Give That Thing A Rest

New study links masturbation and prostate cancer

by John Casey

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Given the bind that many prominent American men have thrust themselves into — think Tiger Woods, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, et al. — it seems it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. And your prostate gland appears to agree.

According to a new research out of the UK, men who have frequent sex in their twenties and thirties were at a greater risk of developing prostate cancer later in life. What's even more unusual is that researchers showed that young men who masturbated frequently, as opposed to those who have sex frequently with a partner, were at an even greater risk of developing prostate cancer.

The study was led by Dr. Polyxeni Dimitropoulou of the University of Cambridge. She and her colleagues used questionnaires to examine the sexual histories of more than 400 men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 60, together with more than 400 control subjects.

The men were asked a battery of questions about the sex in their lives, including age of first sexual activity, frequency of masturbation and intercourse, numbers of sexual partners and history of sexually transmitted diseases.

"We were keen to look at the links between sexual activity and younger men as a lot of prostate cancer studies focus on older men as the disease is more prevalent in men over 50," Dimitropoulou said.