Longevity by Jennifer Cox For decades, researchers have said that a healthy sex life is related to an overall positive well-being. While intimacy isn’t beneficial only to couples – fostering a deeper sense of connection and relatability – it’s also good for your health: it burns calories, is a good form of heart-healthy physical exercise, and it can help to lift your mood. And it can alsomean adding a fewmore years to your life! Robert Butler MD is a professor of geriatrics at theMount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and head of the non-profit International Longevity Center. In a recent WebMDpost, Butler said, “Only about 25% of what determines the length of life we have is based on genes. The rest is up to us.” This means that certain choices in lifestyle will play a major role in our mortality, such as diet, physical exercise and (ahem!) sex. According to Psychology Today, English researchers surveyed the sexual frequency of 918 healthy male residents of the Welsh village of Caerphilly, aged 45-59 when the study began (1979-83). A decade later, they checked back with the men, when they were aged 55-69. Of the group studied, 150 had died – 67 from heart attacks and 83 from other causes. The researchers then correlated the men’s sexual frequency (as reported in the original survey) with their death or survival 10 years later. Compared with men who had had sex just once amonth, those who reported having it twice a week had onlyhalf the death rate. For the entire group, as an individual’s sexual frequency increased, his risk of death decreased. Finally, a study at Queen’s University in Belfast published in the British Medical Journal tracked the sexuality of about 1,000 middle-agedmen over the course of a decade. The study comparedmen of a similar age and health, and showed that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm lived twice as long as those who did not enjoy sex. Sex is extremely advantageous physically – it can work out almost every muscle group in the body, particularly the pelvis, buttocks, stomach and arms. It has been proven to improve cholesterol, lower blood pressure and increase circulation, all of which are great for the cardiovascular system. In fact, people who regularly indulge are half as likely to have heart attacks and strokes as those who don’t have sex at all, and a 30-minute romp can burn as many as 200 calories (NaturalNews.com). Intimacy is also a fantastic mood-booster – it can help to combat stress and helps the body to release endorphins, a feel-good hormone. It allows you to clear your mind and it can even be used to relieve pain. A Health.com article put forth: “In a 2013 German study, 60% of participants who had migraines and 30% of cluster-headache sufferers who had sex during a headache episode reported partial or total relief. Other studies have found that women who stimulated an area of the G-spot had an elevation in pain threshold. ‘It took greater pain stimulus for them to feel the pain,’ said BeverlyWhipple PhD, a professor emerita at Rutgers University who has conducted some research on the topic.” Now there’s even more reason to enjoy intimacy with your partner: It’s good for your health, from your physical well-being to your psyche, and it can make you both live longer as well! So go…unmake that bed! Longevity and intimacy 48 | www.snowbirds.org
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