Sex and pain relief: Why having sex can be a pain reliever

I write for a local magazine, so I sometimes receive emails from readers with questions about relationships. Many of these are along the lines of “Why did this happen?” (in the relationship).

The very nature of relationships being highly subjective, it’s oftentimes so easy for us objective observers to see the cause-and-effect cycle and so difficult for the principles involved to see it. And we’ve all heard or opined things like "they don’t want to see it" or "they refuse to see it". And lots of people (myself among them) have at some point asked themselves “What was I thinking?” or “What motivated me to make that choice?” But, interestingly, there’s a body of scientific evidence that highly suggests, or even proves, that not every choice is necessarily conscious on the principles’ part.

For example, there was a guy who wrote that due to debilitating injuries he was in constant physical pain, except during the act of lovemaking. He wondered why this happened and whether he could get some of whatever caused it so he could have some relief at other times besides when he was intimate with his wife.

Out of curiosity I did a little research and it turns out that, when the time is nigh, physiological responses in the human body trigger the brain to send chemical messages to the endocrine system. Glanular activity then causes levels of a certain hormone to rise approximately 500 %. This in turn triggers the production of an endorphin-like substance (or maybe it was endorphins themselves; I don’t remember exactly off-hand). At any rate, the final results are two in number: the physical pain is reduced to the point of irrelavancy, and anybody can look good to anybody. So the old "passion of the moment" explanation does indeed have at least some basis in fact. But I wouldn’t suggest keeping any endorphin-like substances in your medicine cabinet: they’re highly addictive.