The Overlooked Activity that Leads to a Longer, Healthier Life…Sex

Which activity burns 100 calories while reducing your risk of heart disease, lowers your blood pressure, boosts your immune system, and enhances your sense of well-being? Sex.  Research shows that sex can be great for your health and these benefits extend into our senior years.

Here are just some of the benefits to staying sexually active throughout adulthood.

1. Increase Longevity
Studies on sexual activity indicate its numerous health benefits:

  • lower risk of heart disease
  • lower rates of prostate and breast cancer
  • increases bladder control, and assistance in maintaining a healthy weight.

All these positive benefits cumulate into increased life expectancy for those who maintain a healthy sex life, typically defined as three times per week.

2. Anti-Aging Benefits

  • Better Skin: Hormones released during sex can improve the appearance of our skin. Improved elasticity, anti-inflammatory effects, and that over all healthy “glow” can all be achieved from maintaining an active sex life.
  • Better Brain: Having an orgasm causes a release in DHEA, a hormone that improves brain function and helps maintain and repair damaged tissue.
  • Better Aging: Having frequent sex can repair and lengthen telomeres, which means cells live longer and help keep us younger.

The fountain of youth might be right in the bedroom!

3. Lower Depression and Improve Relationships

Sex can decrease our experience of stress and enhance our general feeling of well-being. It also helps bond us with our partners, through the release of oxytocin, and makes use feel closer to them. Also, sex is a form of exercise with all the mental and physical health benefits.

4. Improved Immune Function

Sex boosts our body’s ability to make protective antibodies against bacteria, viruses, and other germs that cause common illnesses. People who have sex at least once a week have been shown to benefit from higher levels of immunoglobulin A, an antibody that protects you from illness. With flu shot effectiveness as low as 9%, we may need a little extra protection during flu season!

We now understand that sex can be a critical element for enhancing our mental, physical, and emotional health.  People are living heathier longer. It stands to reason that people (with or without the assistance of Viagra) are maintaining active sex lives long into our senior years. Sex can be an easy, and enjoyable way, to improve our health, wellness, and overall feelings of happiness!

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