Exercises to Improve Your Sex Life

Sex. It can ignite our senses, fill us with ripples of pleasure and awaken a new dimension of feeling for our partner. Lovemaking doesn't require extraordinary skill, nor is it limited to young couples in the throes of passion. Couples of all ages can cultivate sexual bliss for the duration of their lives together.

So what's the trick? One of the most important and often overlooked components of a rewarding sex life is exercise. Regular exercise can pique sexual desire and make sex more enjoyable.

Good Sex Is a Good Thing
Though definitions vary, "good sex" might be thought of as an act of intimacy that promotes health and well-being. Good sex provides significant physical and physiological benefits. Enjoyed in the context of a happy relationship, "sex boosts chemicals in the body that protect against disease," says Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., author of the book "Superimmunity."

Research also suggests that sex and masturbation can help ease joint and muscle pain, combat depression, promote heart health and lengthen life span.

All too often, however, we haven't the time or energy for sex. According to the Masters and Johnson Institute, at least a third of American couples experience a lack of sexual desire. After a stressful day at work, it's easy to neglect the ultimate celebration of human pleasure.

There are ways to ensure that lovemaking remains a passionate, intense and regular part of our repertoire no matter what our age or how busy our lifestyle.

Sex By Schedule

This is a story about love cycles, which are not silly things moonstruck couples ride on the boardwalk of hotels They are rhythms that link your sexual behavior to your hormones.

And Winnifred B. Cutler, Ph.D., found them. She discovered that regular sex is good for you. It orchestrates a woman's body biologically, regulating the flow of hormones that make it fertile and increase well-being. It also props up testosterone levels in men.

The time to embrace is once a week. Weekly intercourse--but not less frequently-- tunes the menstrual cycle to 29.5 days, optimal for fertility and general endocrine health.

Here's the tricky part: For Cutler, the findings mandate monogamy. Only committed relationships allow sex so regularly. If regular sex is not possible, then it's better to abstain altogether, because intermittent sex drives hormones wild, sending estrogen to lower lows (and higher highs) than the more moderate lows of celibacy, Cutler claims in a report, Love Cycles, the Science of intimacy. (Lows are responsible for bone loss, depression, heart disease.)

Banish the thought that you can keep yourself hormonally humming by your own hand. It isn't the orgasm but the presence of another person, preferably male, that does the trick. Males add pheromones: The odors fire off nerve signals to the brain and alter endocrine patterns.

Riding the cycles of love is definitely an indoor sport.