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http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/27/560268250/does-smoking-pot-lead-to-more-sex

 

Tobacco companies put a lot of effort into giving cigarettes sex appeal, but the more sensual smoke might actually belong to marijuana.

Some users have said pot is a natural aphrodisiac, despite scientific literature turning up mixed results on the subject.

At the very least, a study published Friday in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests that people who smoke more weed are having more sex than those who smoke less or abstain. But whether it's cause or effect isn't clear.

The researchers pulled together data from roughly 50,000 people who participated in an annual Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey during various years between 2002 and 2015. "We reported how often they smoke — monthly, weekly or daily — and how many times they've had sex in the last month," says Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist at Stanford University Medical Center and the senior author on the study. "What we found was compared to never-users, those who reported daily use had about 20 percent more sex. So over the course of a year, they're having sex maybe 20 more times."

 

Women who consumed marijuana daily had sex 7.1 times a month, on average; for men, it was 6.9 times. Women who didn't use marijuana at all had sex 6 times a month, on average, while men who didn't use marijuana had sex an average of 5.6 times a month.

When the researchers considered other potentially confounding factors, such as alcohol or cocaine use, age, religion or having children, the association between more marijuana and more sex held, Eisenberg says. "It was pretty much every group we studied, this pattern persisted," he says. The more marijuana people smoked, the more they seemed to be having sex.

Now, that association doesn't necessarily mean the weed is responsible for the heightened sex drive, says Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist at the University at Albany who has studied cannabis and sex but wasn't involved in this work. "In some surveys, we saw that people [who used cannabis] did have sex more, but it seemed to be mediated by this personality type that's willing to try new things or look for thrills," he says. In other words, it seems that people who like to smoke weed may have other character traits that lead them to be lustier.

Or maybe it really is the weed. "It's possible it makes men or women more interested in sex," Eisenberg says. In one study, researchers found they were able to induce sexual behavior by injecting a cannabinoid, the class of psychoactive compounds in marijuana, into rats. But people aren't rats, of course.

Another study published in 2012 found that women became more aroused when watching erotic films when they had cannabinoids in their system. But that might just be because weed seems to heighten sensory experiences overall. "It gets people to appreciate the moment more anyway," psychologist Earleywine says. "They like food more, find humor in things more easily, so it wouldn't be stunning to think they would enjoy sex more."

Whatever the connection, Eisenberg says his results leads him to think that pot, unlike tobacco which can depress libido and performance, isn't going to take the steam out of one's sex drive. "One question my patients always have is will smoking marijuana frequently negatively impact my sexual function?" Eisenberg says. "We don't want people to smoke to improve sexual function, but it probably doesn't hurt things."

Not everyone agrees with that conclusion. "It's a lot of stretch here," says Dr. Rany Shamloul, a researcher at Ottawa Hospital in Canada who focuses on sexual health and function. He didn't work on the latest study. In an odd Catch-22, Shamloul says that recent research suggests cannabis might actually make it harder for a man's penis to become erect, even if weed might turn people on. "Recent studies have shown cannabinoid receptors in the penis itself, and experiments in the lab show an inhibitory response," he says. "There was basically a mixed result. Cannabis might increase [sexual arousal] frequency in the brain, but also decrease erectile function in the penis."

There is another issue that may throw cold water on cannabis' potential as a love enabler. A frequent side effect of marijuana is a dry mouth, and University at Albany's Earleywine points out that one's mouth might not be the only thing turning arid. "Drying of the mucus membranes is a pretty consistent effect of the plant. Women should keep that in mind when considering cannabis as a sexual aid. I know that some products have THC or cannabinoids in a lubricant, but I haven't seen any actual data on that," he says.

Stanford's Eisenberg says his study doesn't prove the idea that marijuana is getting people into the sack, though he says that is a possibility. There's really only one conclusion he can safely draw from the work: Cannabis users are doing it more.

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More ...  http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/10/27/marijuana-sex-frequency/91086/

Published: Oct 27, 2017, 1:00 pm • Updated: 4 days agoComments (3)

By Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post

sex-chart.jpg (The Washington Post)

Regular marijuana users have about 20 percent more sex than abstainers, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University.

The study analyzed data on 28,000 female and 23,000 male participants in the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative CDC survey of Americans age 15 to 49. It found that women who smoked marijuana daily had sex with a male partner an average of 7.1 times per month, compared to 6 times per month for nonsmoking women.

Similarly, men who used marijuana daily reported having sex with a woman 6.9 times per month, compared to 5.6 times for nonusers.

Those findings held true even after the researchers controlled for a number of demographic variables known to affect sex habits and marijuana use. “The overall trend we saw applied to people of both sexes and all races, ages, education levels, income groups and religions, every health status, whether they were married or single and whether they had kids,” author Michael Eisenberg said in a statement.

Further bolstering the findings, the study also found what researchers call a “dose-dependent relationship” between marijuana use and sex frequency: as respondents’ marijuana use rates increased, so did their frequency of having sex.

The study does not, however, necessarily indicate a causal relationship between marijuana use and sex. “It doesn’t say if you smoke more marijuana, you’ll have more sex,” Eisenberg said. For instance, people who are naturally inclined to have more frequent sex may be predisposed to marijuana use, rather than the other way around.

Nevertheless, it does seem plausible that a causal effect could be at work here. Some qualitative research published in 2016, for instance, found that respondents generally said that stoned sex was more pleasurable than drunk or sober sex. A 2003 study also found that over half of marijuana users said the drug was a libido-booster, compared to 26 percent who said it inhibited their sex drive.


 


“In humans, sex is not only a means to procreation but serves as an important source of physical pleasure and expression of emotional intimacy,” the Stanford authors write. As such, a fair amount of other research has found a link between the frequency of sex and overall physical and mental health. People who have more sex, on average, are happier and less stressed, they have lower blood pressure, and better cardiovascular health overall.

This underscores a key point about drug use. We all know the risks associated with marijuana use – dependency, impaired driving, decreased academic performance, etc. But when discussing drug policy we rarely talk about the benefits of drug use.

That’s partly by design: for decades, research into drug use has been focused almost uniformly on drugs’ detrimental effects. This bias is baked into the very names of the institutions that fund much of this research – it’s why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse, rather than a National Institute on Drug Use.

For pot in particular we’re just now starting to understand some of the potential benefits of the drug, including “>euphoria and relaxation, pain relief, lower rates of opiate dependence and domestic violence, decreased use of more harmful drugs, and, apparently, better sexual health.

But policymakers’ discussions of how and whether to regulate drugs like marijuana rarely take those benefits into consideration.

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Here is a Salon article about that same study.

Quote

But Eisenberg said the study could change how he counsels patients who already smoke marijuana. Previously, he’d advised them to quit smoking pot if they were having trouble with libido or sexual performance. Now he thinks quitting might not be necessary, and that patients can focus on other lifestyle changes to increase libido.

“If somebody is using marijuana to help them for chronic back pain or something like that, there may be other interventions that we can think about targeting, rather than telling them they have to stop, otherwise their sex life is doomed,” he said. Pot use and sexual activity appear to have a “dose-response relationship.” That means the more you smoke, the more likely you are to have had sex in the past month.

 

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