Everyone knows excessive masturbation will make you blind, but you no longer have to worry about suffering the same sort of Oedipal fate post-coitus! Here’s a list of benefits that come from having sex[1] (as if you needed another excuse to do it).
1. Sex lowers blood pressure, which lowers stress. Rapid-fire blood pressure fluctuations can change the architecture of your circulation and corrode the inner lining of your arteries. This in turn decreases blood flow to the penis/vagina, which is not really helpful when it comes to arousal. In fact, medications that fiddle with blood pressure tend to increase blood pressure, which inhibits horniness. Okay, so have some sex!
2. Sex boosts antibody levels. Having sex once or twice a week has been found to produce 30% higher levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA). Our bodies secrete 3-5 grams of this per day. So if you do the math, that’s about 1-1.5 grams more per day! IgA is essential in protecting our bodies against microbes that will metastasize into colds and infections, so the more the better. Incidentally, gonorrhea destroys these chivalrous little health stalwarts, which is another, more oblique, reason to use protection.
3. Sex burns calories. Thirty minutes of serious romping burns around 85 calories. That’s not really a lot. That’s like a sliver of a corn muffin, or a pack of gum, as I recently found out. So when people say that sex improves cardiovascular health, that’s a little bit of a stretch—you’re probably better off actually going on a run after some warm-up coitus. That being said, in this context, sex may be salubrious for our older demographics, who lower their risk of heart attacks if they partake a couple times a week.
4. Sex raises self-esteem. Well, this is debatable.
5. Sex aggregates oxytocin like none other. This is good and bad. Good because oxytocin helps establish the trust and intimacy that’s crucial in a stable, loving relationship with someone who will probably be in it for the long gerontological haul, but not so great if the other person somehow didn’t experience the same oxytocin buildup and sort of takes a bit too long to remember your name when he sees you on campus the next day. BUT oxytocin buildup parallels endorphin levels, which means you’ll at least be fleetingly immune to physical pain[2], and arthritis if you have it, which you probably don’t, and if you do you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog, even if your heart has been pulverized by a treacherously intimate and oxytocin-filled one-night stand with the guy whose name and Facebook name you have respectively already sort of creepily committed to memory.
Incidentally, the reason he probably passed out cold after your romp was because he was succumbing to the same oxytocin proliferation that was promising intimacy and weddings and post-coital cuddling (not necessarily in that order) for you. Oxytocin helps you sleep better! (And because endorphins have a similar chemical structure as morphine, I’m guessing that may also explain the horse-tranquilizer-style pass out.)
6. Sex helps prevent prostate cancer. If in some sort of sick Shyamalan twist, you have a guy partner who doesn’t actually want to have sex by the end of the evening, you can always remind him that frequent ejaculation[3] is a good means of preempting future risks of prostate cancer. Do it twenty-one times or more a month and he’ll reduce the risk by one third, especially if he’s on the younger but still legal side. This is because the prostate literally needs to be exercised—it’s the gland that produces the ominous and mysterious and quivering with pregnancy potential pre-cum. Pre-cum isn’t actually a natural form of lubrication (that’s where we and our well-hydrated vaginas come in) but rather an alkaline neutralizer that protects sperm from our well-hydrated but apparently acidic vaginas[4]. More importantly, it neutralizes the penis’ urethra, the conduit for urine, which everyone knows is the conjugate acid for super-alkalizing foods like alfalfa and dandelion on the acid-base spectrum. So, in conclusion: use it or lose it hermano.
Tomas: My brain’s circuitry is undergoing an apocalyptic neural misfire and I do not actually want to have sex right now.
Geraldine: Use it or lose it[5]. *Gestures to prostate*
Tomas: Okay. *Boing*
7. Sex preempts incontinence. Having lots of vigorous and energetic sex will strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, which helps prevent incontinence later in life.* In other words, if you’re like me and have spent the last five years secretly doing kegels trying to attain Nirvana in class because class just makes you bored and horny, you’re pretty much never going to regress back to that peeing-your-bed infant stage when you’re old. Even if you have lost most other basic motor function, you will be dry and dignified.
*A time I never wish to live to.
8. Sex is an anti-histamine. One of the most casually cited health benefits I hear is that sex is an anti-histamine and will therefore relieve your congested nose and by extension cure you of your cold. Well, I discovered an even cooler trick, which is that if you tap your tongue against the roof of your mouth in quick successions and with enough pressure that action will immediately clear up your sinuses. I was actually suspicious when I tried this, but it totally works. Anyway, that doesn’t detract from the coitus’ magical abilities to staunch the flow of mucus down your face as you’re trying to look sexually appealing. In fact, you could even try the palatal tap WHILE you’re having sex to amplify the sinus-clearing effects. Or, you could just do some exercise, which is really where the anti-histamine property kicks in, the point being that you don’t have sex because you have a runny nose—it’s just like the nice little fortune cookie you always forget is lingering at the bottom of your Chinese takeout bag after you’ve finished an obscenely good meal.
Tomas: Let’s have sex.
Geraldine: Okay. I also happen to have a cold! It’ll be like killing two birds with one stone.
Tomas: Exactly! Or discovering the fortune cookie at the bottom of your Chinese takeout.
9. Sex enhances your sense of smell and taste. I don’t have much to say about this, except that it’s probably not exactly the best benefit if you’re engaged in sexual activities that involve having to taste and smell something in very close proximity.
10. Do not show this one to your guy unless you want to hear a lot of head-related jokes probably followed by sandwich-making-related jokes. Semen contains zinc and calcium, two elements that inhibit tooth decay. It also contains selenium, which is purported to help prevent cancer, along with everything else in the world, except for the things that are purported to cause cancer. If you are uncomfortable with swallowing semen, you can always just have milk. In fact, you probably should just have milk unless you want to drink an absurd amount of cum on a daily basis.
11. Sex increases estrogen levels. This is thought to protect against osteoporosis, a bone disease that affects a sizable slice of predominantly menopausal women. So now’s the time to be proactive and have a lot of sex so you don’t end up with a bone fracture in the midst of your mid-life crisis! Here’s why: estrogen levels decrease during menopause, which leads to bone loss and osteoporosis. Sex acts as a countervailing force by stimulating production of estrogen. The logical conclusion is that you are hoping your parents aren’t really aware of this fact and therefore having osteoporosis-inhibiting sex. As for us more youthful and limber girls, regular exercise is actually one of the best ways to prevent osteoporosis later in life, especially exercise that involves bearing weights, which naturally suggests assuming more classic counter-gravity intercourse positions. Alternatively, you could always just have a lot of semen to fortify bone density…or milk (see above).
12. Sex can prevent endometriosis. Well, this isn’t actually a benefit because it is FALSE. A study back in 2004 suggested that having orgasms and using tampons during menses can actually prevent endometriosis, a condition where endometrial cells (cells lining the uterus) sprout elsewhere (usually the ovaries). This can actually make sex and tampon usage extremely painful for afflicted women since these actions contribute to the congestion of menstrual fluid in the pelvic region.
13. Sex regulates your menstrual cycles. Yay! If your body is diabolically calibrated to deliver periods at the worst imaginable times like mine is, this portends good news. Regular sex will auto-adjust your menstrual thermostat in a similar way birth control does (by means of estrogen). A regular menstrual cycle is also linked to decreased chances of developing osteoporosis later in life—women with highly irregular ones are more prone to the disease.
14. Sex reduces pain involved in delivering babies (maybe). If this is true, by god I will engage in so much sex my vaginal canal will practically be anesthetized by the time I’m laboring. I’ll probably just have to settle for being artificially tranquilized though, because there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that substantiates this claim. What sex can perhaps do is induce the contractions that bring on labor, if it is had frequently enough at the end of a woman’s term. The medical community is divided on this issue, though: another study found that sex might actually delay labor. If only we could all look like this during labor (photo).
15. Sex rejuvenates. According to some sources, sex might accelerate cells regeneration and help wounds heal faster. One study allegedly found that sex-zapped wrinkles though IMHO, a methodology consisting of a panel of experts guessing the ages of participants through a oneway mirror and attributing meaning to the correlation between lower guesses and more active sex lives sounds a little iffy. Still, other side effects of regular sex, like sleeping well, might contribute to overall aesthetic juvenescence.
16. Sex increases flexibility. Again, this is in function of how exactly you have sex. If you’re kind of lazy like me, you’re probably better off doing some yoga.