A study conducted on almost 3,000 women in the United States,
has revealed that women who have sexual activity weekly or more frequently -
including intercourse, oral sex, sexual touching or self-stimulation are 28%
less likely to experience menopause at any given age than women who said they
had sex less than once a month.
Megan Arnot, a PhD candidate at University College London
(UCL) who co-led the research said it is pointing to a form of biological
energy trade-off. She also inferred that the findings backed the idea of human
menopause originally evolving to reduce reproductive conflict between
generations of females and to allow older women increase their fitness through
investing in their grandchildren.
Though Arnot admitted that women are more susceptible to
disease during ovulation because their immune systems are depressed at that
time, she however added that the apparent "biological trade-off" is
that it would be pointlessly costly to invest energy in the ovulation process
if a woman is having little or no sex and is hence unlikely to fall pregnant,
which is why the body diverts energy resources into protecting and caring for
existing offspring.
She said;
"If a woman is not having sex, and there is no chance
of pregnancy, then the body 'chooses' not to invest in ovulation, as it would
be pointless.
"The menopause is, of course, an inevitability for
women, and there is no behavioural intervention that will prevent reproductive
cessation," said Ruth Mace, a professor of anthropology at UCL who worked
on the study with Arnot.
"Nonetheless, these results are an initial indication
that menopause timing may be adaptive in response to the likelihood of becoming
pregnant."
Reuters reported that
the research which was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, was
based on data from the US Study of Women's Health Across the Nation also known
as the SWAN study.
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