Study Claims Men Who Have Frequent Sex Will Live Longer

Men in Caerphilly, Wales, who have sex at least twice a week have a much lower risk of dying than men who don’t.

And what’s good for a Welshman, British medical researchers suspect, is good for men all over.

“Sexual activity seems to have a protective effect on men’s health,” concludes George Davey Smith, a professor of clinical epidemiology at Bristol University.

Smith and colleagues from Queens University in Belfast followed the fate of nearly 1,000 Caerphilly men, between the ages 45 and 49, for a decade.

What they found was that men who had sex twice a week or more - “high orgasmic frequency” the study calls it - had a 50 percent lower mortality rate than men who had sex less than once a month.

“These findings,” the researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal, “contrast with the common view of many cultures that the pleasure of sexual intercourse may be secured at the cost of vigor and well-being.”

“Studies are always telling you to stop doing things you like to do, like drinking and eating sweets, and to do things like eating greens and jogging, which you don’t want to do,” Smith said. “So here’s a study, for a change, that tells you to do something you like to do.”

The study focused on males and offers no indication of whether sex, as it relates to mortality, is as good for women as it is for men.

Critics cautioned that the apparent relationship between sex and good health may not be as strong as the study suggests because sexual activity is affected by a host of physical and psychological factors that could not be easily measured.

The 918 men in the study all had physical exams, including electrocardiograms and blood tests, at the outset. They were asked about the frequency of their sexual activity and responses ranged from daily to never. They were grouped into three categories - twice a week or more, less than once a month and an intermediate group.

Ten years later, 150 of the subjects had died - 45 percent from heart disease. Mortality was highest among the group having sex less than once a month. Mortality was 25 percent lower for the intermediate group and 50 percent lower for the group having frequent sex.