Keep it Up, Chaps!

More and better sex for 70-year-olds

Adam Cresswell, Health editor | July 10, 2008

HITTING 70 usually means you start losing things, such as your house keys, eyesight or bladder control. But it seems a mind-blowing sex life need not be among them.

Sex at 70 is suddenly swinging, and many more 70-year-olds - men and women - are sexually active compared with septuagenarians in previous decades, researchers have found.

Not only are they more likely to have sex at least once a week, they are also much more likely to report high rates of satisfaction.

Men in their eighth decade are less likely to have erectile dysfunction than men the same age 30 years ago, while women aged 70 are much more likely to report having orgasms.

Researchers compared findings from four samples of 70-year-old residents of the southern Swedish city of Gothenburg, who were questioned about their sex lives in 1971-72, 1976-77, 1992-93 and 2000-01.

The responses from the four groups, totalling more than 1500 people, showed that over the 30-year period, the proportion of married 70-year-old men reporting sexual intercourse in the past year increased from 52 to 68 per cent, while for married women, the figure increased from 38 to 56 per cent.

Among unmarried men and women, the proportion rose from 30 to 54 per cent for men, and from 0.8 to 12 per cent among women.

Those reporting sex at least weekly rose from 10 to 31 per cent among both married and unmarried men, and from 9 to 26per cent among all women.

The proportion of men reporting high satisfaction with their sex lives rose from 58 per cent in 1976-77 to 71 per cent in 2000-01. Among women, the satisfaction rating rose from 41 to 62 per cent.

Men were much less likely to report being impotent (down from 18 to 8 per cent), while women were more likely to say they "always or usually" had an orgasm (up from 59 to 83 per cent).

The findings were published online yesterday by the British Medical Journal. Australian experts said that far from being a Swedish phenomenon, pensioner sex was on the rise in this country also.

Serena Cauchi, a Sydney-based clinical psychologist and sex therapist, said the advent in 1998 of drugs such as Viagra, which treat male impotence, had allowed sexual intercourse between couples who previously would have found it impossible.