Women who rarely have sex may not only suffer a bit from pent up tensions — they could be heading to an early grave, a new study suggests.
Scientists found that women between the ages of 20 and 59 who had sex less than once a week had a 70 percent higher probability of dying from any cause within five years compared to women who had sex more than once a week.
These individuals had elevated levels of a protein linked to inflammation, which can cause damage to healthy cells, tissues and organs.
The study also included a sample group of men, but researchers told DailyMail.com that the ‘relationship was not found in males.’
Scientists found that women, between the ages of 20 and 59, with ‘low sexual frequency’ had a 70 percent higher probability of mortality
The team concluded that ‘there are benefits for women to having sex more than once a week.’
The study’s authors, medical researchers at Walden University in Pennsylvania, used a giant database from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the new study.
National survey data including information on depression, obesity, ethnicity and reports of sexual activity from 14,542 men and women were pooled for this analysis.
Also included in the database were answers to the question: ‘In the past 12 months, about how many times have you had vaginal or anal sex?’
The options included: never, once, two to 11 times, 12 to 51 times, 52 to 103 times, 104 to 364 times, and 365 times or more in the past 12 months.
The reports showed that about 95 percent of participants had sex more than 12 times per year, with 38 percent doing it once a week or more.
The team then compared this medical information with another CDC database on deaths up to the end of the year 2015 — which they double-checked against US National Death Index (NDI) death certificate records for those years.
‘Participants who were not matched with death records were considered to be alive through the follow-up period,’ the team shared in their study, published in the Journal of Psychosexual Health.
In one slice of the data, the team found that increased risk of death leapt upward a stunning 197 percent for individuals who reported low sexual frequency and depression over just depression alone.
Above, comparisons of the increased risk of death based on a lack of sex without factoring out other variables (Sex Freq- Crude HR*), beside ‘high rate of sex, plus depression,’ and on the far right ‘lack of sex, plus depression’ (Sex Freq-//Dep+ aHR*) – the most dangerous category
‘Individuals with depression but high sexual frequency don’t feel harmful effects of depression as much,’ lead author Dr Srikanta Banerjee told DailyMail.com.
But this finding also skewed along gender lines, he noted: ‘What we found is that, among females only, there is a beneficial effect.’
‘The theory,’ Dr Banerjee explained, ‘would be that depression affects men in different ways than females.’
‘Depression is something that leads to more increased mortality due to health outcomes,’ the former CDC researcher said. ‘So perhaps sex is more effective because of the severity of how depression impacts females.’
‘There are multiple theories,’ Dr Banerjee noted for this apparent link.
‘For instance, sex releases endorphins that may prevent severe health outcomes.’
But, regardless of race, gender, age and most other health factors, his team emphasized that relatively regular sex seems to be beneficial for most adults.
‘Sexual activity is important for overall cardiovascular health, possibly due to reduction of heart rate variability and blood flow increase,’ the researchers noted.
But the new study added an interesting twist for oversexed men: there really is too much of a good thing.
‘With high sexual frequency,’ the researchers wrote, ‘males were six times more likely to experience increased mortality than females.’
This six-fold increase in death risk for men who truly ‘get around’ proved true despite the study’s use of a multiple complex statistical weights — including Cox regression models — to help cancel out other health, behavioral and demographic factors.
‘This shows that sexual frequency interacts with gender to increase mortality,’ the researchers concluded in their study.
‘The implications are that by addressing sexual frequency, other health disparities can be addressed more directly.’
