Voyeurism Not Sex Prevents Cancer In The Over 50s
CAN lots of sex reduce the risk of prostate cancer? The NHS asks:
Could sex with 21 women ‘cut prostate risk’?
The Telegraph says it could:
Sex with 21 women lowers risk of prostate cancer, academics find
The University of Montreal has found that men who had sex with more than 20 women lower their prostate cancer risk
Is it true?
The Prostate Cancer Foundation says:
High levels of sexual activity or frequent ejaculation have been rumored to increase prostate cancer risk. This is untrue. In fact, studies show that men who report more frequent ejaculations may have a lower risk of developing prostate cancer.
Having a vasectomy was originally thought to increase a man’s risk, but this has since been disproven.
It might not be sex but the exercise that helps. Prostate Cancer UK:
Exercising regularly throughout your life helps you stay healthy. It can help you keep to a healthy weight and may also help to lower your risk of prostate cancer and other health problems. The more physical activity you do, and the more vigorous the activity, the lower your risk of prostate cancer. But even a little is better than none at all.
Try these tips to help you do enough physical activity.
Find a sport or activity you enjoy.
You might find it more fun to exercise in a group or get outdoors.
Aim to do 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week – enough to get out of breath, such as brisk walking, cycling or swimming.
Or you could do 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week, such as running, tennis or football.
You could also try a combination of moderate and vigorous exercise.
Does dogging prevent prostate cancer?
What about voyeurism?
This site reported in 2009:
Frequent masturbation in young men is linked to higher risk of early prostate cancer, but it lowers prostate cancer risk for men in their 50s, a study shows.
High levels of male sex hormones, or androgens, may increase a man’s risk of prostate cancer. But different studies of this question, done in different ways, have reached different conclusions.
To look at the question in a new way, a team of researchers at England’s University of Nottingham looked at whether men with more intense sex drives were at higher risk of prostate cancer.
Polyxeni Dimitropoulou, PhD; Rosalind Eeles, PhD, FRCP; and Kenneth R. Muir, PhD, obtained detailed sexual histories from 840 men. About half the men got prostate cancer by age 60, and about half did not have cancer.
The findings were surprising. Sexual intercourse did not affect prostate cancer risk. But frequent masturbation did — in different ways, at different times of life.
“Frequent masturbation during men’s 20s and 30s increased their risk of prostate cancer,” Dimitropoulou tells WebMD. “But men in their 50s who masturbated frequently had decreased risk.”
Of course, masturbation frequency is relative.
For men in their 20s, “frequent masturbation” was two to seven times per week. Compared to same-age men who reported masturbating less than once per month, 20-something frequent masturbators had a 79% higher risk of prostate cancer by age 60.
For men in their 50s, “frequent masturbation” was one or more times per week. Compared to same-age men who reported never masturbating, 50-something frequent masturbators had a 70% lower risk of prostate cancer.
The NHS takles a look at that headline-making report:
The study was carried out by researchers from the Université du Québec, the University of Montreal and the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre. It was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society, the Cancer Research Society, the Fonds de la recherche du Québec-Santé (FRQS), the FRQS-RRSE, and the Ministére du Développement économique, de l’Innovation et de l’Exportation du Québec.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Cancer Epidemiology.
The media coverage of this story was almost universally poor, with news articles reporting non-significant findings or omitting the fact that some associations were only found in a sub-type of prostate cancer, or omitting the comparator.For example, The Independent, the Mail Online and the Telegraph report that men who slept with more than 20 women were 19% less likely to develop an aggressive type of cancer than those who had only one female sexual partner, whereas this association was actually not statistically significant.
They go on to say that having more than 20 male partners doubled the risk of prostate cancer. In the Mail and Telegraph, this is compared to men who had never slept with a man. This is again incorrect. Having more than 20 male partners compared to having one was associated with an increased risk of less-aggressive prostate cancer, but it was not significantly associated with prostate cancer risk overall or risk of aggressive prostate cancer. Having more than 20 male partners compared to only having female partners was not significantly associated with any type of prostate cancer.
Astonishingly, according to a new study by the University of Montreal, it turns out that men who have had more than 20 lovers have a reduction in diagnosis rates of 28 per cent — a pretty significant number. Virgins, meanwhile, have twice the risk of the sexually experienced.
Apparently it’s something to do with “reducing the concentrations of cancer causing substances in the prostatic fluid” and “fewer crystal-like structures in the prostate that have been associated with prostate cancer”, but before I join a cohort of men in late middle age heading down to the nightclub in a pair of tight trousers (also rumoured to cause problems in the prostate department) in the hope of making up for lost time and protecting their health simultaneously (“But darling, it’s just a matter of maintaining a healthy lifestyle”), I note that there are a few important qualifications to this startling new statistic.
First, as far as I can make out, it seems to be related to the number of times that men ejaculate rather than the number of times that men have sex. One Australian study of 2,338 subjects has shown that the men who masturbated five or more times a week were 34 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer by the age 70 than those who were less hands-on. This is an even better statistic than the survival rates for the promiscuous and it’s a lot less trouble and available, on the whole.
Of course, you will go blind…
Posted: 30th, October 2014 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
