Ganja Vibes Blog

Having sex could lower your stress and your blood pressure.

That finding comes from a Scottish study of 24 women and 22 men who kept records of their sexual activity. The researchers put them in stressful situations -- such as speaking in public and doing math out loud -- and checked their blood pressure.

People who had had intercourse responded better to stress than those who engaged in other sexual behaviors or abstained.

Another study found that diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of your blood pressure) tends to be lower in people who live together and have sex often.

For those addicted to sex, JUST DO IT!!! You know how to stay healthy! I know I always feel better when I am getting my regular dose of great sex!! Don't you?

Having sex once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A, or IgA, which can protect you from getting colds and other infections.

A Wilkes University study had 112 college students keep records of how often they had sex and also provide saliva samples for the study. Those who had sex once or twice a week had higher levels of IgA, an antibody that could help you avoid a cold or other infection, than other students.

Thirty minutes of sex burns 85 calories or more. It may not sound like much, but it adds up: 42 half-hour sessions will burn 3,570 calories, more than enough to lose a pound. Doubling up, you could drop that pound in 21 hour-long sessions.

"Sex is a great mode of exercise," Los Angeles sexologist Patti Britton, says. It takes both physical and psychological work, though, to do it well, she says.

A 20-year-long British study shows that men who had sex two or more times a week were half as likely to have a fatal heart attack than men who had sex less than once a month.

And although some older folks may worry that sex could cause a stroke, the study found no link between how often men had sex and how likely they were to have a stroke.

University of Texas researchers found that boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex.

That finding makes sense to sex, marriage, and family therapist Gina Ogden. She also says that those who already have self-esteem say they sometimes have sex to feel even better.

"One of the reasons people say they have sex is to feel good about themselves," she says. "Great sex begins with self-esteem. If the sex is loving, connected, and what you want, it raises it."

Of course, you don't have to have lots of sex to feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem is all about you -- not someone else. But if you're already feeling good about yourself, a great sex life may help you feel even better.

Having sex and orgasms boosts levels of the hormone oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, which helps people bond and build trust.

In a study of 59 women, researchers checked their oxytocin levels before and after the women hugged their partners. The women had higher oxytocin levels if they had more of that physical contact with their partner.

Higher oxytocin levels have also been linked with a feeling of generosity. So snuggle up -- it might help you feel more generous toward your partner.

Oxytocin also boosts your body's painkillers, called endorphins. Headache, arthritis pain, or PMS symptoms may improve after sex.

In one study, 48 people inhaled oxytocin vapor and then had their fingers pricked. The oxytocin cut their pain threshold by more than half.

Research shows that frequent ejaculations, especially in 20-something men, may lower the risk of getting prostate cancer later in life.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that men who had 21 or more ejaculations a month were less likely to get prostate cancer than those who had four to seven ejaculations per month.

The study doesn't prove that ejaculations were the only factor that mattered. Many things affect a person's odds of developing cancer. But when the researchers took that into consideration, the findings still held.

For women, doing pelvic floor muscle exercises called Kegels may mean more pleasure -- and, as a perk, less chance of incontinence later in life.

To do a basic Kegel exercise, tighten the muscles of your pelvic floor as if you're trying to stop the flow of urine. Count to three, then release.

The oxytocin released during orgasm also promotes sleep, research shows.

Getting enough sleep has also been linked with a host of other health benefits, such as a healthy weight and better blood pressure. That's something to think about, especially if you've been wondering why your guy can be active one minute and snoring the next.

Still, the rate of such cancers occurring in men is relatively low: There is a lifetime risk of slightly more than 1 percent, Cortessis said. "The truth is, the vast majority of men who develop testicular germ-cell tumors survive them. There's still a small proportion that don't. Those guys tend to have non-seminonas, unfortunately," Cortessis said. "But also, non-seminomas require more extensive treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy. "We're not concerned only with preventing non-seminomas so that the malignancy doesn't harm the man, but we're also concerned about the later health effects for men that may be related to the more-aggressive therapy" (such as chemo), she added. So, why would weed wield such woes for some cojones in some dudes? The USC scientists are unsure exactly what internal glitches marijuana may trigger that could cause cancer. But they speculate that the process may begin in the body's endocannabinoid system, which is the cellular network that responds to the active ingredient in marijuana. That same system has been shown to be vital in the formation of sperm. The study was was funded by the National Cancer Institute. The researchers also invested a few words of their report to speak directly to the young men living in the 17 states where medicinal marijuana is legal, stating: "The findings suggest that the potential cancer-causing effects of marijuana on testicular cells should be considered not only in personal decisions regarding recreational drug use, but also when marijuana and its derivatives are used for therapeutic purposes." At medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington state and California, that stance not surprisingly drew swift retorts. At the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the proprietors read the USC study on Friday afternoon, then promptly emailed to NBC News a news link to a recent study in Madrid in which cannabis was found to be a cancer fighter. "The LA study stands in contrast to several recent studies which have found that cannabis actually has cancer fighting properties," said Steve DeAngelo, co-founder of Harborside.  "The LA study is reporting a correlation, as opposed to a causal connection between cannabis use and the cancers. It is a well-established scientific principle that correlation does not equal causality. "I would also note that the sample size is quite small," DeAngelo added, "and the size of the control group is double that of the cannabis users." Two states to the north, at Seattle's Northwest Patient Resource Center, chief executive John Davis argued that any person taking therapeutic drugs should know that all of those otherwise beneficial substances carry some health hazards. "And with a lot of them," Davis said, "the risk is death. "If you're using (marijuana) medicinally, you should understand the risks and the benefits, just like any other therapy," Davis added. "Marijuana, in general, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances on Earth. Can it have some side effects? Yeah. But compared to pharmaceutical drugs, those side effects are much less."