How many calories are “expended” in sexual activity? The act can be considered as physical exercise, but is it more like a brisk run or a walk? If it’s like physical activity, it might hurt the heartin any case? Some scientific studies have answered these and other curious questions, even if numerically they are not many. In particular, a review of the best ones to answer the most common questions has selected 18.
Sex numbers
The exam, conducted by the University of Almería and Murcia in Spain e published in the magazine Archives of Sexual Behavior, shows some more specific numbers. Of course, the sexual act speeds up the heart and burns calories.
In studies where people wore a monitoring system, heart rate it averaged between 90 and 130 beats per minute and reached a peak between 145 and 170 bpm. Heart rates in women tended to be lower than in men.
Compared to total energy expenditureduring a single intercourse the 130 calories spent, while in another experiment they totaled about 101 calories for men and 69 calories for women. Mean calorie expenditure during intercourse varied widely, depending on the duration and locations of the subjects.
Just with respect to the duration of relationships, in young and healthy couples sex lasted on average 32-38 minuteswhile it continued for about 19 minutes in a study that looked at couples with health problems that included heart disease.
A light ride, but it lasts less
These measurements indicate that “sexual activity can cause physical demands of moderate or even vigorous intensity,” said José M. Muyor, a professor at the University of Almería’s Health Research Center who led the research. For the unit of time considered, we can say that the numbers are similar to those of a light jogexcept for the heart rate spikes that occur around orgasm.
Heart attack and sex, very rare event
No worries regarding heart health, on which there are more studies. In 2022 on JAMA Cardiology research has come out that mapped 6,847 fatal sudden cardiac arrests of a London heart disease center between 1994 and 2020: only 17 occurred during or almost immediately after sexual intercourse, but of those 17, 6 were women and most were relatively young, as the median age was 38. Another study from 2018 in Paris on people who survived sudden cardiac arrests between 2011 and 2016 found that about 0.6 percent, 17 overall (all men and most in their 50s) went into cardiac arrest during or shortly after sex. By comparison, 229 of the other cases occurred during sports or other physical exercise and 2,782 in other situations.
