Study: Regular Sex Improves Memory

A regular sexual intercourse may improve the memory of young women, a new study revealed.

For the study, which was led by Canadian researchers in McGill University, 78 heterosexual women, ages 18 to 29 were examined. During the course of the test, the women were asked about the frequency of their Penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) and their ability to recall abstract words and faces were measured, National Post reported.

Results showed that women who experiences PVI more frequently have higher ability to recall than those who reported to have less PVI. Improvement in both words and facial recognition is high among those who reported having the most frequent sex, but the improvement is much higher in words.

In addition to this, the same effect was seen regardless if the woman is in a committed relationship with her sexual partner or not.

The results of the study were published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Explaining the result, Medical Express noted that the researchers said that having frequent sex can stimulate neurogenesis, or the growth of nervous tissues, in the hippocampus, which has been found to be involved in memory withholding, particularly verbal communications.

"Because memory for words depends to a large extent on the hippocampus, whereas memory for faces may rely to a greater extent on surrounding extra-hippocampal structures, our results appear to be specific for memory believed to rely on hippocampal function," the study read.

Meanwhile, it's not clear whether how frequent do you need to have sex to assure that memory will be improved. The Science Explorer said that the effect could be attributed to the fact that sex stimulates the release of happy hormones that help combat depression and stress, which are both known to impair memory function.

Aside from boosting memory, other studies have also noted that sex also improves bladder control in women, lowers blood pressure, lowers heart attack risk and boosts the immune system.