Stay healthy for a better sex life

Healthy individuals are almost twice as likely to be interested in sex. While sexually active life expectancy was longer for men, they lost more years of this activity due to poor health than women.

Healthy individuals are almost twice as likely to be interested in sex compared to those in poor health, says a new study. The research has been published on bmj.com.

According to the study’s results, at the age of 30, men have a sexually active life expectancy of nearly 35 years and for women it's almost 31 years. While at 55, this figure changes to almost 15 remaining years for men and 10 years for women. This gender difference diminishes for people with a spouse or intimate partner.

While sexually active life expectancy was longer for men, they lost more years of this activity due to poor health than women. To reach the conclusion, authors Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova from the University of Chicago used data from two representative research groups in the US.

One group consisted of over 3000 men and women between the ages of 25 and 74 and the other included over 3000 men and women between 57 and 85 years of age.

The results reveal that men are more likely to be sexually active, report a good sex life and be interested in sex than women. This difference was most stark among the 75 to 85 year old group, where almost four out of ten males compared to less than two out of ten women were sexually active.

The authors conclude that "sexually active life expectancy estimation is a new life expectancy tool than can be used for projecting public health and patient needs in the arena of sexual health" and that "projecting the population patterns of later life sexual activity is useful for anticipating need for public health resources, expertise and medical services."