Weekly sex to delay menopause?

These should delight very sexually active women. According to a study published this Wednesday, January 15 in the review Royal Society Open Science, the more frequently a woman makes love, the more it will delay her menopause. This could be explained because when a woman has little intercourse, her body prefers not to invest in ovulation.

Here, to go further, researchers examined the data of nearly 3,000 American women, recruited between 1996 and 1997. At that time, none of the participants had yet entered menopause but 46% of them were beginning to experience changes in menstrual cycles and hot flashes.

Over a decade, women have had to answer several questions about the frequency and nature of their sexual intercourse. During this period, 45% of women experienced natural menopause (absence of menstruation for at least 12 consecutive months), at an average age of 52 years.

No influence of pheromones

By modeling the relationship between the frequency of intercourse and the age of natural menopause, the researchers found that women of all ages who had weekly sex had a risk ratio of 0.72, while those who had monthly intercourse had a risk ratio of 0.81. Women of all ages who have sex every week are 28% less likely to have menopause than those who have sex once a month. They are 19% less likely to be menopausal at any age than those who have sex less than once a month.

“The results of our study suggest that if a woman does not have sex, and there is no chance of pregnancy, then the body ‘chooses’ not to invest in ovulation, as this would be useless. There can be a biological energy tradeoff between investing energy in ovulation and investing in other areas, such as staying active taking care of your grandchildren. The idea that women stop being fertile in order to invest more time in their family is known as the Grandmother’s Hypothesis, which predicts that menopause originally evolved in humans for reduce the reproductive conflict between different generations of women, and allow women to increase their inclusive physical condition by investing in their grandchildren, ”explains doctoral student Megan Arnot (UCL Anthropology), lead author of the study.

Although all of the women interviewed reported heterosexual relationships, it is not known if homosexual activity would have a similar effect. What is more, contrary to what previous studies have suggested, no link has been observed between the presence of indwelling men and the subliminal chemical signals that these latter could send. “We have found no evidence of the pheromone hypothesis,” note the authors.

“The time of menopause can be adaptive”

And Professor Ruth Mace (UCL Anthropology) concludes: “Menopause is, of course, inevitable for women, and there is no behavioral intervention that will prevent the cessation of reproduction. Nevertheless, these results are a first indication that the time of menopause may be adaptive in response to the probability of becoming pregnant. ”

This study reinforces the idea that genetic factors account for only about half of the menopausal age differences for women. Other factors, such as diet for example, also come into play.

Thus, according to a study published in May 2018 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, a diet rich in fatty fish (3.3 years late per serving / day) and fresh legumes (0.9 years late per serving / day) would delay the onset of menopause, just like a diet rich in vitamin B6 (0.6 years late per mg / day) and zinc (0.3 years late per mg / day). Conversely, higher consumption of pasta and rice would be associated with earlier natural menopause (-1.5 years per serving / day), as would that of salty snacks (-1.0 years per serving / day ).

–