Sex Can Reduce Heart Attack Risk
Study Also Finds Sex Reduces Stroke Risk
The new study, presented at the World Stroke Congress in Australia, found that men having three or four orgasms a week actually cut their risk of having a major heart attack or stroke in half.
Researchers from England's University of Bristol interviewed 2,400 men from the same town, asking them how often they had sex.
Ten years later, the men were checked to see how many had suffered strokes or heart attacks.
Results found that even non-strenuous sexual activity proved beneficial.
"In the past, we though it had to be activity at least three times a week and lasting 20 minutes or longer, causing sweatiness and being out of breath ... That's quite vigorous activity. Most men of course think it's sex, which most women think lasts only a few minutes and isn't nearly as sustained as that," said Professor Shah Ebrahim, the study's lead researcher.
The men in the ongoing survey have also yielded vital clues to the relationship between diet and smoking and heart disease.
Doctors do not recommend strenuous exercise following a heart attack, but they say that mild to moderate exercise can be helpful.
Sexual activity can resume, on average, as soon as a few weeks after a patient suffers a heart attack, provided that they are capable of walking a few hundred yards or climbing a flight of steps without getting out of breath or suffering chest pain, according to Alison Shaw, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation.
"The risk of suffering a heart attack during sex is very small," she said.
