous type of shape-modifying injections to the bottom is the "Brazilian Butt Lift", although the procedure is also called fat injections, fat transfer, or fat grafting. It usually consists of a combination of liposuction around the buttocks and many injections of fat into the buttocks. The fat is harvested by liposuction from ones buttocks, abdomen or elsewhere. The fat is processed and purified before it is reinjected. Depending on the amount of augmentation needed, one may need to undergo a great deal of injections, which are made at various sites and depths in the buttocks.

Implants

Buttocks implants are "stronger than breast implants" and made of an elastomer so they do not leak. Implants are placed using a small incision atop of the muscles above the sitting area and below the surrounding fascia to secure them. A previous technique of intermuscular augmentation only augmented the upper third of the buttocks whereas implants can address the entire area. The incision scar should be unseen in about a year's time.

Transgender

Surgical buttock augmentation is sometimes performed on transsexual and transgender women who wish to have more feminine buttocks. Genetically women's bodies typically have a more pronounced curve of the hips than transgender women, so the goal is to create a more feminine body shape. This type of surgery is sometimes also referred to as hip augmentation or hip enlargement. This surgery may take the place of the usage of hip and buttock padding.

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Optimal sexual function

Version 1.1, November 2007

In as much as optimal orgasms have a metaphysical dimension as the true meaning of life, optimal sexual function is the most important practical concern of every man and woman who has achieved a high degree of self-cognition.

Optimal sexual function is no longer just a matter of the right attitude towards life (a psychological problem). In as much as our 'modes of production' (or, in a more narrow sense, our technologies) are evolving, optimal sexual function is becoming an affair of technical know how.

Some time in the future, genetic engineering will assure that we all get the most out of our sex lives. But even at this stage of human history, we are not just powerless bystanders.

Pharmacological intervention can go a long way if we want to improve our sexual function, and there is much more to the chemical arsenal than just Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra.

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Blepharoplasty

Both a functional or cosmetic surgical procedure intended to reshape the upper eyelid or lower eyelid by the removal and/or repositioning of excess tissue as well as by reinforcement of surrounding muscles and tendons. When an advanced amount of upper eyelid skin is present, the skin may hang over the eyelashes and cause a loss of peripheral vision. The outer and upper parts of the visual field are most commonly affected and the condition may cause difficulty with activities such as driving or reading. In this circumstance, upper eyelid blepharoplasty is performed to improve peripheral vision. Patients with a less severe amount of excess skin may have a similar procedure performed for cosmetic reasons. Lower eyelid blepharoplasty is almost always done for cosmetic reasons, to improve puffy lower eyelid "bags" and reduce the wrinkling of skin.

Blepharoplasty is performed through external incisions made along the natural skin lines of the eyelids, such as the creases of the upper lids and below the lashes of the lower lids, or from the inside surface of the lower eyelid. Initial swelling and bruising take one to two weeks to resolve but at least several months are needed until the final result becomes stable. Depending upon the scope of the procedure, the operation takes one to three hours to complete.

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In vitro breast cancer cell lethality of Brazilian plant extracts.

Laboratório de Extração, Universidade Paulista, São Paulo, SP, 01310-100, Brasil. extractlab@unip.br

PIn this study we screened the cytotoxicity of 1220 plant extracts obtained from 351 plants belonging to 74 families occurring in the Amazon and Atlantic rain forests against MCF-7 human breast adenocarcinoma cell lines. All extracts were tested at a dose of 100 microg/mL. Only 11 aqueous or organic extracts belonging to the Annonaceae, Apocynaceae, Araceae, Clusiaceae, Flacourtiaceae, Leguminosae, Olacaceae and Violaceae showed marked lethal activity. Vismia guianensis and Annona hypoglauca extracts showed the greatest lethal activity.

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Antioxidant activities of Ptychopetalum olacoides ("muirapuama") in mice brain.

Departamento de Farmacologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Rua Sarmento Leite, 500, sala 202, 90050-170 Porto Alegre RS, Brazil.

Ptychopetalum olacoides (PO) roots are used by Amazonian peoples to prepare traditional remedies for treating various central nervous system conditions in which free radicals are likely to be implicated. Following the identification of PO ethanol extract (POEE) free-radical scavenging properties in vitro, the aim of this study was to verify the in vivo antioxidant effect of POEE. Aging mice (14 months) were treated (i.p.) with saline, DMSO (20%) or POEE (100mg/kg body wt.), and the hippocampi, cerebral cortex, striata, hypothalamus and cerebellum dissected out 60 min later to measure antioxidant enzyme activities, free-radical production and damage to macromolecules. POEE administration reduced free-radical production in the hypothalamus, lead to significant decrease in lipid peroxidation in the cerebral cortex, striatum and hypothalamus, as well as in the carbonyl content in cerebellum and striatum. In terms of antioxidant enzymes, catalase activity was increased in the cortex, striatum, cerebellum and hippocampus, while glutathione peroxidase activity was increased in the hippocampus. This study suggests that POEE contains compounds able to improve the cellular antioxidant network efficacy in the brain, ultimately reducing the damage caused by oxidative stress.

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Pseudolarix amabilis

Pseudolarix is a monotypic genus in the family Pinaceae. The sole species, Pseudolarix amabilis is commonly known as Golden Larch, though it is not a true larch (Larix), being more closely related to Keteleeria, Abies and Cedrus. It is native to eastern China, occurring in small areas in the mountains of southern Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei and eastern Sichuan, at altitudes of 100-1500 m. Golden Larch is sometimes known under an old scientific name Pseudolarix kaempferi, but this may cause confusion with Larix kaempferi, the Japanese Larch.

It is a deciduous tree reaching 30-40 m tall, with a broad conic crown. The shoots are dimorphic, with long shoots and short shoots similar to a larch, though the short shoots are not so markedly short, lengthening about 5 mm annually. The leaves are bright green, 3-6 cm long and 2-3 mm broad, with two glaucous stomatal bands on the underside; they turn a brilliant golden yellow before falling in the autumn, whence the common name. The leaves are arranged spirally, widely spaced on long shoots, and in a dense whorl on the short shoots.

The cones are distinctive, superficially resembling a small globe artichoke, 4-7 cm long and 4-6 cm broad, with pointed triangular scales; they mature about 7 months after pollination, when (like fir and cedar cones) they disintegrate to release the winged seeds. The male cones, as in Keteleeria, are produced in umbels of several together in one bud.

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