Since I am an old fart this is good news for us aging radicals.

More couples over 70 are having sex – and finding it satisfing – than in previous generations, a British Medical Journal survey suggests.

Swedish researchers asked 1,500 older people across a 30-year period about their sex lives.

The number of people saying they had sex increased – as did the number of women reporting having orgasms.

The scientists from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden interviewed 70-year-olds in 1971-2, 1976-7, 1992-3 and 2000-2001.

They found that the number of 70-year-olds reporting sexual intercourse rose in men and women, married and unmarried.

Nearly all – 68% – of married men in the most recent survey said they had sex, an increase from 52%, while the percentage of married women having sex rose from 38% to 56%.

Dr Petra Boynton, a specialist in the psychology of sex and relationships at University College London, said it was important to remember that someone turning 70 in the year 2000 would have been influenced by the more free sexual attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s – and also perhaps fitter and healthier than those in their 70s in previous decades.

She said: “We still have this stereotype of elderly people with their bath chairs and canes, staggering around, who couldn’t possibly be having sex – but that isn’t the case.”

She pointed out that the study did not record the frequency of sex for any of those surveyed, simply whether they were having sex at all, and focused on penetrative sex, rather than other types of sex which might be favoured by older people.

Older men who have more sex will experience fewer erection problems, report Finnish researchers.

A five-year study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, of 989 men aged 55-75 in Pirkanmaa, Finland, showed that having sexual intercourse less than once per week doubled the risk of erectile dysfunction (ED), compared to having sex once per week.

Now that is something of a good news day–coffee helps the sex….watermelon makes you horny and now this…damn!  Life is good!