Sex before sports: can it help you score?

by Sherman M. Fridman

It's a scene that's been parodied in countless films and acted out in locker rooms across the country for decades: a rumpled coach addresses his team and concludes his remarks with a final piece of advice: "No sex before the game tomorrow."

For generations, men who engaged in athletic competition were led to believe that the rule of pre-game sexual abstinence was the Holy Grail of sports. But recent research has shown that self-denial before the big game may, in fact, be detrimental to athletic performance.

The prohibition of pre-game physical intimacy is based upon the belief that having sex lowers a man's level of testosterone the hormone directly associated with increasing aggressiveness in men. Coaches want their male athletes to have a lot of testosterone in their bodies to enhance aggression as well as physical performance, and they believed that abstinence was the way to save it up.

Although testosterone is produced and replenished naturally in men (and to a lesser degree in women), it was thought that having sex too near the start of physical competition would not allow enough time for the body to restore its testosterone to normal levels.

New research findings are putting a smile on the faces of amateur and professional male athletes, as well as their partners. Italian researchers claim to have uncovered evidence that sex sharpens rather than dulls the competitive edge of top athletes.

Led by Emmanuele Jannini, a team of scientists from Italy's University of L'Aquila say they have found that men's testosterone levels rise with sexual activity; and the more sexual activity, the greater the increase in testosterone.

But there is one thing amorous athletes need to know about the study before heading for the sheets: the subjects of the Italian study were men who had been diagnosed as sexually dysfunctional and were being treated with psychological therapies, rather than with drug therapies. Plus, the men who took part in the study were not necessarily athletic.

Jannini says that he believes men's bodies adjust testosterone levels to match the level of sexual activity. \"It's an adaptive mechanism,\" he says. \"If a man has sexual intercourse, testosterone causes him to desire the next sexual intercourse. So if a sportsman needs to be more aggressive, it's better to have sex.\" The same might also be said of women, he adds.

The Italian findings come as no surprise to John Kowalczyk, DO, a board-certified surgical urologist practicing in Southern California, nor to American sprinter, Dennis Mitchell.

Kowalczyk says that moderate exercise, whether it's from running, sports, or sex, will increase the amount of testosterone in a man's body. But, the key word here is moderate. As with any form of exercise, you don't want to have done so much, and be left so physically drained, that it takes days to recover.

Mitchell, an Olympic bronze medallist, claims to have personally experienced the effect having sex had on his testosterone level. He was immediately banned from competition in 1998 after testing positive for having higher than normal levels of testosterone in his body an indication that he was supplementing his natural level by taking additional doses of the hormone in order to enhance his performance. Mitchell's defense, which prevailed on appeal, was that his positive drug test was the result of having had sex four times (and drinking five bottles of beer) the night before the test was administered.

A second reason for Kowalczyk's advice to engage in moderate exercise to stimulate the production of testosterone is that vigorous activity, including vigorous sexual activity, will deplete testosterone levels in male athletes.

Vincenzo De Leo, MD, and colleagues at Italy's University of Siena, measured testosterone levels in the blood of male marathon runners before and after they ran for 90 minutes. During the run, testosterone levels rose, but levels declined to below normal after the men stopped running. The exercise was repeated two days later with the same results.

The Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine and Science reports that there can be more serious consequences from over-exercising than just a temporary decline in testosterone levels. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that endurance training can result in dysfunction of the reproductive system of both males and females, with male endurance-trained athletes having abnormally low levels of testosterone. However, even these researchers have found that moderate exercise such as with sexual activity lasting 45 to 90 minutes, will result in an increase in a man's testosterone level.

Another interesting finding from research on the relationship between testosterone and sports is that even inactive sport fans those who watch rather than play experience an increase in testosterone, even if they're only sitting on the couch.

About ten years ago, Theodore Kemper, PhD, a professor of sociology at St. John's University in New York, hypothesized that fans watching sporting events would have testosterone changes similar to those experienced by the athletes on the field. Recently, Paul Bernhardt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah, examined this theory and found that highly loyal male fans demonstrate a rise in testosterone just by anticipating a sporting event involving their favorite team. And, when their teams won, the testosterone levels of these ardent fans increased by about 20% the same amount that testosterone levels decreased in the committed fans of the losing teams.