Health Benefits
It has been suggested that an active sex life can increase longevity amongst the elderly. Indeed in the United Kingdom, a government health adviser even went so far as to officially promote the advantages to the elderly of such behaviour. STDs are also prevalent in later life despite common misconceptions that STDs only affect younger people groups. There has actually been a steady increase in the number of STDs found in elderly individuals in nursing homes and other residential living communities, belying the perception that elderly people do not engage in sexual activity. Many men in older age do not believe they need to use protection such as condoms as they age and their partners often feel likewise, so it can be difficult to stress the importance of continued use of protection for elderly couples.
Read more about this topic: Sexuality In Older Age
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or benefits:
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“It is with benefits as with injuries in this respect, that we do not so much weigh the accidental good or evil they do us, as that which they were designed to do us.—That is, we consider no part of them so much as their intention.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)