There is no doubt about it – people have more sex today than they have in the past, and with more partners. Diversity in sexual behaviour increased in 59 countries surveyed by the World Health Organisation in 2006, with a higher frequency of premarital sex – also an effect of the tendency to get married later in life nowadays. In developed countries, people have two or three sexual partners in a year, especially when it comes to men.

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It seems that not even Perseus and Medusa can escape E&M’s Hot Facts. | Image: E&M and Ketrin1407, CC BY 2.0 (Flickr)

It has also become obvious that women find sex just as important as men, or even more so. According to a Pfizer study conducted in 2011, European women would like to have even more sex than they currently do, a large proportion of them being over 45 years old.

With all this passion and diversity flying around, sex is bound to be a verrrry interesting experience. There are passionate women of all ages, uninhibited men, greater mobility (and flexibility – thank you, Pilates!) and tons of porn to get ideas from. What could possibly go wrong?

SEX INJURIES IN EUROPE

A lot, especially for the Britons. In 2010, one in three people admitted to researchers that they suffered injuries at the climax of sexual acts. Almost half of the interviewees said they only noticed the wounds the next morning, while 5% said their injuries required medical treatment.

When it comes to the most dangerous places to have sex, the results were quite surprising: the living room ranks highest, followed by stairs, cars, showers or office closets. One in ten couples said they fell out of bed during sex and one in 50 Britons managed to fall off the washing machine.

The data places Britons among the most inventive nations when it comes to sexual injuries requiring treatment. The most frequent medical conditions were sprained muscles, lesions to the spine, throat muscle spasms and injuries to the knees or elbows. So why all the pain, folks? Experts think the high number of sexual traumas can be explained by the lack of experience of those involved, as well as people’s ambition to make sex more movie-like.

One in three people admitted to researchers that they suffered injuries at the climax of sexual acts.

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The bigger the bubbles, the more dangerous it is!

We now see that this extreme creativity can lead to serious consequences, but that’s not the worst. Danish researchers found the injuries suffered by women during consensual sex nowadays cause just as much damage as those inflicted during rape.

The study, conducted in 2012 in Odense, compared wounds suffered by a group of students to those of rape victims. Vaginal injuries of similar gravity were found in 36% of rape victims and 34% of students. Besides making it harder for victims to file lawsuits against their rapists, the study points out another worrying aspect: people are risking their health in order to enjoy an adventurous sex life.

On the opposite side of Europe, a Croatian ER doctor had to pull the quirkiest objects out of his patients’ rears in 2010: neon lamps, vegetables, pebbles, vibrators, tree branches (!!!) and even a bottle of wine. It is not clear if it had been opened. This tendency to stick things up one’s ass proudly belongs to educated, middle class and often married people, who declare themselves … bored. It’s just as bad in the UK – figures released in 2008 show that over 10,000 people were treated for a “foreign body entering through the eye or other natural orifice”.

CASE STUDIES

There’s no easy way to insert this next fact into the discussion, but here goes: in light of the above information, it’s not a good idea to try to have anal sex with a horse. Or any kind of sex with any animal. Boeing engineer Kenneth Pinyan from Washington died in 2005 after he let his stallion (I highlight – stallion) penetrate him. It was not his first time having fun with horses, but it became his last.

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Nothing “butt” a problem! | Picture: E&M and nickwheeleroz, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (Flickr), kuzeytac, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (Flickr), townsonu2003, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikipedia), and fotosearch.com

Italians do it better? I don’t think so. A young man showed up at the ER in a hospital in Perugia with a foreign body in his urethra. The guy inserted uncooked spaghetti up there, while he jerked off. Guess what: the spaghetti broke.

A 27-year-old woman from the US was brought to the hospital after she was injured in an incident involving an unusual sex toy. Her boyfriend attached a plastic vibrator to a saber saw blade, in an attempt to “try something new”. Somehow, they never thought that metal cuts through plastic. She lived, surprisingly.

UK numbers from 2008 show that over 10,000 people were treated for a “foreign body entering through the eye or other natural orifice”.

On a lighter note, a young woman from Spain appropriately dubbed Asian Fury found out just how exotic sex on the beach can be. After arriving with her boyfriend on a splendid, isolated beach in South-East Asia, they jumped off their boat and into the cool ocean water to … mark the territory. They hadn’t noticed the giant jellyfish floating around, so that was unpleasant. Later, stranded on the silky sand, with red spots all over their bodies, they gave it another shot. “It all became very intense, then I suddenly felt more than three hands on me – one was mine, still scratching the jellyfish bites. Apart from that, there were crayfish on my breasts.” And that’s why the cocktail beats the literal meaning, especially when you’re in Asia.

Cover photo: Lionel RuizCC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (Flickr)

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