What happens in our bodies when we have sex?
Sex is good for our mental and physical health. It reduces heart rate and blood pressure. It may boost the immune system, which protects us from infection and reduce feelings of stress and tension.
Talking about sex is one of the most undesirable and uncommon things although it is present in some sessions out of shyness.
While every adult is expected to know how to practice it, books are ashamed to talk about it. While some lack information about sexual practices, the majority are ignorant of the exact details of what happens to our bodies during sex, and the results of its practice.
The benefits of sex for the body and mind
Above all, sex is good for our mental and physical health. It reduces heart rate and blood pressure. It may boost the immune system which protects us from infections, and it definitely reduces feelings of stress and tension.
It seems that the problem of ignorance of what happens inside our bodies during sex is not problem-related While many medical bodies such as Britain's National Health Service (NHS) recommend it, this recommendation is found in a hidden section of their website which few are likely to reach. It says: "Have sex weekly." It may help ward off disease."
That's why Dr. Laila Frodsham, a consultant obstetrician, and gynecologist, believes that people should be better educated on this topic. She believes that more information about it can make us healthier and happier, and save a lot of money because sex keeps diseases away.
“People who have difficulties having sex are more likely to have other health problems,” Frodsham tells The Guardian. And she would like to see more investment in sexual health as preventative medicine.
Sex as a substitute for sport
Having sex can be a good sport, although it depends on how sexually active you are.
A study published in the journal Plos One in 2013 found that healthy couples burn about 85 calories during moderate-intensity sex or 3.6 calories per minute.
It is not enough to be considered physical exercise. So the NHS says: "Unless you're having 150 minutes of sex a week, try cycling, brisk walking, or dancing."
And those stories of men suffering heart attacks and ending their sex lives are exaggerated. Sex raises your heart rate, which is generally a good thing. A 1997 study published in the British Medical Journal of 918 men in Wales found that sex helped protect men's health.
Men who self-reported that they had sex more often and more regularly during their lifetime were half as likely to die over the 10-year study period, compared to those who had less sex.
As a general rule, if you're able to climb two flights of stairs without chest pain, you're more likely to have safe sex, experts say.
↚
The secret is in the love hormone
The key to many of the health benefits of sex is the love hormone oxytocin. It is sometimes called the cuddle hormone, which can even be released when you pet your dog.
The same hormone causes contractions at birth, is also to its present in suppositories or vaginal suppositories that are given to pregnant women to induce labor, and it is present in sperm. It's not a myth, then, that sex can help deliver a premature baby.
When she was working as an obstetrician, Frodsham says, male partners "used to grin from ear to ear because I suggested they have sex on all fours to make labor go."
A lot of oxytocin is released when people are having sex, or even when they are friendly toward each other. "Any touch releases oxytocin," Frodsham explains. So, maintaining physical interactions affects sexual desire, "if you stop using it, you will lose it."
The solution to low sexual desire
She adds that she doesn't often see people with intrinsically low sexual desire, but rather "people who were involved in a kind of eroticism that kind of went away. So I often encourage people to schedule sex. Which a lot of couples feel is an issue." It's not normal and it forces them to have sex, but sometimes you need to get them used to it so they can be spontaneous."
Sex helps sleep, and helps the brain stop working. "If you're having sex, you get into that zone where your brain is moving away from hyperactivity," she says. It is a state similar to concentration and complete relaxation of the mind. But, she adds, "I think not many people give themselves time to relax."
Professor Kay Wellings, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, blames a busy lifestyle for the decline in sexual activity in Britain.
Her latest large study of 34,000 men and women, published in the British Medical Journal, found that people are having less sex than they were a decade or more ago.
Half of the women and two-thirds of the men told the researchers that they would prefer to have more sex than usual. The digital age is partly to blame, Wellings says: “We are surrounded by attention-grabbing things.
I can see the boundaries between public and private life getting thinner. You get home and go on to work or go on shopping, doing everything but communicating by word of mouth, which is old-fashioned. And using the phone doesn't feel close enough."
Stages of sexual response
Credit for the best explanation of what actually happens during sex still goes to two scientists who began their work in 1957, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, although parts of their work have been criticized by later researchers.
Masters and Virginia worked at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Masters had persuaded Virginia to have sex with him in the interest of research, while he was married to another woman.
He divorced and married Virginia in 1971, and they divorced twenty years later. Together, they founded the Masters and Virginia Institute, where they conducted their research and trained therapists.
In a book titled "Human Sexual Response", published in 1966, they described a cycle of four stages in the sexual process between a man and a woman.
The first stage: Excitement
The first stage was the arousal stage, which occurs in response to kissing or caressing.
A small 2006 study by Roy Levine found that 82% of women said they felt sexual arousal from having their nipples fondled, as did 52% of men.
About half to three-quarters of women have what is known as sexual flushing, which can appear as pink spots that grow on the breasts and spread all over the body.
About a quarter of men also get these spots, which start on the abdomen and spread to the neck, face, and back. During this stage, the man's penis becomes erect, but he may lose this erection, and then regain it again.
The female sexual organs swell. The size of the clitoris, labia minora, and vagina increases. The muscles around the opening of the vagina tighten, and the uterus expands and produces lubricant fluid. The breasts also swell and the nipples become erect.
The second stage: Stabilization
After that, Masters and Virginia say, there's the relative plateauing phase, which is very like the previous phase for women. As for men, the muscles that control urine contract to prevent any mixing between it and semen, and those muscles at the base of the penis contract. These contractions lead to the secretion of some pre-sperm fluid.
↚
The third stage: Orgasm
The third stage is the orgasm, during which the pelvic muscles contract and the man ejaculates. A woman also has uterine and vaginal contractions. As for the feeling of reaching this stage, it is the same whether it results from stimulation of the clitoris or penetration.
Frodsham says that about a third of women reach orgasm through penetration, while the second third reach it only, and the third does not reach it at all. "I've never seen anything that could be what they call Area G," she adds. But the clitoris is much larger than some people think. "The clitoris surrounds the vagina," she explains. "The process is only 5% of the clitoris."
Fourth stage: Relaxation
Women can reach orgasm again if stimulated, but men can't. And here we reach the last stage, which is the stage of relaxation, in which everything returns to normal. Muscles relax and blood pressure decreases.
But not everything is understood
But, says Cynthia Graham, professor of sexual and reproductive health at the University of Southampton, "we still don't understand everything about what's going on even though research has been going on since Masters and Virginia's early lab studies."
Take, for example, the female orgasm. “Women tell of a lot of different sensations when they reach this stage,” says Cynthia. “Some women describe the sensation of orgasm in a specific, focused way in the body. Some describe it in a way that suggests it is spreading, for example, a shiver that runs the length of their legs.” Some women report feeling like losing consciousness.
Then there is the male erection. And it may happen to a healthy man at a rate of three to five times a night, each of which lasts about half an hour.
Many men wake up in the morning with the last in a series of nocturnal erections. The reason for this is not known, but there have been suggestions of a link between this and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is when people are most likely to dream.
Even during daylight hours, an erection is not necessarily under conscious control. An erection is usually associated with sexual arousal, but not always.
There is an assumption that sexual desire and impulses are strongest in youth and wane as we age. But there is plenty of evidence that people want and actually have sex at older ages. For women, menopause can be a real obstacle. This is because the loss of estrogen leads to dryness of the vagina and vulva. Frodsham notes that hormonal treatments, from estrogen tablets in a pessary that is inserted into the vagina, to creams and gels, are all safe and effective. But regular sex can also be effective, she says. Sex is like a workout for muscles.
"There is very good evidence, especially in postmenopausal women, that the more sex they have, the better their physiological functioning," she says.
But she cautions against the current enthusiasm for promoting the health benefits of sex for all ages, explaining: "It can cause a kind of pressure on older people who don't want to. A lot of older people do, but not everyone. There is no standard for sexual desire.".
Although we are biologically similar when we are born, the one thing that is certain is that sexual desire and preferences, as well as the means of satisfying desire, differ from one individual to another. Frodsham believes that improving our understanding of sexuality can boost our mental and physical health. And you think that should start early.
"Many schools present sex as something that causes STDs and pregnancy," she says. In doing so, she says, schools ignore one important thing: "They don't talk about the very natural reason we want sex, which is a pleasure."