The photo of a naked man covered with tattoos flashed onto the screen. Professor Simon Rosser’s hand hovered above the computer mouse.

“Hot or not,” he asked, looking just a little sideways at me.

“Not,” I said. Click.

Up came another. A rear view of muscled butt cheeks. Simon looked at me again, his little gold earing glinting in the fluorescent light of his office.

Professor Simon Rosser

“Hot or not?”

“Hot.”

Up came another picture, the description of which is not fit for a family blog. Again, the sidelong glance, his finger poised to click.

“Hot or not?”

“NOT!” Click.

I swear he was enjoying this. What was a middle-aged heterosexual woman doing looking sexually explicit photos with a middle-aged gay man in the middle of a work day? Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m a reporter. My friend and colleague Connie Nelson, who does the Inside Out home video feature for startribune.com, always starts her snippets by explaining how she’s a huge snoop and her job gets her into some the best houses in town.

Well, I’m a snoop, too, but my job gets me into some different kinds of places altogether. The thing about snooping in new places is that you sometimes learn something about your self. Rosser, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s school of public health, spent an hour or touring me around, Sexpulse, a prototype he’s developing for a new on line HIV intervention web site for gay and bisexual men. Then he turned to me. “You notice,” he said, “you’ve been here just a bit and it’s gotten much easier to talk about sex.”

He was right. It had gotten easier. (It would be easier yet if it was just the computer and me.) And that’s his point. The HIV epidemic that is growing at a rate of 12 percent annually among young gay and bisexual men will never slow down unless we start talking about sex. That’s also true for the rising rates of all sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancies.

Back in the 1980’s when HIV/AIDS was at it’s peak there was a saying: “Silence equals death.” It’s just as relevant today.

Dr. Gary Remafedi, an expert on HIV and adolescent health at the university last week said, “we have to confront the realities of human sexuality. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that people don’t have sex is not the solution.”

To read more about the web site and the growing rates of HV in gay and bisexual men, click here.

 Do you talk about sex? With your kids? With your partner? With your friends?

For the past year I have watched as my friend Kevyn Burger faced down a terrible beast — breast cancer. Many of you know her, too. She was for many years a reporter for WCCO-TV, and now hosts The Kevyn Burger show on weekday mornings on FM 107.1. I asked her to review a new DVD for cancer patients called Visions for Cancer Recovery. In the process she reveals some of the weapons she used to force the beast back into its cave.

The DVD was produced by Mary Hallman, a Minneapolis nurse who is also a cancer survivor. (You can find out more about it here.)

Kevyn Burger: Her blog is at http://gabster.fm1071.com/fm107_kevyn/blog/

When I was a little girl, I relished visiting my grandmother–right until bedtime. My beloved Oma understood that I felt lonely and frightened in that unfamiliar bed. She used to tuck me in and pat me on the back while I slipped into slumber, murmuring all the while to “just let go…to let my body feel like … it’s just an old washrag.”
That was my first encounter with creative visualization.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the nice things about living in the land-of-the-endless-winter is that you can put off wearing a swimsuit in public as long as possible. Well, summer’s here, and Lands’ End and More Magazine are trying to coax the over-40 set out of our cocoons with some words of encouragement.
Would you believe that nearly half of all women feel more confident in swimsuits after reaching 40? That’s one of the claims of a survey of more than 1,400 readers of the magazine, which caters to women over 40. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the survey was cosponsored by Lands’ End, which makes a line of beachwear designed to hide women’s “swimsuit anxiety zones.” 

Here are some of the body-image secrets revealed: 
- 46 percent say they have rectangular-shaped bodies, compared to 34 percent with triangle- or pear-shapes.
-32 percent say they usually can find a swimsuit they like, though it can take longer than expected.
- 51 percent think one-piece swimsuits are the best way to “complement and balance” their body types; 40 percent prefer “tankinis.”
- 75 percent would rather have a custom-designed swimsuit than free! plastic surgery to look good at the beach.
“Forty-something body confidence is in,” More’s fashion director, Regina Haymes, enthused in a news release.
Maybe. But that only goes so far. Fewer than ten percent would say they “fully embrace wearing a swimsuit.”
When it comes to body image, perfection is an elusive thing.

What’s the magic number? 35 inches for women — 40 inches for men, measured right at the belly button.

I can’t help but wonder what Tim Russert’s number was, especially when I read what his internist, Dr. Michael Newman, told the New York Times: “If there’s one number that’s a predictor of mortality, it’s waist circumference.” Russert was taking both blood pressure and cholesterol medication and exercising every day. But he was significantly overweight, he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eat a big breakfast.

Well, maybe not that big.

Moving right along from coffee to what goes with it, we know (and our mothers knew) that it’s always important to eat breakfast. Researchers know that teenagers who eat breakfast are healthier and are less likely to become overweight.

Now research presented this week at a national medical conference has found that eating a substantive breakfast high in carbs and protein actually helps obese people not only lose weight, but keep it off long term.

Diets that restrict carbohydrates are notoriously short lived. They increase cravings for carbohydrates and slow metabolism. As a result, after a short period of weight loss, most people regain their lost weight quite quickly.

The scientists, who presented their study at the Endocrine Society Conference underway in San Francisco this week, put 94 obese, physically inactive women on two different diets. Both were low in fat and calories. Half of the women were on a very low carb diet, consisting of 1,085 calories per day and a breakfast of 290 calories — 7 grams of carbs and 12 grams of protein.

The “big breakfast diet” consisted of 1,240 calories a day, but about half of those calories were consumed at breakfast — 58 grams of carbs and 47 of protein. They ate 395 calories for lunch and 235 calories for dinner. (Think of it as an upside down food pyramid.)

After four months, the women on the low-carb diet dropped an average of about 28 pounds, and the women on the big-breakfast diet lost nearly 23 pounds on average. But after 8 months, the low-carb dieters regained an average of 18 pounds, while the big-breakfast group continued to lose weight, shedding another 16.5 pounds on average. Women who ate a big breakfast reported feeling less hungry, especially before lunch, and having fewer cravings for carbs than did women in the other group.

Problem solved. Does this inspire you to change what you eat for breakfast?