Heart disease and sex: How sex can help your heart health?
Sex offers a host of health benefits: it helps lessen stress, improves sleeping patterns, controls blood pressure, eases menstrual pain, minimizes colds, and based on a recent study, it also boosts heart health, helping protect you from possible heart disease in the future.
“Having sex regularly can do more than make you feel closer to your partner—it can make you physically healthier,” Dr. Hilda Hutcherson of Columbia University told Women’s Health.
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Dr. Joseph J. Pinzone explains to WebMD how sex boosts heart rate and helps balance your estrogen and testosterone levels.
“When either one of those is low you begin to get lots of problems, like osteoporosis and even heart disease,” explains Dr. Pinzone.
According to research out of the National Defense Medical Center in Taiwan, having sex multiple times each week minimizes the chances of heart disease.
More than 2,000 men and women, aged 20 to 59, took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, reports Medical Daily. For their inquiries, researchers based most of their data on responses to the question:
“In the past 12 months, about how many times have you had vaginal or anal sex?”
Based on the study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, lessened heart disease risk has been linked to a decrease in a specific chemical in the blood known as homocysteine, which in high amounts increases the risk of heart disease. The study also found that men who had sex a minimum of twice a week had lower levels of homocysteine in their blood.
When this component of the blood is high, it can lead to hardened arteries or atherosclerosis. Which can cause heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and venous thrombosis.
On the other hand, further research is needed to support these findings and explain why men mostly benefit from it. It’s still worth noting that an active sex life can do wonders in strengthening long-term relationships and improving one’s quality of life.
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