The Sunday Mail
Ah, ah, ah!
Recent findings by their researchers have torched a storm on mainstream media print editions, social media platforms and amongst academic researchers.
Discoveries by researchers at the University of Montreal and INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier show that men who had slept with more than 20 women during their lifetime were protected against prostate cancer.
Ironically gay men who had slept with 20 or more men during their lifetime were not protected!
Actually, the scientists discovered that gay men who had sex with over 20 men in their lifetime were at double risk of contracting prostate cancer.
“However, having more than 20 male partners in one’s lifetime is associated with a two-fold higher risk of getting prostate cancer compared to those who have never slept with a man,” read a statement on the university’s website.
Men who had sex with 20 or more women, revealed the research, were also 19 percent less likely to develop an aggressive type of cancer, compared to those who had only one female sexual partner.
Gay men who had sex with 20 or more men, said the researchers, had five times more chances of developing an aggressive cancer compared to the other group.
The university said the results were obtained as part of the Montreal study PROtEuS (Prostate Cancer & Environment Study), in which 3 208 men responded to a questionnaire on, among other things, their sex lives.
Of these men, 1 590 were diagnosed with prostate cancer between September 2005 and August 2009, while 1 618 men were part of the control group.
“Overall, men with prostate cancer were twice as likely as others to have a relative with cancer. However, evidence suggests that the number of sexual partners affect the development of the cancer.”
Consequently, men who said they had never had sexual intercourse were almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as those who said they had.
“When a man has slept with more than 20 women during his lifetime there is a 28 percent reduction in the risk of having prostate cancer (all types), and a 19 percent reduction for aggressive types of cancer,” said the researchers — Professors Marie-Elise Parent and Marie-Claude Rousseau from the university’s School of Public Health.
“It is possible that having many female sexual partners results in a higher frequency of ejaculations, whose protective effect against prostate cancer has been previously observed in cohort studies,” said Professor Parent.
After these discoveries, the million-dollar question becomes – should men be encouraged to sleep with more women to save themselves from prostate cancer?
My hope is that these findings only apply to those men who were part of the research.
And what is it about having sex with more women that protects men from prostate cancer?
The researchers should at least find more information on why having sex with more women provides protection against the cancer.
A local researcher who is studying at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa rubbished the report and called it a dangerous and misguided research.
“And I suppose sex with more than 20 men reduces risk of cervical cancer!!!???? Such hogwash! Very dangerous and misguided research,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
In the same vein that men are protected from prostate cancer by having sex with lots of women, women who had sex with lots of men should resultantly be protected from cervical cancer.
Ironically a different research showed that the Human Papilloma Virus that causes cervical cancer in women is transmitted from men to women through sex.
Mainini shudders to think of the havoc likely to occur should we choose to protect our men from prostate cancer via the Canadian researchers’ route.
While we wait, with bated breath, further research on why men who had sex with 20 or more women had reduced chances of getting prostate cancer compared to men having an equal number of men should be at higher risk, our men this side of Africa should be in a quandary over the desire to protect themselves or face the wrath of their women when they discover that they have multiple partners.
The choice is yours, men, to protect yourself from prostate cancer or from the madam.
