Drop Dead Healthy

Graham was on the extreme end, but he represents a prevalent strain of sexaphobic thinking. A friend gave me a 1901 book called What a Man of Forty-five Ought to Know. It was a gag gift (I’m approaching forty-five, though not there yet), but it was a fascinating read. The book soberly warns that middle-aged men will “find that the act of coition is generally followed by a period of lassitude or weariness more pronounced and more prolonged than anything he has previously experienced. Nature is thus sounding her warnings and admonishing the individual of the importance of the utmost care in the use of a secretion which can now ill be spared, and which is of utmost importance in vitalizing every department of the physical economy.” I’m pretty sure this means stop humping.

On the other hand, history is filled with experts who argued sex is a key to robust health. The Taoists in the eleventh century believed sex resulted in the joining of the Energy, and could even result in immortality—especially if the men didn’t ejaculate. Frankly, that seems a high price.

Other experts have said it’s dangerous not to have an orgasm, especially for women. Physicians from the time of the ancient Greeks right on up to the 1950s believed that noxious fluids built up inside unmarried women, causing “hysteria.” The solution was a vigorous between-the-legs massage. In fact, as Mary Roach points out in her excellent book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, the earliest vibrators were sold not to women but to doctors to help relieve them of their manual labor.

Also on the pro-sex side: noted medical theorist Ernest Borgnine. I was watching the ninety-four-year-old Poseidon Adventure actor on a morning talk show, and the host asked him the secret to his long life. He replied: “I masturbate a lot.” So there you go. QED.

Recent science has come down on the side of sex as healthy. For the most part, that is. It has to be the right kind of sex: consensual, of course. And not so acrobatic that it results in broken body parts (penis fractures occur in about a thousand energetic men a year in the United States). And if you’re out of shape, there’s a slightly higher risk of heart attack in the hours after sex.

But overall, frequent orgasms have multiple health benefits. Among them, according to Rutgers University researchers: lower stress, and decreased rates of heart disease, breast cancer, and endometriosis. A study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that men who ejaculated twenty-one or more times a month had a lower prostate cancer risk.

Also longevity. One British study concluded that two or more orgasms per week cut your risk of dying from heart disease in half. Another claims that Protestant ministers live longer than Catholic priests. Of course, it’s always best to take epidemiological studies like this with a grain of Himalayan crystal salt. (Also, no disrespect to Dr. Borgnine, but most of the data focus on two-person sex.)

Sex almost certainly helps a relationship. When you have an orgasm, your brain pumps out the attachment chemical oxytocin, heightening feelings of closeness. In fact, semen itself contains oxytocin, which is thought to have an effect on women’s postcoital moods.

Oh, and don’t forget about curing hiccups. In Bonk, Roach cites a report in the journal Canadian Family Physician called “Sexual Intercourse as a Potential Treatment for Intractable Hiccups.” It was a case study of an Israeli man whose four-day hiccup spree vanished after sex with his wife.

And if that’s not enough, sex is just plain good exercise. There have been a handful—not a lot—of studies on the aerobic benefits of bedroom behavior. In one study, ten married couples tested out different positions. It wasn’t the most romantic of settings, unless you happen to be a fan of Mistress Roxy’s Dungeon Club. The husbands were covered with electrodes and kiss-preventing face masks to measure their breathing rates. Regardless, the conclusion was that, yes, sex does provide moderate exercise, and that the man-on-top missionary position burned the most calories for men. (The women’s exertions, unfairly enough, went unmeasured.)

Which brings me to the practical question: In terms of optimum health, how often should I be engaging in said horizontal workout? I asked Dr. Debra Herbenick of the Kinsey Institute. She said it’s hard to say. There’s no scientific consensus.

But it does seem that this is one area where more is almost surely better, at least up to a point.

Julie doesn’t want me saying exactly how often we have sex. That is probably just as well. But she will let me say that it’s somewhere below the U.S. average, which, according to a 2001 survey, is 132 times per year. However, it’s above the Japanese average, which is 37 times per year. (And yet Japan has a high percentage of centenarians, so an idle libido isn’t necessarily a death sentence.)

Early on in this project, I proposed an every-night schedule for the book, a Hail Mary that, frankly, neither of us wanted. So that went nowhere. But for the sake of health, I should at least try to nudge us up to the putative U.S. average.

So on a Thursday night, I start Project Libido.

I’ve been researching aphrodisiacs in an effort to enlist some chemical help and I’ve prepared a romantic meal for our special night:

Brazil nuts

celery and peanut butter

red ginseng

asparagus

walnuts

All are alleged to boost the sex drive, some with bioflavonoids to open up the blood vessels, others by raising testosterone, and still others by mimicking pheromones.

I laid them all out on a tray and brought them to Julie while she was watching Mad Men. A devoted wife, Julie took a bite out of each one, save the peanut butter (she hates it). She continues watching Mad Men. It’s been ten minutes, and so far she hasn’t ripped off her bra and jumped on top of me.

After the show, we go to the bedroom. I’ve brought a water mister and I spritz the air in our bedroom with a special concoction.

“What’s in that?” asks Julie.

“This scent causes the biggest increase in blood flow to women’s privates, according to one study.”

Julie sniffs the air. “I can’t place it.”

“Good and Plenty and cucumber,” I say.

Earlier, I’d soaked five pieces of the candy and three slices of cucumber in a glass of water, then poured it into the sprayer.

“Someone actually tested that? Good and Plenty and cucumber? That’s the combination they came up with?” she asks.

“That’s what the science says.”

“What about Mike and Ike and turnips?”

“It’s under review.”

She’s not annoyed, just incredulous. Unfortunately, Julie might be right to be a little skeptical. When I later asked Rockefeller University odor researcher Leslie Vosshall about it, she said, “Ah, the famous Good and Plenty study. Well, it hasn’t been replicated. It’s not one of the most pressing issues in biomedical research.”

Here’s the sad news. Almost all existing aphrodisiacs are scientifically dubious. There’s a whiff of evidence that daily ingestion of red ginseng can boost libido a bit. One meta-analysis says that maca powder and saffron might also be effective. But overall, science hasn’t yet cracked the code. They may soon. But not yet. Earlier this week, I’d e-mailed Dr. Helen Fisher for aphrodisiac advice. Fisher is a Rutgers professor, the author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, and the expert on this topic. She wrote me back:

There are only a couple true aphrodisiacs: testosterone, and perhaps dopamine.

There is no evidence at all that any particular food or liquor stimulates sex drive. But testosterone does. This is the hormone of sexual desire. And these days, it is available by injection, patch, or cream.

Doctors often prescribe a dopamine agonist instead, though. Dopamine [a neurochemical associated with pleasure] does seem to stimulate sexual desire, but not directly. It probably does it by triggering the activity of testosterone, as these two chemical systems tend to stimulate each other.

So if you are really thinking of a “natural aphrodisiac,” go do something thrilling together. Novelty, danger, and excitement all drive up dopamine in the brain.

Skip the food and take a vacation together to somewhere new. The novelty will do what oysters and peanut butter never will.

A vacation isn’t on the horizon right now, not with the kids anchoring us to the apartment. So my brainstorm? Julie loves roller coasters. Roller coasters are exciting. The iPhone has a remarkably lifelike roller-coaster game.

When I show her the iPhone app, Julie gives me a look that says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I appreciate the thought, but that’s not going to work, so you can put it away now.” I put it away.

“Okay, then. Let’s go burn some calories,” I tell Julie.

I know. Not exactly the eighteenth sonnet.

But I wanted to remind Julie that sex can be legitimate exercise. I even had the data to back it up. Two weeks ago, I bought a gadget called a Fitbit—a black, french-fry-size, motion-sensor device you clip to your waistband. It links to the Internet and keeps track of calories you expend.

To help with the calculations, Fitbit’s website has a list of activities along with the estimated calories burned per hour. It’s a long list. We’re not just talking about walking, running, and jumping rope. They’ve listed any activity you can think of.

Vacuuming? That’s 238 calories per hour.

Shuffleboard? 204 calories.

Cooking Indian bread on an outside stove? Also 204 calories per hour.

I show the printout to Julie, as we sit on the bed. She reads:

Sexual activity—passive, light effort, kissing, hugging—68 calories.

Sexual activity—general, moderate effort—88.

Sexual activity—active, vigorous effort—102 calories per hour.

“Moderate effort sounds good,” says Julie.

I agree. We’re not vigorous-effort types anymore.

Besides, she points out, if we want a workout afterward, we can always groom a horse (408 calories an hour).

I won’t go into detail about our exercise session, but suffice it to say, we fell pretty far short of the hour mark. So depending on how much you believe Fitbit’s stats—which, frankly, seem a tad low to me—we didn’t break 88 calories.

Even sadder: The following month—despite the big plans and the dopamine and the scent of Good & Plenty—Julie and I fell back into our old subaverage schedule. We’re just not motivated enough. I pledge to seek professional help. Before the end of the project, I plan to see a urologist.

Checkup: Month 7

Weight: 158

Blood pressure: 110/70

Cans of steel-cut oatmeal consumed this year: 11

Average hours per day wearing noise-canceling earphones: 10

Pounds lifted on squat machine (15 reps): 150

To paraphrase James Brown, I feel moderately good. Every day, I look at the digitally aged photo of myself and try to honor Old A.J. I’m eating a little better. The cravings for sugar and salt still wash over me, but they’re weakening. (And because I’ve weaned myself from salt, my palate has changed. It’s more sensitive. When I break down and have a potato chip, the saltiness is overwhelming, as if I’m emptying a shaker on my tongue.)

At the gym, Tony tries to work me hard enough to make my glasses steam up. “That was a lens fogger,” he’ll say proudly, after a set of fifty squats.

I’m trying, with moderate success, to control my stress. So I’m self-massaging every day. That is not a euphemism. Studies show that rubbing your own shoulders decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So I rub myself while riding the bus or reading the paper.

My family, though, is becoming impatient with the project. My sons are annoyed that I won’t eat cupcakes with them at birthday parties, opting instead for a plastic bag of carrots. They keep asking me why it’s so important to me that I be healthy.

“It’s so I don’t get sick,” I tell them one day as I spoon my steel-cut oatmeal. “So I can stay around and be with you for a long, long time.”

“So you don’t die?” says Lucas.

“Right. So I don’t die.”

I had been avoiding the D-word. But the kids cut right to it. My boys are well aware of death. My twins finish every story they make up with the same phrase: “Then everyone died. The end.”

It works no matter the subject. “And the octopus went to the circus. He saw the lions and tigers and had some cotton candy. Then everyone died. The end.” Or else, “Curious George climbed up the tree to get his kite. He got his kite. Then everyone died. The end.”

I don’t think they are being macabre. They are just looking for a tidy way to wrap up a complicated plot. It’s effective, if a tad deus ex machina.

At the same time, they are starting to get concerned about this notion of death.

A few days ago, Lucas told me, “When I grow up, I want to be a character in a book so that I never die.” That broke my heart, and made me want to warn him to avoid his own stories.

Around the same time, Zane begged me to put him on my shoulders so he could touch the ceiling in every room of our apartment. I told him I couldn’t do it right then, but I would later that evening when I got home. “But what if you die before you get home?” he asked. I put him on my shoulders. He’s a smart negotiator, and I’m a sucker.

Today, over our Sunday Chinese dinner (which I don’t eat, of course), Zane asked me the dreaded question about what happens to people after they die.

What do I say? I don’t want to patronize them and say we’ll all go to heaven, since I remain agnostic about an afterlife. But I don’t want to stress the possibility of a Yawning Void of Nothingness. That could devastate them. A friend of ours has a six-year-old son suffering through a premidlife crisis about his impending lack of existence, saying things like “I know God doesn’t exist because He doesn’t talk to me. So when I die, I’ll be nothing. And I don’t want to be nothing.” Long crying jags follow.

I decided that admitting my ignorance was the best way to go.

“No one’s sure what happens. Some people think it’s like you go to sleep for a long time, but you don’t dream.”

They seem to be processing that one.

“And some people think we go somewhere called ‘heaven,’ which is a wonderful place.”

“I hope that one is true,” says Julie.

“And some people think we won’t ever die.”

Julie shoots me a look.

“There’s a man named Aubrey de Grey, and he’s got a looong beard.” I draw my hand from my chin down to my stomach. “And he’s a scientist. And he says that soon we will be able to keep our cells from getting old. Cells are tiny pieces of us and they sometimes make garbage, and we just have to clean up the garbage. And maybe that would make us live forever.”

“Like infinity years?” asks Jasper.

“Right,” I say. “And there’s another scientist named Ray Kurzweil who thinks we may be able to upload our brains into a computer and live forever that way.”

“But we don’t have to worry about any of this for a long time,” says Julie.

Julie thinks I’m doing crazy talk. She tells me so later: “You’re giving them false hope. You’re feeding their delusions of immortality.” Maybe she’s right. But I’ve been steeping myself in books about the life extension movement. I’ve been reading about telomeres and sirtuins. I’ve read how some scientists think the humble lobster may hold some clues to immortality, since aging doesn’t inflict damage on lobster cells. If not for outside forces like disease and predators, the average lobster might just keep on crawling along the bottom of the ocean for centuries.

The science of indefinite life extension isn’t totally fringe anymore. It’s not like Yeti or cold fusion. It’s only partially fringe. So what’s wrong with a little happily-ever-after, especially if it’s got a little cutting-edge medical theory behind it?