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Too Much Sex Causes Prostate Cancer

Many physicians have believed that men who participate in high levels of sexual activity are at increased risk for prostate cancer, one of the great fears of all men as they start to get a little bit older.
Besides the situation that we live in a very sex-phobic society, and therefore tend to blame anything negative that we can on sexuality, particularly too much or too pleasurable sexual activity, there are some factors that relate to cancer and sexiness that might lead one to hypothesize that prostate cancer and high levels of sexual activity might be linked.
One suggested basis for this hypothesis is the possibility that increased sexual activity may be an indication of higher levels of androgen – that is, male hormones –and therefore a higher risk of developing prostate cancer, which has been related to male hormone levels. And we know that testosterone is related to desire and arousal. Another hypothesis is that perhaps those men who have high sexual activity are more likely to be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases organisms, which in turn might be a factor in the development of prostate cancer.
However, to date no sexually transmitted disease organism has been connected to the development of this cancer, as the genital wart virus has been connected to cervical cancer in women – and that’s HPV or human papillomavirus. And by the way, there is a vaccine now, so if you are a woman listening to this myth a month and you haven’t gotten that vaccine, and been tested for HPV, you should go right out and do it now, because when we’ve got a good thing we ought to take advantage of it. And if you’re a man out there and you have a female partner, you should encourage her to go get tested and get the vaccine.

So – let’s look at the frequency of sexual activity at each age range. Between ages 20 and 29 the men reported an average of 15 ejaculations a month – average – always remembering that average is in the middle, and there are men that have a lot fewer and men who have a lot more. Between 40 and 49, 11 ejaculations a month was average, and between 50 and 59 9.5 per month – and remember, that’s an average – nobody had half an ejaculation. Now, men 60 and older reported an average of 5 ejaculations per month. The researchers have detailed medical and lifestyle histories on the men – all kinds of things about the rest of their lives. And so they could evaluate whether factors other than sexual actvity might be counting for whatever their findings were. And here’s what they found. Most categories of ejaculatory frequency were not related to the risk of prostate cancer – however, a lower risk was found in the group of men with the highest frequency of ejaculation. Hooray! That’s the opposite of what other people had found. And in fact, each increase of three ejaculations per month across the man’s lifetime was associated with a 15% decrease in the risk of prostate cancer. So the more ejaculations you had, the less likely you were to have prostate cancer, and every time you had three more as an average per month, you were 15% less likely to have prostate cancer. When just considering cancer confined only to the prostate; that is, it hadn’t gotten so bad that it had left the prostate and gone out to the rest of the body, the relationship was even stronger with each increase of three ejaculations per month across a lifetime, associated 90% decrease in the risk of prostate cancer. Now, in both these cases there was a suggestion that men in the very lowest ejaculation frequency group of 0-3 per month also had somewhat lower risk, when compared to those with frequency of 4-7 per month. So there was some suggestion that in the very, very lowest group there might have been less risk of prostate cancer. But overall, looking at men who were consistently in the highest ejaculation frequency group – that is, 21 or more ejaculations per month, over the period studied – and that was from 20-29, 40-49, and last year – as compared to all the men who consistently reported frequencies of 0-20, those with the most ejaculations showed the lowest risk of developing prostate cancer.

These results were not altered after taking into account many other factors, such as whether the men had ever had syphilis or gonorrhea, whether the men were younger than 60, whether they were 60 or older, whether they were married, whether the men had a history of prostatitis, a previous diagnosis of an enlarged prostate or surgery for an enlarged prostate, men who had taken a PSA test by the end of the study, that is, to check for their prostate, how much fatness they had, what their body fat was, family history of prostate cancer or history of smoking. So the good news is that higher levels of sexual activity cannot be blamed for prostate cancer. We can scratch another punishment off the list for enjoying the god- or nature-given pleasure of sexuality.

So, what’s the moral of my story here for this myth-a-month? We should never be surprised when we hear someone, whether a relative or a professional, a parent or a physician, tell us that sex is bad. And particularly that more sex is even worse. It’s an American tradition – blaming sex for disease is nothing new. Don’t forget what I’ve said before in other myths – let’s not forget John Harvey Kellogg who, late in the 19th century, blamed everything from tuberculosis to mental disease on masturbation, and on having intercourse more than once a week. In fact, he believed that once a month was the most you should ever have intercourse and orgasm, if you wanted to be a really healthy person. And, he’s the one who invented Kellogg’s cornflakes in order to lower libido and desire so that you would have sex less often and be healthier. And Kellogg was the ardent follower of Sylvester Graham, who invented, at the beginning of the 19th century, the graham cracker, for the same anti-sexual, anti-arousal, anti-desire purpose. So – we have an old American tradition that the medical community has fostered, and is only just recently coming out of, that sex is bad for us, when in fact the new data more and more tells us that sexuality is good for us, that it raises our immune system, that happiness is good for people, and that sexuality and a health, good sex life, and a good sexual relationship with someone that you love, makes for longer life and a healthier happier person.