London - There’s a widespread assumption that women lose interest in sex as they get older.
But according to scientists, it may be nothing more than a myth.
Women who enjoy having sex actually find age is no barrier in the bedroom, a study has revealed.
Researchers found that the belief women become less interested in sex as they age does not apply to those who have always enjoyed an active sex life – and women who say sex is important to them keep on having it in their 60s and beyond.
US researcher Dr Holly Thomas said the critical factor was how highly women rated having sex in the first place.
She said: “Women who said sex was moderately or extremely important were three times as likely to remain active as women who said not at all.
“There’s this popular public perception that as women age, sex becomes unimportant, and that women just stop having sex as they get older. From our study, it looks like most women continue to have sex during midlife.”
Dr Thomas and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research on Healthcare studied 600 women between the ages of 40 and 65, starting in 2005.
After four years, researchers classified 354 of the initial 602 participants as sexually active and they formed the baseline group. At year eight, 85 percent remained sexually active, says a report published in JAMA Internal Medicine
In total, 10 percent of women in the study said sex was extremely important to them, 50 percent said it was moderately important and about 20 percent said not very important. The rest did not answer the question.
Women who rated sex as important were three times as likely to remain sexually active as women who rated it as unimportant.
For a group then ranging in age from 48 to 73, “active” meant that they had sex at least once in the previous six months.
The study did not look at frequency, but Dr Thomas said other research shows that once a month is average for this age group.
Dr Thomas said: “A woman’s sex life may change over time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean sex isn’t important or she isn’t enjoying it.
“But at least in the four years that we were examining, the vast majority of women who were sexually active continued to be sexually active.” - Daily Mail