LONDON (Reuters) - Frequent masturbation, particularly in the 20s, helps prevent prostate cancer later in life, according to new research.
Australian scientists have shown that the more men masturbate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop the disease that kills more than half a million men each year.
They suspect that frequent ejaculation has a protective effect against the cancer because it prevents dangerous carcinogens from building up in the gland.
"The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them," Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.
In a survey of 1,079 prostate cancer patients and 1,259 healthy men, Giles and his team discovered that men who ejaculated more than five times a week in their 20s were a third less likely to develop an aggressive form of the disease.
The findings contradict previous studies which suggested that having a variety of partners or frequent sexual activity could increase the risk of prostate cancer by 40 percent.
But Giles said the earlier research concentrated on intercourse, whereas his study focused on masturbation. Infections caused by sexual activity could account for the different findings.
"Men have many ways of using their prostate which don't involve women or other men," he added.