By Andrea Nemerson. View more alt.sex columns here. Email your questions to Andrea: andrea@altsexcolumn.com.
andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com
Dear Readers:
WebMD sent out this slightly goofy "10 Amazing Health Benefits of Sex.", an article virtually identical to dozens of others I’ve dutifully read, but you, perhaps, have been spared. Among the benefits of "healthy loving in a relationship," according to the article (summaries mine) are:
1. Less stress: Volunteers kept sex diaries and were then subjected to stressful situations. "Those who had intercourse had better responses to stress than those who engaged in other sexual behaviors or abstained."
Neat. I’m interested to note that it’s intercourse, rather than other sex acts. Added to the older study that found that feel-good hormone levels spike after intercourse but not masturbation, it’s starting to look like penis-vagina intercourse produces a unique hormonal response and possibly provides unique payoffs in the health-and-well-being department. It would be nice if someone thought to check whether intercourses available to the non-p/v-sex-having population produce similar effects, but I’m not holding my breath.
2. Immunity: "People who have sex once or twice a week produce more immunoglobulin A (IgA). Subjects who reported having less or a whole lot more sex have lower IgA."
Huh. Moderation in all things, right? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find it applies to sex. But does it; or were there other factors here? Maybe the high-IgA moderates were in committed relationships, while the nevers were lonely and the horn-dogs were sleeping around? Who knows?
3. Calories: "Thirty minutes of sex burns 85 calories or more," claims WebMD. "It may not sound like much, but it adds up: 42 half-hour sessions will burn 3,570 calories, more than enough to lose a pound. Doubling up, you could drop that pound in 21 hour-long sessions."
I’ve seen umpteen versions of the ridiculous sex/calories breakdown and this might be the silliest yet. Forty-two half-hour sessions (of apparently extremely energetic pumping; if you want foreplay or a kissing break, you’ll have to budget extra time) will take most couples months to achieve, and few people rack up anything like 21 hour-long sessions in a lifetime. You’d be better off on a treadmill. Or you could do try one of the following (supplied for your amusement by my exercise-geeking husband), all of which you’re more likely to fit into your daily schedule than a solid half-hour of “vigorous thrusting,” as they used to say:
2 minutes of wrestling
8.5 minutes of running
17 minutes of gardening
60 minutes of sitting and reading
135 minutes of sleeping
I’ll take 60 minutes of sitting and reading, please.
4. Cardiovascular: Researchers found that neither having nor not-having sex was correlated with strokes. More impressive, they "also found that having sex twice or more a week reduced the risk of fatal heart attack by half for the men, compared with those who had sex less than once a month."
Again, there may be other factors here, since the heart-healthy guys presumably had partners, and both loneliness and the death of a spouse are highly correlated with dropping dead. Broken hearts cause broken hearts. Still, nice news for older men who do have partners. Have at it, dudes. As for the ladies?
5. Self-esteem: "Boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex."
Hahaha! 237 is a mighty big number. You could fit anything in there. Reason # 6: Getting partner to leave you alone so you can go to sleep. Reason # 33: bored. Reason #235: free rent.
6. Intimacy: "Sex and orgasms raise levels of oxytocin, the famous bonding, trust, and generosity hormone." The article goes on to cite a study showing that women’s levels of oxytocin rise after "warm contact" and hugs with their husbands, but you don’t need sex to get that.
7. Pain: "In a study published in the Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 48 volunteers who inhaled oxytocin vapor and then had their fingers pricked lowered their pain threshold by more than half."
Coolness.
8. Prostate cancer: "Men who had five or more ejaculations weekly while in their 20s reduced their risk of getting prostate cancer later by a third."
There are a lot of similar studies supporting this. And finally, a clear benefit not dependent on male/female intercourse! Any old ejaculation will do it.
9. Sleep: Oxytocin and exercise promote sleep, and lack of same is correlated with every bad thing from divorce to weight gain.
That’s … nine. I lost one somewhere.
Of course, few of us need a specific reason to have sex, nor are we likely to be sufficiently motivated by any of the above to go get some, if not already inclined. As for the slightly worrisome implication that emerges from these articles that there is one true (straight, vanilla, monogamous) sex-style that is good for us, well. If we want research into the cardiovascular effects of polyamory or immune responses to S&M, we’re just going to have to do it ourselves.
Love,
Andrea