It's not new information, but the follow-up to a previous study reiterates findings of the benefits of frequent ejaculation on reducing the risks for prostate cancer. Specifically, men who ejaculated 21 times (or more) in a month significantly slashed their risks of prostate cancer.
Lower Prostate Cancer Risks
The information provided by the current study isn't exactly new, but it does support their own previous data, as well as results from other similar studies.
In Harvard's Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, researchers asked over 31,000 men between 46 and 81 years of age to report their average ejaculations in young adulthood, in mid-life, and in the latest year. These ejaculations include sexual intercourse, masturbation, and nocturnal ejaculations.
Participants answered the ejaculation questionnaire from 1992 up until 2010 and also provided health and lifestyle data during the study. As it turns out, men who ejaculate 21 times or more times in a month slashed their risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer by 33 percent compared to men who ejaculated an average of four to seven times a month throughout their lives.
Similarly, an Australian study yielded strikingly similar results when researchers found that men who ejaculated four to seven times a week were 36 percent less at risk of a prostate cancer diagnosis when compared to men who ejaculated less than two times per week.
While the research did not extensively discuss the possible reasoning behind the results, the theory behind it is that perhaps frequently emptying the prostate of harmful substances aids men in protecting themselves from prostate diseases.
Additionally, though the current study did not delve deeper into the connection between the number of sexual partners and prostate cancer, a previous study did find that men who had 30 or more sexual partners were two to three times more likely to develop prostate cancer as opposed to the men who had only one.
The current study is published in European Urology.
Prostate Cancer
The prostate is a gland behind the man's bladder which produces fluid for semen. Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer to affect men after skin cancer and is more common among older men. Symptoms of prostate cancer may include problems when urinating, pain with ejaculation, and lower back pain.
Approximately 11 percent of men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime and in 2017 alone, there have been 161,360 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States. However, rates for new cases of prostate cancer have fallen an average of 5 percent each year in the last decade.
Currently, prostate cancer has a 98.6 percent five-year survival rate.
