Sex, Health & Happiness - "Things are looking UP" Deborah Kotz
Comedian George Burns once cracked that "sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope." Clearly, he was speaking for his own generation. Today's seniors, their sex lives liberated long ago by one pill and extended indefinitely by another, have every intention of staying in the game. The scope of the sexual shifts launched by Viagra a decade ago--perhaps as monumental as those triggered by the birth control pill--is now becoming apparent. A July study published in the British Medical Journal found that considerably more 70-year-olds are enjoying sex regularly than 30 years ago: 57 percent of men and 52 percent of women today versus 40 percent and 35 percent back then. (And that's before the baby boomers arrive with their outsize expectations.)
About one quarter of those ages 75 to 85 are now sexually active, according to recent research from the University of Chicago. "We used to think seniors didn't have sexuality at all," says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and author of Why We Love.
"Viagra has caused many older people to put sex way up front in their relationships." That could explain why U.S. sales of the little blue pill and two newer drugs have skyrocketed to more than $1.5 billion--or 19 million prescriptions--a year, causing drug companies to salivate over the possibility--still distant--of a "pink Viagra" for women. Further along in the pipeline: a testosterone gel to reverse libido loss after menopause and a pill that boosts desire by acting on serotonin receptors in the brain.
A Scottish study found that people who enjoy sex every other day looked about seven to 12 years younger than their peers, on average.
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