Dr. Michael Eisenberg compared the intimacy levels between marijuana users and non-marijuana users.
We’ve all heard that marijuana reduces your sex drive, right? But, is that common thought really based on any real evidence?
Dr. Michael Eisenberg, an assistant professor at Standford University, just released the results from his new study that was published. The Journal of Sexual Medicine and his findings could surprise you.
Eisenberg sees patients experiencing intimacy issues in the bedroom. Many couples have asked him if they should be cutting back or eliminating marijuana use. Since there was not a lot of data on the topic, Eisenberg decided to examine it further.
He did not find what he was expecting.
“Usually, people assume the more frequently you smoke, the worse it could be when it came to sex, but in fact, we learned the opposite was true,” Eisenberg said according to CNN.
Eisenberg’s study looked at the information from the National Survey of Family Growth. He looked at data on how often 28,000 women and 23,000 men were having sex in a four-week period and the frequency of their marijuana use during a one year period. The average rate of sex for women who did not use marijuana was six times in a four-week span. The number rose to seven times during the same time period for women who did partake in marijuana use. The trend was similar for men. Overall, men who did not user marijuana were having sex at a rate of about 5.6 times during the same time period. Men who used marijuana were having sex about 6.9 times.
“We were surprised to see the positive association between users,” Eisenberg said. “This was across the board: marital status, race, none of that mattered.”
The study only used information from heterosexual individuals.
Joseph Palamar, a study associate professor in the Department of Population Health at New York University, thought the study was a “cool epidemiological paper” that “did the best it could with the data,” but did not definitively end the discussion. “It’s unclear from the data if people had marijuana in their system before or during sex.”
Marijuana is known for alleviating a long list of ailments. Could increasing libido become the newest to join the list?
