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It is a surprise to most younger people that an appreciable minority of people aged 65 to 85 continue to have an active sex life of one sort or another, and did so even before the days of Viagra. Most Americans remain sexually active into their early 70s in spite of sometimes “bothersome” health or age-related problems that make intimacy difficult, according to a groundbreaking study released.
What they discovered is that seniors not only are sexually active well into their 70s and 80s, but they also are surprisingly willing to discuss their intimate lives. “Participants were more likely to refuse questions about income than they were about sex,” said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, who led the study.

Indeed, just 13 percent of older men and 35 percent of older women surveyed told the researchers that sexuality was not at all important to them. The survey, funded with grants from the National Institutes of Health, found that 73 percent of people ages 57 to 64 had been sexually active with a partner in the past 12 months. The numbers fell with age, but even so, 53 percent of people 65 to 74 reported they were still sexually active, and 26 percent of people ages 75 to 85 were.
“Its portrait of this aspect of older Americans’ lives suggests a previously uncharacterized vitality and interest in sexuality that carries well into advanced age, which perhaps has not been appreciated as an important part of late life,” said Richard Suzman, a director at the National Institute on Aging, in a statement.

The researchers interviewed and performed physical exams on people in their homes in 2005 and 2006. More than three-fourths of the people approached for the survey agreed to answer the often intimate questions. The researchers defined sex as any mutual activity involving sexual contact, whether or not intercourse or orgasm occurred. Vaginal sex was the most commonly reported activity.
Lindau hopes the new findings will provide a frame of reference for older people and perhaps improve communication between patients and doctors.
“These data will give people a sense of whether what they’re experiencing is typical,” she said. “Are these changes due to aging? Are they due to medications? Is this a problem that can be corrected, or a warning sign of an underlying illness?”
“From a medical and a public health perspective, we have an opportunity and an obligation to do better patient education and counseling about health-related and potentially preventable and treatable sexual problems,” Lindau said in a statement.