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Sex is healthy. Admittedly, that’s hardly a novel notion. But in an age when you have to find ways to make sex “safe,” a little reminder of sex’s essentially salutary nature never hurts.

Keep in mind, though, that “healthy” is one thing, “medicinal” is another. True, intercourse does have its direct health benefits. It is, after all, exercise (though it comes in well below golf and sawing wood on the calorie-burning charts). It has an analgesic effect, reducing pain for several hours after the fact, most encouragingly for sufferers of arthritis. And there’s evidence that ejaculations on a steady, regular basis make for a healthier prostate.

But sex, as far as anybody knows, doesn’t cure cancer. It won’t prevent heart disease. We’d love to report that sex will fend off diabetes forever. But that, as a certain jowly ex-president once said, would be wrong.

Still, it’s wrong only in its overstatement, not in spirit. Sexual fulfillment is a player in the disease-fighting game, not because it cures anything directly but because it’s a morale-booster.

Sex is a motivator and a powerful one, according to Aaron Vinik, M.D., Ph.D., director of research at the Diabetes Institute in Norfolk, Virginia. “The contact that sex provides keeps you functioning and involved,” Dr. Vinik says. “Sexually inactive people become what I call slothful – apathetic and inactive.”

Apathy and inactivity are invitations to disease; they’re the antithesis of the disease-free lifestyle. To defy disease, you need to exchange those two losers for a couple of winners: inspiration and action. A lusty sex life is part of that motivational mix.

“A lot of the depression and withdrawal you see in people with illnesses is because of a loss of sexuality,” Dr. Vinik says. “Sex is important to feel whole, to have a healthy outlook, to maintain vibrancy.”

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