Keep young and healthy with a sexually active life!

We all know that you are as old as you feel and one way of expressing this is by really enjoying an active sex life. Research conducted by Doctor Merryn Gott at Sheffield University studied the importance of regular sexual activity among older people. It was concluded that older people who enjoy regular sex also enjoy better mental and physical health than people of a similar age who are not sexually active.

Even in these enlightened times, there is still a preconception that once you are past 60 you are too old to enjoy sex. But nothing can be further from the truth. Sex is like everything else that people do that doesn't have to come to an end just because you have reached a certain age. In fact ageing starts to really happen when you stop doing things that give you pleasure and fulfillment - how many older people do you remember who gradually gave up what they liked doing - and ended life early on a decidedly unfulfilled note?

Keep doing what you enjoy - and ageing will be deferred even while your chronological age increases.

Sex is good for you so don't ever think you are too old to enjoy it. Dr Gott says: "It has something to do with the stereotypes that have grown up around older people - we have a tendency to think of them as being asexual." That the subject has even been researched means that older people are more prepared to talk about sex whereas in the past they tended to be somewhat reticent. Now, she found, the older people were the happier they were to talk about their feelings, and to know someone was interested in what they had to say.

From her research, Dr Gott found that older women were more likely than older men to really appreciate sex as, having gone through the menopause and no longer concerned about procreation, they could just appreciate being loved and wanted by another person and find it liberating in the process.

There is also evidence that having sex when older age can extend one's lifespan. There is a definite link between sex and health which shows that having orgasms has a beneficial effect on an older person. A study held in 1997, published in the British Medical Journal, studied the links between frequency of orgasms and mortality. It was found that the more orgasms a person had the longer they were likely to live!

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