Japanese study finds that interest in male sex is associated with risk of premature death

A recent­ly pub­lished study found that lack of sex­u­al inter­est may indi­cate an increased risk of pre­ma­ture death among men liv­ing in Japan.

The exact rela­tion­ship between mor­tal­i­ty and libido remains to be worked out by researchers, but spec­u­late that low libido may be a more vis­i­ble sign under­ly­ing a more sub­tle health problem.

The data came from 20,969 peo­ple aged 40 and over (8,558 men and 12,411 women) who under­went annu­al health checks for six years in Yam­a­ga­ta Pre­fec­ture, a pre­fec­ture famous for its hot springs, tem­ples and nat­ur­al beauty.

A research team from Yam­a­ga­ta Uni­ver­si­ty ana­lyzed sub­jects’ self-report­ed lev­els of sex­u­al inter­est in an ini­tial ques­tion­naire and a fol­low-up sur­vey sev­er­al years lat­er. Of the orig­i­nal 20,969 sub­jects, 503 died dur­ing that time.

Researchers found sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er can­cer and all-cause mor­tal­i­ty among men who report­ed no sex­u­al interest.

This asso­ci­a­tion per­sist­ed after adjust­ing for fac­tors such as age, hyper­ten­sion, dia­betes, smok­ing, alco­hol con­sump­tion, BMI, edu­ca­tion, mar­i­tal sta­tus, fre­quen­cy of laugh­ter, and psy­cho­log­i­cal distress.

“Sex­u­al activ­i­ty and sat­is­fac­tion are believed to be ben­e­fi­cial for psy­cho­log­i­cal health and well-being in old­er age groups, but the rela­tion­ship between sex­u­al inter­est and longevi­ty has not been inves­ti­gat­ed,” the researchers wrote. there is

“This study is the first to prospec­tive­ly exam­ine the asso­ci­a­tion between sex­u­al inter­est and all-cause, car­dio­vas­cu­lar, and can­cer mor­tal­i­ty in a com­mu­ni­ty population.”

How­ev­er, there was no sig­nif­i­cant asso­ci­a­tion between decreased libido and mor­tal­i­ty, as was the case in men.

Since this is a pure­ly obser­va­tion­al study, it is not pos­si­ble to con­clude which is the cause and which is the effect.

Low sex­u­al inter­est in men may be linked to an “unhealthy lifestyle,” sci­en­tists say.

“Fur­ther­more, giv­en that sex­u­al inter­est is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors, “lack of inter­est may influ­ence a vari­ety of inflam­ma­to­ry, neu­roen­docrine and immune respons­es,” they wrote.