Is that something you should really be worried about?

We are constantly being told the exercise is good for the heart however if you already have a heart condition should you exercise and more importantly should you be having sex? There are lots of stories about men who have heart attacks when they are actually in the process of having sex and while many of them are probably just urban legends there is no doubt that the strain and stress put on the heart muscle during sex is considerable.

Research done by Harvard University as part of the Harvard Mens Health Watch claims that while sex could increase the danger it is only minimal and possibly something which you could really ignore. For example the risk of a healthy 50 year old man having a heart attack over the course of any particular hour is about one in a million, and according to the Harvard estimates sexual activity will double this risk. Is that something you should really be worried about?

The researchers said that for men who suffered from heart disease the risk was tenfold higher which still only increases the risk to one in 50,000. Another thing which the researchers did was compare the blood pressure and heart rates of men doing exercise on a treadmill and having sex.  They noted that the heart rates were on average 25 percent higher and blood pressure was on average 20 percent higher on the treadmill, therefore suggesting that having sex was a more leisurely activity.

If we could butt in here and give you our own opinions from Ukmedix News we would just like to point out that sex has been shown on numerous occasions to significantly reduce stress and there is loads of evidence to show the correlation between stress and heart attacks. Interestingly, [and this should be a topic of conversation among couples] the researchers observed that for women sex was much less of a workout for them compared to men, basically showing that men do most of the work in bed!

Other research projects which we have seen at Ukmedix News show that men who are sexually active tend to have better health in general, a higher level of fitness and therefore healthier hearts. It may be that the reason that they are having sex is because they are healthy but it could also be that the sex is making them healthy too.

The researchers of the Harvard study said that they had found no evidence that the use of Viagra, Cialis or Levitra increased the heart risk but warned that they were contraindicated with certain blood pressure medication such as nitrates.