Men are more than twice as likely as women to be sexually active in old age but good health is the key for both to feeling naughty, a study published yesterday by the British Medical Journal said.
Doctors looked over two big probes into the health of the US population.
One survey covered 3,000 people aged 25 to 74 who filled in questionnaires in the mid-1990s as part of an investigation into midlife. The other survey, focusing on old age, was carried out a decade later among a similar number of volunteers aged 57 to 85.
At the age of 55, men have on average almost 15 years of sexually active life ahead of them, and women 10-and-a-half years, the researchers found.
They also discovered a major gap between the sexes on sex lives.
“Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, report a good-quality sex life and be interested in sex. These gender differences increased with age,” said the paper online.
The biggest gap was among 75- to 85-year-olds, where 38.9 percent of men said they were sexually active, compared with 16.8 percent of women.
Another 41.2 per cent of the men were interested in sex, compared with 11.4 percent of the women.
Within the “sexually active” group of the 75 to 85 year olds, 70.8 percent of men rated their sex life as of good quality, compared with 50.9 percent among women. Why such a difference?
It could be partly explained by opportunity, the investigators say.
Around three-quarters of men across all age groups said they had a partner.
Among women, though, only two-thirds of respondents between 25 and 54 had a partner. For women aged 75 and beyond, fewer than four in 10 had a partner — a figure reflecting women’s longer lifespan and the tendency of men to marry younger women.
Good health, too, was vital for sexual well-being, the study said.
An individual in sound health is almost twice as likely to be interested in sex and can expect to enjoy around six more years of sexual activity compared to a peer in poor health.
Authors Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova, from the University of Chicago hope the findings will help end a taboo.
“Doctors rarely address sexual concerns in older adults, particularly in women,” they said.
In a commentary, Patricia Goodson, a professor at Texas A&M University, said the news that US adults could enjoy “many years of sexual activity beyond age 55” was good news.
But there were also intriguing questions, she said.
The study says US men generally stop having sex around the age of 70, about eight or nine years before their death, while women stop at about the age of 65, and live to about 82 or 83.
“The measure sheds no light on the intriguing — and still poorly understood — question of why, even though they enjoy fewer years of a sexually active life, many women do not perceive this as a ‘problem,’” Goodson said.
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