Can a healthy sex life actually help you live longer? Science says yes! In this video Dr. Rena Malik, we explore the fascinating ...

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Want to Live Longer? Here’s How Sex Can Help, According to Science

we finally have an answer how often should you be having sex I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and I get asked this question all the time and until recently I didn't have an answer but it turns out based on a new study I might just have one prior Studies have shown not surprisingly that having sex boosts your mood and even helps you have a positive feeling about your meaning in life and even the day after having sex and that people who have more sex tend to have less anxiety and less depression and even better health outcomes compared to people who tend to have less sex but how much sex is enough sex so a study was published in the Journal of sexual medicine and it looked at data from over 15,000 adults in the United States the researchers wanted to understand the trends in sexual activity over time and how sexual frequency or the amount of times you have sex might impact your mortality or death now the research ERS use data from the national health and nutrition examination survey or n haanes and this is a nationally representative survey that collects health information from Americans and starting in 2005 n hay started asking participants about their sexual activity in the past 12 months participants then reported how often they had vaginal or anal sex with options ranging from never to 365 times or more and the researchers Then followed these these participants for about 6 years on average and they tracked who passed away and what they died from this then allowed them to see if there was any link between sexual frequency or how often someone was sexually active and their risk of dying from any cause as well as specific causes like heart disease and cancer now here's what they found over that 11year period from 2005 to 2016 the percentage of adults who were between 20 and 59 years old report having sex at least monthly was 72% and at least weekly was 36% but here's the really interesting part the study found that participants who reported having sex 52 or more times per year so at least weekly had a significantly lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those who had sex less than once a year specifically they had a 49% lower risk of dying from anything and 69% lower risk of dying from cancer now of course less than one and more than once a week is a huge difference but when you look at the people who had sex anywhere from two times a year to 51 times a year they saw that those people also had a 36% lower risk of dying now we're going to take it a step further another study looked at the same database and they recently published their result in 20124 and this was researchers from Walden University who published in the Journal of psychosexual Health and they looked at this link between the frequency of sex depression as well as death or all cause mortality in that same database so they had over 14,500 adults they looked at their self-reported sexual activity again over the past 12 months as well as their depression levels which they measured based on a questionnaire called the patient Health questionnaire 9 they also track death rates over the following years to see again how does this relate to death and they div divided It Up by gender they also looked at depression and how that impacted the risk of dying and how they worked together so ultimately what they found was that women with lower sexual frequency defined as less than once per week had a 70% higher risk of dying during the study period compared to those with higher sexual activity meaning once a week or more now that's a pretty staggering difference and they even accounted for factors like age obesity and other health conditions but here's where it gets even more interesting when they looked at the combined effects of having depression and sex frequency the results were even more dramatic now people who had depression and low sexual activity had nearly a 200% higher risk of dying compared to those with depression alone in other words having sex less often seem to amplify the negative effect of depression on overall health now on the flip side for those who had depression but still had healthy sex life with having sex once a week or more their risk was actually not significantly different from those without depression and so it might be that sex is actually protective if you have other mental health issues like depression what's going on here now we can't say for sure that sex itself is causing people to live longer and the study obviously had some limitations like people had to actually remember how many times they had sex in the last year and write that down however it's possible that those who are more sexually active also tend to be healthier in other ways the researchers also thought that there might be some key mechanisms at play first of all sexual activity has been shown to have cardiovascular benefits like reducing heart rate variability and increasing blood flow it also causes the release of feel-good hormones like endorphins and it leads to the emotional benefits of intimacy with your partner and overall a feeling of connection which we know is so important for longevity so when we add depression into the mix we also know that depression is often correlated with people having lower sexual desire and a lot of the medications that you use for depression can further worsen libido and even affect sexual performance so when depression and low sexual frequency are combined based on this data it's sort of a compounding negative effect now I want to be clear this is not to suggest that if you're having less sex you should force yourself to have more but it's to say that sex matters intimacy matters connection matters if you are fortunate enough to be in a relationship prioritize your sexual health and connection with your partner because it's not always going to be spontaneous and easy but clearly it's worth doing not only to enhance your quality of life or enjoyment but for your Health and Longevity if you guys enjoyed this video make sure to check out my newsletter where I send out a Weekly Newsletter or almost weekly that covers some interesting piece of research it also answers questions that our subscribers can submit in the newsletter itself and allows people to learn about maybe things they missed on the YouTube or the podcast and what's going on with me every week so if you would like to get that in your inbox make sure to check it out it's called Urology by Dr Malik and I look forward to seeing you there and as always going to take care of yourself because you are worth it

Dr.

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