One of the modern medicine’s greatest achievements has been helping old dudes get boners. But a new study suggests that those very boners might be sending men to an early grave.
Old men who have sex once or more a week are more likely to experience cardiovascular events such as heart attack, heart failure or stroke, says Hui Liu, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University and the lead researcher on the study.
The research contradicts the conventional wisdom that an active libido is a sign of a healthy heart. Instead, it appears that though many men have both hearts and dicks, they only have enough blood to work one at a time.
The connection between frequent sex and a higher risk of heart disease might be due to the sexual dysfunction most men face later in life, Liu says. Old men have to work hard just to get hard, and that puts stress on their cardiovascular systems, she theorizes.
Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs might also be to blame, Liu adds. Despite their prevalence, there have been no long-term studies on how these medications affect heart health.
Men who reported having sex less than once a week (what Liu calls “moderate frequency”) were at less of a risk, however. And for women, sex actually improved health in some cases. And older women who reported being sexually satisfied in their relationships had lower risks of hypertension.
The research was conducted on more than 2,200 people between the ages of 57 and 85, and the results were published in the latest edition of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
The findings bring to mind the famous 1954 James Olds and Peter Milner experiment, in which rats were able to activate the pleasure centers of their brains with the press of a button. Many of the rats proceeded to pleasure themselves nonstop, forsaking food and sleep, until they died.
