Carrie smoked in bed with Big, most black-and-white movie stars and starlets struck a light after a romp – smoking after sex is a veritable movie cliche.
But if you want to make like Marlene Dietrich after a roll in the hay, it may be time to think twice.
We all know the general (and horrible) health risks of smoking, but research is increasingly showing that smoking is bad for your sex life too.
And that’s not just the consequences of having poor lung and heart function, which obviously makes it harder to do strenuous activity, pound the headboard and generally enjoy yourself.
Smoking and sex are a bad combination from start to finish, it turns out – and it all starts with arteries.
The main ingredient in cigarettes, nicotine, acts as a constrictor to arteries, making them rigid and small. That’s desperately bad news for the flood of blood necessary for arousal.
It’s been far more studied in men, but ‘erectile disfunction’ can be a feature of womens’ sexual health too – the clitoris becomes erect and swollen in its own way, and the tiny arteries there are dangerously vulnerable.
In fact, if you watch the arteries in the penis during smoking, scientists report, the disruption to the blood flow is palpable. Smoking in men is strongly linked to equipment failure, particularly when they’re young.
However, some of the other ideas about smoking and sex aren’t actually based in fact at all.
Smoking hasn’t been shown to have any influence on sperm count, although it is supposed to damage fertility in women – and it doesn’t lower testosterone, one of the biggest drivers of lust, in any way.
Beyond that, its effects on women in bed are unknown. Anecdotal evidence suggests it might cause vaginal dryness, which would make sense scientifically (cigarettes restricting blood flow).
And given that deep breathing has been shown to have deeply positive effects on orgasm, smoking’s definitely harmful for sex oxygen intake.
For definitive answers, we’re still waiting on science – but the logic’s clear. Smoking’s no good in the bedroom, and not just because it stinks up the sheets.
Lady Friday xx
