participants who come into my lab I want
you to think about what age group
immediately pops to your head when I
talk about the research that I do so
I’ll roughly divide our adult lifespan
into three categories eighteen to thirty
four thirty five to fifty and fifty plus
so with a show of hands how many of you
immediately thought of my participants
as being in that 18 to 35 year old range
okay
how about 35 to 50 anybody how about 50
and over all right there’s some
representation there for the older group
as well but what we see here is that the
majority of you immediately pictured my
participants to be in that younger age
group why is that one of the anonymous
reviewers I had for a grant that I once
submitted perfectly wrote out and
highlighted this bias that we have
against sexuality and older adults and
I’m paraphrasing they said I can’t
imagine that an older adult would want
to come into the lab have their genitals
filmed and watch pornography this just
does not seem feasible so what message
was descending to me one that I didn’t
get the grant and two that we have this
bias in society against older adults
engaging in this process of sexual
expression and sexuality that either
older adults are too old to have sex
that they are tool to be interested in
promoting sexual arousal and
understanding of sexual arousal in their
demographic or that they’re just not
able to come to the lab anymore again
what this reviewer was indicating and
the messages that we’re receiving within
society those implicit messages those
conversations we have about sexuality
those popular representations of
sexuality is that our sexual lifespan is
incredibly limited so if we look at this
representation of let’s say the human
average human lifespan we have a very
small WTF window to fornicate that’s
what it stands for
and this very small exclusive wTF is is
incredibly limited to individuals again
that are relatively young and within
this reproductive age the more popular
interpretation of WTF is the expression
that I have when I look at this vast
expanse of nothingness of sexlessness
that we’re supposed to endure again
according to these popular
representations of sexuality that this
pleasurable window is really for a very
elite group of individuals of a certain
age and the rest of us must injure
decades of nothingness I for one won’t
take it and in fact when I’ve talked to
my classes about this bias against
against sexuality in older adults and
asked you know what are some of these
popular representations one that was
thrown out to me was that well once you
are once you’ve had children you don’t
need to have sex anymore which again is
incredibly exclusion excluding to a
whole group of individuals who don’t
want to engage in sex for procreation
but also as somebody who has had
children I can personally assure you
that that is not the case that sex does
not end once I have been pushed out of
this window and I feel we have an
obligation to
push back and say that we need to expand
this window across the adult lifespan
unfortunately what we see in those
popular representations is echoed and
biases that individuals have when we
look at the research so here this was a
study on individuals aged 66 to 90 in
depth interviews about whether or not
these patients had had discussions about
sexuality with their physicians how
their physicians broach the topic with
them and what we see is that it none of
my physicians has ever talked to me
about sex they look at my white hair and
they stop asking I can’t recall ever
discussing sex with a doctor I guess
since my wife had a baby 45 years ago so
this message again is saying that
somehow we as patients cannot talk to
our health professionals openly about
sex and that we shouldn’t be talking to
our health professionals about sexuality
unfortunately when we look at research
on the flip side so when we look at
physicians and their experiences they
echo a lot of these sentiments that as
physicians the common themes that came
up in research were that sex is not
actively broached with the topic is not
broach with older adults that it is not
an appropriate topic of discussion with
older adults and that it is a matter
best left to the pressing needs of
younger individuals and again not all
physicians are like this right this is
just the general consensus that’s coming
out of the research what this suggests
is again that we have a strong bias
against having those open discussions
with with health professionals and
sexuality and this goes completely
contrary to the World Health
Organization definition of sexual health
which highlights that it shouldn’t be
just the absence of disease or infirmity
or dysfunction that rather sexual health
should include those conversations about
having pleasurable and say
sexual experiences that we should have a
positive approach to sexuality and
sexual relationships and that we need to
really respect the sexual rights of all
persons in order to be able to promote
sexual health so we have this obligation
to really move forward
from these biases and to have these open
discussions we should be having these
open discussions in addition to this
obligation what we see is that in fact
the research really supports sexual
satisfaction as being linked to a number
of positive outcomes related to quality
of life so research spanning you know
spanning the different age groups has
demonstrated the sexual satisfaction is
linked to greater life satisfaction it’s
linked to greater relationship
satisfaction it’s significantly related
to greater mental health physical health
and overall happiness now when we look
at this we understand that the research
here is correlational that this isn’t
implying causality but this is saying
that if you have higher sexual
satisfaction you’re going to have higher
quality of life so it seems all an
obvious way to promote higher quality of
life by having again those open
discussions and promoting sexuality in
older adults and this is particularly
relevant when we think about our rapidly
growing population of individuals over
the age of 65 the greater life
expectancy of individuals as compared to
our predecessors and this idea that we
need to promote active aging so when we
look at health professionals we often
talk about promoting you know physical
activity exercise in older adults
healthy eating those social connections
those cognitive challenges in order to
have this holistic understanding of
active aging yet somehow we leave out
this whole conversation about sexuality
when sexuality is linked to all these
positive
outcomes for individuals so again we
have this bias that somehow maybe older
adults are just not having sex and there
isn’t a need to address this because
again that engagement isn’t there that’s
completely false so if we look at a
large nationally representative study
done in the states of over 3,000
individuals aged 57 to 85 what we see
here is I’m giving you a snapshot of the
oldest age group so this is just 75 to
85 year olds we see that yes they are in
fact still engaging in sexual activity
and although it is significantly less
than younger age group so we see
engagement in sexual activity declines
significantly with age those who are
engaging in sex are more than half of
them are having sex two to three times a
month 75 to 85 year olds and a fifth of
them are having sex at least once a week
or more these rates are comparable to
younger populations of individuals so
what this is telling us is that we
really have to start challenging those
biases that individuals who wish to
engage in sexual activity are going to
continue doing so it up into those ninth
decade of life I can only hope that’s
the dream right what we also need to do
is start focusing more on that
pleasurable approach we need to start
thinking about okay we know that
individuals are engaging in sexual
activity we also know from this study
that more than half of these individuals
indicate that they have a sexual
dysfunction that they find bothersome
also significantly increased rates of
physical health conditions so we know
that despite these barriers individuals
still want to engage in sexual activity
we have to think of what is it about
sexual activity what is it how can we
take that pleasurable positive approach
to understanding sexual expression in
older adults
so researchers at the University of
Ottawa doctor climb climb flats and her
colleagues have looked at what
constitutes great sex they looked at
individuals over the age of 60 who’ve
been in a relationship for 25 years or
more and who indicate that they are
still having great sex and what they
found is a number of different themes
come up in these interviews this idea of
individuals being authentic with their
partners having a connection with their
partners during sexual activity being
fully present in the moment having deep
intimacy exploration and risk with their
partners being able to be vulnerable in
that relationship and vulnerable in
those sexual activities and of course
having that extraordinary communication
between partners and that sense of
transcendence during sexual activity
what I find so inspiring about this
particular work is that it’s taking that
positive approach it’s saying okay we
know individuals are enjoying sex let’s
find out what it is that’s so wonderful
about it and what gets me excited is
taking this research and then bringing
it into the lab and saying okay we have
this picture of great sex how does that
relate to our physical experience how
does our physical body so you know this
this entity that is providing us with
those sensations and that sensory
information how does that interact
across the lifespan to create these
experiences so if we get back to those
original questions of can I get people
to come and do research in my lab the
answer is yes and I’m putting up this
graph here which is you know here to
demonstrate to us that in fact if we
look at the different age groups so here
in purple I have 18 to 28 year olds in
blue 30 to 45 and in red I’ve got the
50-plus year olds what I want to
highlight here is that there are no
differences in self-report when
individuals are coming into the lab so
those 50 plus year olds
ours are just as relaxed as those
younger individuals when they’re coming
in and having sexual arousal measured
they’re enjoying it to the same extent
so again these are not significant
differences they’re enjoying it to the
same extent as those younger populations
and their self-reported sexual arousal
is just as high as it is with those 18
to 28 and 30 to 45 year olds and in fact
if we ask them I ask my participants to
compare their sexual arousal to how they
feel when they’re with a partner what we
see is on average again there are no age
differences so here we have much less
sexually arousing much more sexually
arousing and no different there are no
differences across age groups and what
this shows us is again we have to start
pushing back against those stereotypes
and biases we have to move beyond these
ideas that we have about sexuality in
older adults and move forward as
educators as health professionals as
citizens as researchers to embrace and
promote sexual health and sexual
education across the adult lifespan
because with any luck we’re all going to
be there one day and I’m hoping we’re
all going to enjoy that that time frame
that we have thank you [Applause]