You can also find this in today's Brighton Blade.
We conduct a lot of worthwhile studies in this country. We look for cures for cancer and Parkinson’s Disease and, amazingly enough, we do most of it by smacking lab rats over the head with wooden mallets.
Some studies shouldn’t be done. Some studies don’t benefit us as a whole.
But, there I was last week, faced with the stunning facts on a recent study of how much old people, pardon me while I dive back into my pre-adolescent years and use the term, “do it.”
The study, conducted by the University of Chicago and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was based on data collected from 3,005 adults ages 57 to 85 during two-hour face-to-face interviews between July 2005 and March 2006. The findings showed that many are sexually active, as long as their health holds out.
In fact, according to the study, in the preceding 12 months, 73 percent of those ages 57 to 64, 53 percent of those ages 65 to 74 and 26 percent of those ages 75 to 85 said they were sexually active. Among those reporting good or excellent health, 81 percent of men and 51 percent of women said they had been sexually active in the past year compared to just 47 percent of men and 26 percent of women reporting fair or poor health. And ….
La, la, la, la, la, fingers in ears, not listening.
Do old people no longer have any dignity? Do we have to question the “Greatest Generation,” if they’re really still the greatest?
Is it necessary to spend countless amounts of dollars grilling old people on their friskiness?
I assume the researchers had more fortitude than I did in broaching this topic. My approach would have been such:
Researcher: So, Ethel, do you, you know?
Ethel: Huh?
Researcher: At night, do you, well?
Ethel: What?
Researcher: Uhhh, let’s start over.
I found much simpler ways to conduct such fact-finding missions a long time ago. You take yourself, add up your respective number of siblings and you have a quantitative data on how many times your parents did that.
Simple. No mess. Precious minds are spared of hearing lurid details. No creepy data on how many times old people still … eww, yuck. Never mind.
Researchers are heralding this data as a way to correlate sexual activity among older people with health, i.e., if you’re dead then you probably won’t be as sexually active as, say, someone who is undead – good news for frolicsome Zombies.
The study also found physicians are less likely to discuss sex with older patients. Researchers said they “found 38 percent of men and 22 percent of women reported having discussed sex with a physician since the age of 50.” The first time I read that, my mind in a tremendous Freudian slip, left out the word discussed. It briefly made a lot more sense why they weren’t wasting any time gabbing about it.
Maybe, I’m the problem here. Maybe my petulant, immature attitude toward older people and their intimate needs is the reason why the subject is regarded as taboo. Maybe, it’s time I respect that older Americans don’t trade in their libido when they get their AARP card.
And more power to them. Keep doing that as long as you can, talk to your physician about it if you want and I’ll be over here in the corner humming the theme from “Love Boat,” really, really loudly.
