No, Cycling Won’t Hurt Your Sex Life

For years, male cyclists have worried about reports that too many hours on a bicycle seat could lead to erectile of urinary problems. Now comes a report from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, with some good news, kind of. The researchers found that cycling doesn’t harm the perineum any more than swimming and jogging do. HealthDay reports on the study, which surveyed 2,774 cyclists, 539 swimmers and 789 runners, and asked about sexual health, prostate symptoms, urinary tract infections, genital numbness and saddle sores.  The researchers found that high-intensity cyclists had better erectile function scores than low-intensity cyclists, and also that cyclists had more than twice the incidence of scarring or narrowing in the urethra compared to swimmers or runners.  But the on the big questions, those about sexual and urinary health, cyclists’ health was comparable to that of the other athletes.