A healthy sex life can continue well into the 70s and 80s, and apparently that’s on people’s minds all over the country.

More than three-quarters of American men aged 75 to 85 and half of women that age are still interested in sex, a survey of the elderly by University of Chicago researchers found.

“It’s not age per se; that when you get to 80 it’s all over with,” said sociologist Edward Laumann, who led the study of 3,000 American men and women aged 57 to 85 who lived at home, not in nursing homes.

Sexual dysfunction is not an inevitable part of aging, but it is strongly related to a number of factors, such as mental and physical health, demographics and lifetime experiences, many of which are interrelated, according to the study.

STD History a Factor

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that a history of sexually transmitted disease also has an impact on sexual health later in life. People who had an STD are also more likely to have had sexual experiences over their lifetimes that included more risks and multiple sex partners.

“Having had an STD roughly quadruples a woman’s odds of reporting sexual pain and triples her lubrication problems,” said Laumann, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University, and lead author of the paper, “Sexual Dysfunction Among Older Adults: Prevalence and Risk Factors from a Nationally Representative U.S. Probability Sample of Men and Women 57 to 85 Years of Age,” published in the current issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Men are more than five times as likely to report sex as non-pleasurable if they have previously had an STD.

Laumann was joined in writing the paper by University researcher Aniruddha Das, and Linda Waite, the Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology at the University.

The study showed that women may be more likely than men to experience sexual dysfunction because of health issues. The most common problem for men is erectile dysfunction, a problem that increases with age.

“The results point to a need for physicians who are treating older adults experiencing sexual problems to take into account their physical health and also consider their mental health and their satisfaction with their intimate relationship in making any assessment,” Laumann said.

The study is based on interviews with a national sample of 1,550 women and 1,455 men, ages 57 to 85, who were part of the 2005-2006 National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, a nationally representative survey of community-dwelling older U.S. adults. The survey collected data on social life, sexuality, health, and a broad range of biological measures.

Okay, so maybe all the news about aging isn’t bad.

– Lori Woehrle