Women who rarely have sex may not only be suffering from pent-up stress, they could be heading for an early death, a new study suggests.
Scientists found that women aged 20 to 59 who had sex less than once a week were 70 percent more likely to die from any cause within five years, compared with women who had sex more than once a week.
These individuals had elevated levels of a protein linked to inflammation, which can cause damage to healthy cells, tissues and organs.
The study also included a sample group of men, but researchers told DailyMail.com that “no association was found in men.”
Scientists found that women between 20 and 59 years old with ‘low sexual frequency’ had a 70 percent higher probability of mortality
The team concluded that “having sex more than once a week has benefits for women.”
Researchers at Walden University in Pennsylvania used a giant database from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the new study.
The information included depression, obesity, ethnicity, and reports of sexual activity. 14,542 men and women.
Also included in the database were responses to the question, “In the past 12 months, about how many times have you had vaginal or anal sex?”
Options included: never, once, two to 11 times, sometimes, 52 to 103 times, 104 to 364 times, and 365 times or more in the past 12 months.
The reports showed that about 95 percent of participants had sex more than 12 times a year, and 38 percent did so once a week.
The team then compared this medical information to another CDC database on deaths through the end of 2015, along with death records from that year.
“Participants who were not matched to death records were considered alive during the follow-up period,” the team shared in the study published in Psychosexual health journal.
In one segment of the data, the team found that the risk of death increased a staggering 197 percent for individuals who reported both low sexual frequency and depression, compared to depression alone.
Above, comparisons of the increased risk of death based on lack of sex without taking into account other variables (Sex frequency – raw HR*), alongside “high sex rate, more depression” and, on the far right, “lack of sex, more depression” (Sex frequency -//Dep+ aHR*), the most dangerous category.
“People with depression but a high sexual frequency do not feel the harmful effects of depression as much,” lead author Dr Srikanta Banerjee told DailyMail.com.
But this finding was also biased based on gender, she noted: “What we found is that, only among women, there is a beneficial effect.”
“The theory,” Dr. Banerjee explained, “would be that depression affects men differently than women.”
“Depression is something that leads to higher mortality because of the health consequences,” the former CDC researcher said. “So maybe sex is more effective because of the severity of the impact of depression on women.”
But regardless of race, gender, age and most other health factors, her team stressed that relatively regular sex appears to be beneficial for most adults.
“Sexual activity is important for overall cardiovascular health, possibly due to reduced heart rate variability and increased blood flow,” the researchers noted.
But the new study added an interesting twist for hypersexualized men: There really is too much of a good thing.
“With high sexual frequency,” the researchers wrote, “men were six times more likely to experience higher mortality than women.”
This sixfold increase in death risk for men who actually “commute” held true despite the study’s use of multiple complex statistical weightings, known as Cox regression models, to help them cancel out other health, behavioral and demographic factors.
“There are multiple theories,” Dr. Banerjee said.
‘For example, sex releases endorphins that can prevent serious health consequences.’