Good news, everyone! Researchers have found yet another reason why sex is good for you. See, this is why I love science.
According to very recent research conducted at the University of Oxford and the University of Coventry, it would appear as though having sex does a lot more than just make your penis feel good — apparently, sex is really good for your brain, too, especially as you get older.
For the study, which was published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences (sexy name, I know), researchers surveyed 73 participants between the ages of 50 and 83 about their sex lives, and found that just over half said they have sex daily, 35 percent monthly, and the remaining 13 percent said they never had sex.
After gathering information about their sex lives, the researches assessed the brain function of the participants with a series of cognitive tasks, and found that those who had sex every day scored an average of two points higher on the tasks than the participants who had sex monthly, and four points higher than the sad people who chose to abstain from sex altogether.
If you think that two and four point differences seem small and insignificant, you’re mistaken, my friend. In the world of clinical research, even small differences can be noteworthy, and in the case of this particular study, it definitely was.
That said, the researchers concluded that having a lot of sex is good for your brain!
The results found that, particularly, having sex regularly has the biggest impact on verbal fluency, meaning those who bang it out often are better at things like naming as many nouns that begin with the letter B as they can in 30 seconds, or something.
Aside from having higher scores in the verbal fluency tasks, sexually active people also scored better in visual tests than everyone else, which included things like copying complex pictorial designs, and drawing things from memory.
Scientists aren’t entirely sure what the connection between sex and intellectual acuity is, however they hypothesize that it’s likely due to the surge of hormones and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and oxytocin.
What’s more is that a previous study found that sex is like a fine wine that gets better with age, which makes these recent findings so much better.
So, when you’re 70 and getting pretty old and wrinkly, you can find solace in the fact that sex will be mind-blowing, and it’ll be good for keeping your brain working nice and fast.
H/T: Independent