Being "in the mood" just might help your health.
How does a juicy sex life do a body good? Let's count the ways.
1. Less Stress, Better Blood Pressure
Having sex could lower your stress and your blood pressure.
That
finding comes from a Scottish study of 24 women and 22 men who kept
records of their sexual activity. The researchers put them in stressful
situations -- such as speaking in public and doing math out loud -- and
checked their blood pressure.
People who'd had sex responded better to stress than those who engaged in other sexual behaviors or abstained.
Another
study found that diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of your
blood pressure) tends to be lower in people who live together and have
sex often.
2. Sex Boosts Immunity
Having
sex once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of an
antibody called immunoglobulin A, or IgA, which can protect you from
getting colds and other infections.
A Wilkes
University study had 112 college students keep records of how often they
had sex and also provide saliva samples for the study. Those who had
sex once or twice a week had higher levels of IgA than other students.
3. Sex Burns Calories
Thirty
minutes of sex burns 85 calories or more. It may not sound like much,
but it adds up: Forty-two 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.
"Sex is a great mode of
exercise," Los Angeles sexologist Patti Britton says. It takes both
physical and psychological work, though, to do it well, she says.
4. Sex Improves Heart Health
A
20-year-long British study shows that men who had sex two or more times
a week were half as likely to have a fatal heart attack than men who
had sex less than once a month.
And although some
older folks may worry that sex could cause a stroke, the study found no
link between how often men had sex and how likely they were to have a
stroke.
5. Better Self-Esteem
University of Texas researchers found that boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex.
That
finding makes sense to sex, marriage, and family therapist Gina Ogden.
She also says that those who already have self-esteem say they sometimes
have sex to feel even better.
"One of the reasons
people say they have sex is to feel good about themselves," she says.
"Great sex begins with self-esteem. If the sex is loving, connected, and
what you want, it raises it."
Of course, you don't
have to have lots of sex to feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem
is all about you -- not someone else. But if you're already feeling good
about yourself, a great sex life may help you feel even better.
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