9 Reasons Sex is Good

Here is a list of reasons why sex is good for you and your partner, married or otherwise.

Granted, this list is from a ‘gossip’ site, and it’s geared towards married types, there is still some good information – not like you needed it.

   1. Sex helps you forget

    Oxytocin, which triggers orgasm, has an amnesic effect that lasts up to five hours. So for a period of time you forget that he maxed out your Visa card or she was an hour late getting home from work. Women get an additional benefit. During orgasm that parts of the brain that govern fear, anxiety, and stress are switched off. (Faking orgasm gives no such benefit.)

   2. Heightened sense of smell

    After sex, production of prolactin surges, causing stem cells in the brain to develop new neurons in the brain’s smell center (olfactory bulb).

    3. Weight loss

    Rambunctious sex burns a minimum of two hundred calories, about the same as running fifteen minutes on a treadmill. British researchers determined that the equivalent of six Big Macs can be worked off by having sex three times a week for a year.

  4. Healthier heart

    Women who have more sex have higher levels of estrogen, which protects against heart disease.

  5. Cure for the common cold

    Once-a-week sex produces 30 percent higher levels of immunoglobulin A, which boosts the immune system.

   6. Better bladder control

    Sex strengthens the pelvic muscles that control the flow of urine.

   7. Relief for a stuffy nose

    Really. Sex is a natural antihistamine. It can even help combat hay fever and asthma.

8. Boosts immune system

    Endorphins stimulate immune-system cells that fight disease.

  9. Protection against Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis

    Women who have more sex have higher levels of estrogen, which protects against Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis.

Good Sex, Great Prayers

Pratt has fallen upon strange times. Father Johnstone, who’s served at the helm for the past thirty years, has begun to lose his flock. He dispenses poor marital advice and indulges in the company of lusting widows, both of which he can hardly remember doing. The pastor has never felt more unlike himself, and Madeline Paige—the town’s newest resident—believes she knows the reason. What she reveals will compromise everything Father Johnstone has ever known.
Meanwhile, two men beyond Pratt’s county lines administer their own brand of faith. Billy Burke, the truck-stop preacher, tours the Bible Belt advising blue-collar workers how to properly assault a meth-hooker and the best way to protest gay nightclubs. He’s destined to meet a man that’s been operating out of Las Vegas under many different names, experimenting on a myriad of escorts using Christian lingerie, pious roleplay, and Biblical paraphernalia. Together, they will push the threshold, and the town of Pratt will serve as the battleground for when faiths clash and lives hang in the balance.

• With Good Sex, Great Prayers, Brandon Tietz reveals the danger in believing in things you can never fully understand. The title is a dare, a provocation, a promise—and Tietz delivers with a visceral, faith-based attack that takes your senses and sexuality to the limit. Despite all the intertwined fireworks, the core story is a classic Stephen King setup, as a small town struggles with evil and a normal man has to come to grips with impossible circumstances in order to confront them, resulting in a memorable and unexpected climax (the literary kind, though there’s plenty of the dirty kind throughout). Reading this book cost me 1.2 million ‘Our Fathers’. . . and it was worth it. ~ Fred Venturini, author of The Heart Does Not Grow Back
• Brandon Tietz skewers Christianity so effectively and so severely that he betrays what has to be a genuine affection for his target, but I'm no psychologist. All I know is the contradictions of religion and behavior are essentially all we care about anymore regarding our ancient and ongoing freak show, and realizing this, Tietz has a lot of fun here. I haven't seen take downs like this since that YouTube montage of cats attacking babies. Written with the ardor of a modern-day Philip José Farmer, maybe even reminding this reader a bit of the Jerry Cornelius books from the '70s by Michael Moorcock (yeah, his last name was no accident), this book targets hypocrisy in ever-increasing and extremely satisfying ways. Entertaining, energetic, and like the author's previous book Out of Touch, full of all sorts of good "bad" ideas, as well as profane and colorful sensory overload. And the title isn't false advertising either. In fact, some of the more fascinating biblical passages compete with the author in a game of who can out-crazy the other. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to watch some sacred cows get slaughtered, or romanced, or both. ~ David James Keaton | author of Fish Bites Cop
• Whores, witchcraft, Christian relics, truck-stops, a lonely pastor and his Yorkshire Terrier, a small intolerable town: all ingredients for a wildly good book. If you’ve got the balls to get past the descriptive language and controversial subject matter, you will find one helluva character-driven world so dark, so deep, and yet oh-so uncomfortably familiar. One of the best books I’ve read in some time… ~ Matt Micheli, author of Smut
• Knowing the author as I do, I expected an irreverent romp in the vein of Jesus Angel Garcia’s Badbadbad, perhaps lampooning religion while vacuous sluts violated Commandments under the auspices of some misguided preacher. Instead, the story (though not the writing) is closer to Chuck Wendig territory, with supernatural elements that took me by surprise—which isn’t a spoiler. It’s a “rural fantasy” with a high body—er, bodily fluid count, and the mature evolution I’d hoped for Tietz. A major leap in that regard, really. Its faith and religious elements are treated respectfully, just like in the characters who embody them. If you liked Tietz’s previous work, odds are good you’ll dig this, too, and even if you didn’t, GSGP offers a clean slate. While the voice of the interspersed sermons from its truck-stop preacher will ring familiar to you, the main story I would not have even recognized as being by the same author. It’s mostly written in very straightforward language that I think would appeal to a mass audience. Pun unintended. As always, his characters are distinct and colorful, enhanced by the small town they inhabit and its collective personality. A fickle flock, prone to gossip and groupthink. Just like readers. Give the guy a chance, for Christ’s sake. ~ Gordon Highland, author of Submission Windows
• The title and cover art of Brandon Tietz’s latest novel are attention grabbers, but the book extends far beyond the erotic streak that runs through it. Tietz’s writing has matured immensely since his début novel Out Of Touch. Good Sex, Great Prayers is a long work that echoes the style of early Stephen King: detail oriented rambling, high level of characterization, small town politics, and high stakes horror. Some very memorable characters were born out of this book that will always stick with me: Billy Burke, the truck-stop preacher that could easily be found in the ranks of a more radical Westboro Baptist Church and another character with many different names that could be the love child of Patrick Bateman and James Bond. Paranoia, high tension, steady pacing, twists and turns–this book whet my appetite with this foundation, but blew me away with the originality and strong writing. The author didn’t skimp on his research either. Religion and sex do meet in this book, but not in the way you would expect. The sex is far from pleasant, and so were most of the religious sexual rituals described in some of the chapters. The sex scenes cross in to horror territory. In my opinion, this is the author’s shining achievement. I’m excited to see what he will do with his next novel because it will take a lot to top Good Sex, Great Prayers. Since Brandon Tietz is constantly working out his writing muscles, pumping his prose full of steroids, I have faith that he won’t disappoint. ~ Revolt Daily

A Politically Incorrect Guide To What ‘Good Sex’ Means For Women

It often feels like women are expected to give some extremely technical answer when it comes to what we like — that we have a body that’s more like a piece of software, and it’s all about entering the right code and getting the right result. But the truth is, as different as we all are, the answer is very general. Like anyone else, women like to have orgasms. Women like to feel wanted and cared for and paid attention to. On a more technical level, women like a man who knows how to use his hands, tongue, and penis (often in combinations) to the point of orgasm.
But women don’t always need to have an orgasm. While there are a lot of women who can achieve orgasm, and do it multiple times in one sexual encounter, that doesn’t mean that every woman needs to have one to enjoy sex. There are a lot of girls who feel the pressure to “perform” in relationships because the guy will get weird and down on himself if she doesn’t come screaming. There are many times that I personally have not reached orgasm during sex, but still totally enjoyed the experience. I know that I’m not exceptional in that regard, and it doesn’t mean that the guy isn’t talented.
Now, I know that this shouldn’t be politically incorrect, but somehow it’s become a taboo thing to say because we’re all supposed to be “liberated” women who can engage in just as much casual sex as a guy, and don’t need to attach strings to them emotionally to make them worth it. This is bullshit. I can only go off the girls I know and the sex I’ve had, but I have found in my experience that 90 percent of the time, women need some kind of emotional connection with the guy in order to really enjoy sex. It’s not that the act of sex doesn’t feel good, it’s a combination of a) not knowing someone well enough to feel comfortable explaining what you actually need to get off and b) wanting more out of a sexual encounter than just “put the penis in the vagina, say thank you, leave, perhaps send a muffin basket.” There is a lot of media directed at women that emphasizes the idea that we should and even COULD embrace being “sluts” or have sex “like a guy,” but most girls I know can’t relate to this. For a lot of us, a real connection is synonymous with a decent sexual experience.
But even when you are with someone you know, trust, and are very attracted to, that doesn’t mean that the orgasms are just going to start flying fast and loose. First of all, men need to get over their fear of toys. There are some girls who will always need a vibrator during sex if they want to orgasm, and there’s nothing “wrong” with them. There are other women who enjoy using one from time to time because it makes for a face-melting, unlike-anything-else-you’ve-experienced-in-your-life orgasm when combined with the right guy and the right moves, and they should not feel weird about it. There are women who like using any range of toys that involve the butt, and they are no less wife-able. Guys have this weird paranoia that any toy that comes into the bedroom is going to question their masculinity or “replace” him, but this is absurd. The toy is not in place of him, it’s not a supplement because he inherently isn’t good enough. It has nothing to do with him, and we should let go of the idea that everything regarding a woman’s sexuality does. You have to embrace whatever things enhance sex for you, otherwise you’ll always end up frustrated and not enjoying yourself.
Another thing that has become strangely incorrect to say, even though we all know it’s true, is that a lot of women really like rough sex. It doesn’t mean that they are having rape fantasies every time they close their eyes, but the “no means no” talk definitely doesn’t always apply in the confines of a lot of relationships. We’ve become absolutist about what it means to have consenting or even “feminist” sex (ugh), but a lot of women I know could not be more turned off by the idea of a guy asking politely before doing everything. Obviously this is something that a couple has to establish beforehand, but you are naive if you say that people don’t give off body signals that say more than their words do in the bedroom. A lot of women have said “no” to their boyfriends but leaned into him slightly because they want to be “taken,” and that doesn’t mean he did anything wrong. For many people, politics in the bedroom just aren’t sexy. It’s not how their sexual encounters function on a regular basis. If you’re really that worried about it, get a safe word like an adult.
But the biggest problem generally stems from the fact that guys think they know about women, but most of the time, they really don’t. It’s no secret that porn has ruined men’s vision of what women enjoy during sex, but the problem is that, when they finally get around to having sex, girls are often really bad about telling them what they need to do. (We are betraying each other when we don’t educate men, let’s not do this anymore.) I have been with men who had all the swagger of a true casanova, because they were packing an above-average unit and were pretty good looking — and they were TERRIBLE. They thought that their looks and their dick were enough to get them an A+ in the sex department, as long as they just went really hard and slapped your ass every once in a while. In my experience, uncircumcised dudes have been better off the bat because they are more naturally sensitive and relate to the sometimes-unpleasant intensity that a clit can experience. They know that harder does not always equal better, and that soft, rhythmic motions can often be the key to a mind-blowing orgasm. But there are cut dudes who get it, too. They’ve just been taught right.
The best thing you can teach a guy, if you only impart one piece of advice before passing him off, is that if something is working — DON’T STOP IT. There is nothing worse than guys who get the perfect stroke going and then suddenly change paces or decide to start doing something crazy in an effort to show off. You can craft the perfect man in bed, and will have the kind of sex that makes monogamy seem like something to look forward to and not something that will bore you to tears, but it takes work.
If we can remember these things, and learn to laugh at ourselves (weird things will happen during sex, and there’s nothing worse than feeling like you can’t just roll with the punches), we can have some good sex. But first we really need to know what ‘good sex’ means for women, and it’s something that takes a while to learn. But don’t worry, I believe in you!

Sex superbug

Reports of a new “sex superbug” threatening the U.S. aren’t true, public health officials say, even as they reiterate worries about the rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea.

“The sky is not falling -- yet,” said Dr. Kimberly Workowski, a professor of infectious disease at Emory University in Atlanta.

Several media outlets, including The Associated Press, last week reported that a rare strain of gonorrhea known as HO41 had been detected in Hawaii. That would have raised alarms nationwide, signaling the first domestic sign of a strain that's been found to be resistant to ceftriaxone, an injectable antibiotic that is the last-resort treatment for the sexually transmitted infection.

But the Hawaii cases, first discovered in May 2011, were actually a different strain, H11S8, resistant to a different drug, the antibiotic azithromycin, state health officials confirmed. That’s been a known problem for a while, Workowski added. The AP later withdrew the inaccurate report.

In fact, the HO41 strain hasn’t been detected anywhere in the world since 2009, when it was found in a Japanese sex worker, said Dr. Robert Kirkcaldy, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A handful of other cases that are resistant to ceftriaxone have been detected in other countries, but they’re different isolates, he added.

The false reports have put public health experts in the unusual position of refuting an error while also emphasizing that the threat of untreatable gonorrhea in the U.S. is very real.

“We think that that could be just a matter of a year or two,” said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

Nearly 322,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported in the U.S. in 2011, making it again the second most commonly reported notifiable infection in the nation. Sufferers often show no signs, so the actual number of infections is likely closer to 700,000, according to the CDC.

For decades, gonorrhea was easy to treat with a single dose of antibiotics. But the germ is wily and easily mutable. It developed resistance to successive classes of drugs over the years until the cephalosporins, the current treatment, were all that’s left.

In recent years, though, there have been worrisome signs that the bug is starting to outsmart those drugs, too. Last year, the CDC stopped recommending the oral antibiotic cefixime to treat gonorrhea after surveillance showed it was on the verge of resistance. Now, the recommended treatment is the injectable ceftriaxone along with two other antibiotics, azithromycin or doxycycline.

“The point was to actually preserve the last remaining drug we know is effective,” said Workowski.

The NCSD, led by Smith, has asked Congress for $54 million in emergency appropriations to help bolster the US public health infrastructure that monitors, diagnoses and treats gonorrhea.

“Untreated gonorrhea is a disaster for public health and HIV prevention,” Smith said.

The best prevention against gonorrhea is monogamous sex between uninfected partners, Kirkcaldy said. Diligent use of condoms can also prevent infection, he added.

Condoms should be more available to teens

Although teenagers should be encouraged to abstain from sex, they should also have access to cheap condoms, pediatricians said Monday.

In a policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Adolescence said schools are a good place to make condoms available. To be most effective, they should also be accompanied by sex education programs.

There is still some resistance to making condoms more accessible for young people, researchers said.

"I think one of the main issues is the idea that if you provide condoms and make them accessible, kids will be more likely to have sex. But really, that's not the case," Amy Bleakley said.

"Getting over the perception that giving condoms out will make kids have sex is a real barrier for parents and school administrators," she told Reuters Health.

Bleakley studies teen sexual behavior and reproductive health at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia but wasn't part of the AAP committee.

She said some studies suggest teenagers with access to condoms and comprehensive sex education actually start having sex later than their peers who don't.

Teen birth rates have been declining in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2011, there were 31 births for every 1,000 U.S. women aged 15 to 19.

But that number is still higher than in other developed countries.

Rates of many sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including Chlamydia and gonorrhea, are also highest among teenage and young adult women.

The new policy statement, an update to the AAP's 2001 statement on condom use by adolescents, was published Monday in Pediatrics.

"The biggest difference is that we have more evidence about how effective they are against sexually transmitted infections," Dr. Rebecca O'Brien, the policy statement's lead author, said.

That's especially true for viruses like herpes and HIV, she added.

When it comes to preventing pregnancy, condoms will fail in about 2 percent of couples when used perfectly - all the time, every time - over a year. In reality, the failure rate is about 18 percent during a year of typical use, the committee said.

Using condoms along with another birth control method, such as the Pill or an intrauterine device, may be the best way to prevent pregnancy and STIs.

In its recommendations, the committee said doctors should support consistent and correct use of condoms. They should also encourage parents to discuss condom use and prevention of STIs with their adolescent children.

Sexually active teenagers should have access to free or low-cost condoms, such as in pediatricians' offices and schools, the committee emphasized. At retail stores, condoms sold in multi-packs typically cost 25 to 50 cents each.

"For teens to use them, they have to have them available, and they're not going to come in necessarily asking for them," O'Brien said.

O'Brien specializes in adolescent medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. She said her office has a fishbowl full of condoms.

"Having them available, not just in healthcare settings is really important," she told Reuters Health.

"Have them in the mall. They should be everywhere."

Still, the committee said, abstinence should be encouraged as the best way to prevent STIs and unintended pregnancy.

Bleakley echoed the importance of communication between parents and teenagers.

"Parents really need to be proactive about communicating with their adolescents before their kids engage in sexual activity," she said.

"Really parents who talk to their kids about sexuality, about contraception, about condoms - their kids have much better outcomes," like fewer unintended pregnancies, Bleakley said.

"If you don't feel comfortable talking about these topics, get some help," O'Brien said.

5 things regular couples can learn from pairs skaters

They glide across the ice with beaming smiles and interlaced hands. When it’s going well, everything is in sync. One movement is mirrored by another. Muscle meets grace.

When it’s not? They pick each other up, brush it off and keep smiling.

Just like you and your spouse, right?

More than a few couples watching the Olympics at home are probably wishing their relationships were more like the ones they see on the ice. Some of those pairs are actually dating, some are just good friends, others are brother and sister — but all spend way more time together than most married couples. And yet when one of them falls and ruins the couple’s chance at a medal, they somehow refrain from showing the exasperation mere mortals feel when a partner loads the dishwasher wrong.

Of course, the brave faces they show to millions of fans can hide plenty of turmoil.

“It’s not always as harmonious behind the scenes as what they display on the ice,” said Dr. Mark Aoyagi, Director of Sport & Performance Psychology at the University of Denver. “I would say that they are couples and pairs just like the rest of us.”

And yet many of them stay together for years — 17 and counting for Olympic ice dancers Charlie White and Meryl Davis. So even if you’ll never master a triple axel, there are some lessons regular couples could learn from skating partnerships.

 1. Share a purpose

Skaters point to one thing that really helps them stay in sync: a common goal.

“We have always had very similar mindsets and similar work ethics and we always feel like we’re trying to reach the same goals. So anytime we disagree, it’s always because we’re trying to get to the same place, so that makes it easy to get over,” White told TODAY about his partnership with Davis. “I think we both have very agreeable personalities and a lot of respect for one another so it never escalates.”

Aoyagi, who has worked with regular couples as well as USA Track and Field and professional teams, suggests thinking of your own romantic partnership as a team

“The biggest thing with a team is to have a goal bigger than the team itself,” he said.

For some couples, that bigger purpose might mean religion or raising a family. For others, discovering a shared dream might take more work. “To take it to an extreme level, look at Bill and Melinda Gates. Their mission is to cure the world of malaria, so that gives them a huge purpose. On a smaller scale it could be helping out your community,” he said.

Sharing a dream is what American ice dancer Maia Shibutani credits for working smoothly with her brother and partner, Alex.

“At the end of the day, having the same dream and working together is really what gets us through and only makes us stronger,” she told TODAY from Sochi.

2. Talk, talk, talk

Couples therapists love to talk about communication — and so do couples skaters.

“Having grown up together, we developed our people skills together. We naturally developed a really great level of communication from an early age,” Meryl Davis told TODAY. “Whenever we’re on a different page or have a different vision for what we want to do, we're able to sit down and talk about it efficiently.”

Performing a spin in unison or deciding whether to throw a stunt after a wobble requires a constant back-and-forth, said Angela Aldahwi, who has worked with figure skaters from around the world on their partnerships.

“Normally when they’re in a tight spin, they’re communicating — they learn to communicate without anyone knowing. They learn their body language. The male will know what the female is thinking before she even knows what she’s thinking,” Aldahwi said.

So it bears repeating: Communication is key to any partnership, romantic or otherwise.

“Communicate about as much as you can,” Aoyagi said. And to do it right, he said, know that the burden is on you to get the message across — not on your partner to hear what you meant to say.

3. Forgiveness is divine

So your Valentine’s Day gift is some dumb little thing from CVS? Take a deep breath and imagine if your partner lost you a gold medal.

Forgiveness is key to skating partnerships, where little errors in execution can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

“The tiny mistakes are what cost them the points, and it’s the same in relationships. It’s those tiny things that no one wants to forgive,” Aldahwi said. “You forgot to take out the garbage, you forgot to put the toilet seat down — it’s quite the same. It’s those really tiny things that are hard to forgive.”

She tells skaters never to leave the ice mad, and to remember that life is about moments: If you hate someone this moment, you may still love him the next.

4. Learn to trust

If falling backward into someone’s arms can cause anxiety at trust-building corporate retreats, imagine throwing a double toe-loop first.

Trust is so important to pairs skating that Aldahwi thinks many people just can’t handle it — even if they’re great skaters individually.

“If you don’t have any ability to trust yourself, you can’t trust anyone else,” she said.

Giving up control and surrendering to a partner is hard for anyone, and like anything it takes hard work. Aldahwi works with one 83-year-old couple and still struggling with trust — now complicated by ordinary fears about aging. Every time they get on the ice, she said, he now pledges he’ll come home.

All those hours on the ice have helped Alex Shibutani and his sister know they’re there for each other — even though they both have strong personalities and “butt heads,” as she put it.

“Maia and I know that we can trust each other implicitly out on the ice. It’s a stressful situation, we put a lot of hours, and work and energy into the performance, it’s definitely nerve-racking, but I’m so comfortable knowing that Maia is there going through it with me, and we have this great relationship that’s grown over the past 10 years,” Alex Shibutani said.

5. Define your roles

Men take the lead in pair skating, and even if that sounds a little retrograde for regular couples, sports psychologists say there’s something to learn: In the best partnerships, roles are clearly defined.

For a couple, that might mean that the person who really detests washing dishes can instead take responsibility for the laundry.

Aoyagi has a trick to help team members (and you) appreciate each other: Try switching roles. If he is working with a pro basketball team, for example, he’ll have the point guard play center and the center play point guard.

“On teams and in couples, we have a tendency to overvalue what we do and undervalue what the other person does,” he said.

Switching tasks for a week — trading garbage duty for cooking, for example, or bedtime routines for bathroom cleaning — can give each partner a break and help you appreciate what the other person does.

Parents, get your sexy back

Parents, get your sexy back:

Avoid these 7 'anti-aphrodisiacs'

Good sex improves sleep, provides a total-body release and strengthens your marriage. “It provides so many benefits that make us all-around better mothers and people,” says Logan Levkoff, a sexologist, sex educator, author of "Got Teens?," and most importantly, a mother.

So if sex is so good for us, why does it keep falling off our to-do lists? Sure, some of us are so sleep deprived that just opening our eyes is an act of willpower. But there are many other reasons our intimate lives tend to wane, and most of them are easy to overcome.

Consider the following common anti-aphrodisiacs, and how to avoid them.

Anti-aphrodisiac #1:

Talk nonstop about the kids. “It’s easy to fall into a pattern where you only talk about how many diapers you changed that day,” says Levkoff. “Diapers are the least sexy thing you could ever talk about.”

The fix: Vibrant conversations are like a form of foreplay. So think back to your lives before children. What did you used to talk about? Politics? Pop culture? The news? Push yourself to start conversations that don’t revolve around your children.

Anti-aphrodisiac #2:

Wait for the mood to strike. Sure, that might happen every once in a while, usually at a time when your spouse isn’t around or it’s not convenient.

The fix: For the rest of the time, learn how to cultivate a sense of sexiness, suggests Rachel A. Weinstein, a psychotherapist in Portland, Maine. “Even when you don’t feel loving, act loving,” she says. “Think of love as a verb rather than a noun.” When you act affectionate, for instance, you’ll feel affectionate. When you act in love, you’ll feel in love, and when you act sexy, you’ll feel sexy.

Anti-aphrodisiac #3:

Reserve foreplay for just before the main event. Doing so can make foreplay feel mechanical and about as enticing as painting your bedroom.

The fix: Instead, practice intentional acts of foreplay all day long, suggests Dayna M. Kurtz, a postpartum specialist. Maybe you send playful emails or texts, leave love notes in each other’s bags, or make a point of grabbing one another for a long embrace. “Harken back to the days of your early courtship,” she says. “That worked once before, and it can work for you again.”

Anti-aphrodisiac #4:

Never let strangers watch your kids. That makes it tough to find time for yourself as well as for each other.

The fix: “From the day that my kids were born I realized the best money I could ever spend was on baby sitters,” says Weinstein. Baby sitters are what make date nights possible, which brings us to the next anti-aphrodisiac.

Anti-aphrodisiac #5:

Don’t bother finding time for just each other. All the mom experts interviewed for this story mentioned “date night” as one of the top ways to keep a sex life strong. That doesn’t mean you must do dinner and a movie or even stray far from home.

The fix: Kurtz used to ask the grandparents to watch the baby so she and her husband could walk around the corner to a chocolate bar where they sipped hot chocolate and connected for 45 minutes. Weinstein and her husband sometimes attended yoga classes together. Other ideas: Walk around your neighborhood while holding hands, go to a museum together or just cuddle in a different part of the house.

Where and how you pull off date night is up to you. Just follow this one rule: “No talk about the baby,” says Kurtz.

Anti-aphrodisiac #6:

Don’t bother finding time for yourself, either. That’s a recipe for fatigue, resentment and boredom, none of which will perk up your bedroom life.

The fix: “Getting dressed up and going out with girlfriends allows you to come home feeling great, and that translates to better intimacy,” says Levkoff. Other just-for-you ideas: Locking yourself in the bathroom and taking a long bath, doing yoga or another form of exercise without the kids, going to a library or bookstore so you can read without interruption.

Anti-aphrodisiac #7:

Reserve intimacy only for your bedroom. That way the two-and-a-half-foot-long human propeller who continually sneaks into your bed can become a wedge that prevents you from touching one another.

The fix: If you’ve got a kid in your bed, consider getting out of bed and going somewhere else for a short rendezvous.

Not Just Good But Good For You

Okay, so maybe there’s some wishful thinking going on — the science isn’t exactly iron-clad — but evidence is accumulating that the more sex you have, the better off you are.

There is one caveat, though. “We do not have good data to show a direct connection [to all-around good health]," says Jennifer Bass, the head of information services at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington, Ind. "We know that healthier people have more sexual activity. But we do not know which comes first. Does the good health make you more willing to have sex, or does the sex have a positive impact?”

And you dirty girrrls and Don Juans should know that the assumed health benefits of sex are generally thought to accrue to people in loving, monogamous relationships or those flying solo. Risky sex with lots of partners will probably do more harm than good.

But while researchers try to nail down the impact on overall health, data is mounting when it comes to some specifics. Here are several potential benefits:

1. Easing depression and stress

Bass says this is pretty definite. “The release from orgasm does much to calm people. It helps with sleep, and that is whether we talk about solo sex or sex with a partner,” she says.

But wait, there’s more. A recent study of college students at the State University of New York in Albany suggests that semen acts as an antidepressant. Females in the study who were having sex without condoms (see safe sex caution, above) had fewer signs of depression than women who used condoms or abstained from sex.

“These data are consistent with the possibility that semen may antagonize depressive symptoms,” the authors wrote, “and evidence which shows that the vagina absorbs a number of components of semen that can be detected in the bloodstream within a few hours of administration.”

I kid you not, ladies. Semen is good stuff. It gives a shot of zinc, calcium, potassium, fructose, proteins -- a veritable cornucopia of vitality!

2. Relieving pain

Orgasm is a powerful pain-killer. Oxytocin, a natural chemical in the body that surges before and during climax, gets some of the credit, along with a couple of other compounds like endorphins.

According to a study by Beverly Whipple, professor emeritus at Rutgers University and a famed sexologist and author, when women masturbated to orgasm “the pain tolerance threshold and pain detection threshold increased significantly by 74.6 percent and 106.7 percent respectively.”

3. Boosting cardio health

I can’t resist another plug for semen. It’s possible that male goo can lower blood pressure. Another recent study found that women who gave their men oral sex, and swallowed, had a lower risk of preeclampsia, the dangerously high blood pressure that sometimes accompanies pregnancy.

No, I’m not making this up. “The present study shows that oral sex and swallowing sperm is correlated with a diminished occurrence of preeclampsia,” said the Dutch authors.

See? We told you it was good for you.

There have been other studies showing that sex lowers blood pressure, and might even protect against strokes because of its stress-relieving ability.

But when we think of sex and the cardio system, we tend to think of poor old Nelson Rockefeller having a heart attack in flagrante delicto. Well, not only does that hardly ever happen, but sex might actually protect the heart. A 2002 report from a large British population of men said “some protection from fatal coronary events may be an added bonus” of frequent sexual intercourse.

4. Countering prostate cancer

Over the past few years, several journals have published studies showing that the more ejaculations the better.

Now the Journal of the American Medical Association, no less, has reported that “high ejaculation frequency was related to decreased risk of total prostate cancer.” It doesn’t matter how a man climaxes -- intercourse or masturbation. So next time he says, “Really, honey, it’s therapy,” he could be telling the truth.

5. Healing wounds

Some evidence suggests sex can be rejuvenating to the point of helping wounds to heal faster. Several experiments have shown that oxytocin can help even stubborn sores, like those suffered by diabetics, to heal by regenerating certain cells.

6. Fighting aging

Maybe it’s the rejuvenation, maybe the happiness, maybe all of the above. One thing’s for sure: “Use it or lose it” is literally true. For example, postmenopausal women often suffer from “vaginal atrophy,” which is what it sounds like and can lead to all sorts of complications like urinary tract infections. What’s one way to prevent it? More intercourse.

Sex is a form of exercise, after all, and like all exercise, it burns calories and can help battle the onslaught of the years. In fact, nursing home experts say they wish oldsters would have more sex.

Can sex really make you live longer? Maybe. In the same population of British men I cited earlier, researchers found a 50 percent reduction in overall mortality in the group of men who said they had the most orgasms. There was a dose response: the more orgasms, the better.

Of course, as Kinsey’s Bass reminds us, it could be that these blokes were just healthier and felt like having sex more often. But since there’s no evidence that lots of sex is bad for you, what have you got to lose?