SEX IS GREAT for the body and mind, say experts.

And they contend that a healthy sex life improves people’s feelings about themselves.

Little wonder, then, that researchers link sex to a reduction of stress and anxiety.

Dr Debra Herbenick, an oft-quoted expert from the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University, whose groundbreaking research on human sexuality is known among academics, psychologists, physicians, scientists, insists that sexual activity is good for the body and the mind. Indeed, she is a highly vocal advocate of the benefits of sex and, interestingly enough, argues that the rewards of sex can be enjoyed even without a partner.

“The health benefits,” she said recently, “can be the result of partner sex or masturbation. All that is required is that a person feels good about it.”

A scientific study conducted at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Edinburgh Scotland, concluded that people who had sex four times a week felt that they were seven to 12 years younger than people who have less sex.

At Rutgers University in New Jersey, Dr Beverly Whipple, a research scientist, found that sexual activity in general, and orgasms in particular, heighten people’s ability to endure pain. Scientists contend that sexual activity can reduce migraine headaches, chronic back pain and even bring relief from such things as premenstrual symptoms, cramps among them.

“Sexual excitement and orgasm, for both women and men, increase their threshold for pain. They are both less sensitive to pain and less likely to experience it,” Herbenick writes.

That’s not all. A study conducted in 2005 by Dr Patricia Barthalow Koch, a sex researcher from Pennsylvania State University, found that women who believed they were less attractive now than say a decade before had less and less enjoyable sex than women who still felt attractive.