Monday, August 29, 2011

What about a women's eyes is the biggest turn off for men?

The answer is tears. They contain chemicals that seriously dampen a man's desire according to a recent Israeli study that compared the reactions of men after sniffing saline solution and women's tears.  Men found women's photographs less attractive after sniffing tears when compared to saline. 

The scent of women's tears also had a physical effect on men.  There was less blood flow to areas of the brain related to sexual desire and the men showed low levels of testosterone.  There were also signs of the absence of sexual arousal such as a slow heart rate and a slow breathing rate.

Interestingly, women are commonly sufferers of chronic dry eye.  Is this evolution's way of suppressing "repulsive" tears to ensure successful mating?  Just a thought.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Pencil push-ups are so last decade

I'm surprised that some doctors are still recommending pencil push-ups to patients with convergence insufficiency. Convergence insufficiency is an eye-muscle disorder where the two eyes do not converge properly when doing close work like reading. The symptoms are often double vision, blurriness, problems reading, eye fatigue, headaches, frequent loss of reading and more. It is the most common ocular-motor disorder.

Even more surprising is that some ophthalmologists have told patients for whom pencil push-ups did not work that there is no other treatment for convergence insufficiency. To the contrary, a landmark study funded by the National Eye Institute and published in 2008 found that in-office vision therapy was the best treatment for convergence insufficiency.

So for all those convergence insufficiency sufferers out there, pencil push-ups are not the only answer - and not the best answer.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Which doctors make you spend the most time in the waiting room?

Nobody likes sitting in the waiting room waiting for their doctor to see them. While most of the time waits are caused by emergency patients and other unexpected medical issues, excessive waits in the doctor's office are irritating for patients especially when the doctor does not apologize for the wait and gives no explanation for it. In the absence of the latter, many patients assume that the doctor was just out playing golf or otherwise wasting time.

The good news for those seeking eye and vision care is that the lowest wait times are in optometrists' offices! They have have an average wait of just 17 minutes. The worst wait times are in neurologists offices, where the average wait is 30 minutes. Among all doctors the average wait time was 23 minutes.

These results come from a survey conducted by

The New York times has a story on waiting room frustration here.