Our latest ISSM Member Profile features Dr. Jacques Buvat of the Centre pour l' Étude de l'Appareil Reproducteur et de la Psychosomatique (CETPARP) in Lille, France.

Dr. Buvat has been an ISSM member for 33 years and has held the offices of Secretary General-Treasurer, President-Elect, and Past-President.  

He graduated as a medical doctor from the Faculté de Médecine de Lille in 1971. His qualifications include neurology and psychiatry, internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolic diseases, and sexology. He also has interests in reproductive medicine and developed an in vitro fertilization clinic in Lille.

When asked about the special challenges he faces in his part of the world, Dr. Buvat explained, "Sex education of the young French people remains insufficient. For many of them, it is mainly found in pornographic movies on internet, resulting in a distorted vision of the sexuality."  

He added that the cost of drugs for male sexual dysfunction and the lack of pharmacological treatment for women were also concerns.

After a long and "well-filled" career, Dr. Buvat has started to consider retirement. "But I am certainly going to keep in touch with my ISSM friends and will continue to read the JSM with the same excitement," he said. "A thousand thanks to the ISSM for all that it has brought me."

Please click here to learn more about Dr. Buvat. You can also find links to other ISSM Member Profiles here.

How do sexual arousal and orgasm affect a woman's genital pain or pleasure? Canadian researchers recently examined this question.

The authors explained that past research had not analyzed pleasure and pain in the same study.  Also, orgasm's role in pleasure and pain sensations had not been widely studied.

To learn more, the research team recruited 26 healthy women between the ages of 18 and 30 to take part in a genital sensitivity study.

At the study site, a lab room was converted into a bedroom.  Each woman visited the lab twice. At one visit, the participant was instructed to masturbate to orgasm.  At the other visit, she was to masturbate "almost" to orgasm.  

Assessments of pleasure and pain were taken at three locations: the glans clitoris, vulvar vestibule, and volar forearm.  These assessments were also taken three separate times during each visit: at baseline, immediately after masturbation, and after a 15 minute rest period.  Women rated pleasure and pain on a scale of 1 to 11.

The researchers found that masturbation enhanced pleasure, but also increased pain sensation.

They stressed the importance of vaginal lubrication as a way to decrease genital pressure and pain.

Psychological sexual arousal may serve as a distraction to physical pain during sex, they added.

The study was published online in April in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. For more details, please click here.