A recent German study published in the Journal of _______________ examined over 30,000 deaths occurring during the last 30 years and found some interesting associations. 60 men had died during sex—almost all by heart attack. Over half of these men were having sex during an extramarital affair. The researchers could come up with only one explanation for these findings: the added stress of trying harder to impress the women with whom they were having an affair put too much strain on their hearts. Two comments about this study seem warranted:

1. It would be absurd to suggest that, on its own, sex—whether extramarital or not—could "cause" a heart attack. Lots of people have affairs—presumably involving sexual intercourse—but most don't suffer heart attacks. The 30 or so men in this sample who died probably already had a pre-existing heart condition that could become exacerbated by the added stress of extramarital sex. Indeed, a heart attack takes a while to develop. Known as a myocardial infarction, a heart attack is the death of a part of the heart muscle due to starvation of blood and, therefore, the oxygen it carries. This starvation is usually caused by blockage of an artery carrying blood to that part of the heart (as occurs in atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis).
2. Even then, these men were probably experiencing a host of other stressors in their lives (some of which perhaps led to, or were at least related to, the reasons for having an extramarital affair). Sex itself was probably just the "straw that broke the camel's back," so-to-speak. The reason I bother to mention any of this is to dispel the myth that a particular emotional event all by itself can "cause" someone to have a heart attack.