There has been a growing phenomenon around the developed world. The birth rate has been falling quite steeply and, in some countries, the average is only marginally above one child per woman. This is not enough to maintain the population in balance. Over time, societies will age and there will not be enough young to pay the taxes to fund healthcare. This change is a direct result of a major cultural shift. Our lifestyles now delay parenthood or postpone it altogether. Ignoring the long-term social risks, there is a more immediate problem. Such medical evidence as there is suggests the problem of erectile dysfunction is growing more common. The reason for this is the redefinition of what it means to be a biological man and woman. Go back fifty years and you find yourself in a time warp that has lasted thousands of years. Men go out to work and the women stay home and have babies. Originally, this was men go out to hunt leaving women to clean the cave. But the spirit of the gender roles has remained consistent over the centuries. But all that changed as the 1950’s turned into the 1960’s. A revolution was coming.

It never hurts to start off with a few simple truths. If it was easy to lose weight by eating less, there would be no obesity. If exercise burns off unwanted pounds, everyone would get off their couches and lose those potatoes. But life is never straightforward when it comes to losing weight and, more importantly, preventing the pounds from sneaking back when we are not looking. So what’s the problem? The Jesuits have a saying, “Give me the boy until the age of seven, and I will give you the man.” Put another way, as we grow up, we are surrounded by role models and authority figures who show us and instruct us on how to fit in and live our lives successfully. This so-called socialization process is largely complete by the age of seven. We have absorbed all the social rules for fitting into our culture and it takes a major effort to unlearn all these habits later in life.

The Texas Rangers slugger Rafael Palmerio is 37 years old and he will not admit to having erection troubles. But he appears in ads promoting the ED drug. People started to wonder if he really suffers dysfunctions or if Pfizer, the company making this drug, wants to encourage young men to try it just for fun.

It’s true that penile dysfunction is more usual among older men, but lots of potential consumers are barely senior – around 40% of 40-year-old-males in the USA have certain degree of ED. Most of the today’s consumers are in early to middle 50s.

Let’s start off in Florida where State Farm has just sent out notices to 15% of the 810,000 people holding home insurance that their policies will not be renewed. For the record, the insurer has to give six months’ notice of its intention to refuse renewal. This is supposed to give adequate time for all homeowners to make alternative arrangements. This move to drop some 125,000 policies is quite significant so what’s going on? The answer is unfortunate and going to become a problem around the country. Every state has a Department or Office of Insurance that’s responsible for licensing and regulating the selling of insurance. One of the standard conditions in every one of the fifty US states is that each licensed insurer should have adequate capital reserves to pay out on all claims as and when they fall due.

Before the recession, this was not a problem. All the insurers had their reserves invested in stocks and bonds. While the DJIA and other exchanges continued on an upward trend, the world sat back and assumed nothing could go wrong. This overconfidence meant that insurers were slow to pull their money out of the markets when the recession started to hit. As a result, almost all the insurers lost a big slice of their capital worth. In early 2009, State Farms in Florida realized it was likely to be insolvent in about two years if the projected number of claims were made. It approached the local Office of Insurance and did a deal. It would reduce the number of homeowners insured and increase the premiums for the remaining policyholders. This would reduce its exposure to claims and increase its capital reserves. Even with this plan, A M Best reduced the rating of State Farm to “fair” based on the expected continuing deterioration in its earning capacity.

One of the entertainments in everyday life is to watch the endless cycles of urban myths. They start as whispers, slowly build in volume and then roar around the community for a few days or weeks until we all get bored. Then people start whispering a new myth. One of the more common themes is sex and, because we all like our stories to be slightly macabre, death and sex gets the biggest laughs. Have you heard the one about the man who died on top. The rigor mortis set in fast and, were it not for the weight pressing down on her, the woman said she’d never enjoyed an erection so hard and long-lasting. Such stories feed into all the fears and insecurities we have following a stroke or heart attack. Family and friends tell us to “take it easy” and not overexert ourselves. But the medical profession would not necessarily agree. It all depends on your physical condition. If you have been a couch potato, carry too much weight, have a high cholesterol level, are stressed and smoke, the risk of a second heart attack is high. But for the rest, exercise is good for you. It helps burn off the cholesterol, reduce the weight and restore your heart to a better working order. So how do you know which camp you fall into?