SEXUAL intercourse before a presentation or speech keeps stress at bay and calms the nerves, scientists have found.
The discovery could be the secret behind great raconteurs and after-dinner speakers.
Having sex with a partner appears to improve a person's ability to cope with stress for up to a week, the research shows. But it has to be full sexual intercourse for the effect to work.
Psychologist Stuart Brody, from Paisley University, compared the impact of different kinds of sexual activity on stress.
For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men were asked to keep diaries of how often they engaged in full penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI), masturbation or non-penetrative sexual activity with a partner.
Later, the volunteers were given a stress test which involved public speaking and doing mental arithmetic sums out loud.
Those from the PVI group were least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than it did for the others. Participants who had abstained from sex had the highest blood pressure response to stress.
Mr Brody's team tested for psychological traits, such as neuroticism and anxiety in the volunteers, as well as work stress and partnership satisfaction.
Even taking these factors into account, differences in sexual behaviour provided the best explanation for the range of stress responses.
"The effects are not attributable simply to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm, but rather, endure for at least a week, " Mr Brody told New Scientist magazine.
He believes that release of the "pair-bonding" hormone oxytocin between partners might account for the calming effect.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article