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Shy bladder sufferers want DirecTV to stop airing a television ad in which a “painfully awkward” actor Rob Lowe says he can’t urinate in public. The satellite TV company suggests its critics should be able to take a joke. The ad is in poor taste and ridicules a serious problem, said Steve Soifer, CEO of the International Paruresis Association, which estimates that some 7 percent of Americans have some form of “shy bladder syndrome.” “We don’t mind if people have a little fun with it,” said Soifer, a social work professor at the University of Memphis. “It’s a situation that...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German psychologist is touting a cure for paruresis, fear among men of using urinals, and seeking volunteers to spend time in public toilets. Philipp Hammelstein, a researcher at the Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf, believed, however, it was not necessarily linked to the size of the sufferer's genitals. "All healthy men should be capable of using a urinal," Hammelstein told Reuters on Friday. Though findings show six percent of men have an irrational fear of urinating next to others. Hammelstein said he had already cured several patients and was seeking 60 volunteers for clinical trials to...