Smart Business & Career Tips

Lemon or lime juice as a contraceptive

    

CANBERRA   (Reuters) - Australian scientists believe they have rediscovered an effective use for lemon juice -- as a contraceptive and also a killer of the AIDS virus.

 

 Reproductive physiologist Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne 's obstetrics department, said a few drops of lemon juice can be a cheap, easy-to-use solution to protect women from both HIV and pregnancy.

 

The juice should be squeezed onto a piece of sponge or cotton wool and placed into the vagina before sex, he said.

"We can show in the lab that lemon juice is very effective in immobilizing human sperm and also very effective in killing HIV," Short told Australian Broadcasting Corp television in a science program which was to be shown later yesterday.

He said lime juice, which has similar acid levels, can also be used, with both fruits often freely available in poor countries where contraception is hard to come by.

Short said laboratory tests found not only does lemon juice kill sperm, it also kills the AIDS virus itself.

Short said using lemon juice as a contraceptive was not a new idea but it had fallen by the wayside over the years.

The ancient douche-style contraceptive was encouraged by such luminaries as Casanova, renowned for his sexual prowess.

"This has been used for hundreds of years and we've just forgotten about it," said Short, who is planning to conduct some field trials in Thailand.

"About 300 years ago, Mediterranean women used lemon juice as their main method of contraception."

Oct. 11 2002

Sense of Connection Helps PK Flow

The ability to use the mind to create an effect on matter (psychokinesis) seems to require a sense of connection between the person and that which the person wishes to affect by powers of the mind. That is the conclusion of Pamela Rae Heath, M.D., Psy.D., in her new book The PK Zone (iUniverse), in which she summarizes the research on this particular psychic ability.

A would-be spoon bender, for example, asking the spoon if it is willing to bend, is a method for creating such a connection. Sometimes this connection is experienced as rapport, and sometimes in cases of spiritual healing, as merger. The sense of unity can be experienced as transcendent, as if both agent and target are taken up into a higher realm.

Heath notes that the sense of connection can create a loss of ego identity. There can be a playfulness in the experience, or an emotional peak. Often there is an energetic quality to the connection, either the connection happening in an energy-charged environment or a feeling of energy flowing. With the sense of connection there is a narrowing of focus of attention. The sense of connection helps to trust in the process, which can be fulfilling on its own.

Heath summarizes her findings by pointing out that whether or not a person can use PK to affect a particular target - human, living, or otherwise - seems to depend less upon the target itself than upon whether the person feels comfortable forming an intimate connection with it.