Health: Can Sex Delay Menopause?

Women who partake in sexual activity more often may have a lower risk for early menopause, a new study claims.

According to a study published this week in Royal Society Open Science, those who engaged in sexual activity weekly were 28 per cent less likely to encounter menopause at any given age compared with those who engaged in sexual activity less than monthly.

Those who had sex monthly were 19 per cent less likely to experience menopause compared with those who had sex less than monthly.

Authors define sexual activity as intercourse, oral sex, touching, or self-stimulation.

Helena Harder, PhD, research fellow at the University of Sussex, noted that the data is from a large, valid source, but believes more research is needed to understand the link — and define it.

“It is a link and the researchers can only speculate about possible causes for this link,” she said, citing that there could be causes for the link not mentioned in the report.

The study only included premenopausal women ages 42 to 52 at the first follow-up. It excluded women with early menopause, which is defined as before age 40, Jennifer Marino, PhD, a reproductive epidemiologist, told Healthline.

“I think, even should this association eventually be shown to be causative, women should probably decide how often to have partnered sex based on how often they and their partners would like to have sex, rather than in an attempt to change the timing of their menopausal transition,” she said.

Source: Healthline