Is There a Hidden Danger to Sex After 60?... A Special Issue on Healthcare in America.

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What I’m Discussing Today:

● Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Older adults are still sexually active, which is not all that surprising. What is surprising is that STI rates are on the rise.

● What’s behind the mysterious uptick in migraines? New evidence suggests climate-driven heat, pollution, and pressure swings may be making migraines more severe.

● A milestone nobody asked for: The U.S. hits 2,000 measles cases for the first time in more than 30 years.

● 7 of the biggest medical breakthroughs in 2025: In the “glimmer of good news” department, it seems Americans are still capable of extraordinary medical innovation.

● Video Break: Here’s a small, determined shoe thief providing the kind of comic relief you’re grateful for when you could really use a laugh.

● What I’m Watching: Jim Thorpe: Lit By Lightning may just be bigger than the sum of its parts.

● Jukebox Playlist: I don’t want to spoil this one before you get there, but given the theme of this special issue, I’ll bet you can guess.

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

At 78, I’ve earned the right to keep certain aspects of my personal life private. My sex life remains off the table when it comes to this newsletter.

But I do need to talk about sex.

When I was a kid, sex education amounted to “don’t do it.” In school, I learned the biology in the abstract, the morality in the concrete, and the practical realities not at all. Which I suppose was par for the course for an all-boys Catholic school. Forget protection: it wasn’t discussed. As for STIs, they were called “venereal diseases” and primarily associated with sex workers and soldiers.

By the time I left Power Memorial and entered UCLA, it was the height of the Love Generation, the height of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.” Social norms about premarital sex and cohabitation were cratering. Broadway featured male and female nudity. And everyone was talking and singing about “doin’ it,” to the point where once in a while all you wanted was for folks to shut up for a minute.

So you’d think these same Baby Boomers, of which I’m a member, and who grew up in what is perceived as one of the most sexually promiscuous times in history, would have sex wired, so to speak.

Nope.

It’s not that sex is not happening among older Americans. A 2024 study from the Kinsey Institute and Cosmopolitan found that over a third of American women age 60 or more have partnered sex at least a few times a month. Men’s numbers track similarly. But all this sex is causing big problems.

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among adults 65 or older have more than doubled in the U.S. over the last decade. Between 2010 and 2023, chlamydia cases more than tripled in this age group. Gonorrhea increased sixfold, and syphilis soared nearly tenfold, according to Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, board-certified physician and AMA board member.

The “why” is not all that complicated. Only 3% of adults aged 60+ use condoms during sex.

If you’ve had the same partner for the last half-century, condom-less sex makes sense. But you’re increasingly in the minority. Divorce rates are higher among Boomers than any other generation. And, since more than half of women and over a quarter of men over 75 have experienced the death of a spouse, many older adults suddenly find themselves adrift in the dating pool after decades of monogamy, navigating online dating platforms, meeting new partners.

And all this sex among seniors is not a secret. The rest of America is aware, or should be, that older folks are sexually active. For at least thirty years, we’ve been taught by television that people in their so-called golden years do it. The Golden Girls did it. So did Grace and Frankie. So did the elders in Transparent and Six Feet Under. Yet, only 2% of nurse practitioners routinely ask adults over 50 about their sexual history.

And patients don’t bring it up, either.

Is it embarrassment that keeps them quiet? Or are Baby Boomers simply the self-involved “Me Generation” that they’re (we’re) accused of being?

Although that’s one cliché that definitely holds some truth, let’s dig deeper. In the 1960s and 1970s, “The Pill” was everywhere, lifting the responsibility for birth control off male shoulders and placing it decidedly on females’. And let’s not forget that those decades came before the ugly specter of HIV/AIDS, or the multitude of contemporary STIs that are active today. Once you don’t fear conception or some killer disease, the idea of protected sex becomes superfluous. So much so that a variety of statistics placed condom use among sexually active adults in the 1970s at around 7% (as opposed to today’s numbers, which hover between 25% and 45%).

So, how does one go about breaking old habits, especially bad ones?

If you’re a healthcare provider reading this, ask your older patients about their sexual activity. Make it routine. If you’re dating at any age over 60, get tested and use condoms. STIs don’t care that you remember watching the moon landing. They’re more than happy to infect you anyway. And while a few of those STIs can definitely kill you, others can be chronic, painful, and extremely annoying.

Put another way, a “venereal disease” in your 70s and 80s can make your life something less than golden.

What’s behind the mysterious rise in migraines? (National Geographic)

Summary: Migraines are becoming more debilitating, with new research pointing to climate change as a possible factor.

Scientists are investigating correlations between migraine flare-ups and environmental conditions. Research presented at the 2024 American Headache Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting found that “for every 10°F increase in outdoor temperature, there was a six percent increase in the occurrence of any headache.” A 2025 study in the journal Headache tracked nearly 408,000 people in the U.K. over 12 years and found more migraine cases among those exposed to higher nitrogen dioxide levels and extreme temperatures.

My Brief Take: If you’ve never had a migraine, lucky you. I’ve struggled with them for most of my adult life. During the ‘84 championship series against the Celtics, I had six migraine attacks in nine days. I almost bowed out of Game 1 because of a particularly severe attack. Couldn’t make it to either the team breakfast or meeting the morning of. Fortunately, by the time of tipoff, it had faded enough for me to power through, but it was a near miss.

A migraine is hard to explain to someone who has never had one. It’s not “a bad headache.” You can ignore a headache. When your vision and hearing are affected, and you’re nauseous to the point of vomiting, you can’t just push through. Not even for the NBA finals.

The research listed in National Geographic shows correlations between climate change and migraine severity. These changes include higher temperatures, pollution, and barometric pressure swings.

Thankfully, a migraine—as awful as it might be—is not a death sentence. But it can definitely ruin your day, your week, your year…or even your career.

As if we needed another reason to worry about the environment.

US hits 2,000 measles cases for first time in more than 30 years (USA Today)

Summary: The United States has recorded 2,012 measles cases as of December 23, 2025, marking the highest total in more than 30 years.

According to the CDC, the last time the U.S. exceeded 2,000 cases was in 1992. This year’s numbers were driven by 50 outbreaks across the country, accounting for 87% of confirmed cases. The CDC reports that 93% of cases in 2025 were among people who were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. Three deaths from measles were confirmed this year, including two school-aged children in West Texas who were unvaccinated.

Measles was eliminated in the U.S. by 2000 but has resurfaced with periodic outbreaks, mostly among people who are not vaccinated. The MMR vaccine protects against measles with a 97% efficacy rate.

My Take: This is what happens when vaccination becomes a political identity instead of a basic duty to protect kids and neighbors. Parents want to make decisions for their children, and I respect that. But if your decision puts your child at risk of severe brain infections, lung infections, deafness, or death—and risks the health of immunocompromised individuals in your community—is that really your choice to make?

We’ve all seen this movie before. World War Z, The Last of Us, 28 Weeks Later. Pick your preferred zombie apocalypse. The outbreak always starts small. There’s always that moment when decisive action could’ve contained it. But those folks in the movie never take it seriously. They downplay the threat. Instead of acting to eradicate it, they argue about individual freedom. They mistrust the experts trying to help them. By the time they realize how serious it is, the infection has spread beyond anyone’s capacity to control it.

Welcome to the apocalypse of our own making. And it’s not just movies that have warned us. The U.S. lost more than 1 million people to Covid, thanks to a slow and overly politicized response.

Measles infections have been recorded in 43 states. The disease is one part virus, one part misinformation. If we could create environments where facts reach people effectively and where trusted messengers have the loudest voices, this problem wouldn’t even exist. But with a conspiracist at the helm of the Department of Health & Human Services, misinformation has institutional cover. Put more simply, the foxes are now running the hen house.

We don’t let parents withhold other life-saving medical treatments from their children. How is this any different?

7 of the biggest medical breakthroughs in 2025 (ABC News)

Summary: 2025 delivered seven major medical breakthroughs across neurology, transplant science, pain management, and diagnostics.

An ALS patient became the first person to control an iPad entirely by thought using an implantable brain-computer interface. The FDA approved the first non-opioid pain medication in over 20 years, cleared the first blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, and approved a clinical trial for transcontinental robotic surgery performed 7,000 miles away. Scientists at NYU Langone Health discovered immune reactions behind pig kidney rejection in transplant patients and developed methods to detect and reverse rejection before permanent damage occurs.

Additional advances include a late-stage clinical trial showing positive results for the first oral pill for obstructive sleep apnea, and a baby with a rare metabolic disorder who received a personalized CRISPR gene-editing treatment that saved his life.

My Take: There’s a lot that’s wrong with healthcare in America, but there’s also a fair amount we do right. We remain at the forefront of medical innovation. All seven of these medical innovations were spearheaded by American companies or research institutions (one technicality: Fujirebio Diagnostics, the manufacturer of the Alzheimer’s blood test, is located in Pennsylvania, but is a subsidiary of Japanese-based Fujirebio Holdings).

Of course, discovery and access are not the same thing. Too many Americans never benefit from these breakthroughs. Barriers include cost, lack of insurance, location (no doctors or clinics), or sheer bureaucratic inefficiency. But these shouldn’t cause us to throw up our hands. They should spur us to fight harder to ensure that everyone, regardless of income, gender or geography, gets the medical treatment they need.

Recovery from surgery is tough, but having a four-legged thief as your companion makes it more entertaining. It’s even better when the thief is small enough to fit in your shoe but determined enough to steal it anyway.

What I’m Watching

Jim Thorpe: Lit by Lightning, The History Channel

This History Channel documentary about Jim Thorpe is produced by LeBron James’s Uninterrupted. As everyone who has ever produced a documentary knows (including me), it’s not easy to pack an extraordinary life into two hours. But director Chris Eyre’s decision to center Thorpe’s own words from his unpublished autobiography (narrated by artist-actor Dukon Harris) gives the film an authenticity that talking-head documentaries often lack. The Indigenous filmmaker’s perspective matters here, treating Thorpe as a complete human being who must navigate systemic racism, rather than just showing us a collection of athletic achievements. The problem is that Thorpe excelled at too many things: football, baseball, basketball, and track. And the film lurches between sports, decades, and themes without letting any single story breathe. I came away respecting Thorpe even more but wishing the filmmakers had chosen depth over breadth. If you’re interested in sports history or Native American stories that rarely get told, it’s worth your time, but prepare for a documentary that feels more like an overview than a portrait. Grade: B+

Jukebox Playlist

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby (Salt-N-Pepa)

Come on, you know I had to include this one.

Salt-N-Pepa released “Let’s Talk About Sex” in 1991, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when saying the word “sex” in public spaces was still taboo. The song opens with Salt saying, “I don’t think they’re gonna play this on the radio,” which was a direct dare to the stations of that era. As a result, radio stations played it, the track became a Top 20 hit and made enough impact that Peter Jennings invited them to create a public health version focused on AIDS, which they did.

Listen to how the two rappers speak to each other and us, passing verses back and forth like friends having an honest conversation. The chorus is a chant that gets stuck in your head immediately, but the verses address the difficult facts directly—STDs, condoms, consequences. Few songs of any genre have been able to achieve all that.

Bonus Song:

I chose this song because it feels like Ray Charles is reaching out and grabbing you, reminding you that joy is still worth choosing, no matter how heavy the year has been. There’s something beautifully human in the way he sings it — not flashy, not forced, just warm, alive, and full of that spark people get when they decide to celebrate life instead of waiting for it to get easier.