Frequent Ejaculations May
Counter Prostate Cancer

Sexual activity does not cause prostate cancer, and men who ejaculate frequently may even be protecting themselves against the disease, U.S. researchers reported.

The study, which involved more than 29,000 healthy men and covered sex of all kinds including masturbation and nocturnal emissions, confirms a smaller Australian study from last July that reached similar conclusions, the authors said.

Most of the previous research into the question was on whether sexual frequency caused prostate cancer, on the theory that increased production of the male hormone testosterone could prompt prostate cell growth, the study's chief author, Michael Leitzmann, said in an interview.

But the new research found that "ejaculation frequency is not related to an increased risk. There is no adverse effect. And ... higher elevations of ejaculation appear to protect men from developing prostate cancer," said Leitzmann, a physician and investigator at the National Cancer Institute.

The study suggested that frequent ejaculations may decrease the concentration of "chemical carcinogens which readily accumulate in prostatic fluid" and may reduce the development of crystalloids "which have been associated with prostate cancer in some."

The prostate is a small gland that produces some of the fluid for semen. Prostate cancer is the second most common kind of cancer (after skin cancer) diagnosed among U.S. men, and is highly survivable if caught in time.

The new study, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, was based on an ongoing survey covering a variety of health issues of thousands of men who were 40 to 75 when the study began in 1986. In 1992 they were asked to report the average number of ejaculations they had per month during ages 20 to 29, 40 to 49 and during the previous year. In later surveys they were asked to report if they had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The earlier Australian study published in July 2003 by the Cancer Council Victoria found that the more often men ejaculated between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they were to suffer from prostate cancer.

That survey, which covered 1,079 prostate cancer patients and 1,259 healthy men, found that those who had sex at least once a day in their 20s were a third less likely to develop the malady.

"The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them," Graham Giles, lead author of the earlier study said at the time.

Leitzmann said his new study is consistent with the Australian findings, and may even be stronger because it tracked men over time rather than asking them to recall ejaculation frequency only after they had already been diagnosed with cancer.

That kind of recall can be distorted, he said, because the cancer brings diminished sexual activity with it.

Reference Source 89

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