MID-LIFE SEX WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?
Comment: Fish-oil capsules? Forget it — regular lovemaking stimulates memory and brain
Having sex may not make you smarter, but smart people definitely have more sex. Scientists from Oxford and Coventry universities recently published research suggesting the brainboosting effects of regular sexual activity on 50-somethings’ verbal fluency and visual memory.
Poets have known for centuries passion is the path to enthralling verse. No one walks away from Shakespeare without knowing they’ve encountered a writer with extensive experience of physical rapture. It just took science a while to catch up.
Professors at Rutgers University, armed with ant MRI scanner, have shown the brain floods with blood, oxygen and nutrients at the point of orgasm — activating key areas associated with neurological function. As far as I know I’m the only British woman to have donated an orgasm to science as part of Rutgers’ research project. (This did involve self-stimulation in a clanking metal tube in a sterile white room, but I won’t elaborate.)
This allowed me to talk to the experts at some length about the physical, mental and emotional benefits of sex. Frequent exercise improves almost every aspect of human function, so it makes sense horizontal exercise is a universal panacea. Men who remain sexually active are less likely to suffer prostate cancer, while female enthusiasts enjoy cardiovascular benefits. There’s also evidence that people who maintain active sex lives live longer than those who don’t. And then there’s sex’s mood-enhancing properties: swifter and surer than any medication.
The fact we now know sex has brain-enhancing properties is just the cherry on the icing on the erotic cake — although, admittedly, it does give sensualists an excellent excuse to disport themselves even more frequently. Surely this news is most cheering for the older section of the population, who live in dread of encroaching dementia. They can throw away the fish oil and take up good, old-fashioned thrills instead.