The Benefits of a Healthy Sex Life

by Becky Knight, MPH

We all know that sex is a form of exercise, burning as many as four calories a minute, and that all exercise is good for us. Similar to the effects of any good workout, when we get aroused, our blood pumps at a faster rate. That fresh supply of blood pumping through our body gives our organs a healthy dose of oxygen and rids the body of toxins and waste.

You also get a rush of endorphins after sex, aka the “runners high.” Endorphins, hormone-like chemicals akin to morphine, promote a sense of well-being and alleviate the pain of headaches and migraines, arthritis, and even PMS.

And then there is that lovely hormone oxytocin. Just before orgasm, oxytocin levels surge to five times their normal level. Oxytocin does wonderful things for us. It increases bonding, trust and generosity. It also increases our sense of empathy. It’s the same hormone that is released when a woman breast-feeds her child.

One thing that I found especially interesting is that men benefit most when they’re having regular sex, either alone or with a partner. For instance, men need 3-5 ejaculations a week in order to significantly reduce their chance of a heart attack, stroke, or prostate cancer. What some women may complain of as a “high sex drive” is maybe just his body’s way of keeping him alive!

Of course, it’s not just physical health that is improved by a good sex life. Having a good sex life reaps emotional and spiritual rewards as well. Thankfully, the more sex you have, the longer you’re likely to live — and the longer you’re able to enjoy sex!

Becky Knight, MPH, works as a Sex and Relationships Coach at Sensovi Institute, where she is also the director of Education and Programs.  To learn more about Becky visiting her web site Living Sexuality.

Is Your Sex Drive Normal? (And what does that mean, anyway?)

By Susan Mernit

Do you want to make love all the time? Every morning and night and anything in between you can fit in on the weekends? Or do you prefer making love 1-2 times a week, building your way up to it, and then knowing that by the time you and your partner make love again, it’s going to be deeply anticipated and treasured? Or, are you just over all that — someone for whom sex, most of the time, just doesn’t feel very necessary or exciting?

Welcome to the world of your sex drive.
In preparing to write this post, I spent some time cruising the web, as well as reading my favorite sexologists, like Susie Bright and Pepper Schwartz. I discovered there are two ways to think about sex, pretty much, but two ways stand out most. The first view is that sex is something a wife gives her husband and they have to negotiate a satisfactory rate of delivery of the goods, a viewpoint very common in sex self-help forums at sites like Men’s Health. The second view is that sex is a form of health and pleasure, and if you’re not enjoying yourself in a meaningful way, hey, something is the matter (translation: the world owes you some orgasms, damn it, so make sure you get what’s coming to you.)
The first view leads to normal sexual activity being whatever makes you and your partner happy. In this scenario, if both people have “low” sex drives and want to make love 1X a week or less, that’s totally normal (and if you have small kids, it might be amazing to make it that often!). In this world, at 36 my friend Lucinda made love with her new 40 yr-old boyfriend 2X a day and was dying to share news on every yummy minute; at 47, she and same boyfriend, now 51 yr-old husband, made love less that once a month and since he didn’t complain or press her (and their relationship was great in all other ways), she thought it was completely normal (and was thrilled to skip sex, which hadn’t interested her that much as she got older and the relationship became more familiar.)

The second view, however, is more of a “are you living up to your orgasmic potential?” perspective. This is the world view where even if the status quo feels okay, it’s worth checking out if you could feel a whole lot better.

This is the world where my 57-year-old friend Marsha who felt her libido had flat-lined, went to the doctor who started her on testosterone, and then fell back in love with sex. In other words, this is the view where normal is what you make it.

In my own life (sorry, son, I’m going to get personal now), I’ve lived in both camps. As a young nursing mom, exhausted and stressed, the whole idea of a normal sex life seemed like a joke because I rarely felt normal (or relaxed). Later, as the married mom of a teen, normal was whatever my husband and I agreed felt right, with interest and availability both completely tied to how much time we could carve out from everything else. (And that was telling, wasn’t it, that making time for sex was not in our top priorities?)

At each of these moments, I felt “normal” but my so-called sexual desire went up and down, and of course when there were issues, like we weren’t getting along, or I felt depressed, or my self-esteem was hurting, it went way, way down.

But then there was the period after I got divorced (the big watershed moment) when I thought about my single state, thought about sex and decided the whole truth about your sexual desire is in your head.

Or, to put it another way, I realized I had a button in my head labeled sexual desire that I could now reset.

Even though I had no clue who my future partners might be, I knew a) there were going to be some and b) I wanted sex to be both meaningful and fun, and ideally, more than once in a great while. And I also knew that I only wanted to date people where there was a strong attraction from the beginning, people whom, as my sweetie “C” might say, are “yummy.”

So while my sexual life feels normal, it’s definitely different than it was 10 years ago, when my son was still a boy, and even then it was 5 years ago, coming out of a divorce-and I have no doubt, as life and health continue to evolve, my so-called normal sex life will also shift, again and again.

And yet, it’s all about the joy we have, isn’t it? The intimacy and the pleasure and the connection that sex brings? The release of tension, the energy connection, the passion? After all, what’s normal is putting your sexual desire to work in the pursuit of these things, not the absolute number of how often you do it.

So BlogHers – How has your understanding about your sexual desire evolved over the years? What do you do to keep things juicy, both in your brain and in your, ah, bed?

This post was originally published on BlogHer and reprinted with permission by Susan Mernit.

The Importance of ‘Self Love’

I can’t say when I first heard the word ‘masturbate’, or learned what it meant. What I can tell you is that the word has always struck me as something ugly. And it’s certainly not a word — or concept — that most women are comfortable talking about. You probably squirmed a little just reading it here. But I think it’s a subject that needs to be talked about, like so many other women’s issues that are ignored or suppressed. Not that masturbation is relevant only to women, but like the disparity in so many things between men and women, masturbation is considered pretty much a given with men. It even seems to create somewhat of a brotherhood among them, as they joke about it, and otherwise openly talk about it.  Conversely, I think I can count on one hand the number of times the subject of masturbation has come up among my female friends.

So I am opening the dialogue here. It’s time to talk about masturbation, but instead of using the word ‘masturbate’, for the remainder of this article I will refer to it as self love. I realize that throughout VenusVision, there is a lot of talk about self love, and in other contexts, the term is not referring to the act of masturbation, which may be confusing. But in my opinion, it’s all part of the same concept of knowing your body and loving it in a variety of ways.

I imagine that most women fall into two camps when it comes to self love: you either do it, or you rarely, if ever think about it (and if you do think about it, it’s probably not in a positive way). Based on the few discussions I have had with women on the topic, it seems like those who enjoy it as adults discovered the pleasures of self love at an early age, sometimes even before puberty. What began as a simple act of self exploration became an experience which relaxed, soothed, and provided pleasure. Certainly there are those who discovered the joys of self love later in life too, as they began to explore new sides of themselves that had been ignored in the past.

For those women who have confessed to never experiencing self love, I often find that they have less interest in sex in general, and many of them don’t have a positive self image, which may actually lead to overall decreased feelings of sexuality.  They are already uncomfortable in their bodies, and the idea of touching themselves can serve to enhance their self consciousness. Not to mention, I’m sure for many a stigma still remains on self love. Though we realize that you won’t actually go blind or grow hair on your hands from touching yourself, our society’s Puritan roots run deep, and for those who aren’t comfortable in their sexuality to begin with, self love can still seem like something perverse. Everyday Health cited a study by the National Health and Social Life Survey in which 39 percent of American women ages 18 to 60 reported masturbating during the previous year, compared with 61 percent of American men.

Like so many other women’s issues that have been taboo for women to talk about and explore, the barriers to self love need to be examined and broken down. Learning how to make yourself feel good in a way that’s independent from anyone else is not only empowering, it’s liberating.

According the Better Health Channel, some of the benefits of self love are:

• Eases some of the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome
• Relief from menstrual cramps
• Muscle relaxation
• Helps you to fall asleep
• Promotes release of the brain’s opioid-like neurotransmitters (endorphins), which cause feelings of physical and mental wellbeing
• Reduces stress
• Enhances self-esteem.

Additional medical benefits include a cleansing of the vagina and increased lubrication. And of course, if you are using self love as the exclusive means for sexual pleasure, you don’t risk unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

If all this still makes you feel uncomfortable and squeamish, it’s perfectly normal. It’s not likely that reading a few facts will suddenly create an urge to do something that you’ve never had any desire to do. On the other hand, perhaps self love is something that you think about from time to time, and you just need a little push to give it a try. Maybe you need some guidance on where to start. (For some ideas, check out Everyday Health’s article on Masturbation 101.) If you can break down the emotional barriers that have been preventing you from getting closer to your body, understanding it more, and learning how to provide pleasure for yourself, it will bring you one step closer to loving your whole self unconditionally, and serve as one way to make peace with your body and yourself.