People who have healthy sex life are not only happier but also healthier than those who don't. Here are 9 health benefits you never knew sex can provide -

1) Rocking Immune System: Regular sex ensures higher levels of what defends your body against germs, viruses, and other intruders.

2) Lowers Blood Pressure: One landmark study found that sexual intercourse specifically (not masturbation) lowered systolic blood pressure.

3) Great Exercise: Sex is a really great form of exercise. It is a muscular exercise that burns calories and increases your heart rate.

4) Lowers Heart Attack Risk: Great sex life is good for your heart. It not just raises your heart rate, sex helps keep your estrogen and testosterone levels in balance.

5) Reduces Pain: Getting an orgasm can block pain. Vaginal stimulation can block chronic back and leg pain, and can reduce menstrual cramps, arthritic pain, and in some cases even headache.

6) Improves Sleep: People usually dose of quickly after sex and tend to get a sound sleep.

7) Relieves Stress: Sexual arousal releases a brain chemical that revs up your brain's pleasure and reward system. Sex and intimacy relieve you of stress and boost your self-esteem and happiness too.

8) Reduces Risk Of Prostate Cancer: A study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that men who ejaculated frequently (at least 21 times a month) were less likely to get prostate cancer.

9) Helps Women's Bladder Control: Incontinence, a problem that affects about 30% of women at some point in their lives is helped with a regular sex. Good sex is like a workout for their pelvic floor muscles. An orgasm causes contractions in those muscles thus strengthening them

Not all married couples have an exciting sex life. However, there are a few fortunate ones who have an enviable married life. In case you are wondering how happily married couples manage to keep their love making sessions scintillating, you need not look further. Here are five sex habits that most married couples swear by.

If you want to keep boredom at bay, you should never shy away from trying out new things, be it an exciting sex position or the trending sex toys. A lot of couple face issues in their marital life because of monotony, which can be easily broken if they experiment a little.

We all know how hectic life can be, especially, for working couples. After a tiring day at office, no one is left with any energy to make love to their partner. However, married couples with exciting sex life always manage to keep the excitement alive no matter how tiring their day might be. It do not necessarily mean they have sex every night but getting little naughty before hitting the sack is always manageable, right?

Who does not like surprises. A lot of marriages crumble because the partners and their habits become predictable. A surprise can be anything—an unplanned weekend trip or a dinner date. Such little surprises keep the partner guessing about the next move (particularly, in the bed), which is a great way to keep the excitement intact.

Happily married couples know what their partners like. If the husband loves indulging in experimental sex, the wife will ensure that she fulfills his fantasy. If the wife likes foreplay, the husband would never forget to play a little longer with her before they have sex. To maintain a happy relationship it is important that both the partners should be content.

Everyone has wild fantasies and fetishes. But only happy couples are comfortable sharing their sexual fantasies with each other. Indulging in sexual fantasies and fetishes enables partners to explore each other batter—this is one of the common sex habits of happily married couples.

Once considered a perversion, people have started regarding masturbation a healthy practice now. It is satisfying, pleasant, safe and ensures sexual activeness. You might have set a number for its frequency or may just choose to go with the flow but sometimes, you may think you are overdoing it. And this feeling can get you worried. But the good news is: there is no specific number you can set for masturbation sessions until it doesn’t harm your daily activities. Here, we have mentioned a few cases when you need to keep your boner or vagina under supervision!

IT COULD HURT YOU: Masturbating in excess could even injure you. Though the injury can be mild like skin chaffing of the vagina and penis and in certain severe scenarios can even cause Peyronie’s disease, which means a build-up of plaque in the shaft of the penis due to excess stroking. So, if you’re hurting yourself, you must limit the frequency.

YOU MAY GET STRESSED: Masturbating in excess might also impact your social life. Doing it too frequently might prevent you from going out. This can negatively impact your mental health. However, if this is the case with you, we would recommend you seek medical attention as this does not come under normal sexual behaviour.

IT MIGHT IMPACT YOUR SEX LIFE: No doubt, masturbation helps in staying sexually active. But if you’re overdoing it, it might impact your sexual life. This is because rubbing or stroking your vagina or penis teaches a solo act to your brain. And once you perform it frequently, your brain and body get off only in your solo response. This could impact your sexual relationship with your partner.

WHEN YOU USE UNCLEAN SEX TOYS: If you are using sex toys for masturbating, you must keep them sanitized and clean as unclean toys may cause bacteria and infections. Also, avoid using them with multiple partners. This may increase the risk of sexual infections and will do more harm than pleasure.

YOU MIGHT GET ADDICTED: It is not only with masturbation but any type of addiction and can cause loss of control. Manage to curb this addiction as it might hurt your well-being in a long run. Again, you must seek medical help if this is the case with you.

We're taught to feel shame around our sexuality from a young age, as our bodies develop and start to function in ways we're unfamiliar with, as we begin to realize our body's potential for pleasure. Later on, women especially are taught to feel ashamed if we want "too much" sex, or if we want it "too early," or if we're intimate with "too many" people.

Conversely, women and men are shamed if we don't want nearly as much sex as our partner, or if we're inexperienced in bed. We worry that we won't orgasm, or that we'll do so too soon. We're afraid the things we want to do in bed will elicit disgust.

While doctors should be considered crucial, impartial resources for those struggling with their sexual health, many find the questions asked of them during checkups to be intrusive. Not only that but, in some cases, doctors themselves are uncomfortable talking about sexual health. They may carry conservative sexual beliefs, or have been raised with certain cultural biases around sexuality. It doesn't help that gaps in medical school curriculums often leave general practitioners inadequately prepared for issues of sexual health.

Websites such as HealthTap, LiveHealth Online and JustDoc, for example, allow you to video chat with medical specialists from your computer. Companies such as L and Nurk allow you to order contraceptives from your cellphone, without ever going to the doctor for a prescription. And there are a slew of at-home STI testing kits from companies like Biem, MyLAB Box and uBiome that let you swab yourself at home, mail in your samples and receive the results on your phone.

Bryan Stacy, chief executive of Biem, says he created the company because of his own experience with avoiding the doctor. About five years ago, he was experiencing pain in his genital region. "I did what a lot of guys do, and did nothing," he says, explaining that, while women visit their gynecologist regularly, men generally don't see a doctor for their sexual health until something has gone wrong. "I tried to rationalize away the pain, but it didn't go away."

Our Shame Over Sexual Health Makes Us Avoid The Doctor, But These Apps Might HelpSTEPHANIE AUTERI, THE WASHINGTON POSTLAST UPDATED JANUARY 11 2018, 01:07 PM
Many find questions asked of them during checkups to be intrusive and in some cases, doctors themselves are uncomfortable talking about sexual health
Our Shame Over Sexual Health Makes Us Avoid The Doctor, But These Apps Might Help
Health care on their own terms, rather than having to visit a doctor's office (Representational Image)

We're taught to feel shame around our sexuality from a young age, as our bodies develop and start to function in ways we're unfamiliar with, as we begin to realize our body's potential for pleasure. Later on, women especially are taught to feel ashamed if we want "too much" sex, or if we want it "too early," or if we're intimate with "too many" people.

Conversely, women and men are shamed if we don't want nearly as much sex as our partner, or if we're inexperienced in bed. We worry that we won't orgasm, or that we'll do so too soon. We're afraid the things we want to do in bed will elicit disgust.

While doctors should be considered crucial, impartial resources for those struggling with their sexual health, many find the questions asked of them during checkups to be intrusive. Not only that but, in some cases, doctors themselves are uncomfortable talking about sexual health. They may carry conservative sexual beliefs, or have been raised with certain cultural biases around sexuality. It doesn't help that gaps in medical school curriculums often leave general practitioners inadequately prepared for issues of sexual health.

So how do people who feel ashamed of their sexuality take care of their sexual health? In many cases, they don't. In a study on women struggling with urinary incontinence, for example, many women avoided seeking out treatment - maintaining a grin-and-bear-it attitude - until the problem became "unbearable and distressing to their daily lives."

Which may be why smartphone apps, at-home testing kits and other online resources have seen such growth in recent years. Now that we rely on our smartphones for just about everything - from choosing stock options to tracking daily steps to building a daily meditation practice - it makes sense people would turn to their phones, laptops and tablets to take care of their sexual health, too.

Websites such as HealthTap, LiveHealth Online and JustDoc, for example, allow you to video chat with medical specialists from your computer. Companies such as L and Nurk allow you to order contraceptives from your cellphone, without ever going to the doctor for a prescription. And there are a slew of at-home STI testing kits from companies like Biem, MyLAB Box and uBiome that let you swab yourself at home, mail in your samples and receive the results on your phone.

Bryan Stacy, chief executive of Biem, says he created the company because of his own experience with avoiding the doctor. About five years ago, he was experiencing pain in his genital region. "I did what a lot of guys do, and did nothing," he says, explaining that, while women visit their gynecologist regularly, men generally don't see a doctor for their sexual health until something has gone wrong. "I tried to rationalize away the pain, but it didn't go away."

Stacy says he didn't want to talk to a doctor for fear of what he would learn, and didn't know who he would go to anyway. He didn't have a primary care physician or a urologist at the time. But after three months of pain, a friend of his - who happened to be a urologist - convinced him to see someone. He was diagnosed with chlamydia and testicular cancer. After that, he learned he wasn't the only one who'd avoided the doctor only to end up with an upsetting diagnosis.

This can be the case for men and women. While many will use these options as a means to replace those office visits entirely, their potential lies in the ability to improve the health care people receive.

Addiction to pornography has been a big concern for many researchers and professionals in the field of psychosocial health.

While there are many kinds of addiction behavior that are considered as a psychological disorder, compulsive porn watching is not labeled as a disorder that needs clinical attention.

There is no official diagnosis for porn addiction in the books of psychiatry and psychology. However, the serious mental, emotional and social consequences of it are such that one cannot ignore this growing problem in the world.

Porn addiction is a form of sexual addiction which involves excessive preoccupation with sexual imagery that has a negative impact on one's life.

As much as these could be understood has some advantages of pornography, studies have shown that excessive / compulsive viewing of porn results in problematic behaviors and causes threat to a person's mental and social well - being.

Today, high speed internet has made pornographic content easily accessible, affordable while you continue to remain anonymous in your activities. The plethora of sexual content is available at a mere click of a few buttons with your fingers.

When pornography use becomes excessive, romantic relationships can suffer as it may lead to poorer sexual quality and / or satisfaction.

Often the other partner could feel inadequate and suffer from low self - esteem where they begin to think that they are not good enough. When too much time is spent in this kind of solo activity, it creates a physical and emotional distance between the couple which results in loneliness, lack of intimacy and in some cases depression or anxiety.

It becomes a vicious loop as this would push the person more towards the compulsive habit creating more distance and withdrawal that could be detrimental to the health of the relationship.