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CAPITAL BERG – A new study had found that sex doesn’t cause heart attacks. Researchers say that being intimate with your partner after experiencing a heart attack is perfectly ok.
Individuals who’ve experienced a heart attack have often worried that having sex might trigger another one. This is because they fear that the physical activity involved in the act might be too much for their bodies, but German researcher inform that it’s not.
In fact, the results of the experiments showed that sexual activity does not require more exertion than taking a brisk walk or climbing two (2) flights of stairs does.
Field experts came to this conclusion after looking at the data gathered on 536 individuals who suffered heart attacks. All of the subjects were somewhere between the ages of 30 and 70, and the researchers started by asking them to fill out questionnaires related to their sexual activity.
Statistically speaking, almost 15 percent (15%) of all subjects never had sex in the 12 months prior to their heart attack, nearly 5 percent (5%) of all subjects didn’t even have sex once per month in the 12 months prior to their heart attack, around 25 percent (25%) of all subjects didn’t even have sex once per week in the 12 months prior to their heart attack, and 55 percent (55%) of all subjects had sex at least once per week in the 12 months prior to their heart attack.
After the research team analyzed the sexual activity of their subjects, they estimated each person’s likelihood of experiencing strokes, fatal heart attacks, and cardiovascular death, based on the frequency of sexual encounters.
The subjects were followed for 10 years, time in which the researchers noticed 100 adverse heart events occurring among their subjects, but they also concluded that sexual activity had nothing to do with them.
When the field experts checked the last sexual activity that subjects had before experiencing their heart attack, they saw that only 0.7 percent (0.7%) of all those whose hearts were giving them trouble reported having sex within the hour before their incident.
The majority of them, more than 78 percent (78%), reported having sex more than a day before their incident.
Dr. Dietrich Rothenbacher, study author and chair of the Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry from Ulm University (Ulm, Germany), gave a written statement saying that “Based on our data, it seems very unlikely that sexual activity is a relevant trigger of heart attack”.
The author went on to add that “Less than half of men and less than a third of women” consult their doctor for advice on sexual activity after experiencing a heart attack. But “It is important to reassure patients that they need not be worried and should resume their usual sexual activity”.
The findings were published earlier this week, on Monday (September 21, 2015), in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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