One of the most obvious benefits of sex is its ability to inhibit and relieve pain.  Sex helps generate the hormone oxytocin, which in turn releases endorphins, which perform a similar function to morphine!  This means having sex is kind of like grabbing a generic valium off the shelf.  The more sex you have, the more oxytocin is generated, culminating in an orgasm, which makes you pretty much oblivious to any pain you felt previously.

What this means, however, is that you’ve got to make it worth her while.  Most women need an orgasm to enjoy to full pain relieving benefits of sex.  Not that it’ll take much convincing.

Sex is also great for reducing stress.  If you’ve had a stressful day (or week, or month), nothing melts away all that pent up frustration like a solid orgasm.  The post-coital wave of relaxation that comes over you is also proven to help you fall asleep, and stay asleep – a good way to treat insomnia!

Probably the best argument you can use on a spouse who’s weight conscious (and who isn’t, these days?) is that fact that sex is a proven weight loss technique.  A half hour session in the sack three times a week can burn up to 500 calories!  And if you add one more time over the weekend where you get a little more athletic and go a little longer, your sex life could add up to a solid 750 calories burned a week.  That’s almost 40,000 calories burned a year, before you even touch the treadmill!

Endurance:

Good endurance is critical for making sessions of love last with greater vigor.  Try to get in for a cardio workout three to five days a week for at least 20 to 30 minutes at a time.  Remember, vigorous sports and exercise get your heart rate and temperature up and will give you that extra boost of energy and endorphins.  Plus, aerobic exercise also flushes away stress and reduces anxiety, burns fat and rejuvenates the body, priming you for sex.

Strength Training:

Holding yourself in certain positions in bed requires muscle power.  Naturally, lifting weights will ensure the right muscles work well when you need them to. Work on toning the upper and lower body, and you’ll prevent pain and cramping at inconvenient moments too.

Flexibility:

Needing for getting in those cool positions, flexibility makes you more limber, and also increases blood flow and circulation, which stimulates nerve endings all over.

Kegel exercises:

Used by women for years to get back in shape after birth, Kegels are not just for women anymore.  Men can use this exercise too, to delay ejaculation by contracting the pubococcygeal (PC) muscles just before orgasm, then fully relaxing them.

How to do Kegels:

Contract PC muscles by squeezing, as if stopping urine, and hold for at least 2-3 seconds per squeeze, inhaling as you squeeze each time and relax your muscles completely between each contraction. To begin with, start with just 10 or 20 squeezes; Kegels can be practiced nearly anytime and in any place.  Perform them throughout the day until you can do at least 100 to 200 each day and after you get the hang of them, they can stimulate erotic feelings.

Other men with decreased libido take Indian Ginseng, a tonic herb that is capable of strengthening the body and is even used by some as an aphrodisiac, for libido increase .   Believe it or not, the amino acid, L-Arginine is used by the body to create nitric oxide, the chemical that relaxes the blood vessels, in order to diminish erectile dysfunction.

L-Arginine is found in food sources such as meat, dairy products, poultry and fish.  Some men suffering from ED often have a deficiency of the mineral zinc and a simple supplement of 15-30 mg daily can help to improve their symptoms.  But before considering adding supplements and medications, men with ED should consider the research which shows that those men who exercise regularly are less likely to develop impotence as they age.  Researchers at the New England Research Institutes of Watertown, Mass., studied 593 men, ages 40 to 70, and found that men who burned at least 200 calories a day, were less likely to develop ED than sedentary men, so even minimal exercise is helpful when it comes to maintaining a healthy sex life.

Now, there are certain activities are believed to modify hippocampus size in humans; previous studies also have found that the hippocampus shrinks with age and coincides with cognitive declines at a rate that differs from person to person.  In addition, earlier studies have shown that exercise increases hippocampus size and spatial memory in rodents.  But most amazing is this new Hippocampus study which is the first to demonstrate that exercise can affect hippocampus size and memory in humans.  The researchers found a significant association between an individual’s fitness and his or her performance on certain spatial memory tests.  This is pretty clinically significant because it supports the idea that your lifestyle choices and behaviors may influence brain shrinkage in old age—keeping you independent for longer!  So folks, we shouldn’t have to hear it from anyone again, we just need to stay moving on a regular basis for optimal health, all around.