I’m taking a stand (erecting a barrier, if you will) and coming out with the statement that despite what you might hear from British newspapers, masturbation will not, I repeat, will not give you cancer.
When I came across this article in the Independent titled “Masturbation can be good for the over-50s” I thought I was in for a good news story. After all I’m not yet 50 but I hope to be one day. The thought of plenty of masturbation to look forward to sounded good. But then my heart sank at the end of the first paragraph,
Masturbation may be good for you – or bad, depending on your age. The solitary sexual activity that is widely practised but little discussed, is linked with an increased risk of prostate cancer when practised frequently by young men in their twenties and thirties, doctors say.
Now I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’m pretty good at masturbating. I don’t have any trophies, and I’ve never competed professionally, but I’ve practiced diligently and yes, I’ve got some moves. And when I think back, while I laid the groundwork in my adolescence and teen years, I was no masturbatory wallflower in my twenties. So all of the sudden instead of enjoying lots of masturbation in my 50s, I’m going to be dealing with prostate cancer?
Confused, I went to read the actual study.
The study compared 430 British men who had been diagnosed before the age of 60 with roughly the same number of men who didn’t have prostate cancer. They asked the men to recall how much they masturbated and how much intercourse they had in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. What they found was that increased masturbation during their 20s increased the disease risk, while increased masturbation and intercourse in ones 50s decreased the disease risk. Interestingly (and this part is a mystery to the researchers) while there was a correlation between masturbation and disease risk, there wasn’t the same connection between intercourse and disease risk.
So yes, this is yet another small study, filled with methodological potholes (when you’re 60 how accurately do you think you’ll be able to recall your masturbatory frequency in your 20s? Not all of us kept track in small spiral bound notebooks right?) Taking this study and extrapolating any sort of causation is irresponsible. Not that the Independent has a problem with that.
Things became even clearer as I began to read through the other studies of prostate cancer and sexual activity. It turns out none of these two studies agree, and none use the same questions or measurements. What was “innovative” about this most recent study is that they asked men about both masturbation and intercourse (previous studies have only asked about intercourse, or only about ejaculations) and they asked men who had been diagnosed at a younger age than other studies. On the one hand I’m glad that they’re included questions about masturbation, on the other hand, I wish both the researchers and the media would be a bit more responsible about writing this stuff up. After all, if I have to keep evoking one hand or the other in explaining this work, my hands won’t be free for more important, non-cancer causing activities.
If your interested in reading a more thorough analysis of the study and the data, one that doesn’t discount this line of inquiry quite so much, I highly recommend reading Petra Boynton’s review.
Read more - Sex and Prostate Cancer
Read more
- The Independent: Masturbation can be good for the over-50s
- BBC News:Sex drive link to prostate cancer