Wellness
The V-Spot: Getting Selfish in the Sack, Asking for better sex
We’re socialized to not ask for what we want. This applies to promotions, the best looking cookie in the cafe’s pastry case and, of course, sex. When we pointedly ask for what we want, we’re seen as selfish, greedy, finicky and maybe even a little mean. When women ask...
The V-Spot: Aftercare Is Not a Grey Area
A housewife’s wet dream, Fifty Shades of Grey, hit the big screen this past month — and hit it hard. The popularity of the book series, and now movie, has caused quite the stir in the practicing BDSM (bondage, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism) community,...
Astrology: March 26-April 1, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The term “jumped the shark” often refers to a TV show that was once great but gradually grew stale, and then resorted to implausible plot twists in a desperate attempt to revive its creative verve. I’m a little worried that you may do the...
Three True Hearts: True love strikes Southampton family in one fell swoop
“I hate pink because I’m a redhead,” says Kimberly Hodges, 30, the middle sister of the Truehart family. “But of course that’s Jenny’s favorite color.” Having three weddings, in one family and within a nine-month timespan requires some concessions. But if dress choice...Astrology: March 19-26, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You’re entering a time and space known as the Adlib Zone. In this territory, fertile chaos and inspirational uncertainty are freely available. Improvised formulas will generate stronger mojo than timeworn maxims. Creativity is de rigueur,...
The V-Spot: Bumming About Cumming
Dear V-Spot, I’m very different with different women, in respect to how long I last before ejaculating. Wildly different. With some people I go quick, with some I have complete control and could go for an hour or two, getting off whenever I feel like it. With some...
Astrology: March 5-11, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To depict what lay beyond the limits of the known world, medieval mapmakers sometimes drew pictures of dragons and sea serpents. Their images conveyed the sense that these territories were uncharted and perhaps risky to explore. There were...
The V-Spot: When Can We Ditch the Rubbers?
Hi Yana, After how many months of no symptoms can one safely assume he or she is free of sexually transmitted diseases? I’m in a monogamous relationship right now with someone who’s just as healthy as I am, and we’re wondering how long until we can be reasonably sure...
Death and Cake: At ‘death cafes’ people discuss death in order to live better
At a recent gathering in a second-story studio in downtown Northampton, Daniel Lombardo of Westhampton read a story about twin fetuses discussing life after birth. One thinks there will be life after delivery, related Lombardo, while the other isn’t so sure....
The V-Spot: A Straight Boy and His Butt
“Prostate stimulation can be otherwordly, like you are not sure where the pleasure is coming from.” — The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure by Charlie Glickman, Ph.D. and Aislinn Emirzian “[I] can’t put words on the orgasms, but it felt like I was having about three...
Astrology: Feb. 28-March 4, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Lately your life reminds me of the action film Speed, starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. In that story, a criminal has rigged a passenger bus to explode if its speed drops below 50 miles per hour. In your story, you seem to be acting...
Putting Lipstick on a Slog: 17 ways to enjoy the rest of your winter and get ready for spring
As New England natives, we’d like to humbly challenge T. S. Elliot’s assertion that “April is the cruelest month.” It’s March. The month is a tease, punishing snow and winds one minute and green leaves coaxed by a soft breath of spring emerge in the next. March...
Between the Lines: SEX! Now that I’ve got your attention, SEX! The importance of The V-Spot
Since returning The V-Spot sex advice column to the pages of the Advocate earlier this month, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our readers. Most are thrilled to have a sassy sexpert closing out the paper every week. Others question why a newspaper would dedicate so...
Between the Lines: Bad Data Drives the Anti-vaxx Movement
Measles, an infectious viral disease, is far more harmful and deadly than the measles vaccine. So why have so many parents opted to skip this regular inoculation? Bad information. The so-called anti-vaxx movement advises against childhood inoculations, especially the...
The V-Spot: Hopin’ 2 Open
Dear V-Spot, My husband and I were married in May. We’ve been together for eight years. He’s leaving in April for a year-long residence out of state. I’d like to be able to have a “monogamous-ish” (thanks Dan Savage) type thing while he’s gone. How do I bring that up...
Astrology, Feb. 19-25, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): There are many different facets to your intelligence, and each matures at a different rate. So, for example, your ability to think symbolically may evolve more slowly than your ability to think abstractly. Your wisdom about why humans act...
Scene Here: A Spot for Tea
Kevin Gutting Photo
Astrology, Feb. 12-18, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I hope you have someone in your life to whom you can send the following love note, and if you don’t, I trust you will locate that someone no later than August 1: “I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and...
The V-Spot: New Vibe for a New Mama
Hello V-Spot, I had a baby and now I’m so busy. I just want to buy a sex toy. I was going to get the newer JeJoue Mimi as I remember [from past columns] that was your favorite, but I read some people don’t like it and I don’t want to take the chance. I may get the...
The Other Good Life: Pioneering back-to-the-landers Helen and Scott Nearing lived in the shadow of Stratton Mountain before it was a ski resort
Stratton Mountain sits some 45 minutes north of Brattleboro. The drive up state Route 30 encapsulates much of what visitors and residents alike love about the Green Mountain state. The single lane road follows the meandering West River alongside the Green Mountain...
Sexpert Yana Tallon-Hicks is back: You Found The V-Spot, but What About the G-Spot?
Editor’s Note: Back by popular demand, Yana Tallon-Hicks returns with The V-Spot, the Advocate’s weekly sex and relationship advice column. She received her undergrad in sexuality studies and sex education and worked as a sex educator/sales associate at various sex...
Uplift: Pole dancing for mind, body, and spirit
“Get your spots ready for butterfly,” Barre and Pole owner Tekla Kostek tells her students during a pole tricks class last Wednesday. The eight women stand two-to-a-pole and watch as Kostek demonstrates. Kostek positions herself next to the pole. She bends her right...
Between the Lines: Smoke ’em if you got ’em — and if you’re over 21
I had my first cigarette when I was 13; stole it from my dad’s pack of menthol Pall Malls and smoked it on the back porch. I had heard cigarettes were a good way to relax. I took a few puffs. The flavor was all ash and prickly mint. For a moment a rushing dizziness...Astrology, Feb 5-11, 2015
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1979, Monty Python comedian John Cleese helped direct a four-night extravaganza, The Secret Policeman’s Ball. It was a benefit to raise money for the human rights organization Amnesty International. The musicians known as Sting, Bono, and...
Yoga or herbs? Why not both
Last year, yoga and wellness teacher Molly Kitchen was in such high demand that she was teaching 18 classes a week — a difficult feat for someone who demonstrates demanding poses throughout her classes. Massachusetts ranks in the top five states in the number of...
Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You will never make anything that lasts forever. Nor will I or anyone else. I suppose it’s possible that human beings will still be listening to Beethoven’s music or watching The Simpsons TV show 10,000 years from today, but even that stuff...
Oh, That’s Better: How to have hotter sex in 2015
Another year goes by, another high-tech sex toy hits the market: remote-controlled vibrators that respond to your moan intonations, masturbation sleeves shaped like your favorite porn star, and whatever else the kinky nerds come up with next. Your i-Brain might have...Wellness Listings
Health Happenings200 Club Raffle: Raffle will support a renovation project to the Holyoke Medical Center’s auditorium. 200 tickets will be sold at $50 apiece. Starting on March 16th, the Auxiliary Association will draw weekly $100, $250, $500 winners and a $1000...Hot Flash
Hormone mimics wreak havoc on women’s health.By Amara Rose By age 36, I was living in hormone hell. I bled in between menstrual cycles, had constant vaginal irritation, polycystic ovaries, night sweats, insomnia, painful joints, debilitating fatigue and brain...Straight Eye for the Right Dye
What you should know before you tint your hairBy Stephanie KraftWhy do women—and men, too, in growing numbers—dye their hair? It’s not just because they “hate that gray,” though that’s part of the answer. A clue comes from the old...Get Some Shuteye
How to get all the sleep you need By Jenny Stamos You toss and turn, wake up at weird hours of the night and feel exhausted in the morning. Is there a way to get a good night’s rest?Yes—with some help from the pros. Think fast—when was the last time...Broccoli to the Rescue
For stomach problems, vegetables containing sulforaphane may cure what over-the-counter pills merely mask. By Tom SturmThrow away the Pepto-Bismol, the Alka-Seltzer and any other hyphenated tummy helpers you’ve been pouring onto your ulcers; all you need is a...The Stressful Traveler
Taking a mid-winter trip to get away from the worries of the workaday world? That may be harder than you think.By Sophia DemblingA couple of years after embarking on a career as a travel writer, I developed my travel credo: Eat when you’re hungry, drink when...Fast Food
With the food industry using tough strategies to push empty calories, advocates for healthy food need to get tough, too, says public health attorney Michele Simon. By Maureen TurnerIn the summer of 2005, the American Beverage Association—the trade group...Go Long For Fitness
By Rick PachecoFor many of us these days, the realization that our health might be in trouble for lack of fitness can come dangerously late. Content for years to be sedentary, practically averse to motion, often we reach a point where some sobering episode, or the...Green Beginnings
By Molly M. GintyA small but growing number of American hospitals are adding warnings about environmental toxins to their prenatal programs.“Eat salmon instead of tuna when you’re pregnant, and you’ll avoid mercury contamination that can trigger a...How Happy Can You Be?
The day I meet Sonja Lyubomirsky, she keeps getting calls from her Toyota Prius dealer. When she finally picks up, she is excited by the news: she can buy the car she wants in two days. Lyubomirsky wonders if her enthusiasm might come across as materialism, but I...Ginger to the Rescue
Many consider ginger to be a medicine cabinet all by itself. If you’re not already keeping fresh ginger or even a box of ginger tea in your pantry, next time you visit the store, bring some home. Ginger has been proven to relieve both motion and morning...Staying With It
“Exercise and balance are imperative to a healthy, productive and happy lifestyle,” says Brandon Reed, who knows all about the hectic pace of modern living. From the starting gate, Brandon, co-owner and manager of Fitness Together in Northampton, has been...Calling the Shots
At age two, Barbara Loe Fisher’s oldest son came to the pediatrician for his DPT shot and something went terribly wrong. She watched, terrified, as his eyes rolled back into his head and his body went limp. He had temporary paralysis. But the long-term effects...The Eyes Have It
Since its development in the early 1990s, the popularity of laser eye surgery or LASIK (short for Laser-Assisted in Situ Keratomileusis) has soared; the procedure is used to treat various common ocular conditions. However, LASIK retains some of its status as a...Living in a Cancer Culture
Epochs in the Western World seem to have their defining diseases—mysterious, serious ailments that become nexuses of obsession. The plague, tuberculosis, malaria and polio are seared in cultural memory—as are their treatments, their inevitable effects on...
Wellness: Am I (Still) Ill?
I can’t resist quoting Morrissey on hypochondria and the mind-body connection. His musings on the topic are apt, and appropriately elusive and unequivocal. In the Smiths’ song “Still Ill,” he warbles:“I decreed today that life is simply...
Antimicrobial Backfire
The "vomiting virus" now sweeping across Britain may be spreading. At the same time, San Francisco is being hit with a new strain of the nasty bacterium known as MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), this one responsible for "flesh-eating...
Wellness: Of Plateaus and Progress
Diet long enough and you're bound to reach a phase where weight loss levels off and the scale is stuck on the same three digits for weeks or more. In fact, researchers from Drexel University find that dieters tend to reach plateaus at week three, week 10 and after...
Wellness: Spreading Like Yeast
Before the 1970s, only extremely health-conscious Americans ate yogurt. But thanks to its purported association with an especially long-lived people of the Caucasus Mountains, yogurt was heralded as a miracle health food and thrust into ubiquity. Some three decades...
Wellness: When Sleep Plays Hard to Get
Browse amazon.com results for "insomnia" and amidst all the self-help books is a slim, seductively titled volume: Insomnia: A Cultural History by Eluned Summers-Bremner. Summers-Bremner, like any good cultural studies major, draws on the teachings of Freud...
Reluctant Heroes
Heroes tend to spring up in unlikely places. They’re often commonplace people who, by dint of circumstance and lack of choice, are forced to overcome insurmountable odds. Their shoulders suddenly bear a ponderous weight and they are spurred to action, compelled...
Moist as a Dewdrop, Fresh as a Flower
Anecdotes about the naive misuse of chemicals in bygone times are always colorful; historians love to recount the etymology of the term “mad hatter” (which became part of the vernacular during a period when milliners used the neurotoxin mercury to clean...Brief-ercise
Did you know that a short burst of intense exercise is extremely beneficial not only for overall fitness, but for building lean muscle tissue and promoting longevity? Just imagine exercising from only two minutes to a maximum of 17 a couple of times a week and still...
“A Miracle for Breakfast”
Elizabeth Bishop, that precise, austere poetess, penned so many odes to prosaic, un-picturesque subject matter (filling stations, bus rides) that one critic described her best work as a “magical illumination of the ordinary.” An early piece, penned...
Ambassador on Two Wheels
About seven years ago, when my daughter was an infant, I resolved to get myself back into good enough shape to keep up with her. I had just hit forty, and though I’d been a very fit marathon runner once upon a time, it had been nearly a decade since I’d...
Soy and Breast Cancer
Cancer prevention strategies and potential cure-alls range from the banal (the often-repeated three: exercise, eat healthfully, avoid excessive alcohol consumption) to the arcane and controversial. One of the most presently controversial foods or products,...
Wellness: Holiday Blues
Perhaps the most common feeling people have during the last couple of months of each year is one of pressure. The holiday season is laden with expectations—expectations we put on ourselves, our society and our families—and the compulsion to fulfil them...
Nuts About Nuts
An article recently published in the British Medical Journal has received much attention from blogs and mainstream media alike. Written by Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, the article, titled "This Allergies...
A Shot in the Dark
To say there's a big debate over autism is an understatement. More than 5,000 families have filed court claims blaming vaccine makers for their children's autism symptoms, including serious language delays, poor social skills and repetitive movements. Yet the...
Wellness: Java for Life?
Coffee may make you a happier person, a nicer and more open-minded person, a more intelligent, alert and beautiful person who lives a healthier life—and lives it longer. We coffee drinkers just knew it all along, but medical science in recent years has been...
Undoing the Damage
Leslie Tarr Laurie was in a celebratory mood last week.Laurie—president and CEO of Tapestry Health—was rejoicing over a recent federal court decision that reversed, in part, one of the many blows to reproductive rights delivered by the Bush administration....
An Epidemic of Fear of (Being) Fat
It's finally happening—fat people in America are getting fed up. They're tired of taking it on their cushioned chins from comedians and commentators on national television who otherwise would not dare treat another minority with such disdain and...E-Edition
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