older people have sex but what makes for people who have more satisfaction with their sex life as they age I'm Dr Reina Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today I'm going to talk about what things can affect your sex life as you age and what might be a predictor of having more satisfaction in your sex life when you're older if you're new here I make videos every Monday and Friday covering your logic Health bladder health sexual health and so much more make sure if you like what you see you subscribe and share this Channel with
your friends [Music] people over the age of 65 who are more satisfied with their sex life they actually age more successfully and they tend to have a better well-being overall so having a good sex life is linked to so many other positive factors so how do we figure out what factors are maybe correlated with having a better sex life well a German study looked at people over the course of several years they basically took a sample that was representative of their population in the years of 2002 2008 and 2011 and they sent them surveys to
understand how satisfied they were with their sex life as well as a number of other factors they then divided the participants into two groups middle age which is between the ages of 40 and 64 and older age above 65 in each of the Waves they had somewhere between 3500 participants to over 5 thousand so it's not a small number of people they analyzed and they compared a number of different things and the things that really stood out to me as being different were obviously people who were older had a higher number of illnesses there was
really no difference in the rates of depression in both groups but interestingly when they asked the importance of sexuality or intimacy on a range of 1 to S the groups were about a 1 Point difference now what does that really mean it's unclear but when you look at statistics they found that it was significant different meaning that people who are above 65 tended to find intimacy and sexuality as less important than those in middle age not surprisingly cognitive function tended to decrease as people aged and also the number of important people they remained in regular
contact with tended to decrease as well the major thing that they found was that satisfaction with sex life did decrease as people aged so when they looked at all these different factors what was associated with being less likely to be satisfied with your sex life after the age of 65 so it's not surprising to me that people who either rated their health as poor or had more illnesses or were depressed were less likely to be satisfied but there's three other interesting factors that came out of this so one is if you are lonely you're more
likely to have less satisfaction with your sex life and that makes sense but I think this is a real issue in the Aging population many many people are getting more and more lonely we live so much in a silo now everyone's in their phones so I think if you are getting to that age or if you have family that is aging please encourage them to stay in touch with their family and friends because they can have a dramatic impact on their health also people who found sexuality more important were more likely to have satisfaction and
I think that makes sense but of course if you prioritize your sexual health then it's more likely that you're going to be satisfied with it or you're going to try to find ways to be satisfied with it and the last thing was the most interesting to me was that women were less likely to be satisfied with their sexual health and I think that's because you know women go through a lot of changes after menopause and all of those changes can sometimes cause a lot of discomfort and dryness and loss of libido that can all contribute
to just not having a great desire or enjoyment when you're having sexual activity if you're a woman or you're partnered with a woman who's above the age of 65 encourage them to go see a urologist or gynecologist to talk about these symptoms because there's so much we can offer them and there's so many things that we can improve their libido with that we can improve their discomfort with and so I'm happy to talk more about those if you'd like to learn more please comment below and I'm happy to make a video more about those things
overall my takeaway from this study is that sexual well-being is so important just because you're above 65 doesn't mean that sex isn't important anymore and so I think it's important to prioritize these issues make sure you're living the best life you can stay as healthy as you can so invest in your health now whether you're young or whether you're aging it's really important to take that time to invest not only in your health with more physical activity a better diet but also making sure you stay connected with the people that are important to you and
avoid loneliness I realize this can be very difficult for men specifically because they don't connect with other men the way women connect with other women it can be as simple as sending your friends a quick text saying hey how are you I'm thinking of you and that helps keep you bonded and makes you feel connected I hope you guys found this interesting and as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it [Music] oh [Applause] [Music]
