SEX TWICE A WEEK FOUND GOOD FOR IMMUNE SYSTEM.Byline: Diane Urbani New Scientist It's official: Sex is good for you, at least in moderation. Psychologists in Pennsylvania have shown that people who have sex once or twice a week get a boost to their immune systems immune system Cells, cell products, organs, and structures of the body involved in the detection and destruction of foreign invaders, such as bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells. Immunity is based on the system's ability to launch a defense against such invaders. . Scientists can evaluate how robust our immune systems are by measuring levels of immunoglobulin A immunoglobulin A n. Abbr. IgA The class of antibodies produced predominantly against ingested antigens, found in body secretions such as saliva, sweat, and tears, and functioning to prevent attachment of viruses and bacteria to epithelial (IgA), an antigen found in saliva and mucosal linings. ``IgA is the first line of defense against colds and flu,'' says Carl Charnetski of Wilkes University  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . in Wilkes-Barre. IgA binds to pathogens at all the points of entry to the body, then calls on the immune system to destroy them. To find out if sex can alter IgA levels, Charnetski and his colleague Frank Brennan
Father Frank Brennan, AO, SJ, a Jesuit priest and lawyer, is Professor of Law in the Institute of Legal Studies, at the Australian Catholic University. asked 111 Wilkes undergraduates, aged 16 to 23, how frequently they'd had sex over the previous month. They also measured levels of IgA in the volunteers' saliva. The results showed that participants who had sex less than once a week had a tiny increase in IgA over those who abstained completely. Those who had one or two sexual encounters each week had a 30 percent rise in levels of the antigen. But people who had very frequent sex - three times a week or more - had lower IgA levels than the abstainers. The researchers presented the results this week at a meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Providence, R.I. Clifford Lowell, an immunologist at the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). at San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , thinks the high levels of IgA in volunteers who had moderately frequent sex are easy to understand. ``Sexually active people may be exposed to many more infectious agents infectious agent Pathogen, see there than sexually nonactive people,'' Lowell says. ``The immune system would respond to these foreign antigens by producing and releasing more IgA.'' This could give them better protection against colds and flu. Why there was no IgA rise in the most sexually active group is less clear. ``My feeling is that the people in the very-frequent-sex group may be in obsessive or poor relationships that are causing them a lot of anxiety,'' speculates Charnetski. ``We know that stress and anxiety make IgA go down.'' |
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