You may think that sex is all about reproduction, becoming closer as a couple or having fun, but in fact your sexual health can have an impact on your overall wellbeing. There are certain, little-known side effects that safe sex can do for you and your wellness, on top of the things you already know about.
Firstly, according to a 2010 study published in the science journal PLoS ONE, rats that had sex were less anxious than those who hadn’t been allowed to have sex, and the sexually active rats’ brains were protected from the negative effects of stress hormones. Another study on sex and anxiety, this time in humans, found that people who had more sexual intercourse had lower blood pressure when performing stressful tasks, such as arithmetic or speaking in front of a crowd, than those who had less often.
Next, while it’s probably best to avoid being intimate when one of you has a cold, regularly having sex can boost your immune system. In 1999, a study showed that undergraduate students who had sex once or twice a week had higher levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, (IgA) compared with students who had sex less often. IgA, found in saliva and mucosal linings, is one of your body’s first defences against infections. However, as the same study found that those who had sex three or more times a week had similar IgA levels to those who abstained from sex altogether, researchers suggested that there’s a happy medium.
Also, researchers from Rutgers University discovered that during vaginal stimulation and orgasm, women are more tolerant of pain and detect it less. One study, published in the journal Pain, showed that vaginal stimulation increases your pain threshold of about 36% to 40%, and orgasms increase it by 74.6%. According to the researchers, they’re now working on a way to isolate the chemical or brain response that causes this immunity to pain, to develop more convenient, albeit less fun, medications.
However, it’s not just the ladies whose health improves in the bedroom, but research shows that male ejaculation may reduce the risk of prostate cancer. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004, men who ejaculated the most – 21 times a month or more – were roughly one-third less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who ejaculated between four and seven times a month.
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