Men Who Exercise Strenuously Have Lower Libidos

Moderate and light exercise are linked to higher libido
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 23, 2017 11:35 AM CST
Men Who Exercise Strenuously Have Lower Libidos
Contenders strike poses during the IFBB Men's World Bodybuilding Championship in Manama, Bahrain, in this file photo.   (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

All right guys, if you're working on a beer belly and wish you hit the pavement more, fear not: at least your libido might be stronger than the guy who spends hours at the gym every day. Noting a distinct lack of data on the relationship between exercise and sex drive in men, researchers at the University of North Carolina dug into the subject, and their findings may not please devoted gym rats. They report in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise that light and moderate exercise is associated with higher libido, while strenuous exercise is associated with lower libido. The results were drawn from detailed questionairres about the men's exercise habits and sex lives, reports SF Gate.

It turns out that men who regularly engage in workouts that are particularly long or intense might not have enough reserve energy or even testosterone to want to, well, sweat between the sheets. The New York Times reports that the small sample size is only of men who volunteered to fill out a highly personal questionnaire, and that it's impossible to determine whether their answers were honest or representative of a larger population of men, but the researchers hope to follow up with research that also tracks hormone levels and perhaps even sorts out just how long or strenuous exercise must be to reach a "tipping point" that then affects sexual desire. (Maybe a little light therapy would help.)

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