Having sex every week can DELAY your menopause: scientists say that not enough action becomes ’causes the body to choose to stop ovulating’
- Study compared those who had sex weekly, monthly and less than monthly
- Sexually active women 28% less likely to have menopause
- Those who had sex once a month were 19% less likely to experience the menopause
- If the woman is not having sex, the body ‘chooses’ to stop putting energy into the ovulation
- Body can decide to invest energy elsewhere, such as in the care of grandchildren
By Harry Howard for Mailonline
According to researchers, women who have sex every week have a lower chance of an early menopause.
Experts from University College London asked nearly 3,000 women – who were followed for 10 years – how often they had sex.
Women who were sexually active every week were less likely to have gone through menopause at any given age than women who did this less than once a month.
For example, those who had regular sex were 28 percent less likely to enter the menopause at the age of 51 compared to their counterparts.
Sexual activity included full sexual intercourse, oral sex, touching and stroking, or self-stimulation.
Scientists said that if a woman has no sex and there is no chance of pregnancy, the body “chooses” to stop investing in ovulation.
According to researchers, women who regularly have sex are less likely to come early in the menopause
Instead, their bodies may decide to invest energy elsewhere, such as caring for grandchildren.
The theory, known as the grandmother hypothesis, says the menopause has evolved to help mothers have more children.
It suggests that grandmothers would help their offspring to get more of their own children by taking care of existing grandchildren.
A woman’s immune function is impeded during ovulation, making the body more susceptible to diseases.
And so if a pregnancy is unlikely because of a lack of sexual activity, the body would shift its focus from a costly process to helping existing family members.
Menopause is when a woman stops menstruating and is no longer able to become pregnant naturally.
The process is a natural part of aging and usually occurs in women between 45 and 55. The NHS says the average age of menopause is 51.
Researchers used data collected from 2,936 women who participated in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) in the US.
WHAT IS THE MENOPAUSE?
Menopause is defined as the changes a woman goes through just before and after she has stopped her period and is no longer able to become pregnant naturally.
Some women go through this time with few or no symptoms, about 60 percent experience symptoms that lead to behavioral changes and one in four will suffer severely.
Common symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness that leads to discomfort during sex, disturbed sleep, decreased sex drive, memory problems and concentration and mood swings.
The menopause occurs when your ovaries stop producing as much as possible hormone estrogen and no longer release an egg every month.
In the UK, the average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 51, according to the NHS.
The women, at the start of the study in 1996 with an average age of 45, were asked if and how often they had had sex in the last six months.
They were also asked if they had had oral sex, sexual contact, or self-stimulation in the last six months.
The researchers discovered that the most common pattern of sexual activity was weekly (64 percent).
None of the women who participated were already in the menopause, but 46 percent began to get symptoms (known as peri-menopause).
Fifty-four percent were before the menopause, which means that they had no symptoms and were still having their period.
Interviews were conducted both when the women participated for the first time and then ten years later.
Women who had sex every week were less likely to experience the menopause, compared to women who had sex, than monthly.
And women who had monthly sex were less likely to have menopause at a certain age, compared to women who had less than monthly sex.
Professor Ruth Mace, who co-authored the study, said: “Menopause is, of course, an inevitability for women and there is no behavioral intervention that will prevent a halt to reproduction.
“Nevertheless, these results are a first indication that the timing of the menopause may be adaptive in response to the chance of becoming pregnant.”
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