Sleep apnea treatment does not affect a person's sex life.

A study shows that sleep apnea treatment will not hamper your sex life.

Your sex life is unlikely to suffer because of sleep apnea treatment, according to a new study.

People with sleep apnea experience periods of disrupted breathing throughout sleep. This can lead to daytime fatigue, high blood pressure and other health conditions.

The gold standard of sleep apnea treatment involves going to bed wearing a mask or nosepiece with a hose that's attached to a machine that provides a steady stream of air to keep the airways open during sleep. This is called continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP).

Many patients who use CPAP believe it makes them less sexually attractive, which may make them less likely to comply with treatment, according to the researchers from Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago.

To find out more about how CPAP affects patients' sex lives, the researchers surveyed 52 patients who were prescribed the treatment. Of those patients, 27 were compliant (meaning they used CPAP more than four hours a night on 70 percent of nights) and 25 were not compliant.

All were asked 10 questions related to physical and emotional aspects of lovemaking, the researchers said.

After adjusting for other factors, the investigators found that compliant and non-compliant patients had similar sexual quality-of-life scores.

The findings, published Oct. 21 in the journal Chest, will be presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Austin, Texas.

"This study suggests that CPAP compliance does not impair sexual quality of life in patients with sleep apnea," Dr. Mark Rosen, medical director of the college, said in an association news release.

Erectile dysfunction is common in men with sleep apnea, but previous research has shown that CPAP improves erectile dysfunction in these patients, according to the college.

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Tonight honey, I have a headache: Migraine Headaches Relieved by Sex

This article discusses a study that found that sex works as well as medication at relieving migraine headaches. 

I'm certainly not ready to make this recommendation in the office....awkward....

As an aside, I am not sure how they would do more research on this topic.JR

Maybe Marvin Gaye was right.

Researchers say sexual healing — as the crooner suggested, in his so-titled hit — is not all in the head. In fact, having sex can actually cure what ails the head.

More than half of migraine sufferers said their pain subsided when they had sex, researchers found. And one in five who took part in the study said their pain disappeared completely, The Daily Mail reported.

“Our results show that sexual activity during a migraine attack might relieve or even stop an attack in some cases, and that sexual activity in the presence of headache is not an unusual behavior,” researchers found, The Daily Mail reported. “Sex can abort migraine and cluster headache attacks.”

The studies were conducted at the University of Munster in Germany. They involved 400 patients suffering from two different types of headaches, cluster and migraines. One neurologist emphasized that the findings were preliminary. But they’re significant enough to moot at least one age-old excuse.

“We can now say, however, that the excuse of ‘not tonight, I have a headache,’ may not be taken seriously by all sexual partners,” said Nick Silver, a consultant neurologist at the NHS Walton Centre for Neuroscience and Neurosurgery in Liverpool, in The Daily Mail report.

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Sexual function in female patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

(Finally, some good science! - JR)

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea;
• Sexual Distress;
• Sexual Difficulties;
• Sexual Dysfunction;
• Females

Sexual Function in Female Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Keywords:

ABSTRACT

Introduction.  Obstructive sleep apnea is defined as repetitive (≥5/hour) partial or complete cessation of breathing during sleep. Whereas obstructive sleep apnea is often considered to be associated with sexual problems in men, studies concerning effects of obstructive sleep apnea on female sexual function and distress are sparse.

Aim.  To investigate sexual dysfunction and sexual distress in female patients with obstructive sleep apnea and to determine which factors are of importance for their sexual function.

Methods.  We investigated 80 female patients (ages 28–64) admitted to a sleep laboratory and who after investigation received a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. All subjects answered questions drawn from three self-administered questionnaires on sexuality. The results were compared with a population sample (N = 240).

Main Outcome Measure.  Data from nocturnal respiratory recordings. Female Sexual Function Index, Female Sexual Distress Scale and four questions from Life Satisfaction-11 (Lisat-11).

Results.  Female Sexual Function Index indicated that obstructive sleep apnea patients were at a higher risk for having sexual difficulties. Female Sexual Distress Scale showed significantly more sexual distress in the obstructive sleep apnea group. Manifest Female Sexual Dysfunction (combined data from Female Sexual Function Index and Female Sexual Distress Scale) showed that female patients with obstructive sleep apnea also had more sexual dysfunction. Severity of sleep apnea was, however, not related to any of these indices but consumption of psychopharmaca was. In Lisat-11, we found that obstructive sleep apnea females scored lower than women in the population sample regarding life as a whole but not regarding domains of closeness.

Conclusions.  This study indicates that sexuality of women with untreated obstructive sleep apnea is negatively affected compared with a female population sample. This was not related to severity of obstructive sleep apnea, whereas psychopharmaca may act as an important confounder. Petersen M, Kristensen E, Berg S, Giraldi A, and Midgren B. Sexual function in female patients with obstructive sleep apnea. J Sex Med 2011;8:2560–2568.