Partners the world over who complain that they aren’t getting enough sex have a legitimate reason to ask for more. It’s good for your health, and not just emotionally.
Sex Helps Fight Obesity and Pain
Having sex for half an hour makes you burn 85 calories, so if you do it regularly you can use it as a method of losing weight. It is also a great form of exercise.
If you have a chronic health condition, it may relieve your pain due to the production of endorphins, the body’s natural painkiller. That’s why some people say their headache goes away after they’ve had sex. (1)
Sex Reduces Your Risk of Cancer
A U.S. study looked at 30,000 men over an eight year time frame. The men who ejaculated on average of 21 times per month reduced their chances of getting prostate cancer by a third. (2)
Pregnant Ladies: You may Reduce Your Risk of Pre-Eclampsia by Having Oral Sex!
No, I didn’t make that up. The baby is 50 percent daddy so some cases of pre-eclampsia may be caused by an intolerance of the mother’s immune system to the paternal parts of the baby’s genetic makeup.
By swallowing his DNA via semen, you build up a tolerance to the foreign DNA which may protect the baby from pre-eclampsia. Before you both rush to the bedroom to try this out, the researchers did conclude that they need to study the scenario more before making any definite conclusions! (3)
Sex Reduces Your Risk of Having a Fatal Heart Attack
Researchers from the University of Bristol, UK, found that frequent sex might stop you dying from a fatal heart attack. They wrote: "Middle aged men should be heartened to know that frequent sexual intercourse is not likely to result in a substantial increase in risk of strokes, and that some protection from fatal coronary events may be an added bonus." (4)
Sex Improves Your Immune System
If you don’t fancy getting swine flu or other bugs or colds, having sex boosts your immune system! People who have sex at least once a week have higher levels of immunoglobulin A (antibodies that protect you from infection), compared with people who have it less than once a week. (1)
In fact, sex has been helping our immune systems since the development of early humans. Sex between early Homo sapiens (the current human being) and Neanderthal humans (a different type of early human that is now extinct) gave us new genes that helped our immune systems to kill viruses more effectively. (5)
Sex May Regulate Blood Pressure
The Brazilian Health Minister Jose Temporao says that people should have protected sex more often to keep high blood pressure at bay! He also suggests regular exercising, healthy diet, blood pressure checks and dancing. He commented after a rise in the number of Brazilians suffering from high blood pressure. (6)
Sex Makes You Live Longer!
A 10 year study in South Wales found that mortality risk was 50 percent lower in people with high orgasmic frequency and that sexual activity had a protective action on men’s health. (4, 7)
This backs up research that shows that single people die earlier than their married counterparts. Single men had a 32 percent increased risk of death and single women a 23 percent increased risk of death. This means that a man on his own could die 17 years earlier than he would have done if he’d been married and a woman on her own could die as much as 15 years earlier.(9)
This could be because of the lack of sex and its protective effects, poorer immune function or higher stress levels. Physical contact is vital for the psychological and physical benefit of all animals and there is even evidence to show that a simple hug between partners is enough to lower a woman’s blood pressure. People in partnerships also experience less stress when they are faced with challenging situations. (8, 1)
Sources:
1. 10 Surprising Health Benefits of Sex, WebMD. Web. 30 December 2011. http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/10-surprising-health-benefits-of-sex
2. Frequent ejaculation may protect against cancer, New Scientist (6 April 2004). http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4861-frequent-ejaculation-may-protect-against-cancer.html
3. Correlation between oral sex and a low incidence of preeclampsia: a role for soluble HLA in seminal fluid? J Reprod Immunol. 2000 Mar;46(2):155-66. Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706945
4. Sexual intercourse and risk of ischaemic stroke and coronary heart disease: the Caerphilly study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2002 Feb;56(2):99-102. Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11812807
5. Neanderthal sex boosted immunity in modern humans, BBC News. Web. 30 December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14673047
6. Brazil health minister urges sex to help blood pressure, USA Today. Web. 30 December 2011. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-04-27-brazil-sex_N.htm
7. Sex and death: are they related? Findings from the Caerphilly Cohort Study. BMJ. 1997 Dec 20-27;315(7123):1641-4. Full Text: http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7123/1641.full
8. The Rising Relative Risk of Mortality for Singles: Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression. American Journal of Epidemiology,Volume174, Issue4, Pp. 379-389. Abstract: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/174/4/379.abstract
9. How singles could be at risk of dying over a decade earlier than married people
Daily Mail online. By TAMARA ABRAHAM. Web. 30 December 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2027983/How-singles-risk-dying-decade-earlier-married-people.html#ixzz1i3O37BD6
Reviewed December 30, 2011
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith