Getting older has a few perks — wisdom, greater perspective on life and senior discounts among them — but most of us associate aging with the harsh reality of wrinkles, joint problems and a decline in intimate performance.
Even though intimate activity does tend to decline with age, the link between age and intimacy dysfunction isn’t as strong as you might think — and the reality might not be so harsh. It’s often possible to maintain your swagger well into old age, as long as you adopt good behaviors and habits when you’re younger.
Below, we’ve looked at the science behind aging and intimacy to explain when most men start to experience a decline in their performance and incline in instances of dysfunction.
We’ve also shared a few actionable tips that you can use to maintain a healthy, enjoyable intimate life in your 60s, 70s and beyond.
When Do Men Stop Making Love?
Since male drive and physical health can vary hugely from person to person, there’s no specific age at which most men give up on intimacy. There’s also no real answer to the question, “What age does a man stop getting hard?”
That’s right, fellas. Don’t let the “old men making love is weird” or “old people making love is a myth” comments bother you — they’re nonsense.
However, research suggests that most men stop making love around 75 to 85 years of age.
In a 2010 study conducted by the University of Chicago, researchers looked at the link between age and intimate activity in men and women throughout the United States.
The study used data sourced from large-scale surveys of the US population and found that 38.9 percent of men between 75 to 85 years of age remained intimately active.
It also noted that 70.8 percent of intimately active men reported that they had a “good quality” intimate life. Good on ya, gents!
Interestingly, the men who reported being in either very good or excellent health were more likely than their peers to maintain a high level of interest in intimacy, which helps confirm that keeping up with your health as you age is crucial for more than just living longer.
In short, most men remain well into retirement age, with the majority of intimately active senior men happy with their intimate lives.
Male Libido and Age
Libido tends to decrease with age in men and women. Part of this is due to natural changes in your production of testosterone that occur as you get old, but there are a few other key factors that contribute, as well:
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Testosterone Levels
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Medical Conditions
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Medications
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Mental Health
Testosterone Levels
Testosterone is responsible for the pitch of your voice and the amount of muscle mass on your frame, and most importantly for regulating your intimacy drive.
It’s normal for your testosterone production to slowly decline as you age. Most men begin to produce less testosterone after age 30, with testosterone production dropping by about one percent every year.
FYI: Women experience a similar drop in hormone levels, with estrogen production declining after menopause. Who needs his and hers bathroom towels when you can have his and hers hormonal chaos, right?
Medical Conditions
Fellas, it’s a natural part of life — as we get older, we stop being as spry as we used to be. Medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and others become more prevalent, and some of them can — and do — have a negative effect on performance and libido.
Medications
Certain medications used to treat age-related issues — like blood pressure medications or antidepressants — can also affect your intimacy drive. Check the side effects of your current medications and ask a healthcare provider questions about what libido issues you might experience.
Mental Health
Finally, your mental health is important (and not just for your libido, but definitely for your libido). Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and stress — which often develop in middle age or later in life — can also have a negative effect on your desire.
(Related: Senior Intimacy: Tips for Older Men)
Can a 50+ Year-Old Man Be Intimately Active? Our Best Tips
While it’s normal to experience some amount of slowdown in your desire as you grow older, entering your 60s, 70s or even your 80s doesn’t mean that you need to throw in the towel.
It’s absolutely possible to enjoy satisfying relationships well into old age by doing the following:
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Maintaining a healthy lifestyle
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Addressing medical conditions
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Preventing ED
Below, we’ve explained how.
Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
When it comes to staying Intimately active as you grow older, good physical health usually equals good healthy desire.
Simple things like exercising regularly, eating a balanced diet, getting good sleep each night and treating sleep issues like sleep apnea and avoiding unhealthy habits such as drinking alcohol excessively all have a positive impact on your health and ability to maintain a healthy intimate life in your 60s and 70s.
Use ED Medication
ED can affect men of all ages, but it’s particularly common in the older crowd.
In fact, research suggests that men have about a 40 percent risk of developing some form of ED in their 40s, with this risk increasing by 10 percent with each additional decade.
Modern ED medication is the route that most men take because it can make it easy to maintain getting hard.
Popular medications for treating ED include:
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sildenafil (the active ingredient in Viagra)
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tadalafil (generic Cialis)
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vardenafil (Levitra)
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avanafil (Stendra)
Used before intimacy, these medications make it easier to get and maintain hard, allowing you some solid hanky-panky without having to worry about ED.
There’s also some new evidence that suggests that certain ED meds are associated with a decreased risk of heart attack, stroke, and overall mortality — just another reason to talk to a healthcare provider and see if they’re right for you.
(Related: ED Cures for Seniors: How to Get Hard at 65+)
Treat Any Underlying Medical Issues
Many intimacy performance issues that affect older men are either directly caused or made worse by chronic health conditions, including:
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High blood pressure
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Cardiovascular disease
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Type 2 diabetes
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Obesity and sleep apnea
If you have a chronic disease or other health issues that could affect your intimacy function, make sure to treat it — ideally with your healthcare provider’s support.
It’s also important to take a proactive approach to check for age-related medical issues (like prostate cancer if you’re between the ages of 55 and 69) that could affect your performance and quality of life.
By being proactive about your health, you’ll be able to deal with issues as they arise and maintain good health and performance at any age.
This article originally appeared on Hims.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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4 “Intimate” Benefits of Cloves For Men
Interested in exploring the benefits of cloves for arousal? You’ve come to the right place.
Cloves: one of the final spices you can likely name off the top of your head before giving up a very boring guessing game. While these small dried flower buds are a semi-popular spice, they’re also a well-known traditional element of Chinese medicine used as a potential treatment for a number of health issues.
Some medicinal claims have even ventured into the world of health, leading people to wonder if the secret to fighting ED or balancing testosterone is actually sitting in the back drawer of your grandmother’s kitchen.
So what gives? Can a sprinkle of cloves cure what ails you and your privates?
Not exactly.
Cloves are being closely studied by a number of researchers, but the results we have so far are very modest.
Below, we’ll explain what cloves are, the benefits they may offer (according to scientific studies) and what you should probably do instead if you’re dealing with ED or other issues.
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If you’re thinking about pouring yourself a cup of clove tea or soaking in a bath of ground cloves, you may want to hold up.
Cloves are a natural antioxidant, and that clove water you’re sitting in probably has some skin benefits. However, benefits from the flowers of clove trees aren’t going to come from whatever you bought at Whole Foods.
Clove (Syzygium aromaticum) is an Indonesian species of tree that produces the small flower buds we commonly refer to as cloves. These flower buds — once dried and cleaned — have been used for centuries in traditional medicine to treat various health conditions.
Over the centuries, they’ve been employed as alternatives to toothpaste, respiratory treatments, pain relief, skin health and wound healing.
But in many cases, these traditional treatments for things like asthma, colds, gut inflammation, nausea, increased sperm count and acne aren’t based on well-established science.
According to the National Library of Medicine, several uses for cloves can actually lead to just as many side effects as benefits (more on those in a minute).
But the advantages of cloves aren’t all hearsay. In fact, there have been substantial studies testing the waters to see whether the health benefits claimed by these little flower buds will float.
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Cloves for enhancement? Here’s everything you need to know about the potential benefits of cloves.
Cloves haven’t been studied much in humans, so as much as we’d like to point you to relevant data, it doesn’t seem to exist just yet. Most of what’s out there for the benefits of cloves is limited to rat testing, with a few rabbits sprinkled in.
Here’s the thing: both rats and rabbits are really good at intimacy, so if it’s helping them, it could one day help you too (maybe).
In terms of boosting the arousal process and improving pleasure, cloves have been associated with enhanced blood flow, increased libido and performance. See why below.
Enhanced Blood Flow
A potential benefit of cloves for men is that they may help to enhance blood flow to the privates, which is the biological mechanism for treating ED.
Good blood flow is essential for getting and staying hard, and many problems in men are related to poor circulation. A 2020 study showed that eugenol — clove essential oil — increased the hardness of diabetic rats.
(Related: What Foods Help You Get Hard: 8 Foods For ED)
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A 2003 study looked at the effects of combined nutmeg and clove extracts on male mice. The extracts stimulated the mice into “mounting behavior,” which means exactly what you think it means.
But the researchers also noted that the drugs increased performance, meaning the mice weren’t just horny but also better in bed — er…cage. Obviously, this isn’t a PE treatment yet, but maybe one day?
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Another study of rats (this one from 2004) using clove extract saw higher libido and potency, as well as sustained activity. The results suggest that cloves may operate as both an aphrodisiac and a stamina booster. This study has yet to be repeated in humans, but we’ll let you know when they start asking for volunteers.
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A 2013 study of mice looked at the effects of lipid-soluble clove extracts on sperm motility. It found that several drops of clove oil increased sperm motility, sperm mobility and even sperm count.
However, a big caveat was that a lower dose was more effective, while a higher dose actually had adverse effects on male fertility and performance. In other words, researchers for cloves did offer benefits, but there was such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Ekaterina_Lin/istockphoto
The internet is well-populated with so-called benefits of cloves, honey and orange. But we weren’t able to find much real research to show that the combination of these things could boost performance or increase stamina.
Still, honey and extracts of cloves are mentioned in at least one research paper on natural aphrodisiacs, with benefits not outlined in any detail. We also found one mention of honey for health because of its benefits to vaginal microbiota.
Unfortunately, this combination — which sounds more like an old-fashioned whiskey drink — doesn’t seem to appear in any known medical literature. With that said, we’re comfortable calling this unproven for now (even if it has us thirsty).
(Related: Does Honey Make You Last Longer?)
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While the internet claims many health benefits of cloves, the National Library of Medicine says there’s no scientific evidence to support the majority of common use cases in herbal medicine.
But a number of studies suggest that cloves and their component parts could one day offer benefits to certain people — that is, after more research is completed.
Antioxidant Benefits
Cloves have potent antioxidant properties. They’ve been shown to offer antioxidant benefits in several studies, including one where they beat out several other dried spices like black pepper and cinnamon. The essential oil containing cloves performed as well as coriander in the battle against free radicals.
Anti-Inflammatory Benefits
Cloves also have anti-inflammatory benefits. At least one dermal test focusing on eugenol found the antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial capabilities of cloves to be effective on top of the skin as well as internally.
Insulin Production
One limited study from 2018 found that, alongside fermented ginger, cloves had positive effects on blood glucose, insulin and insulin receptor levels in diabetic rabbits. Obviously, this needs to be translated to research in humans, but the research is promising.
Tumor Inhibition
We found several studies mentioning the effects of cloves on tumor growth. One 2014 study went so far as to say cloves can inhibit growth and stop the cell cycle from continuing, leading to the potential for cloves to one day treat colorectal cancer.
Again, more research is needed, but eugenol seemed to be involved in the inhibition of cells that were otherwise growing out of control in tumors.
Jacob Wackerhausen/istockphoto
So, what risks are you taking with that teaspoon of clove powder? Will a particular dose of cloves in your daily diet cause any problems? The answer is: it depends.
Cloves offer many potential health benefits. Still, it’s essential to use them in moderation and under the guidance of a healthcare professional, particularly in cases of existing health conditions or if you’re taking medications.
For example, clove oil mixed with ibuprofen may cause a higher absorption rate through the skin, worsening side effects.
Cloves are generally safe to consume (you’ve probably had small amounts of them in the last few months without realizing it). But experts say there are side effects associated with clove consumption, including:
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Skin irritation
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Gum irritation and gum damage
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Burning and itching
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Lung damage and breathing problems when inhaled
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Problems with clotting in people using blood thinners or dealing with bleeding disorders
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Changes to blood sugar levels
Large amounts of cloves or clove oil shouldn’t be consumed if you’re on medications for the treatment of diabetes without first talking to a healthcare professional. The same goes for blood thinners and anticoagulants.
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The aromatic spice known as a clove isn’t a cure for dysfunction any more than demolishing a whole pumpkin pie is good for your intimate life.
Cloves may offer a number of benefits, and their most important internal component (eugenol) may one day be part of the solution for everything from ED to cancer. But we’re not there yet, and more research is needed on the potential advantages of cloves.
If you’re curious how cloves may figure into your health plans, the best advice we can give you is to consider the following:
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Cloves have been tested in limited capacities for the treatment of ED, but the results are modest, with most in the form of animal tests.
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Proven ED treatments already on the market can help people with ED regain function.
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Cloves aren’t actually going to cure anything like cancer, though essential oils derived from them may be one alternative for certain disease symptoms like inflammation.
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The best treatments for medical conditions come from healthcare professionals, not the dried spice aisle of your local grocery store.
This article originally appeared on Hims.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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Featured Image Credit: PeopleImages/istockphoto.
