Link found between marijuana and sexual frequency

If you are a bit of a prude about the herb, well, buckle up because a population study has found a link between smoking marijuana and frequent sexual intercourse.

“Marijuana” by United States Fish and Wildlife Service – [1], specifically CASA1_LF.jpg. (If the links expire, the photo can be found by searching for “cannabis” at the GIMP photo archive.) The original file with a watermark is at http://www.fws.gov/midwest/sherburne/CASA1.htm. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marijuana.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Marijuana.jpg

Carried out by the Stanford University School of Medicine, the large-scale study looked at 28,176 American women with an average age of 29.9 years and 22,943 American men with an average age of 29.5 taking part in the National Survey of Family Growth.

The study which was published on Friday found that people who smoked weed tended to have more sex although it did not establish direct cause.

They examined the subjects’s self-reported marijuana use over a year and the self-reported heterosexual intercourse.

The team found that women who reported no marijuana use in the past year had sex on average 6.0 times during the previous four weeks, whereas those who used marijuana daily reported having sex 7.1 times.

For men, those who reported no marijuana use had sex on average 5.6 times during the previous four weeks, whereas for daily users that number increased to 6.9.

This means, according to the study’s senior author Michael Eisenberg, MD, that marijuana users are having about 20 percent more sex than abstainers.

In some instances, it was down to personality types who tended to be more adventurous and were more likely to use marijuana and seek new thrills.

While previous studies have reported reduced sperm count for men but different ones have also reported stimulation in areas of parts the brain that trigger arousal.

A conclusion in the study which is the first of its kind said:

A positive association between marijuana use and sexual frequency is seen in men and women across all demographic groups. Although reassuring, the effects of marijuana use on sexual function warrant further study.

So not quite the time to pull out the spliff and have a puff in order to get laid more.