Why is Porn Bad for Your Eyes
The issue of the case with the Standford student discussed below is a volatile subject on all sides.
My interest and all eyeMD’s interests are protecting the vision and health of everyone involved and for all our patients.
Aside from the sexually transmitted diseases that can be transmitted in any sex act, even in consenting parties, which in and of themselves can cause long term infammation in the eyes called Uveitis (I have seen 4 cases of ocular syphilis this year alone), which is a potentially blinding disease, there is the added risk that these patients begin taking Oral Birth Control Pills and Viagra-type medicines as well without first having an eye exam.
Oral Birth Control Pills and Viagra-type medicines have the risk of causing an artery or vein occlusion or ischemic optic neuropathy in the eye that can lead to sudden, permanent vision loss. I have posted about this before.
This is devastating.
Why does no one talk about this as well.
Sometimes Birth Control is given for medical reasons, like my friend, but all to often, women use it to keep up with the porn culture around. Men are using Viagra more and more for the same reason.
Thus, I think porn should be outlawed purely from a medical point of view. It is too risky to get addicted to porn, which has been proven to be highly addictive
Anyone who says porn is not addictive, does not see patients really talk to their patients.
I am part of a wonderful online community called Healthtap and we get questions on porn addiction often.
The list of questions from patients concerned about their “porn addiction” go on & on. For the record, men should not be encouraged to mastrubation.
Masturbation is addictive. There has never been a proven medical benefit, published in a peer reviewed journal by researchers not addicted to mastrubation or porn themselves, showing that mastrubation or porn is medically helpful in any form.
It can be very hard to break the addiction of mastrubation and porn addiction, so I recommend no one starts doing this.
Neurochemical research is beginning to prove what we have already known for years:
- The neurochemical rush triggered by sexual experiences can turn masturbation into a convenient drug of choice for pleasure, escape, and self-medication from loneliness, boredom, insomnia, negative emotions, and the stresses of life. Over time, the brain’s highly efficient powers of habit-formation turn masturbation into a chemical dependency–an addiction.
- Masturbation interferes with healthy sexuality in a committed relationship and in marriage. The same neurochemicals that, during marital intimacy, enhance your relationship with your spouse, redirect your desire toward your self rather than your spouse. Over time, “self-sex” becomes your brain’s preferred method for achieving sexual gratification.
More MDs should be warning their patients not to mastrubate and see porn but sadly many MDs do not know the long term side effects.
Luckily there is a great researcher at Harvard who does and is publishing about this issue:
See PURITYISPOSSIBLE.COM
Such sites can help one be released from the chains of such an addiction.
If you are addicted to mastrubation and porn, please check out this website.
And for all patients, see your eyeMD and ask about your optic nerve’s cup to disc ratio before starting any hormones like birth control or Viagra. If your eyeMD says your cup to disc ratio is 0, 0.1, 0.2, avoid external hormones as they can increase your risk for a vein or artery occlusion which can lead to permanent blindness. This year alone, I have seen 5 men who have lost sight in one eye permanently from taking Viagra: they wish their eye doctor had told them they had a “disc at risk” and that Viagra could increase their risk of an anterior ischemic optic neuropathy.
A couple of years ago, a dear friend was given the pill to regulate her periods, she was 35. She had a severe heart attack and a loss of her visual field that has taken months to stabilize.
The risk is not worth it, in my medical opinion.
Sandra Cremers, MD, FACS
Where Have The Good Men Gone?
Kay S. Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adolescence.
Erin Patrice O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal
Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.
Between his lack of responsibilities and an entertainment media devoted to his every pleasure, today’s young man has no reason to grow up, says author Kay Hymowitz. She discusses her book, “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.”
“We are sick of hooking up with guys,” writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, “I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I’ve Dated.” What Ms. Klausner means by “guys” is males who are not boys or men but something in between. “Guys talk about ‘Star Wars’ like it’s not a movie made for people half their age; a guy’s idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends…. They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home.” One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner’s book wrote, “I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?”
For most of us, the cultural habitat of pre-adulthood no longer seems noteworthy. After all, popular culture has been crowded with pre-adults for almost two decades. Hollywood started the affair in the early 1990s with movies like “Singles,” “Reality Bites,” “Single White Female” and “Swingers.” Television soon deepened the relationship, giving us the agreeable company of Monica, Joey, Rachel and Ross; Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer; Carrie, Miranda, et al.
But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It’s no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today’s pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.
What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.
WHY GROW UP? Men in their 20s now have an array of toys and distractions at their disposal, from videogames and sports bars to ‘lad’ magazines like Maxim, which makes Playboy look like Camus.
Still, for these women, one key question won’t go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie “Knocked Up.” The story’s hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup.
So where did these pre-adults come from? You might assume that their appearance is a result of spoiled 24-year-olds trying to prolong the campus drinking and hook-up scene while exploiting the largesse of mom and dad. But the causes run deeper than that. Beginning in the 1980s, the economic advantage of higher education—the “college premium”—began to increase dramatically. Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of younger adults enrolled in college or graduate school more than doubled. In the “knowledge economy,” good jobs go to those with degrees. And degrees take years.
Another factor in the lengthening of the road to adulthood is our increasingly labyrinthine labor market. The past decades’ economic expansion and the digital revolution have transformed the high-end labor market into a fierce competition for the most stimulating, creative and glamorous jobs. Fields that attract ambitious young men and women often require years of moving between school and internships, between internships and jobs, laterally and horizontally between jobs, and between cities in the U.S. and abroad. The knowledge economy gives the educated young an unprecedented opportunity to think about work in personal terms. They are looking not just for jobs but for “careers,” work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions. They expect their careers to give shape to their identity. For today’s pre-adults, “what you do” is almost synonymous with “who you are,” and starting a family is seldom part of the picture.
Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn’t afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a “moratorium,” a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.
Like adolescents in the 20th century, today’s pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. And like adolescence, pre-adulthood is a class-based social phenomenon, reserved for the relatively well-to-do. Those who don’t get a four-year college degree are not in a position to compete for the more satisfying jobs of the knowledge economy.
But pre-adults differ in one major respect from adolescents. They write their own biographies, and they do it from scratch. Sociologists use the term “life script” to describe a particular society’s ordering of life’s large events and stages. Though such scripts vary across cultures, the archetypal plot is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The invention of adolescence did not change the large Roman numerals of the American script. Adults continued to be those who took over the primary tasks of the economy and culture. For women, the central task usually involved the day-to-day rearing of the next generation; for men, it involved protecting and providing for their wives and children. If you followed the script, you became an adult, a temporary custodian of the social order until your own old age and demise.
Unlike adolescents, however, pre-adults don’t know what is supposed to come next. For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether. In 1970, just 16% of Americans ages 25 to 29 had never been married; today that’s true of an astonishing 55% of the age group. In the U.S., the mean age at first marriage has been climbing toward 30 (a point past which it has already gone in much of Europe). It is no wonder that so many young Americans suffer through a “quarter-life crisis,” a period of depression and worry over their future.
Given the rigors of contemporary career-building, pre-adults who do marry and start families do so later than ever before in human history. Husbands, wives and children are a drag on the footloose life required for the early career track and identity search. Pre-adulthood has also confounded the primordial search for a mate. It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage. In 1970, to cite just one of many numbers proving the point, nearly seven in 10 25-year-olds were married; by 2000, only one-third had reached that milestone.
American men have been struggling with finding an acceptable adult identity since at least the mid-19th century. We often hear about the miseries of women confined to the domestic sphere once men began to work in offices and factories away from home. But it seems that men didn’t much like the arrangement either. They balked at the stuffy propriety of the bourgeois parlor, as they did later at the banal activities of the suburban living room. They turned to hobbies and adventures, like hunting and fishing. At midcentury, fathers who at first had refused to put down the money to buy those newfangled televisions changed their minds when the networks began broadcasting boxing matches and baseball games. The arrival of Playboy in the 1950s seemed like the ultimate protest against male domestication; think of the refusal implied by the magazine’s title alone.
In his disregard for domestic life, the playboy was prologue for today’s pre-adult male. Unlike the playboy with his jazz and art-filled pad, however, our boy rebel is a creature of the animal house. In the 1990s, Maxim, the rude, lewd and hugely popular “lad” magazine arrived from England. Its philosophy and tone were so juvenile, so entirely undomesticated, that it made Playboy look like Camus.
At the same time, young men were tuning in to cable channels like Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network and Spike, whose shows reflected the adolescent male preferences of its targeted male audiences. They watched movies with overgrown boy actors like Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell and Seth Rogen, cheering their awesome car crashes, fart jokes, breast and crotch shots, beer pong competitions and other frat-boy pranks. Americans had always struck foreigners as youthful, even childlike, in their energy and optimism. But this was too much.
What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It’s been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.
Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can’t act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.
Single men have never been civilization’s most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn’t be surprised.
Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men’s attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do.
They might as well just have another beer.
—Adapted from “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys” by Kay S. Hymowitz, to be published by Basic Books on March 1. Copyright © by Kay S. Hymowitz. Printed by arrangement with Basic Books.
If you suspect that your partner is addicted to porn what should your do?
I’m 18 & addicted to porn please suggest a help how to control maturbation?
I am addicted to porn and smoking cigarettes, this is really affecting on me. How I can stop both of them ?
I am addicted to porn and my sister why?
I would like help i’m the edge of being addicted to porn .?
Hello doctor, I am married and feel hello doctor, I am addicted toporn;( what should I do?
What do you advise if i want help i’m the edge of being addicted to porn?
What should I do if my husband is addicted to porn and will NOT go and seek help at all ?
I am insanely addicted to porn and masturbation, it’s effecting my mental health. How do I fix myself?
What side effects are often associated with being addicted toporn as a child?
I masturbate compulsively to porn. I know masturbation is healthy, but being addicted to porn is not! How can I overcome porn addiction? Thank You
How do I break my addicted to porn?
Could porn cause erectile dysfunction?
Can watching porn give you erectile dysfunction? It this true?
What is porn induced ed?Is it treatable?What are the herbal products to treat ed?Do they work throughout life?Any permanent solution to ed?
10 Reasons Colleges are Producing Rapists Like Brock Turner
Brock Turner got off with an extremely light sentence (three to six months in a county jail instead of two years minimum at a state penitentiary for three felony counts of sexual assault), but the deeper question no one is asking is WHY are so many U.S. male college students becoming rapists? In my opinion Brock and the judge who sentenced him, are terrifying products of our pornified culture.
Some studies show that one-third of women have experienced unwanted sexual contact in college. The term “rape culture” is frequently in the news. But no one ever connects the dots between rape culture and porn culture. Porn culture normalizes rape culture. Pornography has created the rape culture.
What is Rape Culture?
Let’s first define “rape culture” and then connect the dots from porn culture.
Rape culture is a culture in which dominant cultural ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions support and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and eroticizing male violence against women and blaming victims for their own abuse.
In other words, especially in our media and with our youth, our society is okay with men sexually exploiting women and then blaming the women themselves for being raped.
What is Porn Culture?
Porn culture is a culture where the often violent sexual exploitation of women and children portrayed in media images, music, and the written word is both accessible and acceptable and is normalized as a form of sexual education for teens.
Connecting the Dots Between Porn and Rape Culture
Here’s how I connect the dots between early porn consumption and the increase of rape in our society. There are more, but these are 10 reasons why kids grow up to be rapists in college:
- Kids are impressionable and have access to rape-glorifying pornography and video games (like Grand Theft Auto, Halo etc.) Rape porn is one of the most popular genres of porn available.
- Kids can easily view a steady diet of violent, sexually exploitative pornography for free. Even at manypublic libraries. Definitely on social media. Most kids say they can easily get around internet filters.
- Child on child sexual abuse is skyrocketing, with many seeing it as a product of exposure and imitation of pornography. Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of Enough Is Enough explains,
”Children often imitate what they’ve seen, read, or heard, and studies suggest that exposure to pornography can prompt kids to act out sexually against younger, smaller, and more vulnerable children.”
Here’s a story of a girl who viewed pornography and then acted out sexually on her cousins. I wrote Good Pictures Bad Pictures after hearing the tragic story of an older brother, addicted to porn, who sexually molested his siblings.
- More and more teens are sexting,with boys pressuring and coercing girls to send them nude photos. Boys are also sending unsolicited pictures of their private “packages” to girls. Sexts have become the new social currency among teens.
- Studies show the obvious–kids who consume a regular diet of pornography suffer more mental health problems and are more prone to engaging in risky sexual behavior.
- Young boys (and girls) who search for porn on the internet see psychopathic, violent behavior towards women. Before boys have ever been sexually aroused by a real girl, the sexual template in their brain is mapped for degrading violent acts towards women.
- Women are portrayed in pornography as enjoying the abuse they suffer. Men who watch pornography regularly are less likely to view rape as a serious crime. Want proof? Read this eye-opening paper from Dr. Mary Ann Layden, Director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the Center for Cognitive Therapy Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
- Gail Dines explains the connection between pornography and rape in her presentation at the first annual Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit. She said this:
Rape is not a form of deviance. Rape is over conformity to society’s [pornified] messages.
(In other words, we shouldn’t be surprised by the increase in rape or shocked when we hear stories about young perpetrators like Brock Turner. Or judges who return six month sentences to convicted rapists.)
- Rape on college campuses is a growing, horrible epidemic. A recent Harvard study determined that one in four women experience sexual assault on campus. It’s higher on some campuses, with some schools like Yale reporting that one out of three women are sexually assaulted. In fact, in 2014, President Obama launched an “It’s On Us” initiative to reduce rape by educating young adults about consent. Sadly, date rape has become a common danger for young women. Drugs are put into drinks to knock girls out so they can be raped without the ability to fight back. Have we connected the dots?
- Pornography normalizes rape and kids who spend years consuming it are more likely to see nothing wrong with it. In fact, a recent study completed by The Barna Group called “The Porn Phenomenon” found that:
Among the 1188 adults surveyed, 46% of those who use porn replied that images of ‘sexual acts that may be forced or painful’ are not ‘wrong.’ Only 50% of participants ages 13 to 25 think it is wrong to view these images of violent porn.
It’s hard to imagine the pain of rape unless you’ve been through it. My heart goes out to all people, both men and women, who have been sexually assaulted. But my heart also goes out to the perpetrators who were deceived by pornography into believing that rape is normal, acceptable and expected male behavior. One mother of a young girl who was raped by her 14 year old male babysitter told me that her (the mother’s) real healing began when she realized that her daughter’s perpetrator was a victim, too.
A lot of people are outraged about the sentence Brock Turner was given. Many are crying out against our rape culture. But what we need is to connect the dotsand be as outraged against the root of the problem, pornography, as we are about the result, which is rape!
Parents, here’s what you can do
- Teach your kids the purpose of sex. Don’t just explain the anatomical facts of sex. Teach your kids early about the loving, edifying and beautiful purpose of sex. Answer the question “What is sexual integrity?” for yourself and for them. If you don’t, the media will. Read this blog post to help you get started on your definition of sexual integrity.
- Arm your kids from an early age with the information they need to reject the addictive, objectifying and degrading images of pornography. Start with our FREE Quick Start Guide for Proactive Parents.
- Explain that pornography is dehumanizing and objectifying. From Good Pictures Bad Pictures: “Watching pornography can lead you to believe that people are objects to use instead of real human beings with feelings. We know that everyone has feelings and wants to be treated with kindness…”
- Teach them why pornography is harmful. Read 21 Powerful Reasons to Warn Your Kids about Porn.
- If your kids have viewed pornography, don’t freak out.Remember, pornography is the enemy. Kids can deal with rejecting porn better than they can deal with disappointing or freaking out their parents! Read this to help lift your relationship instead of lose it. Then download our FREE SMART Plan for Parents Guide.
- Stay informed and vigilant. If you haven’t already, subscribe to Protect Young Minds and get the vital information you need each week to raise porn-immune kids. If you’re already a subscriber, THANK YOU! Please share Protect Young Minds with your family and friends. Tweet this…
Kristen A. Jenson is the founder of Protect Young Minds and author of Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids. Kristen enjoys speaking, writing and anything else that will help empower kids to reject pornography. Kristen earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature (mostly because she had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up), and a master’s degree in Organizational Communication. Kristen currently lives with her husband in Washington State, where she enjoys growing a vegetable garden, cooking those vegetables in new and delicious ways, and taking long walks with friends who tolerate her incessant talking about you know what. Above all else, her husband and three children are her greatest treasures.
I am 16 years old and i think i may have erectile dysfunction from excessive porn use.
I am suffering from porn induced ED. I ain’t able to do sex with my wife since 4 years.please help…..
What to do if I have harder erections while watching porn?
Is there any effect on the future height of teenagers from watching porn?
Does watching porn make men want sex?
Does watching porn rise blood pressure?
I asked my husband to stop watching porn and masturbating. He said he will not stop. Who is wrong? Me for asking? Or him for saying no?
How do I stop watching porn, i think its destroying my self-confidence please help?
Does watching porn video effect of sex ability ? And is it like real
If watching porn which het done in daily manner is harmful for mental health?
Does watching porn and masturbating causes pattern baldness??? and if yes then how can we prevent pattern baldness
I get an arousal while watching porn but not at the time of sex. How can I come over this problem?
I get sharp pains in my vagina when getting aroused from watching porn is that something wrong with it?
My little sister and cousin were watching porn and taking pictures of their genitals on my mum’s phone is this normal expirementing they are 9 and 12?
Does increasing/changing testosterone of the body (ex: watchingporn) during boy’s puberty affect his final height in the future?
Can years of watching porn cause poor erections and hard to maintain erections in a 20 year old? If yes, what can I do to recover?
Why do I get instant penis erection and fluid leakage if thought about sex, girls or watching porn? semen leakage during bowel movement frequently?
How can I continue to resist watching porn?
If watching porn has any benefits to be achieved by the user? Do you recommend it?
Watching or not watching
porn during masturbation. Which is better?
Not watching is better!
