Sex isn’t just fun and a great way to spend some time, but it also has some great health benefits. So it isn’t just a great way to deepen your relationship, it is also very good for you in a lot of other ways. The health benefits of sex range from reducing stress levels to lowering blood pressure and reduce the risk of cancer and a heart attack. With so many great benefits, let’s dive into the exciting topic of the health benefits of sex; 8 reasons why you should have more sex!
Sex should be fun and pleasurable. We encourage everybody to do it as often as possible. However, if you need any more reasons for having a hot and steamy night with your lover, you can use the health benefits argument after reading this blog.
How Often Should You Have Sex?
Sex is not only super healthy; it is also a great way to improve your relationship. There is actually a study that shows that having sex once a week improves your relationship compared to not having any sex. Usually, the frequency of sexual activity lowers with age, but the importance of having sex doesn’t change. So what is the ideal frequency of having sex? For most adults, the best frequency is at least once a week. When you are younger, this goes up to at least 1,5 times a week and when you get over 60, it lowers to around 0,5 times a week.
The Health Benefits of Sex
The health benefits of sex can be categorized into psychological and physical health benefits. Sex can boost your mental health massively and make you feel better, while also reduce the risk of diseases and physical discomfort. Here are some of the best reasons to up your sexual activity.
Psychological Benefits of Sex
Sex Reduces Stress
Sex is a great way to produce “feel-good hormones” like endorphins, which will make you feel good and stimulate the reward and pleasure part of your brain. They will also relax you and thus reduce stress. Furthermore, sex is obviously a great way to take your mind of stressful things, although it might take a bit more effort to get you in the mood while stressed.
Sex Improves Your Sleep
I’m sure most of you know the fact that you sleep like a baby after sex. The reason is simple: an orgasm produces the hormone prolactin, which is like a natural sleeping pill. It aids you in falling asleep. Doesn’t help you enough to fall asleep? Try some bedtime yoga!
Sex Boosts Your Self-image
Yes, sex will also make you feel good about yourself. It has a tendency to increase your self-esteem and boost your confidence. You’ll probably know the feeling when you can’t stop smiling after sex and feel like you can take on the world. It also works the other way around, as a higher self-esteem can in turn boost your sex-life.
Physical Benefits of Sex
Sex Boosts the Immune System
Sex is proven to have a positive effect on your immune system. Not only does it boost your immune system, it also reduces your risk of getting the flu or cold. This is great news, especially in current times. It was found that people who have regular sex, have fewer sick days at work.
Obviously sex isn’t the only thing that is needed for a great immune system. You will still need to eat healthy and work out and have a healthy life-style in general.
Sex Counts as a Workout
While we are on the topic of working out, sex also counts as a workout! It isn’t exactly like running a marathon, but research shows that men burned an average of 101 calories during a 24 minutes sex session, while women burned 69 calories during that same session. Moaning and hard breathing (yes, this is not a joke) will increase this amount by another 18-30 calories. This shows that a healthy amount of sex can save you a training session in the gym ;-).
Sex Reduces the Risk of Heart Attack
Do you want to improve your heart’s health? Sex is a good way to lower your blood pressure and thus improve heart health. High blood pressure is one of the main causes of heart disease and strokes. By having sex, you will dilate blood vessels and increase the amount of oxygen and nutrients in the blood. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen that well during masturbation, so you will need your partner for this great health benefit!
Sex Lowers the Risk of Cancer
This health benefit of sex is specific for men, but very important non the less. A study shows that men who ejaculate more often, reduce the risk of prostate cancer. The magic number of times seems to be 21 times a month. Luckily it doesn’t matter whether you masturbate or have sex. Having many ejaculations reduces the risk of prostate cancer by a massive 20% compared to men who only ejaculate a few times per month. So men; let’s get to it!
Sex Boosts Your Libido
Having a low libido? Well guess what: it might sound contradictory, but the best way to fight a low libido is to have more sex. Sexual activity boosts general libido and vaginal lubrication. Furthermore, sex will also increase blood flow and elasticity for women, which in turn makes you want to have even more sex. So it’s like a positive spiral. Once you get going, you can’t stop.
How to Boost Your Sex Life
So sex is healthy and it improves your relationship with your partner. That being said, in a relationship, we often find that the frequency of sexual activity changes. For many people, this means the frequency of sex goes down. However, this doesn’t have to mean the quality of the sex reduces as well. It requires some effort, but you can actually improve your sexual relationship over time.
The most important thing to boost your sex life is to simply do it. As with many sexual related issues, this starts with the right mind set. By communicating with your partner, you can level on any issues and thus move forward together to improve the situation. Simply doing it works wonders here.
Some other good ways to boost your sex life are:
Lowering stress. Stress is a killer for your libido and health in general. So making sure you are lowering your stress levels is a good way to boost your sexual desires again. You can try our Stress-Busting Diet to help you reduce stress levels.
Boosting your testosterone. Yes, this one is for men, but higher T levels are an effective booster to increase your libido. You can boost your testosterone levels for example by doing heavy and regular workouts, as well as eating parsley on a daily basis.
Playing games. No, we are not talking about turning on your PS5, but do some sex games with your partner. This is a great way to work light-heartedly on any issues and get you both in the mood.
Role playing. It might sound corny, but it is actually a great way to spice things up a bit and get you both in the mood. And remember: the more often you have sex, the higher your libido. So get yourself a sexy outfit and surprise your partner.
Sex in new places. Yes, a great way to make sex more interesting and exciting, and thus boost your sex life, is to find new places to do it! In your garden, in nature, somewhere (semi)public like a fitting room: your only limitation is your fantasy! It might sound wild and crazy, but give it a try! It will make you look forward to a crazy sex session like you can’t imagine right now!
These are just a few ways to boost your sex life, but there are many other ways which we will discuss in a future blog.
As you might have noted, many of these health benefits of sex are based on a causal loop; the health benefit might be caused by sex, but the health benefit itself causes you to want more sex as well. Just remember that it’s the start that matters most. Once your sexual frequency goes up, so do your cravings. So jump right in – or on :-).
Are There Downsides of Having Sex?
After reading all these great health benefits of sex, you might wonder; are there any downsides of having sex? Well, basically not really but some of the more well know effects:
- There is a risk of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD), or Sexual Transmitted Infections (STI). This includes diseases that can be passed on via unprotected sex. This is mostly a risk if you have a lot of casual sex without protection.
Other things that might affect your joy and health are consent, privacy and other related issues. We will not discuss these in this article though, as they are more distant from the actual topic.
Final Words
We hope you are convinced by all these health benefits of sex and realiser that you should have more sex. Besides great fun and cause of profound health benefits, sex is also great for any relationship. If you are experiencing issues with sex, it is important to find the reason. If you can’t do this alone, we recommend getting some help.
If you have any questions of remarks, please let us know in the comments below. If you’d rather ask a personal question, you can also send us a message via the contact page. Our team is ready to help you where we can.
