Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt is a urologist and robotic surgeon with Orlando Health and an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida School of Medicine.

When most of us think about sugar, we must not be thinking about our sex life. We’re thinking about desserts. I am writing this with the help of a bowl of vanilla ice cream by my side.

Sugar makes us feel good in that moment, but over time, too many can be lost in some of the most intimate moments of life.

In 2025, everyone was busy about GLP-1 injections, helping to control sugar and lose weight. This new class of medication has helped many people achieve meaningful health benefits, such as improving blood sugar levels, weight loss, and even improving people’s sex lives (as sleep can also be improved).

My goal here is not to underestimate the use of GLP-1 medications or to suggest that people are taking them unnecessarily (though it may be for some). My intention is to induce a broader conversation. What if we pay more attention to the underlying cause: our love for sugar and its downstream influence on mood, metabolism, gender, etc.?

Most people associate blood sugar levels with diabetes, but few people know what “normal” is.

Blood glucose levels can be checked in real time with a simple finger stick, either via a home glucose monitor or via wearable devices such as a continuous glucose monitor (a coin-sized device displayed on a person’s upper arm).

What do we see when this test is done? Below is the American Diabetes Association’s reference range for blood sugar levels, but it is not intended to diagnose diabetes. In many cases, providers can even double or triple check these numbers before labeling them with “diabetes.”

All figures should be evaluated by the health care provider.

Fasting blood sugar levels (no food at least 8 hours ago):

Random Blood Glucose (Photographed Anytime):

The Point of Care glucose test provides snapshots, but there is one lab that tells the complete story. It’s hemoglobin A1c.

What is hemoglobin A1c and why is it important?

This blood test measures the percentage of hemoglobin protein in the blood that has glucose attached to it. This gives you and your healthcare provider a photo of your average blood sugar for the past 2-3 months. This makes it a reliable indicator that your body manages glucose well over time.

Here’s how the American Diabetes Association breaks it down:

In my job as a surgeon, it is standard practice to check A1C before procedures, especially those involving implants. Elevated A1C levels are strongly associated with poor recovery, risk of infection, and surgical complications. So, whether it’s a major urological procedure or something else, it’s more important to suppress glucose than most people realize.

Sexual health is rarely associated with blood sugar levels first, but chronically high glucose levels can affect intimacy for everyone.

In men, hyperglycemia can damage nerves and blood vessels, which are essential to achieving and maintaining an erection. Over time, this may be present as erectile dysfunction before it is thought to be at risk for diabetes or diagnosed. Hyperglycemia can also lower testosterone levels, which reduces sexual desire and energy.

Many of my patients who do not receive routine screening from primary care providers come to see me because of changes in sexual performance. For these patients, their first clue that something was wrong was not thirst, weight change, fatigue (a more common early sign of diabetes), but trouble in the bedroom.

In women, hyperglycemia can lead to reduced blood flow and hormonal imbalances, leading to vaginal dryness, painful sex, or orgasmic issues. It can also increase the risk of recurrent urinary tract infections, which makes intimacy less painful or attractive. Many women can be frustrated and confused as to whether these changes are expected from aging, postmenopausal, stress, or something else. Low sugar levels are usually the last thing in their minds.

Diabetes is very common – about 38 million Americans have it – and nearly one in four people don’t know about it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US.

Traditionally, diabetes treatment began with oral medications like metformin, which helped to lower glucose by reducing liver sugar production. Other classes of tablets work in a variety of ways, either by increasing the release of insulin or by helping the kidneys wash away excess sugar. These medications are usually prescribed in people with early stages of diabetes or mildly elevated A1C.

If oral pills are not sufficient to treat the illness, you may need an injectable medication. For years, it often meant daily insulin injections, but many patients found it to be burdensome but necessary. Insulin needs to be carefully timed with your diet and can be difficult to do. There is also real fear of hypoglycemic episodes. This may make some people hesitate to start or stick to treatment.

Over the past few years, GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs have become part of the treatment regimen of many people. This class of drugs is known by names such as semaglutide, liraglutide, and tilzepatide. These injections mimic natural hormones in the body to regulate blood sugar, slow digestion, and make you feel faster.

They were originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, but are gaining global attention to helping people lose weight. In fact, many patients now ask and take these medications before other options to not only manage their glucose but also to lose weight.

According to a preliminary study presented at the Endocrinology Society’s annual meeting this week, these drugs could also help normalize testosterone levels in men with obesity or type 2 diabetes.

The researchers followed 110 men who were prescribed GLP-1 injections but were not receiving testosterone therapy. Over the course of 18 months, the number of men with normal testosterone levels increased from 53% to 77% as participants lost an average of approximately 10% of their body weight. This rise highlights how drugs originally designed for diabetes and weight loss can improve hormone levels in men.

While this summary has not yet been peer-reviewed and requires more research, these findings add to much of the evidence that managing body weight and blood glucose in almost every aspect of health, including testosterone, energy, and sexual function, can have ripple effects.

Before you turn to your medication immediately, don’t underestimate that you can make consistent lifestyle changes, not just for your blood sugar, but for the rest of your life.

Regular exercise improves sexual function by improving insulin sensitivity, supporting weight loss, increasing energy, and improving blood flow and hormone balance. A balanced diet – a diet rich in whole foods, fiber and lean proteins – can stabilize blood sugar and reduce inflammation that contributes to chronic disease. Better sleep, reduced alcohol and managing stress all play a role.

So, if you’re discussing between injections or new routines, this time you might reach the gym bag before trying anything else. You may notice that it changes more than your lab. It may change how you feel about yourself.

As for me, the next time I write, I remember that when I help out with an ice cream scoop, it’s not just my waistline, it’s about my energy, my mind, and my sexual health. And now, I’ve finished this post, so I’ll pick up my gym bag and take a walk here talking (to the gym).

Inspired by the weekly roundups on living well, which have become simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, but a better newsletter about information and tools designed to improve your happiness.

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Researchers suspect that two metstones found in the Sahara in 2023 originally came from Mercury, making it the first identified fragment of the innermost planet of the solar system.

The most studied and most mysterious mercury of the rocky planets of solar systems is so close to the sun, it is difficult to explore even with probes. So far, only two non-white-stricken spaceships have visited. Mariner 10 was released in 1973, and Messenger was released in 2004. The third Bepicolombo is in the middle and in the middle to orbit around the planet in the second half of 2026.

Scientists have little knowledge of Mercury’s geology and composition, and have been unable to study fragments of planets that landed on Earth as erosion material. In contrast, the Meteorical Society’s database, an organization that catalogs all known metstones, has over 1,100 known samples from the Moon and Mars.

These 1,100 metstones come from when fragments were cast from the surface of the moon and Mars during an asteroid collision, before heading to Earth after traveling through space.

Not all planets are likely to eject fragments towards Earth during their collision. Venus is closer to us than Mars, but its large gravitational pull and thick atmosphere can prevent the firing of impact fragments. However, some astronomers believe that mercury should be able to produce meteors.

“Based on the amount of Lunar and Martian metstones, there should be around 10 mercury metstones, according to dynamic modelling,” says Ben Reider Stokes, a postdoctoral researcher of achondrite metstones at the UK Open University and author of a study of the Sahara Meteor study, published in the Journal of Ikuars in June.

“But mercury is much closer to the sun, so anything that has been kicked out of mercury needs to escape the gravity of the sun to reach us. It’s dynamically possible and it’s just that difficult. No one has identified the metstones from mercury yet,” he said.

Two met stones discovered in 2023 – named Northwest Africa 15915 (NWA 15915) and Ksar Ghilane 022 (kg 022), according to Rider-Stokes, a great advancement of scientists’ understanding will greatly advance. However, he and his co-authors are the first to warn of some contradictions in matching those space rocks with what scientists know about Mercury.

The biggest is that the fragments appear to have formed about 500 million years before the mercury itself. However, according to Rider-Stokes, this finding may be based on inaccurate estimates, and a conclusive assessment is unlikely. “Until you return the material from the mercury or visit the surface,” he said.

However, there are several compositional clues that suggest that metstones may have connections to the planet closest to the Sun.

This is not the first time known metstones have been linked to mercury. The previous best candidate based on the level of interest that peaked astronomers was a fragment called Northwest Africa (NWA) 7325, reportedly found in southern Morocco in early 2012.

Rider Stokes said it was the first metstone that could be associated with mercury. “It attracted a lot of attention. Many people were very excited about it.” However, further analysis showed the richness of chromium that opposed the predicted surface composition of Mercury.

More recently, astronomers have suggested that from a small metstone that landed in over in France in 1836, a class of meteorites, called orblites, may come from the subsurface layer of Mercury. However, these metstones are not chemically compatible with what astronomers know about the planet’s surface, Rider Stokes said. “That’s what’s very exciting about the samples we’ve studied. They have the optimal chemistry to represent mercury,” he said.

Most of what is known about Mercury’s surface and composition comes from NASA’s messenger probes, which evaluated the composition of the planet’s crust from orbit. Both metstones from studies that Rider Stokes analyzed with several instruments, including electron microscopes, contain olivine and pyroxene.

New analysis also reveals a total iron deficiency in the space rock samples. This is consistent with scientists’ assumptions regarding the planet’s surface. However, metstone only contained trace amounts of agricultural quantities, minerals thought to govern the surface of mercury.

However, the biggest point of uncertainty remains the age of the metstone. “They’re about 4.5 billion years old,” said Ryder Stokes.

However, he said he believes that this inconsistency is not sufficient to rule out Mercurian’s origins, as the reliability of the messenger data, which is also used to estimate the era of Mercury’s surface layer.

“These estimates may not be entirely accurate as they are based on impact crater models rather than absolute age dating,” Rider Stokes said. “This does not mean that these samples are not suitable analogs for regions on the surface of mercury or for early mercury crusts that are invisible to modern surfaces of mercury.”

With more modern instruments now available, Bepicolombo, a study by the European Space Agency, which will begin studying mercury in early 2027, may be able to answer long-standing questions about the planet. And whether it has water or not.

The confirmed arrival of other planetary bodies will help astronomers understand the nature of early solar system components, Rider Stokes said. And it is especially important to identify mercury fragments.

Sean Solomon, the lead researcher of NASA’s messenger mission to Mercury, said in an email that he believes that the two metstones described in a recent paper are likely not derived from Mercury. Solomon, a part-time senior research scientist at Columbia University in New York City, was not involved in the study.

The main reason Solomon cited for his suspicion is that the meteor formed much earlier than the best estimate of the age of the rocks currently on Mercury’s surface. However, he said he still thinks the sample is research worth.

“Nevertheless, the two metstones share many geochemical properties with mercury surface materials with little or no iron, and the existence of sulfur-rich minerals,” he added. “These chemical properties are interpreted to indicate that mercury formed from the precursor material has been reduced much more chemically than the ones that formed Earth and other inner planets. The remains of the mercury precursor material may still remain somewhere in the inner solar system.

Solomon also said it is difficult to persuade the planetary science community that there are samples from Mars in the Meteorite collection, and it is difficult to accurately match the data and chemistry of Mars’ surfaces taken by Viking Probes, as well as to persuade researchers to consider the details. Moon metstones added that after the existence of Mars metstones was demonstrated in the 1980s, it was not widely recognized as being in the Metstone collection, despite the Apollo and Luna missions returning rich samples of the lunar material over a decade ago.

Once the samples were confirmed to be from the planet’s body, Solomon said that the timing of major geological processes, the history of internal melting of the body, and orbital spacecraft on the formation of the planet and the clues of early solar system processes can provide important information that is not available from remote sensing.

Rider-Stokes will continue discussions on these metstones at the Meteorical Society’s annual meeting this week in Perth. “I will discuss my findings with other scholars around the world,” he said. “At this point, we cannot clearly demonstrate that these are not mercury, so until we do that, I think these samples will remain the main topic of discussion across the planetary science community.”