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WEDNESDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- When it comes to sex, grandma and grandpa are having more of it these days, new Swedish research suggests.
According to the study, the last quarter century has seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of sex among the 70-year-old set, whether married or unmarried. And as an added bonus, seniors today (particularly women) say they're much more satisfied with their liaisons than the previous generation -- facing less sexual dysfunction and feeling more positive about the experience.
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"Our study shows that a large majority of elderly consider sexual activity and sexual feelings a natural part of late life," said study author Nils Beckman, a doctoral candidate with the neuropsychiatric epidemiology unit at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology at Gothenburg University. "It is thus important that health professionals and others take sexuality into consideration, irrespective of age."
The findings are reported online in the British Medical Journal.
Beckman and his team reviewed surveys concerning sexual behavior and attitudes that had been completed by more than 1,500 healthy 70-year-old Gothenburg residents over a 30-year period.
The polls had been conducted in 1971-1972, 1976-1977, 1992-1993, and 2000-2001.
Between the first survey and the last, the frequency of sexual intercourse was found to have increased among all groups. Among married men, 68 percent said they were engaging in the practice in the latest poll, compared with 52 percent in 1971, while among married women the number had risen from 38 percent to 56 percent.
Among unmarried men, the jump went from 30 percent to 54 percent in the same 30-year span, while among unmarried women the observed bump was from just under 1 percent to 12 percent.
Women seemed to make the most headway in terms of increasing their sexual satisfaction. While men expressed more positive attitudes about sex in 1971, by 2001 the gender difference had evaporated.
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