Sex Can Improve Health, & Good Health Can Extend Your Sexually Active Life Expectancy

Published: Wed 10 Mar 2010

Thomas Kristoffersen

In addition to helping you enjoy a long life, good health may also help you have a more satisfying sex life for a longer period of time.

A recent study indicated that healthy people are almost two times as likely to have a strong libido in middle and older age and are more likely to have a satisfying and active sex life as well.

Scientists say that a healthy sex life has always been associated with good physical health and long life, but this new study is the first to examine how overall health impacts the quality of sex as people get older and to determine what they refer to as someone's "sexually active life expectancy."

Gender Differences

Based on information taken from 6,000 middle-aged and elderly people, scientists approximate that at age 55, the sexually active life expectancy for the average man is 15 years and 10.6 for the average woman.

"Although the period is longer for men, they lose more years of sexually active life as a result of poor health than women," wrote study author Stacy Tessler Lindau, a University of Chicago associate professor, and her colleagues in the BMJ journal.

And the gender differences do not stop there.

"Overall, the study found that men have a longer sexually active life expectancy and that most sexually active men report a good quality sex life. In contrast, only about half of sexually active women reported a good quality sex life," write the scientists. "This disparity, and its implication for health, requires further exploration."

Additional Findings

The study also found that:

• At age 30, men have a 35-year sexually active life expectancy, and women have a 31-year expectancy. At age 55, the average sexual life expectancy changes to ten years for women and 15 years for men.
• At age 75, 39 percent of men and 17 percent of women are sexually active. For participants with a partner, the gender disparities were significantly smaller.
• Roughly two-thirds of sexually-active middle-aged women and men said they had a high-quality sex life. On the other hand, only 50 percent of older women indicated a good-quality sex life, contrasted with 70 percent of older men.
• Older males were three times more likely to report sexual interest than older women.
• People in excellent health were 1.5-1.8 times as likely to indicate an interest in sex than people in poorer health.
• Among people who were sexually active, good physical health was also related to more frequent intercourse (once per week or more) in males and to a high-quality sex life in women and men.

Sex after 55 is Promising

In an opinion piece that accompanied the research, Patricia Goodson, a professor at Texas University, writes that the possibility that adults 55 and over in the United States can enjoy a satisfying sex life is very promising.

"Despite the spotlight this study shines on the sexual health of older adults in the US, less good news lies dormant in the shadows," writes Professor Goodson. "Take the gender gap in sexually active life expectancy, for instance, which favours men: for men at age 55, sexually active life expectancy was eight to nine years less than demographic life expectancy, whereas for women this difference was 17 to 18 years."