Heart Health, Physical Performance, and Calories: Does Sex Count as Exercise?

Whether it’s Valentine’s Day, the day after, or any other day of the year, many couples have sex. Some, when checking their smartwatches and activity monitors, wonder: do we practice?

Curious scientists have also asked themselves the question. There activity sexual are a popular and enjoyable way to spend about 32 minutes or so. But, Is it physically intense or quiet? can you burn that many calories how to do footor is it more of a smooth ride? Does the heart rate increase? Can it cause heart attacks? What if tomorrow you had to be in optimal physical condition? Should we avoid it?

Given the prevalence of sexual intercourse – it may be the least skipped physical activity – the answers are important, and some recent studies offer preliminary answers, including startling new statistics on the typical age of a person who suffers “sudden cardiovascular arrest” during sex and the extent to which exercise improves sexual function and satisfaction.

But probably the most pressing question about sex and exercise is: Does sex count as exercise?

The answer, in many ways, seems to be affirmative. In a review article published in the journal Sexual Behavior Archivesresearchers from University of Almeria and the University of Murcia (Spain) collected all the previous studies they could find that analyzed the physical effort involved in sexual intercourse. There weren’t many.

As an activity, intercourse is difficult to study, for reasons ranging from courtesy to politics. The studies the researchers found were mostly about engaged heterosexual couples, Normally marriedwho used to go to a laboratory for scientific observation of their efforts.

Sometimes the sexual intercourse took place in the volunteers’ homes. Some of the couples wore heart rate monitors or other monitoring devices. Others were filmed and their movements analyzed. No one was hidden if sex took place. However, even with these limitations, the Spanish researchers found that models existed.

The most obvious thing is that sex they speed up the heart and burn energy. In studies using trackers, the average heart rate ranged from 90 and 130 beats per minute, with peaks of 145 to 170 bpm. Women’s heart rates tended to be lower than men’s.

He average calorie expenditure during intercourse also varied greatly, depending on people’s position, gender, and more ineffable factors, such as whether they were at home or under observation in the lab. In one study, total energy expenditure during a single session of sexual activity reached 130 calories, while in another experiment, the maximum was 101 calories for men and 69 calories for women.

“These measures indicate that sexual activity It can cause physical stresses of moderate or even vigorous intensity. he claimed Jose M. Muyor, Professor at the Health Research Center of University of Almeria, who conducted the synthesis study.

The numbers are similar to those of a smooth running, except for heart rate spikes, which were higher than normal during jogging, and generally during orgasm, which is not often the case.

In reference to duration sexual episodes, also varied. In one study, among healthy young couples, intercourse lasted an average of 32.38 minutes, whereas in another study it lasted only a few 19 minutes between couples with health problems, such as heart disease.

In all studies, duration was considered to begin with foreplay and end with male orgasm. One can wonder whether these parameters adequately capture the experience of the two members of the couple, but “we limit ourselves to describing the methods and protocols than every study conducted,” Muyor said.

Other researchers have recently investigated whether sex, in addition to briefly tonifying the heart, can also, under certain circumstances, stop thatand not metaphorically.

For example, a remarkable study published in 2022 in the journal JAMA Cardiology on deaths in London from sudden cardiac arrest within an hour of having sex revealed that these deaths they were reassuringly rare.

Of the 6,847 fatal sudden cardiac arrests referred to a London pathology center between 1994 and 2020, only 17 occurred during or almost immediately after sex. But of those 17, six were womensomewhat unexpected, and most were relatively youth. The average age was 38 years old.

Similarly, a 2018 study in Paris of people who survived sudden cardiac arrest between 2011 and 2016 found that about 0.6%, o 17 in total, all men and mostly aged 50, suffered a cardiac arrest during or shortly after sex. By comparison, 229 of the other cases occurred during sports or other types of exercise, and 2,782 in other situations.

Interestingly, the Attempts of the comeback of men who suffered cardiac arrest during or shortly after sex tended to start later than not, possibly due to partner’s disbelief or “some degree of embarrassment “, according Eloi Marijon, professor of cardiology at University of Paris and co-author of the study. “We do not have the marital status of the members of the couple,” he warned.

But the main conclusion from his research and others in the field is that cardiac arrest during or following sex remains rarely frequent. Yes the more sexual intercourse is practiced, the lower the risk. “During any physical activity -said the expert-, including sexual intercourse, the risk of suffering cardiac arrest is greater than at rest.”

And he concluded: “But hearts, like other muscles, get stronger and tougher as people exercise, even with sex. sexual activity This should not be considered a risky situation.

Nor is it likely to jeopardize tomorrow’s competition or training, despite widespread myths to the contrary.

A 2022 review published in Scientific reports concluded that “sexual activity between 30 minutes and 24 hours before exercise does not appear to affect aerobic capacity, musculoskeletal endurance, or strength/power.”

The review, which pooled data from nine studies involving 133 people, almost all men, who had sex in the hours before some type of physical test, also concluded that intercourse did not improve physical performance.

Sex, in other words, didn’t help, which is perhaps reassuring for both sexually active and non-sexually active people.

“I would say there is no reason to avoid or promote sex before a race or sexual competition,” he said. Gerald Zavorsky, Professor of Physiology and Membrane Biology at University of California at Davis, who conducted the review.

Of course, to think of sex only as a tool of competition or even more as a moderate exercise, is to risk taking away part of its poetic mystery and its intimacy.

On the other hand, if at any time you choose to think about the exercise as a way to enhance sex, would seem fine. In a 2019 study of more than 6,000 men and women, the more people exercised, the less likely they were to report erectile dysfunction, among men, and sexual dysfunction, among women.

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