The healing power of sex
By FRED TASKER
"A good sexual relationship is essential to good health," says Dr. Barbara Bartlick, psychiatry professor and founder of the Human Sexuality Program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
Even apart from its psychological benefits, having sex creates physiological changes that relieve anxiety, mask pain, aid sleep, reduce stress, foster fitness, boost immune systems, stave off heart attacks and may even promote longevity, experts say.
New studies range from clinical to whimsical - a Scottish paper says women who have sex three times a week have fewer wrinkles. Others say it gives the heart an aerobic workout - how much depends on the vigor of the activity.
In describing how lovemaking helps, increasing attention is being given to three neurotransmitters released by the brain before, during and after sex:
Oxytocin, the "cuddle" hormone, promotes sexual bonding, keeping marriages alive. It boosts nonsexual bonding - the instant adoration of a mother for the infant who has just put her through the pain of childbirth. It's produced when a mother breast-feeds her baby. Dads with more of it are more likely to stick around to help raise the kids.
Oxytocin triggers the physical contractions of childbirth and breast-feeding in women, and orgasm in both women and men. How it promotes social attachment is less clear. Some say it triggers other brain opiates, making that contact warmer and fuzzier.
Brain-chemical cocktail
Experiments in the 1990s by researcher Dr. C. Sue Carter, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, showed that when female prairie voles were injected with oxytocin, they bonded quickly with a single partner. When it was blocked, they coupled less avidly, more indiscriminately.
In humans, oxytocin can be stimulated by touch - massage or simply holding hands. It can attract a woman to a man across a crowded room because his facial features are similar to those of a past lover.
"Your brain focuses on things your earlier experiences predict will produce a good sexual reward," says Dr. Jim Pfaus, research psychologist at Concordia University in Montreal.
Endorphins dull the perception of pain, relieve stress, strengthen immune systems and provide that well-known "runner's high." They provide natural relief from the pain of arthritis, injury, even migraines. Dr. Beverly Whipple, sex educator and professor emerita at Rutgers University, says that endorphins are part of the reason that stimulating a woman's G-spot, a center of sexual pleasure, elevates her pain threshold by 40% - or more than 100% if she has an orgasm.
Endorphins enhance the immune system by fighting stress, dampening the harmful hormones that stress stimulates.
The value of that is demonstrated by a study by Ohio State University psychiatry professor Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her husband, immunologist Ronald Glaser.
They purposely created small blisters on the arms of volunteer couples, had them discuss contentious marital issues such as in-laws and finances, and found that the stress of disagreement slowed healing.
"Stress hormones hurt immunity," Kiecolt-Glaser says.
After endorphins have induced that lovely "high," serotonin kicks in to create the feelings of satiety that come after a good meal or good sex, inducing relaxation and relieving stress, says Pfaus.
"You never sleep better than after good sex," says Bartlick. "Some of my patients use it as a sleeping aid." Experts differ on how the benefits of sex compare in committed relationships, casual sex or even masturbation.
The Scottish study said sex with multiple partners did not provide the wrinkle relief that came with committed sex. But Whipple's G-spot pain-masking effect was the same whether the stimulation came from a lover or the woman herself.
The value of committed sex is described in a bit of doggerel sex researchers quote about the perils of sex after heart attack: "Heart beats stay at normal rate, when one beds down with legal mate. But roosting in another's nest, flirts with cardiac arrest."
Research volunteers needed
Little research has been done on the benefits of lovemaking in same-sex couples. The federal government shies away from funding sex studies in general for fear of controversy, says Bartlick, and drug companies express little interest unless a study might lead to a profitable product like Viagra.
The lack of research leaves holes in many theories about the benefits of making love. For example, studies show that men who are sexually active have lower annual death rates. But which causes which?
"It would not be surprising if a good sexual relationship made for better physical and mental health," says Dr. John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
"The difficulty is that it works in the opposite direction also, and I am not aware of any research which has disentangled this."
But even if not every benefit has been firmly established, it can't hurt to try - to chill the wine, flambe the steak in butter and brandy, put on that Marvin Gaye CD and pursue a little sexual healing.
-- New York Daily News
