College Times

Issue date: 8/21/08 Section: Blogs

Media Credit: Photos.com

According to psychologists at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, sex cures the common cold. Forget week-long bouts of runny noses, sore throats and achy muscles and say hello to the opposite sex. Engaging in intercourse once or twice a week can boost your immune system, says Dr. Carl Chametski, one of the study's scientists, but the question is how?

Chametski and his team of scientists asked 111 Wilkes undergraduate students aged 16 to 23 how often they had sex during the previous month while evaluating their immune system. In order to tell which students' bodies fended off germs more efficiently, the scientists measured the levels of Immunoglobin A (IgA), an antigen found in saliva and mucosal linings that plays an essential part in assisting the destruction of bacteria in a person's body who is sick with the cold or flu. Their research showed the students who had sex once or twice a week had a 30 percent rise in their IgA levels, students who had sex less than once a week had a lower increase in IgA levels and students who had very frequent sex, as much as three times a week or more, had the lowest IgA levels.

Clifford Lowell, an immunologist at the University of California in San Francisco, suggested to BBC News, "Sexually active people may be exposed to many more infectious agents than sexually non-active people. The immune system would respond to these foreign antigens by producing and releasing more IgA. The reasons why more sexually active people did not experience a rise in IgA are less clear."

Chametski believes the reason to be clearer than Lowell and says, "The people in the very-frequent sex group may be in obsessive or poor relationships that are causing them a lot of anxiety. We know that stress and anxiety make IgA go down."

While the study promises hot and steamy hope for the unhealthy, the scientific and medical communities have their doubts and believe that other variables would affect the outcome of the study or that the study is bunk. "(Perhaps) healthy people are more likely to have sex regularly anyway," argues Dr. Douglas Fleming, head of the Royal College of General Practioners, to BBC News or says Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Center, "It is not impossible that sex has an effect on the body's ability to fight off cold, but it would be very difficult to substantiate that claim from this data."

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